Tiananmen Square dates from the seventeenth century and was built around the location of the Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace) which was ironically destroyed in fighting during the transition phase of the Minq to Qing dynasties. The area’s present-day form of a public square housing a monument and surrounded by important buildings is thanks to Mao Zedong whose mausoleum is also found in the square and who envisaged the largest square in the world. It’s not that these days but it’s still an impressively large and open space in the middle of Beijing directly to the south of the Forbidden City and, if you’re Chinese, it’s famous for nothing at all of any significance occurring in June 1989.

Not only was Tiananmen Square the first of the day’s sightseeing stops, it was also the shortest of our organised activities. If you were to visit Beijing on your own then the buildings surrounding the square could easily occupy a significant portion of your day, I’d imagine. Sadly, our excursion only included a fleeting visit and we didn’t get a chance to see them, nor did we get a chance to pay a visit to Mao Zedong’s mausoleum, the reason for many Chinese people to visit the square, and our time was spent mostly just taking photos and enjoying the experience of simply being there.

Our bus from the hotel dropped us off at Guangchang East Side Road and our guide led us across the street into the square where a few of the buildings were quickly identified and we were given a short period to wander off on our own with a meeting time and place explained. There were plenty of people about but not, it has to be said, anywhere near as many as there could be. The time of morning and this being a November played a part here certainly and our guide had explained that on a typical day when busloads of visitors would arrive from all over China and the rest of the world, the queue to view inside the mausoleum alone would be hours-long.

Eyes were immediately drawn to the large monument roughly in the centre of Tiananmen Square. This was the Monument to the People’s Heroes and, as it stated on the plaque facing it, it was constructed between 1952 and 1958 from granite and white marble.

On the north side of the square the view was taken up by the distinctive red walls of the Forbidden City where we’d next be exploring. The portrait of Mao was hard to miss.

To the east of Tiananmen Square, where our bus had dropped us off and where we’d be meeting again before moving on, was the National Museum of China with its distinctive facade. Sadly, the view of the building was somewhat spoiled by the cranes dominating the skyline behind it. Formerly the Revolutionary History Museum this is one of the most visited art museums in the world and is certainly a place we’d love to visit if we ever get a chance to return to Beijing.

The large building to the west of Tiananmen Square was the Great Hall of the People, used for legislative functions and ceremonial ones including celebrations and memorials. Both the Great Hall and the National Museum, as well as the expansion work on Tiananmen Square itself, were part of the Ten Great Buildings plan, itself part of Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

In the southern section of Tiananmen Square was the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, resting place of the embalmed body of the former Communisy Party Chairman (despite his wishes that be be cremated). Like everything else around the square it’s something we’d have loved to have spent time looking at but this pre-cruise visit to Beijing could only fit so much in. Sets of sculptures of revolutionary people were on either side of both the north and south entrances to the mausoleum.

Our free time generally involved an aimless, casual wander through the square, snapping photos and soaking in the experience of simply being in China, and keeping a close eye on the time, of course. We made sure we could always see the meeting spot so we’d know when people from our tour group were starting to gather but otherwise it was thrillingly relaxing to simply be mingling with hundreds of Chinese people, many in tour groups themselves, with lots of typical tourist activities taking place around us; pointing at buildings, peering at pamphlets, posing in front of structures for photos, etc.

It was as we were in the northern part of the square taking a few more photos of the wall on which Mao’s face was hanging that I suddenly felt a tap on my elbow. I found myself facing a pair of Chinese women, perhaps in their early twenties. In pretty good English the first one asked me if she could pose next to me for a photo to be taken by her friend. Now, we don’t like having our photos taken at all, and it’s why you will find it difficult to find any video or pictures of us on the internet (although they’re there, if you know where to look), but attractive Chinese women halfway around the world turn out to be my kryptonite when it comes to avoiding photographic capture and all I could do was smile and agree.

With small bows and thank yous the two women walked away and I turned to my wife who was also posing for a photo with a Chinese person. I then turned a little further and discovered a queue had formed of people who wanted pictures too. For the next few minutes we found ourselves the centre of attention in Tiananmen Square for people tired of grabbing shots of the surroundings and excited at snapping the elusive Western Tourist instead. This was 2008, of course, and I imagine things are not quite the same these days, but it was a fascinating experience if still a little unnerving to think that somewhere in China there may exist photographic evidence of our visit to Beijing and the fact that we won’t combust when posing for pictures in the possession of complete strangers.

It came time for us to gather at the meeting spot outside the national museum, something we did nice and early because we didn’t want to be the people holding everyone up back then, an attitude we retain to this day.

Once heads had been counted our guide then led us off for the next part of the day’s excursion in Beijing, a walk of just a hundred metres or so to the Forbidden City.

Our trip included a visit to a spy museum (I’d show you the pictures but then I’d have to kill you) and a meal before a little bit of a wander around the streets on the way to the main area of galleries and Smithsonian museums.

We like art and I’m drawn to more of the cubist, modernist trends rather than classical as a general rule so we weren’t disappointed with what Washington had to offer.

