Tunisia March 2026

Last week we stayed at Belisaire and Thalasso hotel at Yasmine Hammamet in Tunisia. Very last-minute decision, all inclusive, second time with loveholidays.

Me and my two daughters. We were collectively referred to as the three girls wherever we go, which was fine by me.

Iran war and everything else that was wrong with the world seemed many more thousands of miles away than it actually was.

Having no Internet data outside the hotel helped, as we were blissfully cut off from world news for several hours each day.

Tunisia in the first week of March is not yet sunny and summery. It is a light jumper weather with occasional hot sun moments, when it becomes tshirt weather for a couple of hours.

Our hotel was at the south end of Yasmine Hammamet beach with Hammamet marina around one hour walk away.

Not wasting any time, we headed to the marina in the afternoon on the day of our arrival.

The area was utterly deserted. Long stretches along the marina felt untouched by human hand for a very long time. We followed paved paths through empty recreation grounds and olive trees, wooden arches, and palm trees, without seeing a living soul. We could not tell whether these places were permanently abandoned or whether they would miraculously come back to live in a month’s time or so, when the summer season kicks in. We enjoyed the eerie tranquillity of the place, but I can understand why it might not be every sun-seeker’s idea of holiday fun.

During the week-long holiday we went on three day trips, interspaced with three days at the hotel, where we lapped up every drop of the all-inclusivess; the indoor heated swimming pool, a yoga class on the lawn, the gym, and the steam room, the all day cappuccinos, countless watered down pina coladas and limitless blue lagoons.

Our first trip was to Hammamet town centre. We took a public transport bus. Return ticket was 40p per person. The journey took half an hour. No Internet, so relying on the kindness of fellow passengers to tell us where to get off. Centre ville? Prochain arret. C’est ici. Merci bien.

The streets were busy with local people going about their business, and mangy cats who had seen better days. Or maybe not.

We headed towards Kasbah, the Fort, first. We paid a small entry fee and stepped into the soothingly peaceful courtyard with a few sprawling trees in the middle.

The view over the city from the Kasbah rooftop is a must.

Some blogs mention a rooftop cafe but it was closed. The chairs and tables were there, but no coffee. We were there still very much out of season and in the middle of Ramadan.

We bought some early souvenirs, the ubiquitous Tunisian mosaics, and allowed ourselves to get lost along narrow winding streets of the medina.

We walked along the beach front, which backs onto a cemetery, found an open cafe in the centre of town, had delicious £1 cappuccinos, did not find an open bank, as we learnt that banks closed at 12.45pm during Ramadan, did not manage to change money anywhere else, as we did not bring our passports with us, and the ATM told us in French and English that it was closed and would re-open later. Getting hold of money was simply not to be, so we chilled moneyless on a bench by the bay, took hundreds of photos of sleeping cats and headed back to the bus stop.

We got back to the hotel in perfect time for pre-dinner cocktails by the pool.

Days out do not get much more budget-friendly than this.

The second trip was to Tunis, Carthage and Sidi Bou Said.

This one was organised by our loveholidays rep.

We were picked up by the coach at 8am, and promptly greeted by Mohammed our guide.

Mohammed talked non-stop for three quarters of the day, switching between English, French, German, and Arabic mid-sentence to keep us on our toes.

First stop was Tunis town centre. We were dropped off by a Catholic Cathedral of Tunis, a surprisingly imposing building for a country with 99% Muslim population.

We walked to the medina, where Mohammed led us to an oil-based perfume factory for an inevitable sales pitch, but compared to other similar experiences, it was relatively short and sweet, with no pressure to buy anything.

After that we had about an hour and a half free time. The three of us strolled around the medina without a particular plan or purpose, we stumbled across the Town Hall, were invited to the roof of a carpet shop, which offered an amazing view of the city, and browsed through many market stalls.

From Tunis we went to Carthage, a half hour drive through the suburbs. The pull of this place was the deciding factor in booking Tunisia and getting up at 4am last Sunday to catch an early morning flight to Enfidha.

