The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers is held in September, and generally runs for ten days at the end of the month.
We visited the Laurel Bank Park, where there are beds of many colorful flowers,
open spaces,
statues,
an area set aside for not only tulips but a model windmill
and quite a number of hedge sculptures
There was also the opportunity to go on a morning or afternoon garden tour which visited a number of private gardens of residences in Toowoomba.
Yes, I see the lighthouse, what’s it doing all the way out there? The thing is, these places are sometimes so remote, I start thinking I should rent one for 6 months and then, without any distractions, I’ll get the blasted book finished.
Until there’s a shipwreck, of course!
Light is of course light, duh. Turn on the switch and let there be light.
Hang on, didn’t someone else say that, millennia ago? Someone famous? It’s on the tip of my tongue.
No! It’s not cyanide…
So, whilst we need it to see everything, it has another meaning…
My, that’s a light load your carrying today, which means not very heavy.
Or, that’s a light-coloured jumper, which means pale.
Oh, and did you light the fire?
And, after you light the fire, do you light out to a safe haven in light traffic because really it was arson, and you got a light sentence the last time enabling you to do it again.
If you are trying to rob someone, then it was a kilo light.
And after a long hard struggle, did you light upon the correct answer?
This is not to be confused with another similar word, lite.
It seems this is only used for describing low-calorie drinks and food, such as lite beer, which seems to me to be a lazy way of not using light
Still, there’s not much other use of the word except as a suffix -lite, but then you’d have to mention -lyte as well.
The message here – just use the damn word light and be done with it.
Travelling is always a good source of material to add to the writing store.
Writers collect anecdotes, descriptions of their fellow travellers, more the idiosyncrasies than an actual physical description, and of the experience, though it is all the better if it turns out to be really, really bad than good.
This equally applies to experiences in hotels, with hire cars, tourist spots and especially fellow travellers.
Start with the airline. This can make or break the start of a holiday and could be the difference between a great start or a horrid one.
We can usually accept the sardine arrangements, the lack of legroom, being within earshot of a screaming baby, or put up with the constant kicking in the back of the seat by the wretched uncontrollable child sitting behind you.
It’s having the person in front fully reclining their seat in your face that gets your goat. For an hour and a half or eight hours, it is still the biggest bone of contention when flying.
We are taking one airline down to Melbourne the one that makes a big deal out of the full service it provides, and another airline back, formerly a low-cost airline but now trying to match its so-called full-service rival.
The flight down is smooth, and the food reasonably good. The landing, even though the pilot was battling sharp crosswinds, was very heavy and left us in no doubt we had reached terra firma again. I’ve been on worse.
Hire cars are a rich field to pick over and I’ve read some interesting experiences involving even the best. So far I’ve not had a problem. I pre-booked as far in advance as possible to get a small fuel-efficient vehicle. Sometimes we are upgraded and while they think they are doing you a favour it is not necessarily the case, especially when you finish up with a large car that barely fits small provincial French roads one lane wide. It does happen.
There is also the waiting time at the car rental desk, particularly when it’s the rental company you picked, while other company desks are empty. You also quickly discover that most of the people in the queue didn’t think of pre-booking a car, which to my mind is expecting trouble with it being the peak holiday period.
We had to wait in a long queue after taking a chance it would be less crowded at the pick-up point than the desk in the airport terminal. It was no surprise to discover that a lot of other travellers had the same thought.
Hotels can also be one of the major letdowns of a holiday. If you are going to use a travel agent to pick a hotel for you, make sure you check as much as you can because no matter how it is described, seeing it, in reality, is always completely different than the pictures in a brochure and sometimes on the Internet. It requires research and a good look at TripAdvisor. Or word of mouth by someone you know and trust who has stayed there.
Take, for instance, staying in a five-star hotel the usual stomping ground of the rich and famous, it is always interesting to see how the less privileged fare. Where hotel staff are supposed to treat each guess equally it is not always the case. Certainly, if you’re flashing money around, the staff will be happy to take it though you may not necessarily get what you’re expecting.
We are lucky to be in the highest loyalty level and this accords us a number of privileges; this time working in our favour but it is not always the case. Privilege can sometimes count for nothing. It often depends on the humour of the front desk clerk and woe betide you if you get the receptionist from hell. Been there, done that, more than once.