The science and aeronautical museums, though, were a great draw for us and a good number of visitors too. We tried to hit as many museums as we could, getting a feel for them rather than exclusively fixing on one or two but we still didn’t have time to visit every museum we wanted. Still, plenty more chances to hit America again.

We ended up visiting a couple of museums while there. Photos from inside the museums were taken on the phone rather than with the camera. First up was a teddy bear museum.

We also visited a dinosaur museum in Dorchester. With the whole area of Dorset being somewhat famous for its found fossils it seemed the right thing to do, although there was some questionable science on display.

In the main hangar the big attraction was the SR-71 Blackbird which is just a beautiful-looking plane with some fantastic lines and curves to it.

An attached section to the main hangar in the museum housed spacecraft, including the star attraction of the Space Shuttle Discovery. It’s a lot larger than I imagined it would be and it was a fantastic experience to be able to walk around and take photos of something that had spent just over a year in space across its dozens of flights.

As part of our short visit to Leeds in 2011 we visited the Leeds City Museum. When museums allow you to take photos then I generally do so and this was no exception. Expecting little more than a history of Yorkshire through the ages we were pleasantly surprised to find there was a significantly wider range of items on show covering a wide range of historical periods and cultural topics.

Many museums often run an exhibition, of course, and on the day we visited the exhibition at Leeds Museum was one dedicated to the Spice Girls. To be perfectly clear, we did not visit the museum specifically to see the Spice Girls exhibition. That said, it was very good, featuring shoes and clothes they’d worn, media coverage, dolls, etc.

We had a very enjoyable visit to the Merseyside Maritime Museum in the dock where there was a fascinating exhibition showcasing pictures from Shackleton’s 1914 Endurance expedition to the Antarctic then set off for some general exploration. The architecture of big cities in the north of the country is always impressive as they didn’t suffer from bombardment during the war unlike Portsmouth so I always love walking amongst the huge, imposing buildings they have.

Another thing we don’t have in Portsmouth is a Chinatown but the one in Liverpool was very attractive and very similar to any other you’d see in a big city.

I had been hoping to find many of my old haunts from my university days in Liverpool but things had changed much more than I’d hoped. One of the night clubs I had fond memories of was still present, though: the Blue Angel. Situated over several floors and playing a range of music from the alternative stuff we liked back then through to the dance music we found a tolerance for once we’d had enough to drink.

Liverpool’s famous Cavern club was also still there, naturally. When we visited and had a drink the venue smelled strongly of urine. You’d think that such an obvious tourist attraction might have clean toilets but you would be wrong. I pointed out the stage to my wife where in 1992 I and several friends had got up in front of a packed club and waved, accepting the happy cheers from everyone. That was the night we’d pretended to be Danish just after Denmark had won the European cup and the DJ had invited us up. Good times. One of my friends spent the evening telling girls his name was Fleming but that all his friends called him Flem. No, he didn’t get anyone to kiss him.

Ullandhaug was the area of the city to which we first headed. There would be two components forming this part of the excursion and both from very different parts of Stavanger’s history. We started at the Iron Age Farm open air museum. The location of Jernaldergården felt a little anachronistic, being overlooked by apartment blocks on one side, and this did detract from being able to immerse yourselves fully in the history, but it was still very interesting to visit and the guides did a fabulous job of recounting tales of what life was like in the period between 350 and 550 CE.

We didn’t just wander around the exterior of the farm buildings like the sheep in the area, but also were taken inside one for some more iron age storytelling. The buildings were very interesting, set into the ground and with turf laid on the roofs to keep the places as warm as possible. They were, however, awkward to get into and out of without a lot of bending and risk of bumps to the head.

Staying in the Ullandhaug area we next paid a visit to Ullandhaugtårnet, a telecommunications tower and landmark overlooking the city of Stavanger. Built in 1964 and standing sixty four metres in height there were some delightfully brutalist elements to the design that I loved and that many of our fellow passengers on the excursion couldn’t stand. As a light drizzle accompanied our visit to the tower and there were steps involved to get onto its viewing platform, a fair number of people decided to stay on the bus for the short time of our visit as a result.

Other than providing some lovely views of the Norwegian landscape around Stavanger, the tower itself did not have a lot of history, although it was built next to the spot where another tower commemorating the Battle of Hafrsjord had been erected in 1896 but which had been mostly destroyed during the Second World War. Stone markers with Viking symbols indicated where the remains of the tower had been removed the year before the telecoms tower had been constructed.

We enjoyed the scenery and tutted a little at the mediocre quality of the street art decorating some of the walls before heading back to the bus which was waiting to take us back to Stavanger.

Singapore Chinatown

Our excursion in Singapore included a couple of stops at jewellery places but we weren’t in any position to spend at that time. The first place of interest we visited and walked through was Chinatown.

One of the most engaging sights in that area of Singapore was the Hindu temple with its elaborate and brightly-coloured roof.

We didn’t see inside the temple as our main reason for visiting this part of Singapore was to visit the Chinatown Heritage Centre. Inside, we got to explore recreations of the places in which residents lived in the 1950s. It was quite incredible to see how small the places were and to learn how many people lived there along with the conditions in which they spent every day. A very interesting place to visit indeed.