Carthage archaeological site is positioned very next door to the Presidential Palace. This meant, bizarrely, that we were told by an armed guard to turn back from one path within the site, and to find another way around it. I guess, when in Tunisia, do as a Tunisian soldier tells you.

Ancient Carthage today is a pale shadow of its past glory. Still, it is Carthage, it had to be seen, it was the reason we signed up for this trip and here we were.

The best-preserved part on the site are the Antonine Baths. They are pretty impressive. We were not allowed to walk among the ruins, but could only view them and snap happy from behind a barrier.

The third stop on our itinerary was Sidi Bou Said, the picture-perfect white and blue village commonly referred to as the Tunisian Santorini. It was definitely photogenic. It was also quite small and insanely overpriced. We walked to the top of it, took the pictures overlooking the marina, we resisted a London priced coffee, grateful to our guide for advising us to ask the prices of everything before ordering food and drink.

After that it was time to drive home. The guide mercifully gave up on his trilingual narrative and we enjoyed the views in peace.

We got back to our hotel at 5pm, just in time for, yes, you’ve guessed it, a round of pre-dinner drinks.

Our third and last trip was by a private taxi to Kairouan great mosque, El Jem coliseum and Sousse town and marina.

The trip was pre-arranged for us by the loveholidays rep.

We were picked up at 8am from our hotel and headed to Kairouan mosque. We were loaned headscarves to enter the courtyard of the mosque. Kairouan mosque is one of the most important in the world. One source I looked up said that 7 pilgrimages to Kairouan equals one to Mecca. I cannot vouch for the veracity of that piece of information, but the mosque was certainly impressive. It was peaceful and almost empty except for a couple of Muslim women reciting Koran under the arches.

Certainly worth a visit, especially if you are a holiday culture junkie like us.

After Kairouan we were off to El Jem.

El Jem was easily the top site we visited in Tunisia. A true gem, to use the cliche. Personal opinion of course.

The structure was huge, multilayered, multistorey, and just wow at every step.

The weather was perfect for visiting a sandy coloured stone building too. The sun seeping through endless arches and curves made the strolling though it dreamy and magical.

El Jem featured in the 2000 Russell Crowe Gladiator movie during his initial North African sparrings.

Unlike Carthage, where access inside the ruins was restricted, we were allowed to walk everywhere among El Jem’s giant five storey structures, as well as climb and touch every stone.

Once more, we had the site nearly exclusively to ourselves, which make us feel like true explorers, rather than all-inclusive day-trippers in a taxi.

Our last stop of the day was Sousse, a sprawling beach holiday resort on our way back to Hammamet.

We drove through a long stretch of hotels, each looking exactly like the one before it.

Our first brief stop was at the Sousse medina, we were on a mission to find one more mosaic, a perfect cat one, which had proved elusive to us so far, in Hammamet, Tunis, Carthage, Kairouan and El Jem. As this was our last stop on the last day trip, the quest had become a serious matter.

Things did not look at all promising to start with, as we seemed to have entered a local footwear and kitchenware market, which was fascinating to see, but there was not a souvenir shop in sight. We must have looked lost and confused when a local man came to our rescue. He introduced himself as Mohammed the local chief of police, and to make his claim sound more legitimate, he rummaged in his pockets and flicked a photo ID card of sorts in front of us. It was most likely his driving licence, but played along. ‘The chief of police’ informed us that there were six government souvenir shops in the whole of Sousse medina and he was going to show us all six. It took some serious assertiveness for him to agree that we were only interested in the mosaics shop. He led us to it, and there, miraculously, a prefect cat mosaic materialised in front of our eyes, to the delight of the biggest cat lover among us, and the shop owner who could see clear the Euro signs in my daughter’s big smile.

The shopping done, we parted ways with Mohammed and went back to our taxi. We finished off the day at the Sousse marina, a tranquil place with a lot of boats and a few cafes. Just what we needed.

So this was it. Tunisia done. We have seen the main tourist attractions, in a leisurely out of season fashion. We walked miles along white sandy beaches, often the only people there save for local fishermen. We went during Ramadan, which could have been a problem if we tried to eat at local restaurants, as most of them were closed during fasting hours.

What else.