Then there is the room. There is such a wide variety of rooms available even if the hotel site or brochure had representative pictures the odds are you can still get a room that is nothing like you’re expecting or were promised.
Believe me, there are rooms with a view, overlooking pigeon coops or air-conditioning vents.
A bone of contention often can be the location of the hotel and sometimes parking facilities not the least of which is the cost. Valet parking; forget it.
We are reasonably near transport if we could walk, the km to the nearest bus or tram stop is a long long way when you can’t walk and that’s when the hotel starts to feel like a prison. Taxis may be cheap but when you have to use them three or four times a day it all adds up.
Be wary when a hotel says it is close to public transport. While that may be true in London, anywhere else especially in Europe you could find yourself in the middle of nowhere. Its when you discover your travel agent didn’t exactly lie but it is why that weekly rate was so cheap. In the end, the sum of the taxi fares and the accommodation turns out to be dearer than if you stayed at the Savoy.
So airline, hire car and hotel aside those front line experiences are fodder for the travel blogger, these people who are also known as road warriors.
I wondered why until we started travelling and discovered the incredible highs and lows, of flying, yes there are good and bad airlines and the bad are not confined to the low cost, of rental cars and of hotels. There is a very large gulf between five stars and three and sometimes three can be very generous. And of course, l now have a list of hotels l would never stay in again, the names of which might surprise you.
Unfortunately, my travel exploits are sometimes as boring as the day is long, but even then, there’s at least one calamity to deal with.
Our airport experiences are all without incident, although from time to time the sight of police or soldiers patrolling with guns can be disconcerting.
We have also experienced the odd problem in London at Heathrow firstly trying to get hep from the designated help staff and then to find the check-in desk of an airline apparently no one available knew existed.
That was momentarily exciting after phone calls were not answered and internet contact was not possible. Not until a little footwork found the agents desk and the misunderstanding was sorted out.
By the way, the airline itself was a pleasure to fly on, the staff pleasant and most of all we arrived just before the airport closed.
On the way home, only a flight stands between us and getting home. After days sometimes weeks it is that moment we all look forward to sleeping on our own beds making our own food and getting to the gym to work off those extra kilos put on by delicious hotel food or local fare where calorie counting is not part of the dining experience.
Of course, getting to the airport from the hotel can be an experience in itself whether by taxi perhaps the taxi driver from hell who knows only two speeds fast and stop and is also, unfortunately, colour blind.
Or whether you have arranged for a transfer only to discover it’s not coming because the company went out of business or you changed hotels and someone forgot to tell them.
Or the travel agent made a mistake or forgot to confirm the booking.
Oh yes, it happens.
We have a hire car and will be returning it t the same place. Let’s hope the signage at the airport makes it easy to find the rental place. In London we had a hell of a time trying to find it; good thing we were hours earlier than we should be.
And just because the sign says rental returns for the lane you’re in it doesn’t necessarily follow it’s the right lane. Then as you miss the exit, and get stuck on the one-way road system, all of a sudden you have left the airport and you’re heading back to the city.
If you’re running late …
But if everything goes to plan you get to the airport with time to spare.
We manage to arrive early at the airport. Rather than wait three hours for our flight we decide to try and get on an earlier departure. This will depend on our ticket type and whether there are seats available, preferably together.
We line up in the service queue, which by its very description means you have a long wait as service is mostly between difficult to impossible depending on the request.
We wait for twenty minutes. There’s a long queue behind us. Our request is taken care of quickly and efficiently making it almost seamless, certainly painless. I’m sure our request was one of the very few easy ones the staff will get.
Today it seems it is our lucky day. The transfer to an earlier flight is free and there are two seats available together. All we have to do is alert the pick-up driver at our destination we are going to be an hour earlier. Done.
Checking in bags is usually the bane of the traveller’s existence.
No matter which airport in whatever country you are departing from the only difference is the length of the queue; from incredibly long with a half-hour wait to the head of the line to up to an hour. Our queue is 15 to 20 minutes.
One assumes this is why intending passengers are asked to go to the airport two hours ahead of their fight. There are times of the day where the queues are horrendous, and that not only applies to Heathrow.
And if you are late, just panic.
And if your bags are overweight be prepared to have your credit card hammered.
Especially if you’re flying Air France from Venice to Paris. Domestically in Australia, it’s not so bad.
