Anything, Anywhere But Under Sufferance

  The second week of the holiday began more promisingly. Not only were we all in the same continent, but we actually had several working bank cards and we still had some money left. Well, just about. Around this time we decided to head up to the Mall At Millenia . It would be our first visit there. And probably the last too. Mall at Millenia is the 'prime' outlet in the area. For Prime read exclusive and expensive. You won't be finding your Sports Direct and Ross Dress for Less here. It's more your Tiffanys, Hublot, Rolex, Tesla, Armani, Louboutin kind of mall. It was essentially a similar kind of thing to the Trafford Centre , only with more expensive shops. It was very nice, but underwhelming unless you are a millionaire.  The one positive from it was a trip to The Cheesecake Factory . I'd known about this place for a while as one of the Tennessee Titans old QB's, Vince Young, essentially lived in one for the duration of his time with the franchise.  So we hea...

The First Week - Chase-ing The Banks, Speedy Meals And Frogs In The Pan You'll have to forgive me for not sticking to some kind of linear sensible format for this. I'm not a proper writer who would keep copious notes each day of their trip to regale you with the minutest of details. Instead, I have my brain and memory and I'm not sure of the exact day that some of these events occurred, just that they did. Hence I'm going to lump things in to weekly events and happenings as nothing really came close to needing the detail of the first day of the holiday. And besides some things went on over multiple days, and even all three weeks.  The third day of the holiday dawned with all four of us in the same continent, which was an improvement on the day before. We decided to head up to IHOP for breakfast and were served by a very cheerful local lady, who clearly listed visiting a dentist way down her list of priorities.  With a mouth of teeth that resembled Stonehenge, she was ex...