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Countries, Deals, Europe

Myth busting and Maltese sand between your toes

18th August 202518th August 2025 funtime65

And because you should never listen to the naysayers, some myth-busting with Maltese sand between your toes.

Because the Mediterranean island isn’t all rocks and shingle as many would have you believe.

As anyone who has kicked up the golden grains at the island’s biggest sandy beach Mellieha Bay will tell you.

On the north of the island, it boasts crystal clear waters and is ankle deep for 50m out… perfect for the kiddies.

Close to the village of Mellieha. It stretches along the Ghadira Nature Reserve.

Knights tales

If it’s history you want then, of course, this small but powerful island is associated with St Paul, Knights and beefed-up sailors.

And you can channel your Medieval chevalier in Mellieha.

At the Red Tower and its bastioned watchtower with amazing views from its turreted roof.

Where you’ll be able to gaze out over Northern Malta, Comino and Gozo.

Muscle in on Popeye Village

The archipelago has long been a favourite for movie locations.

And you can muscle in on one of our absolute favourite cartoon heroes.

In the Popeye Village, a purpose-built film set that has been converted into an attraction.

Loveholidays bill Mellieha as its top pick and offers a room for seven nights at the 4* Maritim Antonine Hotel & Spa.

With flight with Ryanair, departing from Dublin on August 26 from €799pp.

Maltese crossings

Now, of course, we’re happy to carry the recommendations of the experts here.

Who point Malta lovers and those who are just waiting to get out there.

To sister islands Gozo and Comino.

Or take a ferry from Valletta to Sliema for its charming shops and local cafes.

The Blue Grotto Sea Caves on Malta’s southeast coast are perfect for the spirited.

While the Upper and Lower Barrakka Gardens are also worth a visit.

Offering breathtaking views of the Grand Harbour and Valletta.

So find out the real Malta and get myth busting with Maltese sand between your toes. And much else besides.

Countries, Europe, Pilgrimage

The Romani Diaspora never forget

15th March 202517th March 2025 funtime65

The Romani Diaspora never forget though few us even know of their holocaust and only rub shoulders with gypsies on our travels when they entertain for us.

Gypsy music evenings we find in our loveholidays travel pack are a feature of Hungarian holidays while for a daily dose of traditional music it can be found in the Central Market Hall in Budapest.

Where, of course, I was dragged as a trade-off for my history binge in the Hungarian capital.

Pride of place above the food and merch stalls, and word to the wise the Hungarians love a tin of goose liver and a Russian doll with Putin and miniature Vlads, is Fakanal Etterem restaurant.

Spell it out: The Fakanel Etterem restuarant

Where we refuel after a day pounding the streets,

After a morning in the Budapest baths with our food du jour goulash.

And listen to the lunchtime entertainment, a gypsy trio.

Just as Margaret Thatcher, George HW Bush, the Emperor of Japan and Princess Diana had done before us.

And that would have been some dinner party although we suspect they weren’t all there at the same time.

A gypsy trio

Now our troupe clearly had their tourist audience down pat.

With the violinist asking each table where they were from and tailoring his tunes to their country of origin.

With the French getting La Vie en Rose and in the absence of a Japanese tune the staple Blue Danube for our eastern friends.

Gypsy songs like every tradition the world over harks back to history.

And while our Fakanal Etterem trio lift our spirits with their toe-tapping tunes.

They equally will have laments for those we celebrate this year on the 80th anniversary of the Romani Holocaust.

Romani Resistance Day

And reflect on an act of unimagined bravery and the Romani uprising against their overlords in Auschwitz.

When on 15 May 1944, 600 Roma prisoners from the 6000 then in the camp defied their guards who were planning to execute them all.

Instead they barricaded themselves into their barracks.

With hammers, pickaxes and shovels they had gathered after breaking into the equipment warehouse.

It was the bravest of resistances and no gypsies were gassed that day.

The Nazis responded by moving half of the prisoners to other camps and gassing the remaining 3,000.

All of which is commemorated on May 16, Romani Resistance Day.

What we all share

And which the Son and Heir who was invited out to Auschwitz last year to observe the commemorations learned from the community.

There is, of course, much to learn from reaching out beyond our own circle.

As I found first-hand when I found that I was actually booked to travel with a gypsy party on a Topflight working assignment.

To Marian site Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

And came away with a whole new understanding of a community which has been maligned and alienated.

The Romani Diaspora never forget though.

Nor those of us who reach out and share what we all do, music, faith and compassion.

Countries, Deals, Europe

Budapest you’ll be the ruin of me

12th March 202517th March 2025 funtime65

Four days spent in the heart of Hungary on our loveholidays and InterContinental Hotel fact-finding mission and the verdict… Budapest you’ll be the ruin of me.