Now its time to relax. There is an hour before we have to be at the gate so just enough time to get coffee and a doughnut.
And be horrified at what shops charge for simple items like sandwiches. I think $10 is very expensive. But if you’re hungry and forgot to eat before getting to the airport then be prepared to pay more than you usually would for the same fare.
It’s also time to observe our fellow passengers, and there is always the one who has a last-minute dash for a plane that is just about to leave, passengers with panic-stricken looks.
We all know what happens if you miss the flight even as you’re downing that last cocktail in the airline lounge while thinking, yes they’ll hold the flight for me!
Apparently not because airlines want to keep their ‘on-time’ record.
Even so, there’s still three more calls for the missing passengers and then nothing. If they missed the plane there their problems are just beginning. It’s the same feeling you have when your name is called out before the flight starts loading.
Only once have we been called up and given an upgrade, and once in the US to be told we could take another flight because our flight was overbooked. Business-class was greatly appreciated and was worth the extra hour we had to wait.
The next bottleneck is the scanners and sometimes the queue here is very long and moving slowly because the scanners are set to pick up belts and shoes so people are scattered everywhere getting redressed and putting shoes on. Today being a weekday the queue is not so bad.
Loading is painless and reasonably organized except when the passengers in high numbered rows try to board by the front door instead of the rear door and clash midway in the plane. After they untangle themselves and get to their seats we’re ready to go.
This flight still has a manual safety demonstration which most people ignored but is slightly better than the video demonstration. Let’s hope we don’t go down over the water.
I’ve charted my path to the emergency exit and l have quite a few people before me. I guess there’s more than one way to be last off the plane.
Sometimes you get to pick who you get to sit next to, especially if you are travelling with your partner which this time l am, but in a three-seat arrangement, you have no control over who takes that third seat.
We are lucky this time because it will not become a tight squeeze but unfortunately, our fellow traveller has a cold and in a confined space for several hours it could turn out to be a problem.
The flight is smooth, the snacks edible, but there is no liquor service like the full-service rival but that might be a good thing.
No air rage on this flight.
Time flies, pardon the pun, and we have arrived. Even though it took forever for the baggage to be delivered we still got home early.
Until the next time, we fly.
The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers is held in September, and generally runs for ten days at the end of the month.
We visited the Laurel Bank Park, where there are beds of many colorful flowers,
open spaces,
statues,
an area set aside for not only tulips but a model windmill
and quite a number of hedge sculptures
There was also the opportunity to go on a morning or afternoon garden tour which visited a number of private gardens of residences in Toowoomba.
Or to be more precise, the homestead at what is now O’Reilly’s vineyard, where there is a pleasant lawn out back running down to the river for picnics, an alpaca farm next door, and the homestead plays host to functions and wine tastings
My interest was that we had assumed there was a restaurant, and we were going to have lunch. There might be one, but not the day we visited, it was just cafe food or a picnic available.
I was more interested in the old homestead because it was a fine example of the homesteads built in the ‘outback’.
…
Today we are having lunch in the Platypus room, in the O’Reilly’s vineyard farmhouse, which, if you close your eyes and let your imagination run free, could see it as the master bedroom of a homestead.
Certainly, the building is old, made completely of timber, inside and out, with the traditional high ceilings to keep the heat at bay.
At one end, a large bay window, which would be ideal to sit and view the outside, past the sweeping verandah. There is a small lawn and a rotunda, but beyond that what might have been extended gardens, is the vineyard.
The homestead is in an ideal position midway between the main road and the river, has the traditional surrounding verandah, and shows signs of being extended on almost all sides.
On the other side of the wide corridor that leads you to the bar, and, coincidentally, down the centre of the house, is a smaller bedroom, also used as a dining room, and ubiquitously named the library.
It may be small but it does have a fireplace, which the assumed master bedroom does not, but now I’m thinking that room might have been the morning room.
Behind the room, we’re in is another bedroom, or perhaps this might be the master because it does have a fireplace and is quite large. And a name, the Ambassador room. Now it serves as the pickup place for picnic baskets.
There is another room on the opposite side of the corridor called the Drawing Room but is not open to the public. But, going into the room with the fireplace adjacent to it, you can sell the aroma of pizzas, so it’s probably an extension of the kitchen, and, walking around the outside that side of the house proves it to be the case.