We had a little bit of time after that to wander around some more of Chinatown before meeting our coach to take us to the next stop.

Raffles Hotel

The real reason we picked this excursion over the others offered by Princess Cruises during this trip to Singapore was that this was the only one that included a stop at the famous Raffles Hotel. While there’s a lot to be said for avoiding the obviously tourist things when visiting somewhere it also seems a shame to travel halfway around the world and not visit the thing that place is famous for. Raffles Hotel did not disappoint; it was wonderfully, wonderfully colonial in appearance. At the impressive entrance we got to see a Sikh doorman, Mr Singh.

Not content with simply showing us around the fantastically clean-looking building we were then taken to the Long Bar to have a genuine Singapore Sling in the place in which it was invented. In addition to the drink we were provided with peanuts on the tables; unlike the rest of Singapore where there were harsh penalties for littering we were encouraged to discard the shells on the floor, something that the British tourists in our group found a lot harder to do than the Americans for some reason. Must be upbringing.

The final part of our excursion was a short trip down to the waterfront area to the Royal Selangor pewter store. To be honest we hadn’t much cared for this portion of the trip initially but this turned out to be immense fun. Part of the reason for that was clearly that we’d all been drinking by this point so were quite merry. The main reason, though, was that in addition to a quick demonstration of how pewter was worked we all got to don aprons and make our own bowls. A room full of tipsy tourists smashing pewter discs with hammers added up to lots of laughter and we got to take away our bowls and aprons as souvenirs of the visit too. It was a fantastic end to a fantastic day’s tour and we were the envy of people who’d visited other places back on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship that evening.

Departing Singapore

Two further things stuck in our heads as we left Singapore. The first was just how amazing it was to see so many container ships queued up ready to arrive. The ships seemed to span the entire horizon as our cruise ship left the country.

The second thing was something I couldn’t take photos of, sadly. That night, as we had Skywalkers night club practically to ourselves once more, we got to look back on the horizon at the disappearing Singapore lit up with huge flashes as a massive thunderstorm covered the area. Listening to music, drinking bourbon and coke, and looking back to a near pitch-black sea and sky flashing and glowing under a tropical storm is one of my most favourite memories of any trip I’ve taken.

Falkland Islands Museum

We briefly popped into a souvenir place with the aim of getting something memorable from our trip to the Falklands but it seemed so did nearly everyone else from the Star Princess so we quickly left and headed to the nearby Falkland Islands Museum instead where we could see people milling about.

There were a smattering of military and maritime exhibits outside the museum with some lovely views across the harbour but it was inside that we wanted to visit. We entered and saw what looked like a ticket desk only for the woman behind to smile and gesture for us to step through and look around without paying. We thought that was odd but did so and came to wonder as we wandered around whether she had mistaken us as part of a tour group who were also exploring since we were still wearing our excursion stickers from the completed battlefields tour. We shrugged and agreed that the museum would do alright out of us anyway as we’d seen they had a shop and we had every intention of spending cash there as we’d been too impatient to wait in the souvenir shop. For the record we followed through on our intention, bought loads of little things, and even got some Falkland Islands change for our holiday money collection.

The museum was excellent and arguably one of the best we’ve visited, covering every aspect of Falkland Islands life from the people across different periods to the wildlife and geology and history, including the war, naturally. Highly recommended.

We carried on along Ross Road which runs along the harbour front in Stanley passing many buildings built in the style typical for the islands: white with coloured roofs, usually red or green. We also passed the mizzen mast of the SS Great Britain which had been damaged in a gale around Cape Horn in 1886.

Christ Church Cathedral

The next place we came upon was Christ Church Cathedral, famous in many pictures of the Falkland Islands because of the whalebone arch that decorates its entrance. The bones are from the jaws of two blue whales and the monument was put up in 1933 for the centenary of British rule and if you find yourself visiting Stanley on the Falkland Islands then there’s a very strong possibility that you’ll end up taking photos like this too. You won’t be able to help yourself.

Globe Tavern

This concluded our exploration of the interesting parts of Stanley on the Falkland Islands but did not conclude our time. We wanted to say we’d had a drink in a bar on the Falklands and just around the corner from the cathedral we spotted a gathering of like-minded people at the Globe Tavern. We initially thought everyone there would be from our cruise ship as it was the only one out in Blanco Bay and we could see nothing else in the harbour but this turned out not to be true.

Our tour guide had told us that many Argentinian people visited the islands (something we found surprising) and this was the case with a sizeable number of patrons in the bar clearly from the closest mainland. Indeed, the staff and possibly owner too were also all Argentinian. Despite this and despite the very pro-British sentiment displayed prominently there seemed no issues with anyone. Smiles and close proximity to a family of Argentinian tourists led to me being asked to take their photos and I happily obliged. Our tour of the battlefields and its reminder of reasonably recent warfare between our two nations contrasted nicely with the pleasant, joint effort of ordinary people to make a living and run businesses.

Refreshed, we walked the short distance down to the jetty to catch the tender boat back to the cruise ship.