Happy Birthday Tom!!

Well its that time of year again when we celebrate Tom's Birthday. This year we were not able to get all three children together, so I managed to get the annual pictures with just the girls!!

Laura is still sporting her pale and interesting look!! I think more so as I have a bit of colour after my holiday!!

This is a particularly good photo of me!!! (I'm behind there somewhere!) I hadn't realised how similar Laura and Beth look, its not all the time but the photo above is one of those times!!!

I really pushed the boat out birthday cake wise!! I had asked Beth to ice it, but she pointed out that Dad doesn't really like icing and always picks it off, so we went for the minimalist look!!! (if you can call a 12 candle candelabra minimalist!!!) 

After ceremonially blowing out the candles we all had a bit and Tom said it was one of the best cakes he had eaten in a while - note to self - don't try to impress with custom made birthday cakes in the future!!!

Our first port of call on our cruise was the Italian town of Brindisi. It was a very small town with a beautiful town and port area. I had forgotten to pack a hairbrush,. which is a vital piece of my equipment. I have no idea why it was left at home. I had to struggle the first morning blow drying my hair using Tom's small black comb! I checked out the ships shops and they did not have one, so it was top priority to find one in Brindisi. 

My search for a brush took us up all sorts of side streets looking for likely shops, we eventually tracked down a pharmacy, but they didn't have one!  

So we had to rest up and have an ice cream!!

We stopped a nice ice cream parlour, which was quite difficult to work out, eventually we worked out that you helped yourself to what you wanted and the price was decided by weighing the finished product! It was lovely I had pistachio flavoured yoghurt ice with strawberries!

We eventually come across a small supermarket and finally I was able to buy a hairbrush !

Once back on board we had dinner and headed off for the Theatre, after that we found a bar and ordered a cocktail. We were shocked to receive a   tap on the shoulder from a lovely lady, who had been a waitress on our previous cruise - Rinthing!! She had recognised us and asked how our friends Richard and Sue were!! I couldn't believe that she had remembered us!How many thousands of people must she see every year??? Perhaps we are infamous???

We only just caught her because her contract was up this week, one week later and we would not have seen her! 

Hope you all have a lovely weekend, I'll be back soon with the next thrilling cruise instalment!!!