We are back where we started our first night, Szimpla Kert ruin bar, and if the mood tonight is yoga mat sleepy then so are we.

On account of our red eye back to Edinburgh.

Szimpla Kert is the granddaddy of romkocsmas, or ‘simple gardens’.

Repurposed shabby chic spaces and cellars rescued after the Cold War.

Alley cats

Szimpla is more of an alleyway of social life and interaction.

Bars, concert spaces, eateries, art spaces, a library, a farmers and bicycle flea market.

Although on quieter days at the start of the week, its core business, the serving of drinks, does demand patience of a tourist.

Which means my little wine drinker is directed to The Wine Bar snug because none of the other dozen bars sell rosé.

A sign above the bar reads ‘Back in ten minutes’ which we learn is a ‘Hungarian ten minutes’, akin to Caribbean island time.

Not that we’d deny the barkeeps their quiet time seeing first hand the throngs who pass through on weekend nights.

When we catch an ambient singer and a standards foot-stomper banging out Adele and Florence Welch on International Women’s Day.

The hideaways

For first-timers of whom we count ourselves in the number the search for new adopted Hungarian beers stretches beyond Szimpla.

To a ruin bar whose front challengingly is described as being hidden behind foliage.

Now if your billet is on the Danube front you’ll be asked to build up a thirst with a half-hour walk to Potkulcs.

But to make your time work for you perhaps visit the House of Terror, the fascists and communists’ torture hub, on your way.

On a balmy night you may want to sup your Soproni IPA which comes in cheaper than the Szimpla hot spot.

But we’d recommend you to enjoy the interior and the clutter of artefacts and graffiti art inside… and the local characters.

You snooze you loos

For a ruin bar meets Paris cafe culture and it is a cafe serving breakfasts or brunches by day, we follow the Danube.

Left of our InterCon hotel. and hang another left to the Csendes Letterem.

Where we nibble on olives and tortilla chips and fill our bellies and bladders before, of course, nature calls.

Now it is part of the adventure and the mischief of ruin bar owners to funk up their loo doors and interiors.

And the Csendes Letterem proudly boasts of its success in stumping customers who end up asking where the rest rooms are?

And of course it doesn’t take much to dupe me but I’m game.

Even if Budapest you’ll be the ruin of me.

Meet you on the ut

No place like foam: Three fingers of foam

We’ve been spending four days in the Hungarian capital with loveholidays, staying in the Danube front InterContinental (£1,099 for two).

I’ve been keeping you updated between goulash, Soproni IPA, hot chocolate and Chimney Cake, history and baths on our progress.

And I’ll put it all together in a review when I shake off the red eye but meantime.

MEET YOU ON THE UT

Countries, Deals, Europe

Bath time in Budapest

11th March 202517th March 2025 funtime65

Bath time in Budapest and there is no shortage of options to take a dip.

Szechenyi Baths though is the most popular for a reason.

With its 15 indoor baths and three outdoor pools, saunas, steam rooms, a rooftop spa greenhouse and a beer spa.

It is 8am though when we arrive, Szechenyi (£20pp) opens at 7am and closes its doors at 8pm, and I’m done with beery breakfasts.

Or Brut brekkies too with that option open at my billet at the InterContinental Hotel on the Danube front.

Breadth of bathing options

With the breadth of bathing options on hand it would be easy to lose your partner… and, of course, I did.

We have a history of miscommunication as any married couple will recognise.

And we agree to meet at the outdoor pool after my sauna.

My little mermaid is no fan of the rocks and had even taken but one breath of the steam room before taking flight.

But we had shared both outdoor pools, gently warm, and warmer.

And at least half a dozen of the inner ones and jacuzzis on the right as we you enter back in from the outside.

She’s hot and she’s cold

Masochist that I am I tiptoed into the freezing cold ones.

Just as I had done in the Czechia Spa Triangle back in the day.

And almost as quickly leapt straight back out.

The baths are, of course, carefully monitored and measured to be of staggered temperatures.

So don’t be alarmed if a member of staff sticks a thermometer in near the step where you’re sat.

The temperature was certainly rising as having dipped my toe in the indoor pools and taken my sauna I repaired to our rendezvous.

Only to find that there was no sign of my little mermaid who could only be spending more time inside.

Trunks and disorderly

Now an hour in the hotter of the two pools outside surrounded by all God’s creatures, fat, slim, tattooed et al.

I took matters into my own hands.

And returned inside, my stars and stripes swimming shorts clinging to my skin, shouting Her name.

Only to find her outside, at the other outdoor pool, outside the cafe, clothed, eating a snack and drinking a coffee.