We felt safe everywhere we went.

Tunisian people were friendly, helpful, and welcoming. Those who wanted to sell us things, were less pushy and insistent than in other countries known for their haggling sales techniques.

And finally.

Tunisia felt ever so slightly like Morocco and Egypt’s poor cousin, which is probably unfair, it is just that the other two North African destinations have so much to offer.

A lot of Tunisian roadside fields and villages that we drove past were drowning in litter, mainly plastic containers, and other debris. We also passed thousands of half-finished houses, and scaffoldings, which did not help the overall impression. As my daughter put it, Tunisia could do with a face-lift. I suspect the problem is, it might ill afford one.

It was the opportunity to visit the once mighty Carthage that decided it for us, and I am glad we saw it, but if I am totally honest, I personally found it a little bit underwhelming. There, I said it.

Still, we really enjoyed the holiday. It is so very true what they say, whoever they are, it’s not where you go, it’s who you go with that matters.

Winter Olympics 2026

My daughter is working a skiing season at a well-known skiing resort somewhere in the French Alps, and I am missing her badly, so I had this genius idea that watching Winter Olympics might make me feel closer to her. I decided to give it a proper go on the weekend.

What can I say. Winter sports have moved on since I last paid attention.

I blinked and technology had elbowed in on everything in the world of snow and ice sports. To be fair, it was a long blink. Last time I watched Winter Olympics, Eddie the Eagle was chasing his dreams in Calgary. Eddie who? Exactly. Life had taken over and I never had much interest or reason to get into watching winter sports. Until now.

I had a lot of catching up to do, so I had spent most of Saturday flicking between BBC2 and iPlayer to get most of the coverage, in the hope of becoming a sofa expert by the end of the evening. It wasn’t to be, so just a few amateur comments from me.

For the life of me I could not work out curling
It’s like cricket on ice. Incomprehensible. Except not really like cricket at all.

Snowboarding was not an Olympic sport last time I looked, so I could be excused for being confused by the names of disciplines.

Men’s big air? Could be a euphemism for a fart for all I knew. Instead, it turned out to be screwdriver spins in the air whilst, for extra points, holding onto your snowboard.

I must admit it was not easy to work out who was who in those high-tech Star Trek like mirror visors and baggy outfits. Took me a while to work out whether I was watching men’s or women’s competition. Turned out to be men’s.

I enjoyed that. Nerve-wracking, spectacular, defying physics and common sense, and cheating gravity for longer than I thought possible. Fearless and unreal. From the corner of my cosy sofa it looked like the risk of life-changing injuries was a split second away each time they launched themselves into the air.

Dancing on ice next.I was pleased to see not much had changed here. In fact, dare I whisper it, it was a little bit boring. The music was very slow and tame. Give me Torvill and Dean’s Bolero any day.

Women’s ski jump?? Since when? My first reaction, as one of my husband’s favourite saying goes, it’s not proper. Let’s see if it grows on me.

I remember watching men’s ski jumping competitions back in Poland, where it holds a joint first place with football and volleyball as a national sport, with lots of medals of all shades to boast each year. But women? Equal rights I guess.

Women’s Ice hockey. Naah. Sorry, Canada, sorry USA, not for me. Perfect time for a tea break. And this time it’s not the women, it’s the hockey.

Sunday morning. Women’s downhill.
Now we’re talking!

Beautiful, powerful, awesome, elegant, out of this world fearless; the speed, the jumps, the turns, loved Federica Brignone’s tiger helmet.

112km per hour? As I only ever experienced that kind of speed inside an airplane, I could not relate. The ice cold, crisp and fizzy atmosphere on the slopes of Cortina made me think about an ice cold, crisp and fizzy g&t, the type that only get served on airplanes, but I understand that could be too huge a stretch of imagination for anybody to appreciate.

Breezy Johnson. What a name for the person who ended up a downhill gold Olympic medallist. I really wanted it to be her real name, but a quick Google revealed that it is in fact Breanna. Oh, well.

Luge.
Not exactly a spectator sport, is it? Or am I missing something?

