The Shans head off on holiday today. We were seriously tempted to hit for Vampire Mountain -- in an attempt to roll with the times, Vancha March was charged by the other Vampire Princes with creating an advertising pamphlet to drive more visitors towards holidaying there. Naturally the pamphlets have mostly been sent to vampires, but a few found their way into other hands -- I guess one of the creatures of the night thought they'd pop one through my letterbox for old (alternative) times' sake.

The pamphlet features such catchy (well, Sire March clearly thinks they're catchy!) slogans as "Bathe in the famous blood fountain of Vampire Mountain!" and "Vampire Mountain -- where the sun never rises!" and "It's all home-brewed ale -- come drink like a whale!" and "Come for the bat broth... stay for the rat BBQ!"

As you can imagine, it was hard to resist such advertorial gems (Don Draper of TV show Mad Men -- eat your heart out!), but in the end, as the photos suggest, we're heading for somewhere a little bit sunnier, where chocolate rather than blood flows through the fountains, and hopefully we won't be fishing any bat bones out of our soup...

The photo of Dante (on the left) harks back to one of our first trips abroad with him, when he was a wee little fella, while the photo of Gaia (on the right) is proof that we like to recycle in the Shan household!