After all, they do catering for weddings and need a very large food preparation area which I discovered runs down the whole of that side of the house.
At the end of the corridor I’d the bar and spare space, and running off that and behind that is where there is a large dining area, perhaps prior to COVID, the restaurant.
It’s not hard to imagine that area as a very large entertaining area, either for very large dinner parties, or dancing.
As for the food, it’s either a picnic basket or pizzas. We chose the latter, not realising the bases were not homemade, but bought in.
The toppings however were both plentiful and tasty. It could have been hotter, because it was a cold day, and it was cold in the room.
As for something to do other than taste the wine, and buy a few bottles, you can get up close to the vines, which, at this time of the year gave been pruned back and look quite dead, look at or walk an alpaca, even feed it, or all of them, or go down to the river and see if you can spot a Platypus.
Perhaps next time we’ll have a picnic down by the river.
Travelling is always a good source of material to add to the writing store.
Writers collect anecdotes, descriptions of their fellow travellers, more the idiosyncrasies than an actual physical description, and of the experience, though it is all the better if it turns out to be really, really bad than good.
This equally applies to experiences in hotels, with hire cars, tourist spots and especially fellow travellers.
Start with the airline. This can make or break the start of a holiday and could be the difference between a great start or a horrid one.
We can usually accept the sardine arrangements, the lack of legroom, being within earshot of a screaming baby, or put up with the constant kicking in the back of the seat by the wretched uncontrollable child sitting behind you.
It’s having the person in front fully reclining their seat in your face that gets your goat. For an hour and a half or eight hours, it is still the biggest bone of contention when flying.
We are taking one airline down to Melbourne the one that makes a big deal out of the full service it provides, and another airline back, formerly a low-cost airline but now trying to match its so-called full-service rival.
The flight down is smooth, and the food reasonably good. The landing, even though the pilot was battling sharp crosswinds, was very heavy and left us in no doubt we had reached terra firma again. I’ve been on worse.
Hire cars are a rich field to pick over and I’ve read some interesting experiences involving even the best. So far I’ve not had a problem. I pre-booked as far in advance as possible to get a small fuel-efficient vehicle. Sometimes we are upgraded and while they think they are doing you a favour it is not necessarily the case, especially when you finish up with a large car that barely fits small provincial French roads one lane wide. It does happen.
There is also the waiting time at the car rental desk, particularly when it’s the rental company you picked, while other company desks are empty. You also quickly discover that most of the people in the queue didn’t think of pre-booking a car, which to my mind is expecting trouble with it being the peak holiday period.
We had to wait in a long queue after taking a chance it would be less crowded at the pick-up point than the desk in the airport terminal. It was no surprise to discover that a lot of other travellers had the same thought.
Hotels can also be one of the major letdowns of a holiday. If you are going to use a travel agent to pick a hotel for you, make sure you check as much as you can because no matter how it is described, seeing it, in reality, is always completely different than the pictures in a brochure and sometimes on the Internet. It requires research and a good look at TripAdvisor. Or word of mouth by someone you know and trust who has stayed there.
Take, for instance, staying in a five-star hotel the usual stomping ground of the rich and famous, it is always interesting to see how the less privileged fare. Where hotel staff are supposed to treat each guess equally it is not always the case. Certainly, if you’re flashing money around, the staff will be happy to take it though you may not necessarily get what you’re expecting.
We are lucky to be in the highest loyalty level and this accords us a number of privileges; this time working in our favour but it is not always the case. Privilege can sometimes count for nothing. It often depends on the humour of the front desk clerk and woe betide you if you get the receptionist from hell. Been there, done that, more than once.
Then there is the room. There is such a wide variety of rooms available even if the hotel site or brochure had representative pictures the odds are you can still get a room that is nothing like you’re expecting or were promised.
Believe me, there are rooms with a view, overlooking pigeon coops or air-conditioning vents.
A bone of contention often can be the location of the hotel and sometimes parking facilities not the least of which is the cost. Valet parking; forget it.
We are reasonably near transport if we could walk, the km to the nearest bus or tram stop is a long long way when you can’t walk and that’s when the hotel starts to feel like a prison. Taxis may be cheap but when you have to use them three or four times a day it all adds up.