I just heard that somebody was currently three and a half tens of a second behind somebody else. I mean, seriously, how could this be seen as a decisive victory? I cannot even imagine three and a half tens of a second.

Sunday night. Women’s big air qualifying run.

They are all so cool, so so very cool. The fist bumps before they start, the twirls, the spins, the grabs, the flips, the smiles, the energy, the youth. Magical.

Figure skating. Last event on Sunday night.

What happened to the perfect 6 scores? The waiting for the judges’ scores for technical merit and presentation used to be the best part for me. The dramatic suspense, the collective holding of breath as the scores were revealed on screen.

This seems to have been replaced by one total score, displayed the moment a skater finishes their performance, so no waiting, no suspense. A bit of a letdown if you ask me.

The skating itself was glorious.

Hamnet film review

The only thing I knew about Hamnet before I went to see it was that a child named Hamnet dies in it, and that it is based on the life of William Shakespeare via the book called Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. A couple of weeks before I went to see it, Jessie Buckley started scooping every seasonal film award going for her role in it, which piqued my interest.

Buckley plays Agnes, which is the name Anne Hathaway goes by in the film. Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare. I am surprised Mescal has not won any awards for his portrayal (yet) because his Shakespeare, with his stuttering writer’s block moments, his pensive contemplation, his vulnerability, and more, is a delight to watch.

I did not expect to be punched in the stomach so hard, so repeatedly, with so much force! I did not expect something so beautiful, so wow, so oh my god. So clever, so pleasing on so many levels, so all coming together so heart-meltingly in the end.

It begins slowly and unfolds steadily. The forest landscape is painted with care, and the misty rolling fields set the right tone. The hawk and the glove motifs might feel cliched to start with, but, but they make sense later on.

What we get in Hamnet is a Hamlet backstory, as imagined by Maggie O’Farrell and presented perfectly on screen by everybody involved.

A tearjerker, an emotional rollercoaster, a feast for the eyes, Jessie Buckley is gorgeous in it, Paul Mescal is ever so good, the Hamnet actor Jacobi Jupe is pulling at the heartstrings with all the ruthlessness an innocent child can convey.

When the final section of the film begins, with Hamlet on stage at the Globe, or is it the Rose, and suddenly it all comes together, and it takes your breath away, well, my breath away anyway, and it’s one of those brief intense moments when we feel alive, when it’s all worth it, when the spoken word reaches out to us through the centuries, all the way to the Everyman sofa in Crystal Palace, when to be or not to be loses its tired overuse, and I feel like joining Agnes when she physically reaches out and touches the hand of Hamlet on stage.

The theme of Shakespeare’s play on stage within a film about Shakespeare has been done before, probably most famously in recent years in Shakespeare in Love, possibly the only time Gwyneth Paltrow fully delivered the goods. Now Shakespeare in Love has a serious competition in Hamnet.

Shakespeare the dad comes painfully alive and everything in the Danish Play suddenly fits the film’s idea of how it came to be. It is of course only an idea, a version of Shakespeare’s creative universe which in all probability was not true, but it fits, it fits! Which is why I left the cinema believing that it could have been conceived and written the way I had just watched, as an expression of father’s grief and the way of saying goodbye to his son, something he could not do in person, as he had arrived home too late.

I tried to upload a close-up from the film, but my WordPress editing tool told me I was not allowed to, probably something to do with copyright policing. So I am uploading a couple of photos showing the comfort and the luxury of Everyman, Crystal Palace.

Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

Oops, I did it again. At Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

Madness is booking myself on another guided tour at another obscure London tourist attraction, run by retired volunteers and expect not to be bored to within an inch of my life.

Still, this is exactly what I did, when, after last month’s Crossness Pumping Station experience, I thought that a good way to spend the first Sunday of 2026 was to book a fun family day out at the Croydon Airport Visitor Centre in Purley Way.

To be fair, Croydon Airport did pop up in an after dinner conversation a couple of days before, and somebody did show more than a fleeting interest in the topic, although I will never know whether it was genuine, or because he is a perfectly well-mannered polite person, but anyway. I did look it up and Google said it was only open to visitors once a month on the first Sunday of each month, and it also said the tour would take about 45 minutes, and it sounded reasonable and it was only 20 minutes drive and we had no other plans, so we went.