Water on the brain

Of course, had the middle lanes pool been open as we’d hoped my little mermaid would have been there eating up the laps.

As with such matters I put the misunderstanding down to water on the brain.

Now they say the human body possesses 60% water.

And after more than three hours in this H2O heaven I reckon I’m up to 80%.

Not that I’m complaining as I’ve never been so clean and reckon I won’t need another dip for the rest of the year.

After my bath time in Budapest.

Bathed and beautiful

Now our four-day loveholidays city break to the Hungarian capital, flying with Ryanair and staying at the InterContinental for two (£1,099) is drawing to a close.

And we’ll share the last knockings with you, only not now as we need our sleep with a redeye in the morning.

And no time even for a sink wash.

Countries, Europe

My kippur in 2025 Budapest

10th March 202517th March 2025 funtime65

The dress code was compulsory, yellow stars in the Ghetto which makes being asked to wear my kippur in 2025 Budapest tame.

Jews from four years old were mandated to sew the yellow stars on to the left-hand side of their garments in the 30s and 40s.

With the ultimate sanction execution.

Today Jews rightly and proudly are giving out the instructions to those entering their grand synagogue… to wear the kippur provided.

If the cap fits

Being an Irish-Scots Catholic this is new to me and the kippur takes off in the March Budapest wind.

I retrieve it and spot that there is a Kirby grip attached.

Only I was told to get my thatch cropped before coming on my four-day loveholidays and InterContinental trip to Budapest.

And so I have little hair to attach it to although I make it work and it does hide my baldy spot.

I am clearly not the only Christian here today judging by the questions fired at our guide.

Who just happens to be Kristjan too, a twenty-something Jew who has been raised in the history of Budapest Jewery.

And tells us that as Neolog Jews they assimilated into their country and lived and fought as Hungarians first.

And Jewish worshippers second and they often took names from their surroundings.

Lest we forget

Not that any of that protected them from persecution, starvation and execution.

The images, audio, video and numbers in the ghetto museum are more difficult to assimilate.

More than half a million Jews killed by the Nazis and their sympathisers.

And one in three who died in the million killed in Auschwitz a Hungarian Jew.

Poignantly a sculpture, a weeping willow with its leaves carrying the names of victims.

In front of the gravestones, the mass 2,500 buried on the land at its front.

Everday life in a Jewish home

We are offered a glimpse of the lives of Neolog Jews.

In the Jewish Museum, the religious rituals associated with food, fasting and fashion.

And we are emboldened by the messages of hope in adversity which endures and how we all assimilate with each other.

It was and is the Neolog Jews’ watchword and we see that in the most modern manifestation of sport, showbiz and satire.

In the baseball cap with the Michael Jordan Jumpman logo in the merch shop.

As a Rabbi with the logo Just Jew It.

Which will take pride of place to my kippur in 2025 Budapest.

Countries

Retro Budapest 1956 and God’s Day Off

9th March 202517th March 2025 funtime65

Breaking off from going to where folks play and pray on holy days, I’m stepping back to Retro Budapest 1956 and God’s Day Off.

The Hungarian capital is a very different city to the one that existed in the late 50s.

A mere 11 years after the Russian communists ‘saved’ the Hungarians from the Nazi yolk.

Only for the long-suffering Magyars it was out of the frying pan into the fire.

We are standing in Parliament Square looking down steps to a photograph of the 1956 insurrectionists sat on a tank.

The museum is closed for the season and will not reopen again until next month but we will see that tank again.

Step back to Communist time

Tour de force: With Flora, Noami, Sarah, a Hungarian institution et moi

Noami and Flora, named for a Hungarian soap character, are walking us through modern Hungarian history.

On a Get Your Guide Communist History Tour with a House of Terror option (HUF 1,987pp/£45) which we will do the latter separately.

Hungary’s tale we learn is like many in central and eastern Europe.

From Berlin to KarlMarxstadt/Chemnitz to Dresden to Prague to here there are many histories.

Noami educates us in this country which is affording us such hospitality these four days.

On our loveholidays and InterContinental Hotel trip (£1,099) which is two-fifths the size it was before the end of World War I.

And that with the territory lost to other countries Historic Hungary was larger than Italy.

Keeping the faith

The bells ring around us from the grandiose St Stephen’s Basilica to remind us that it is Sunday.

And that the citizens of this largely Catholic capital are taking their pews and filling the church.

Their parents and grandparents were not afforded such freedoms.

Or at least not without a harm their status in society and job prospects.

Or worse and particularly for those who led them in worship.

Those priests who refused to bend the knee to the Communist party.

Martyrs to the cause

And found themselves tortured and imprisoned at Andrassy ut 60, the House of Terror.