Be wary when a hotel says it is close to public transport. While that may be true in London, anywhere else especially in Europe you could find yourself in the middle of nowhere. Its when you discover your travel agent didn’t exactly lie but it is why that weekly rate was so cheap. In the end, the sum of the taxi fares and the accommodation turns out to be dearer than if you stayed at the Savoy.
So airline, hire car and hotel aside those front line experiences are fodder for the travel blogger, these people who are also known as road warriors.
I wondered why until we started travelling and discovered the incredible highs and lows, of flying, yes there are good and bad airlines and the bad are not confined to the low cost, of rental cars and of hotels. There is a very large gulf between five stars and three and sometimes three can be very generous. And of course, l now have a list of hotels l would never stay in again, the names of which might surprise you.
Unfortunately, my travel exploits are sometimes as boring as the day is long, but even then, there’s at least one calamity to deal with.
Our airport experiences are all without incident, although from time to time the sight of police or soldiers patrolling with guns can be disconcerting.
We have also experienced the odd problem in London at Heathrow firstly trying to get hep from the designated help staff and then to find the check-in desk of an airline apparently no one available knew existed.
That was momentarily exciting after phone calls were not answered and internet contact was not possible. Not until a little footwork found the agents desk and the misunderstanding was sorted out.
By the way, the airline itself was a pleasure to fly on, the staff pleasant and most of all we arrived just before the airport closed.
On the way home, only a flight stands between us and getting home. After days sometimes weeks it is that moment we all look forward to sleeping on our own beds making our own food and getting to the gym to work off those extra kilos put on by delicious hotel food or local fare where calorie counting is not part of the dining experience.
Of course, getting to the airport from the hotel can be an experience in itself whether by taxi perhaps the taxi driver from hell who knows only two speeds fast and stop and is also, unfortunately, colour blind.
Or whether you have arranged for a transfer only to discover it’s not coming because the company went out of business or you changed hotels and someone forgot to tell them.
Or the travel agent made a mistake or forgot to confirm the booking.
Oh yes, it happens.
We have a hire car and will be returning it t the same place. Let’s hope the signage at the airport makes it easy to find the rental place. In London we had a hell of a time trying to find it; good thing we were hours earlier than we should be.
And just because the sign says rental returns for the lane you’re in it doesn’t necessarily follow it’s the right lane. Then as you miss the exit, and get stuck on the one-way road system, all of a sudden you have left the airport and you’re heading back to the city.
If you’re running late …
But if everything goes to plan you get to the airport with time to spare.
We manage to arrive early at the airport. Rather than wait three hours for our flight we decide to try and get on an earlier departure. This will depend on our ticket type and whether there are seats available, preferably together.
We line up in the service queue, which by its very description means you have a long wait as service is mostly between difficult to impossible depending on the request.
We wait for twenty minutes. There’s a long queue behind us. Our request is taken care of quickly and efficiently making it almost seamless, certainly painless. I’m sure our request was one of the very few easy ones the staff will get.
Today it seems it is our lucky day. The transfer to an earlier flight is free and there are two seats available together. All we have to do is alert the pick-up driver at our destination we are going to be an hour earlier. Done.
Checking in bags is usually the bane of the traveller’s existence.
No matter which airport in whatever country you are departing from the only difference is the length of the queue; from incredibly long with a half-hour wait to the head of the line to up to an hour. Our queue is 15 to 20 minutes.
One assumes this is why intending passengers are asked to go to the airport two hours ahead of their fight. There are times of the day where the queues are horrendous, and that not only applies to Heathrow.
And if you are late, just panic.
And if your bags are overweight be prepared to have your credit card hammered.
Especially if you’re flying Air France from Venice to Paris. Domestically in Australia, it’s not so bad.
Now its time to relax. There is an hour before we have to be at the gate so just enough time to get coffee and a doughnut.
And be horrified at what shops charge for simple items like sandwiches. I think $10 is very expensive. But if you’re hungry and forgot to eat before getting to the airport then be prepared to pay more than you usually would for the same fare.
It’s also time to observe our fellow passengers, and there is always the one who has a last-minute dash for a plane that is just about to leave, passengers with panic-stricken looks.
We all know what happens if you miss the flight even as you’re downing that last cocktail in the airline lounge while thinking, yes they’ll hold the flight for me!