Croydon Airport has the potential of making Croydonians proud of their history. As you are not likely to hear, ‘I am from Croydon and proud’, many times in your lifetime, this is not something to be sneezed at.

Croydon Airport boasts the world’s first air control tower, and it claims its place in history as London’s first commercial flights airport.

The airport was operational on its current Purley Way site between 1928 and 1959, when its conceded defeat to Heathrow. Apparently something to do with grassy fields around Croydon which did not make good runways, as opposed to concrete runways at Heathrow. The last airplane to take off from Croydon flew to Rotterdam. Yes, I did listen to some of it.

The place is interesting, the nostalgic spirit of yesteryear air travel becomes a palpable reality in the many rooms we went through.

Dress code rules for air travel were intriguing, the fact that the passengers were being weighed in before the flight was amusing. I was happy to learn about Amy Johnson’s solo flights and that it took 19 days to fly to Australia.

I am glad I saw it, but, My Dear Newly Born Baby Jesus, the tour did not half drag on!

Two hours! Two hours of technical detail after technical detail, information on propellers, re-fuelling, runway rules, history of airline name changes, as well as going over each map and diagram on each wall, the whole shebang.

My daughter and I would have been happy to see the artefacts, read the signs and notices, or not, and be out and inside Costa Coffee across the road within the promised 45 minutes.

Unfortunately, sneaking out early was not really an option, as the air control tower, arguably the most exciting part of the tour, was left to the end.

When it was all over, I was ready to apologise to my companions for the length of the tour, but curiously, the men in our group claimed they had found it fascinating and not at all too long. They must be the most well-mannered, most polite men in Croydon.

1st of January. Happy Birthday to all Afghans in the UK

Afghan refugees in the UK celebrate their birthdays on the 1st of January. This is the date of birth the Home Office assigns to them on arrival in the country.

My understanding about the reasons why is that the exact date of birth is not something Afghans attach much importance to.

This is especially true of remote rural areas of Afghanistan, where keeping paper records is not high on the agenda.

Unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrive in the UK usually know what age they are, as this is the information their parents are likely to have given them, but they do not know the day or the month they were born. The 1st of January is given to them as a simplified, easy to remember practical date.

As a result of this, a lot of Afghans in the UK send Happy Birthday to All of Us messages on the first day of the year.

This gives our family a great reason to end the Christmas season with a veritable feast at Watan restaurant in Tooting every year.

It grants us one extra day before the New Year’s resolutions kick in, because there is no point in starting the New Year New Abs health drive hours before consuming Watan Family Special Mixed Grill.

After that, there really is nowhere to hide, and the resumption of real life looms big on the horizon.

Off to the gym now.

How to do the London NYE fireworks, by a newly qualified expert

When I told my friends that his year I was going to watch the London New Year’s Eve fireworks not from the safety and the comfort of my sofa but from the banks of the river Thames, they were concerned for my sanity.

One friend even sent me a compelling TikTok reel from a previous year’s disgruntled NYE reveller, in which he called the experience a fing sht, never to be repeated.

To be fair to him, he paid £45 for his ticket, so he was possibly justified in his discontent with a spot behind a row of portaloos behind the London Eye.

Not easily discouraged, and reluctant to change plans once we’ve made them, we went anyway.

It was great!

We did not buy tickets.

We did not camp out by the river from early afternoon.

We did not heed the ubiquitous online advice to leave the car at home.

We drove right into the eye of the storm, and parked a few minutes’ walk from Lambeth Bridge. As I am still buzzing from the night before, I am happy to share my parking slot here, even though one of you is now probably going to take it from me next year. Whitgift Street, free weekday parking from 6.30pm, yards from the NYE road closures.

We got there at 10pm. We walked up to the river and we inititially made a mistake of turning towards the London Eye. We soon noticed that everybody else was heading in the opposite direction, so we turned round and followed the crowd. We walked briskly back towards Lambeth Bridge, but we missed our chance to get on it by a few minutes. The police tannoy announced that the Bridge was now closed and would not reopen before midnight.

