Explore with Fran

Despite knowing for a long time this is what I was going to do, it was still surprisingly hard to press the “proceed” button. Having searched for, and found, exactly the flights I wanted, I just needed to enter my credit card details and it would all become real.

Then why did the butterflies immediately kick in? Why did a tsunami of indecisiveness wash over me? Maybe it is the reality that the clock now starts ticking. Each day that passes is one less that I will live in the UK. Knowing that I do really now have to start tying up the loose strings of my English life. Closing down bank accounts. Cancelling memberships. Packing up belongings. Saying those emotional goodbyes to family and good friends. Not really sure of when I will be seeing many of them again.

Or maybe it’s not that at all. Perhaps it is just the fact that I now realise, and it’s starting to sink in, that I will have to rescind the season ticket for my beloved Manchester United, the team that I first watched live in the late 1970s. In the days when football was football. The Theatre of Dreams was simply, Old Trafford. And the glory days of Best, Charlton and Law were nothing but a distant memory. Long gone, with me continually suffering through the 80s at the hands of the red half of Merseyside. That, of course, was until the day at Crossley Heath school in 1986 when I heard that big Ron Atkinson had been sacked and a dour Scotsman called Alex Ferguson was on his way south. The rest, as they say, is history.

So, I have my flights. On 1st August i will be leaving these shores and heading down under. And yes, it’s a very long flight, so i’ve pushed the boat out (on a plane?) and for the first time ever I booked business class seats (in keeping with ticking things off my life bucket list). Singapore Airlines will be taking me, via Munich, to Singapore, a city I’ve visited on a few occasions, always enjoying the great restaurants, and (exorbitantly) expensive nightlife. Little wonder that Nick Leeson had to resort to being a rogue trader to fund his flashy lifestyle and late nights in “Harry’s Bar”.

Three days later I will be headed to Perth. Glorious Perth. Gateway to beautiful Fremantle, and quite possibly some of the best fish and chips in the whole of Australia, from Cicerello’s by the marina. Afterwards, washed down by a delectable home brewed beer from the Little Creatures micro brewery. I will also take a side trip to Rotto, Rottnest Island, and visit the famous little quokas. It was the quokas that gave Rottnest it’s name, as the early Dutch explorers sailed past, thinking they could see large rats, hence coining the sobriquet, Ratnest Island.

After my week in Perth, and catching up with family, it will be time for another bucket list item. One of the world’s greatest rail journeys. One that many people think I’m mad for doing and look completely perplexed when I say I’m choosing to do. The epic Indian Pacific train journey from Perth to Sydney, taking 3 whole days, leaving just once a week, and rocking into Sydney every Wednesday morning. Can’t you just get a flight and do it in 5 hours, they ask? Well, even if you need to ask that question, we have a very different attitude to travelling.

There we have it. Plans made. Countdown starts. My days in blighty are, literally, numbered.

Will I become a “Pom in Paradise?” Watch this space.

Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware indeed! Then again, shopping in Havana isn’t the same multi sensual experience it is as I’m walking around the Trafford Centre. It’s not even just as simple as going along to the, depleted, stores with your wallet. You need to make sure you have the correct currency for a tourist. That’s right, there are two currencies, one for locals and one for tourists.

Since Fidel Castro ruled out the US$ as a legal currency in Cuba in 2004, it was replaced with a “convertible peso”, CUC$. This is what we use. The locals meanwhile use the plain old peso.

So, armed with my CUC$ I headed to the nearest “supermarket” to buy some much needed sun cream. An easy task in most parts of the world. Not so in Havana. Where the big, 1950s style shops are emptier, of goods, than they are full. That said, I did find one bottle that looked suspiciously like sun cream, and it had a big red SPF4 on the front. Result. A high factor sun block to protect me as I wander around, exploring Habana Vieja.

Fast forward to lunchtime, sat in the café, inspecting my throbbing arms. They had come to resemble some of the sausages that suffered at one of my late dad’s (referring to his passing, not his tardiness) bbqs. The cream I had bought for the princely sum of approx. £1.20, was about as much use as a Starbucks loyalty card in a Cuban coffee shop.

I had more success in picking up some cheap sunglasses. Another packing failure. You might be wondering what I did pack, bearing in mind I was coming on a summer holiday, to gorgeous sunshine, with no sunglasses or sun cream. Live and learn is my motto.

So, off I went, to try and pick a pair up, armed with my new word of the day, gafas de sol – sunglasses. The first doorway with a cardboard stand holding sunglasses was presided over by a quite imposing looking lady. I pointed to the ones I wanted, so I’d resemble Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs, and asked, “Cuanto cuesta?”

Ten, she replied in Spanish. OK, time to bargain, and I countered with “cinco?”. Offering 5, I thought she would meet me half way. No. Ten, she growled back. I know which battles I’m destined to lose, and this was one of them. Undeterred, I went a couple of doorways down, met with a much more amenable stall holder, and bartered the exact same pair for 8CUC$. The best £5 I have spent for some time.

Let’s go to work.

Watching the Godfather and how the gangsters such as Meyer Lansky, friend of the then dictator Batista, had to flee their illegal casinos on New Years Eve 1958 as Fidel marched into town, announcing the revolution, I wanted to go to Havana.

Visiting Rosario in Argentina, the birthplace of Che Guevara, and in later years visiting his family home in Alta Gracia, near Cordoba, I wanted to go to Havana.

Reading the great novels of Hemingway, affectionately known in Cuba simply as “Ernesto”, and about how he frequented the bars, one of the most famous now being La Floridita, I wanted to go to Havana

Watching 13 Days, the film based on the tense times in the JFK administration during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, I wanted to go to Havana.

Watching footage over the years of the rather bizarrely dressed, often in a tracksuit, little man in a green cap and long beard, I wanted to go to Havana.

Reading Graham Greene, I determined that one day, I would be THAT man in Havana.