Where the fascist Arrow Cross Party did the Nazis’ dirty work and the AVH enforced communist rule.

And where we spend two hours moving through the rooms, exhibitions, audios of personal stories and dungeons and a noose.

It is harrowing but rewarding time spent and bookends a day.

Learning first hand from Noami and Flora about their generation’s journey.

Retro lifestyle

And that of their ancestors at the Retro Museum.

We learn what everyday life was like for those who lived during the communist years between 1945 and 1991.

It is an interactive and fun ride through nearly 50 years of Hungarian life.

Where you can ride a police Brabant, read a state television bulletin and dress like a Hungarian.

As well as peaking into the kitchens and lounges of regular people’s lives.

Noami and Flora may take eager tourists back in time on their tour but they live in real time in 2025 and have homes to go to.

We though track back to Freedom Square and stand along two previous American presidents celebrated in these parts.

Here’s to the heroes

Ronald Reagan, who helped bring down the Iron Curtain and George HW Bush, who came here and spoke in front of the Red Star statue.

And follow the line to read the stories and pause at the pictures of the Jews taken from Hungary to the Holocaust.

And we look up to the boarded windows of the US Embassy where Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty took asylum.

He will be canonised by Rome in the coming years.

It has been an afternoon of time hopping for this traveller.

Of Retro Budapest 1956 and God’s Day Off.

Countries, Deals, Europe

My Budapest hovercraft is full of eels

8th March 202517th March 2025 funtime65

The Hungarian phrasebook has been updated since Monty Python days, not that there was ever the call to hear my Budapest hovercraft is full of eels.

Because for the next four days it will be the leisurely drift of pleasure liners out of my InterContinental Hotel window onto the River Danube.

All of which gets you in the mood for a swim and that is why my little mermaid has brought me here.

Only the blue Danube is for cruising and boozing and we will indulge… for research purposes you understand.

Now if the grand old river which winds majestically through the heart of Europe is the Hungarian capital’s artery.

Dip your toe in

Then the Szechenyi Baths are its beating heart.

With its 15 indoor baths and three outdoor pools, saunas, steam rooms, a rooftop spa greenhouse.

And one we’ll definitely sign up for is the 45-minute beer spa.

But that is for another day.

King of the castle

Having come in on the two and a half hour Ryanair red eye from Edinburgh.

On our loveholidays city break we need a reviving shower as we like them in the InterCon.

Before crossing the Danube from our Pest base for the Buda Castle.

Not that we’re recovered enough to tackle the heights.

Up, up and away

Instead we have that funicular in our sights.

And a goulash soup on the terrace and Magyar beer… we deserve it.

All served by the friendliest Hungarians, none of whom bristle when I say my Budapest hovercraft is full of eels.

We have come to Budapest from Edinburgh with loveholidays and Ryanair staying at the Intercontinental on the Danube.

For four days for £1,099.

Countries

Loveholidays the site that never sleeps

13th February 202513th February 2025 funtime65

Loveholidays the site that never sleeps processes 100 bookings every day before 9am.

I’d count myself in that number having twice booked with the online travel provider in the last six months.

Although the night owl that I am I get my wanderlust well after the witching hour and invariably sign up then.

We caught up with our friends at loveholidays over the Irish Travel speed-dating convention Meet The Media in Dublin.

And broke bread in the sumptuous surroundings of House restaurant on Leeson Street.

Dubrovnik pearler

Enjoying the access we do to holiday providers like loveholidays is something we’ve never taken for granted.

But, in truth, loveholidays treats all its customers like VIPs which is why it soars for repeat holidaymarkers.

With three in five of those who had booked loveholidays in January having been away with them before.

Which again is what we will do having finally got to Dubrovnik after one or two previous scares, in September for our pearl anniversary.

Malta love token

Obrigado: With the Scary One in Portugal Centro

Now our digital friends are all about the holidays, obvs, but also the love.

And they saw us off from our lunch catch-up with a love token.

A specially curated perfume they’d got a local apothecary to mix us up with notes from a favourite destination of our choosing.

Which is on their route and on their list of most popular choices, namely the Canaries, mainland Spain and the Algarve.

As well as emerging destinations such as Malta, Poland, Prague and Morocco.

Love token

And so for the week that’s in it with Valentine’s Day hoving into view and yours truly not having anything in the offing for Herself.

My mind tracked back to Malta where I made Her the Happiest Woman In The World and got down on one knee in the sun and She said ‘Yes.’

And so with all this in mind I left loaded up with goodie loveholidays merch.

Knowing too someone who surely does loveholidays and who I’ll be treating to a trip to Budapest next month.

All done with my good friends at loveholidays the site that never sleeps.

Early one morning before 9am when I was thinking how I could atone for something or other.