We kept walking away from the London Eye, with a new plan to get onto Vauxhall Bridge, which was still open.

In the end we abandoned that idea and settled on a spot half way between the two bridges. It was perfect.
We had less than an hour to wait now, and we spent it chatting, laughing, glancing at the river, checking phones and watches.

From where we stood, the fireworks did not disappoint. Since we had a sideway view of the London Eye, we missed the Wicked 2 product placement entirely, so we had no reason to be ‘outraged’ by it, unlike, allegedly, thousands of ticket-holders watching it face on from the North side of the river.

After the last blasts of the display went down in smoke, an unexpected exhilarating event broke up next to us, as small crowds of Asian men performed energetic dances to music.

The six of us provided momentary entertainment to a nearby group of tourists too, when we linked hands and sang auld lang syne at the top of our voices.

After that it was time to head home and that was the only time we experienced the tiniest teeny little glitch in our otherwise perfect night. We got stuck in back roads traffic for a very long time, which meant that the 6.5 mile journey home took nearly two hours. But we are not here to sweat the small stuff.
We got home at 2.40am and ended the night with Morley’s chicken and chips.

Happy New 2026 to all my Friends and Family!

Ithaca

“Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, left his home many years ago and has not returned. This is his story.”

This is the opening line of my debut book, The Odyssey, which I wrote at the age of 7.

It was inspired by the TV series of the same title, which was showing in Poland at the time. I loved the storyline, and started writing long before the brave Trojan War hero returned to the shores of his kingdom.

I felt I was onto something special, and hoped that nobody else would have the same idea and that I would be the only one who put it onto paper. When, two months later my parents told me that some guy called Homer had beaten me to it 28 centuries before, I sulked for a week.

Amelia and I stayed in Kefalonia for ten days earlier this month. Ithaca is a stone’s throw from Kefalonia, 45 minutes by ferry to be precise, so we knew it had to be done. We booked ourselves on a day trip to the tiny island and it was lovely.

Ithaca has no tourist resorts or sandy beaches to speak of, but it still attracts large number of visitors, mainly day-trippers like us, brought here on the strong winds of cultural, literary and historical snobbery.

Ithaca’s entire PR effort is geared towards Odysseus and Homer. The statues are everywhere. The port of Sami, where ferries to Ithaca depart from, features Odysseus Theme Park.

Our guide, Vanna, spoke pretty much non-stop. If I had a Euro for each time she described something as ‘gorgeous’, I could have probably paid for the pork souvlaki and Greek salad lunch for everybody on the coach. To be fair to Vanna, Ithaca is gorgeous.

Our first stop was Vathy, the island’s capital. Amelia and I took a long walk around the bay, snapping happy as we went.

After that, it was a hairpin bend ascent to the Kathara Monastery, which offered us, yes, you guessed it, gorgeous views of the coastline.

Next stop was Kioni, for an unrushed lunch break. Kioni, like every other village in Ithaca, was a quaint little place, busy with sailboats coming and going at a steady pace.

Our final stop was Stavros, hailed as the Odysseus birthplace, but I had a strong suspicion we stopped there mainly so that Vanna was able to earn her commission from a local cafe. She herded us inside and gently nudged us towards the ‘local delicacy’, a rice and honey sweet called Rovani. It was an okay tasting rice pudding, which Amelia polished off happily.

Athens

This post is based on my trip to Athens in September 2023. I wrote it, saved it in the drafts folder and promptly forgot it. Publishing now, because I think it can be quite useful for any good people debating whether to check out Athens or head straight to the islands.

“Athens is not a graceful city. It looks terrible from just about every approach, its air pollution is dire, and its traffic and postwar architecture are a disaster.”

Greece, The Rough Guide

Athens has such bad rep among travel books writers, it sounds almost personal. Having visited Athens earlier this month, I would like to say that the reputation is unfair and undeserved.

My daughter Amelia and I spent three days in Athens.

First half day was dutifully taken up by the Acropolis.

September is meant to be the month when the tourist traffic begins to calm down, but it was still pretty heaving on the uphill paths.

