Join us for our first ever trip outside the UK as we head for America and all things Disney!
Each place of interest is shown on its own separate article, reached by clicking/tapping the fourteen photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
Wednesday 14 July 1993. To recap: it's our last day before returning home from Orlando back to the UK and we have spent it in the Disney parks, specifically the Disney MGM Studios and then EPCOT. We got on the Monorail around five o'clock and transferred over to The Magic Kingdom. It was still pouring it down with rain.
We ate in a restaurant close to Liberty Square where (only with the greatest difficulty) we resisted the clam chowder and enjoyed a more familiar meal, watering the gravy with rainwater drips from the head...
Then it was a race to repeat as many of our favourite rides as we could before the fireworks display brought the night and holiday to an end.
We rode the cablecar to Tomorrowland and went on the Carousel of Progress where the audience seating rotated around tableaux of different periods with animated robots saying how wonderful the new technology of that age was - it mostly automated some chores so the wife could do others... Having running water let her do more sewing, having a sewing machine let her do more ironing etc. Quite right too... Agh! No! Stop that! Yeowch! Ok, ok, I was joking!!! Someone's child was screaming throughout most of it, there was applause when the ride staff eventually came out to suggest they should take it outside. I thought the ride was excellent, we hadn't realised how old it was and it was dismantled the following year and disappeared into the very history it had depicted.
Another ride shortly to disappear was the Wedway People Mover, a train without drivers, based on the magnetic field induction principle where the magnetic field creates electricity as the train passes over it which gives it enough boost to reach the next magnet in the track. [Edit: the ride had a reprieve, but underwent a name change and was still there when we visited again in 2016, some 23 years later.) As we travelled on this we saw the most glorious sunset over the park.
Then it was back to the castle for the firework display. Disney don't sell you short on this, there's a great display every night and afterwards the park closes and a huge mass of people leave all at once, laughing, singing, dancing and as entertaining as any of the park's formal parades. It had been a holiday like no other. We had never before been out of the UK and our holidays were normally spent mooching around the old or picturesque places in the south of England. It was an unforgettable two weeks that we have never yet repeated, but one that I still hope we will sooner or later. (See my spoiler above...)
Thursday 8 July 1993. We have decided to have a day at Disney's MGM Studios.
We arrived early and the park was just opening, but Chip and Dale were there to greet us and we were told which rides would open first. The only ride open when we got there was The Great Movie Ride, housed in a copy of Hollywood's Grauman Theatre. This was a really good ride with tableaux of classic movies interspersed with live action performances based around western and gangster themes and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The Star Wars Tour was a simulator ride - but what a simulator ride!!! The queueing are took us through a futuristic droid controlled environment where the droids actually talked to people going round, making jokes about their clothing etc.
We went in the Muppets "4D" Experience. It was 4D because not only was there a 3 dimensional film but halfway through, the Swedish Chef broke the projector and Sweetums came out into the audience, the lights came up, the two old guys heckled from their box and the Swedish chef opened fire with a cannon upon which huge lumps fell off the walls!
The main streets had the feeling of old Hollywood or New York with 1930s to 1950s themed buildings and some old cars parked here and there.
Tom and Jerry The Movie was about to be released onto the world as a totally predictable disaster. Ignoring all the wonderful cartoons that had been made in the 1940s, it gave the characters unrecogniseable voices and instead of them knocking seven bells out of each other, had them working together in a rescue mission. Proof - as if we didn't know - that people with money don't always have the brains to go with it.
On photographs the New York set looks perfectly plausible and unbelievably expensive to create. It is all painted on plywood!
Another picturesque corner at MGM Studios with old street furniture - a semaphore traffic light - and the old black and yellow taxicab parked up at the side of the road.
Min and Bill's Dockside Diner was housed in a somewhat cartoonish boat.
Tuesday 6 July 1993. We were knackered after last night's scare about getting lost on the roads so we were late up and anyway had decided not to go into any of the big parks. Our Disney tickets included days at their smaller and less well known parks so we visited the Island of Discovery, a tropical island with a zoo.
The island was reached from another park called Fort Wilderness that was themed on the old American West. As we walked down to the beach of white sand to get the boat to the island we passed a huge marquee that was being made ready for a bar-b-que.
We deliberately missed the first boat out to the island in favour of having a drink - it was already very hot - and sitting here to take in the view over the lagoon.
Once actually on the island the heat increased seemingly ten-fold. Probably it was just the humidity as we were entering a jungle environment. The island had many timber walkways over swampy ground. Below we could see crocs and alligators, turtles and all around us were lots of vividly coloured birds. Parrots, parakeets and some gliding birds - paragliders...? One of which pooped on me... At one point a long snake slithered across our path just in front of us. I made sure that it wasn't going to get close enough to poop on me...
Even though there were plenty of drinking fountains about, the heat was getting to us and we were relieved to get back on the ferry to come back to Fort Wilderness.
We had a quick look around Fort Wilderness and peeked into the large marquee again. A stage was being set up so there was going to be some sort of entertainment with the barbie!
I know I live in - well near these days - Blackpool but I'm ignoring illuminations and to be honest, the UK altogether for this entry. Having travelled around Europe quite a bit we have come across many examples of older or just simply decorative street lighting and it's become a habit to look out for them.
As most of our travels have been on cruise ships, we don't tend to see a lot of places at night, so most of these shots will be daytime. But that does make it easier to see detail on the lamp standards and finials. We'll start gently with this view of St Tropez.
Villefranche nestles between Nice on the French Riviera and Monaco. This street is named the Hidden Street and it runs parallel with the seafront and is totally enclosed. It is lit with what seem to be ancient housings containing more modern electric lights.
Housings that look as though they should be holding flaming pitch-covered lengths of wood or bundles of twigs always get my attention. This one is above a gateway into the ancient city of Rhodes.
Another year and back on the French Riviera; this is Sanary-sur-Mer. Wouldn't it be wonderful to sit on the Promenade and listen to a concert in this band stand with it's old-fashioned lighting?
We had just got off our ship in the harbour at Ajaccio, Corsica and this street lamp stood out against the deep of the blue sky.
Koper in Slovenia. I particularly enjoy looking around those medieval cities where many of the street lights are attached to buildings rather than lamp posts, because the streets are so narrow.
These lights are a touch more modern, but at least a bit of imagination has been applied to the design. They sit on the end of a pier at Limone on Lake Garda, Italy.
Lamp posts this time. This is Funchal on the island of Madeira out in the Canaries.
And another one in Valetta in Malta.
We went a long way to see this one. It's in Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando. The flag was a clue wasn't it...?
The lamp standards in Venice have pink glass in their casings. Perhaps to make the most of the colours of the Doges' Palace?
Also in Venice, we found a dragon holding up a bunch of umbrellas! Well just the one wouldn't keep it dry...
The medieval city of Kotor in Montenegro has such narrow streets and nestles so close under the mountain that the light finds it hard to penetrate and the street lights were still glowing when we arrived one morning.
A lovely bit of decorative ironwork in Palermo, Sicily.
Piombino in Italy and a street that I just happened to glance down as we passed it.
For most things architectural it's hard to beat Spain's wonderful city of Barcelona. It's a city where your neck should be constantly stretching upwards to make sure you don't miss anything and for this article I'm going to finish with a second look at Barcelona's magnificent street lights below.