Apparently not because airlines want to keep their ‘on-time’ record.
Even so, there’s still three more calls for the missing passengers and then nothing. If they missed the plane there their problems are just beginning. It’s the same feeling you have when your name is called out before the flight starts loading.
Only once have we been called up and given an upgrade, and once in the US to be told we could take another flight because our flight was overbooked. Business-class was greatly appreciated and was worth the extra hour we had to wait.
The next bottleneck is the scanners and sometimes the queue here is very long and moving slowly because the scanners are set to pick up belts and shoes so people are scattered everywhere getting redressed and putting shoes on. Today being a weekday the queue is not so bad.
Loading is painless and reasonably organized except when the passengers in high numbered rows try to board by the front door instead of the rear door and clash midway in the plane. After they untangle themselves and get to their seats we’re ready to go.
This flight still has a manual safety demonstration which most people ignored but is slightly better than the video demonstration. Let’s hope we don’t go down over the water.
I’ve charted my path to the emergency exit and l have quite a few people before me. I guess there’s more than one way to be last off the plane.
Sometimes you get to pick who you get to sit next to, especially if you are travelling with your partner which this time l am, but in a three-seat arrangement, you have no control over who takes that third seat.
We are lucky this time because it will not become a tight squeeze but unfortunately, our fellow traveller has a cold and in a confined space for several hours it could turn out to be a problem.
The flight is smooth, the snacks edible, but there is no liquor service like the full-service rival but that might be a good thing.
No air rage on this flight.
Time flies, pardon the pun, and we have arrived. Even though it took forever for the baggage to be delivered we still got home early.
Until the next time, we fly.
The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers is held in September, and generally runs for ten days at the end of the month.
We visited the Laurel Bank Park, where there are beds of many colorful flowers,
open spaces,
statues,
an area set aside for not only tulips but a model windmill
and quite a number of hedge sculptures
There was also the opportunity to go on a morning or afternoon garden tour which visited a number of private gardens of residences in Toowoomba.
O’Reilly’s Canungra Valley Vineyards located on Lamington National Park Road, Canungra, Queensland, is a 15-acre vineyard with the 163-year-old historic homestead ‘Killowen’ set up with dining rooms and long verandahs, and extensive grounds that are next to the Canungra creek where it is possible to find Platypus and turtles while partaking in a picnic.
There are about 6,000 vines of the (white) Semillon, Verdelho and (red) Chambourcin, Shiraz and Petit Vedot varieties.
We visited there in December when the vines were just starting to produce fruit.
That fruit is usually harvested in February and then turned into wine.
The setting for picnics is, on a warm Summer’s day is idyllic, where you can wade in the creek, or go looking for a platypus. We did not see one there the day we visited but did spend some time sitting beside the creek.
O’Reilly’s Canungra Valley Vineyards located on Lamington National Park Road, Canungra, Queensland, is a 15-acre vineyard with the 163-year-old historic homestead ‘Killowen’ set up with dining rooms and long verandahs, and extensive grounds that are next to the Canungra creek where it is possible to find Platypus and turtles while partaking in a picnic.
There are about 6,000 vines of the (white) Semillon, Verdelho and (red) Chambourcin, Shiraz and Petit Vedot varieties.
We visited there in December when the vines were just starting to produce fruit.
That fruit is usually harvested in February and then turned into wine.
The setting for picnics is, on a warm Summer’s day is idyllic, where you can wade in the creek, or go looking for a platypus. We did not see one there the day we visited but did spend some time sitting beside the creek.
O’Reilly’s Canungra Valley Vineyards located on Lamington National Park Road, Canungra, Queensland, is a 15-acre vineyard with the 163-year-old historic homestead ‘Killowen’ set up with dining rooms and long verandahs, and extensive grounds that are next to the Canungra creek where it is possible to find Platypus and turtles while partaking in a picnic.
There are about 6,000 vines of the (white) Semillon, Verdelho and (red) Chambourcin, Shiraz and Petit Vedot varieties.
We visited there in December when the vines were just starting to produce fruit.
That fruit is usually harvested in February and then turned into wine.
The setting for picnics is, on a warm Summer’s day is idyllic, where you can wade in the creek, or go looking for a platypus. We did not see one there the day we visited but did spend some time sitting beside the creek.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 