Despite every website telling us to, we did not pre-book, and spent about half an hour queuing up for the Acropolis tickets. There was one, ONE digital ticket machine available.

Tip: Acropolis, as well as every other piece of antiquity in Athens, is free of charge for under-25 EU citizens, the photo on the phone is sufficient to prove your European provenance.

The Acropolis hill was everything we were hoping for. It was beautiful, humbling, moving, fascinating, amazing, ancient, awe-inspiring, thought provoking and full of cats.

When we got our fill of the Parthenon, Theatre of Dionysus, and the rest of it, we walked down to the Roman Agora, followed by the Ancient Agora, where we feasted our eyes on the Temple of Hephaestus, the Stoa of Attalos, and more cats. It was so beautiful and peaceful, we stayed until closing time.

The Acropolis done, we could relax and spent the next day walking around the city. We set off from our accommodation, Kolonaki Nest (a masterpiece of Booking.com creative photography, but it served the purpose of giving us a bed in Athens), stopped for breakfast at Syntagma Square, and headed towards Panathenaic Stadium, followed by the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and ended up near the Acropolis again, loitered around tourist shops and restaurants in Plaka and took the Metro back to Syntagma, and took the funicular to the top of Lycabettus Hill (Lykavitos) for the most stunning views of Athens and beyond. Highly recommended, if a little bit out of the way.

After Lycabettus, we went back to Syntagma Square, which was a great find. It is the main square in Athens, the Greek Parliament building stands to the side of it, and it also turns into the roadman capital of Athens by night.

In the true Heasley sightseeing style, we clocked up well over 25,000 steps that day. We would have done even more, but were frequently slowed down by cats. Amelia is physically incapable of walking past a cat without stopping to stroke them, and take several carefully composed photos of them. And there are a lot of cats in Athens.

The third and last day in Athens, we took a bus to Cape Sounion and the dramatically placed Temple of Poseidon, which was just under two hours drive along the coast. We spent the whole day hanging about Cape Sounion, waiting for the sunset, when Amelia took hundreds of photos, and we took the last bus back to Athens.

Champagne sunset trips to Cape Sounion are being sold to cruise ship loads of Americans daily, and, unbelievable as it sounds, they really do sip the bubbly from elegant champagne flutes, perched on the rocks around the temple, by their thousands.

And finally.

Do not listen to disparaging guidebook opinions, and go to Athens! It is a great place to spend a few days. Amelia and I had the best time there.

The only word of advice, you would be wise to skip the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The best thing about it is its name. Other than that, it’s just two tall columns and a lot of scaffolding, on the side of a football stadium size load of burnt grass and rubble. Still, you will probably ignore my advice and head to the Temple of Zeus on your second day in Athens, like we did, because he is Zeus, the big guy.

Taghazout Last Day. Final bits and bobs.

Time flows differently here. The practice of looking at your watch every few minutes is virtually unknown. If you only have half an hour for a coffee, or an hour for a tagine, you might run out of time in some Taghazout seafront restaurants.

Cats are everywhere. On the beach, on the chair next to you in a cafe, under your table. There are thousands of them and new ones are born all the time. Not all of them are in the best of health, some of them look like they’ve been in wars.

Taghazout is a cash only village. Leave your cards safely locked away in your room with your passport.

Everything is cheap, but because it’s so cheap, it’s only too easy to lose track of how much you spend a day on all these cheap things.

When you are buying souvenirs, and you hear that something costs 200 dirhams, please say 150 or go as low as you dare. Mild haggling is expected as part of every transaction with street sellers. You will know when you’ve gone too low, because they will stop smiling and will shake their heads firmly. I was mindful not to go too low in Taghzaout. I did that years ago in Egypt, the seller walked away, and as he did, he shouted at me ‘you no good woman!’. I felt ashamed and very small. Since then, I have probably overpaid for many bracelets and fridge magnets, just to make sure I did not offend a North African market trader again.

