Sarah and I travelled to Washington DC in September 2008, she was working and I was touring as many tourist sights as possible. It's a very strange city, Sarah described it as Disneyland for museum geeks. I toured most of the museums, all the memorials on the Mall and also took trips out to the National Zoo and the beautiful Arlington.

Michael, Michelle and I spent an occasionally wet, but mostly beautiful week in Venice in May 2008. I can't imagine there is anywhere on earth quite like Venice, it's an utterly crazy place to build a city and it contains some spectacular riches but also some depressing levels of decay. The islands around the lagoon each have their own personalities and hopping on and off of boat buses never gets old.

Sam and I took the Eurostar to France for a couple of days at Disneyland Paris in January 2008. We had glorious weather one day but a lot of rain the next, however it didn't really matter as it's almost impossible to be miserable at Disneyland. Fortunately the rain kept the hordes away and we got to play on loads of the rides.