Be careful who and what you photograph. Do not try to take sneaky snaps of old men in their hooded jalebi robes. The ones who look most Instagram worthy already know it and they do not wish to feature in your reel. When they spot what you are doing, they will shake their walking sticks at you in a menacing way, and will give you a dirty look and you will feel ashamed of yourself, as you should.

Dress code. To state the obvious, Morocco is a Muslim country. You will be more comfortable wearing loose modest clothing to blend in and to show respect for the culture. Leave sexy outifts for Magaluf or somewhere they will be appreciated. Tshirts and 3/4 trousers or long skirts rather than short shorts and revealing vests in town. Beachwear on the beach only.

Taghazout Day 7. Skate park, goats and thoughts on solo travelling.

Today I allowed myself to get up a little later than usual. I was woken up by the rooster and the morning call to prayer at around 6.30 but I fell asleep as soon as the eager chicken and the muezzin stopped their invocations.

I woke up again at 8.50, got dressed and went up for the rooftop breakfast.

There are now five Polish people at the hostel, all in their twenties. They were talking, I listened. It was fascinating, because I quickly realised that I was unfamiliar with this kind of young Polish people.They were not the same Polish people I worked with in London. They were much more like the young English people I knew, but they spoke Polish.

After breakfast, I followed my son’s advice to look for ‘trash goats’ who lived at the very top of the village and ate rubbish, hence the name.

I turn left of my front door, kept walking up, and sure enough, I found a group of goats. They were eating rubbish, just as my son said they would be.

After the goats, I went all the way down to the main street, you need to be fit to walk up and down Taghazout.

I had the whole day ahead of me all to myself, until dinner date with my son.

I decided to start with another climb up, this time to the skate park. It was worth it. A great viewpoint and the skaters were on top of their game. I stayed there for at least an hour, snapping happy.

After that, I did some trinket shopping. Bought a few pieces, not sure now if they are going to be gifts for other people or for myself. I did some half-hearted haggling with the sellers, got the first asking prices down a notch, which I am pretty sure was still well above their last price.

The shopping done, at least for today, I felt hungry, so I went for a simple lunch of cheese omelette and a coffee.

After lunch, I decided that my frantic morning activities, the goats, the skate park, and the shopping needed to be balanced out by a relaxing afternoon at the beach. I walked past the main surfing crowd, paid 30 dirhams for a deckchair, and read my book for a few of hours.

Deckchairs are folded away at 6pm, so I got walking again. Sunset was at 7.29, I made sure I got a good view of it at the small beach in Taghazout centre and let myself be mesmerised by the daily show of the big ball of light going down.

After sunset I met my son and his friend for dinner at Cafe Tayoughte. Chicken tagine and Moroccan tea, lots of talking and laughter. I got to my hostel around 9.45pm, went through the daily black tea ritual on he rooftop, WhatsApped with family back in England, and read Flowers for Algernon before sleep.

The best thing about travelling solo is that I can do only the things I want to do and at the pace I want to do them. I choose how long to sit over breakfast, without having to respond to ‘shall we make a move then?’, or having to be the one asking the question if my companions take taking their time to an absurd level.

Today I chose how long to stay at the skate park and I chose how to fill my whole day. In the evening I felt that I did everything exactly how I wanted to.

The worst thing about travelling solo, for me, is having nobody to share my reactions to what I see and how I feel the moment I see and feel it. Today, that meant nobody to comment to on the skate boarders amazing skills, and nobody to discuss how close I should come up to the goats, especially that there were two baby goats among the group and perhaps a protective goat parent might try to chase me away if I came too close.

If it hadn’t been for dinner with my son, the only conversation I would have had all day today would have been with a metal detectorist guy, who was also the person in charge of the deckchairs. He showed me his loot, several old looking half-rusted coins. He tried to tell me something about them, but he had no English, and my French is, well, let’s not dwell on it. He said something with the word fifty in it.

The freedom to do what I want and the aloneness of it clash constantly in my mind.

I cannot decide if I like it or not. I enjoy the free moments, and I love Taghazout, I think that it is one of the perfect places to go solo. Logically, I am also aware that in a few short days I will be back home, no longer solo. The jury is out. I will keep debating the topic tomorrow, another day with me, myself and I.