...and in English that means?

A final long-ass post.

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:08:00 +0000

March
March was a very full month, although not all play. Gem had decided to do an acupuncture course which was held over three weekends with personal study in between and two of those weekends were in March. She really enjoyed the fusion of western and eastern medicine and reckons it is something that she would like to continue in the future. The weekends were held in Winchester, another town that has previously been the capital of England, so Gem would drive out with Sara who was also booked on the course. The town was quite picturesque and the girls found some time for fun while they were away each weekend.

A week after the first acupuncture weekend we headed out to non-London to visit the rellies. First up we staid the night with Nanny in Solihull, before heading across the country to visit Muriel in the ‘burbs of York.

On the third weekend in March we decided with Vic and Grant to brave the cold and go camping again. We headed out to Longleat Park, home of the show Animal Park and camped in a nearby field. It was cold when we got in late on Friday night, and sure enough when we woke in the morning, although the sky was brilliant blue the grass (and much of our tent) shimmered silver with frost. Thick frost. But it wasn’t in raining, and we have learnt in the UK every tourist day that is not raining is a good day ;)

The park was good, in terms of the safari aspect I think I enjoyed the one in the West Midlands better. We got all prepared for this one removing the aerial etc so the monkeys wouldn’t steal it, only to discover that the monkey section of the safari was closed. However Longleat does have the beautiful house to its name, and gardens, an a-maz-ing maze and a section of other animals that don’t really go in the safari. So that was an advantage. The next morning being safari-ed out we headed for nearby Bath, and wandered around there. We tried very hard to join in the free history walking tour, however the group was sooo big we could not hear anything. So instead Grant and Vic bought a new camera and we went home 

April

April kicked off (after working a weekend of course) with Easter in Wales (9th -12th). Apologies – for some reason my mind has largely blocked this weekend out of my memory so details are sketchy.Despite a gloomy forecast from the BEEB and a wet week, the weather cleared up wonderfully for the weekend. Although when we arrived at the campsite late on Thursday night we weren’t so certain. As it had rained all weekend including the drive down, as we investigated looking for the best place to set ups our feet squelched in the wet ground. But the sky was blue and the sun shining amongst the clouds the next morning. On Friday we headed in a south direction out to the coast. The idea was to do a circular walk through some of the more famous scenery of the coast. It was beautiful. We stopped for lunch at a café at the teeniest tiniest little harbour.
In the afternoon we checked out the ruins of a nearby castle before trying to stop for a pint (pub closed between lunch and dinner) so therefore heading back to the campsite lighting and fire and relaxing. We had planned to have chilli con carne, a camping favourite, but someone who wasn’t Gem, and we shall not name who she was ;) dropped the whole pan on the floor. So instead we had bbq and burgers.
On Saturday we drove in a more westerly direction and followed the coast north towards cardigan bay; and although we didn’t get that far we explored some of the small fishing towns. A quick restock of supplies ensured that we had chilli for dinner.
On Sunday we drove North hiked up to a look out point where we could stand on an iron age burial mound and look out over Cardigan bay. We skimmed slate on a now flooded old slate quarry and walked some of Pembrokeshire’s famous coastal walk. For dinner we went to a pub that we had been eyeing off since our arrival. It was worth the wait with lovely fresh local produce in a farmhouse/game style menu – delish!
On Easter Monday we packed ourselves up and took a long scenic route home. We drove up through the beautiful desolate Brecon Beacons as then down through the Wye Valley popping in and out of England and Wales as the road and river criss-crossed the border.

Gem managed to drop her wide angle lens out of the back of the car.. not so good. So priority during the week of course went to fixing it in time for the next holiday. The boys at the camera store informed us that it would take several weeks to get the parts in, but she would still be able to use it in the meantime. You might notice some black corners on some of the photos. They haven’t been edited out for theatrical effect 

The following weekend saw Duncan and I off again. This time out to Hereford/Wales border where we were joining an ELCO (Landcruisers group) play weekend. This is basically a family friendly weekend and excuse for the boys to get their toys together and drive and get stuck and rescue each other. It was based on a farm where one of the blokes has a 4X4 course. It was fantastic, we met Charlie and Nina who were other first timers like us and we learnt so much from Tony and Julian and Ian and Paul and John – so thanks heaps to all of them.

Gem finished April up with her last weekend of Acupuncture; she has been using it to treat her dodgy ankle pain, so finds it quite helpful!

May
We started May with a bang for Vic and Grants farewell. Vic and Gem got up early on Saturday morning and went and had our hair done. Then mid afternoon in the beautiful and rare London sunshine we walked with Magnus and Nicole and Matilda over Tower Bridge to St Katherine’s Docks for drinks.

With some of us a little more worse for wear the next morning we headed to the Columbia Road Flower Markets. A London institution it was something that Vic and Gem had wanted to do for a while so were squeezing it in at the last minute. It was absolutely packed!!! For good flowers and a little more peace it would be well worth getting there at 6 or 7. From Columbia Road we walked down Brick Lane to Spitalfields Markets and caught the bus back to Bermondsey. A quick change and we headed out on our Farewell to Bermondsey pub crawl. This involved going to all the pubs we have liked or always talked about going to around us (Check out the gallery for all the pubs, I think there was nine in total). Belinda thought that as she lived in the flat for 3 weeks she would come as well, the more the merrier. A good time was had by all 

Fortunately after such an epic weekend Monday was a public Holiday. This meant that we could get a lot of the packing we needed doing during the week done. The baggage guys were coming to pick the stuff up on the Friday.

On Friday evening Duncan and I drove up to Hereford to stay with Gilly and Julian as the next morning we were going to Badminton – which I believe the second most attended sporting event next to one of the motor racing competitions!! And there were certainly a lot of people there. And a lot of shopping – I think Gilly and I spent more time looking at the shops that we did looking at the course. The bits of the course that we saw were pretty speccy however due to the sheer amount of people it was difficult to see them in detail.

We drove back to London on Saturday night as we wanted to drop Vic and Grant off at the train station on Sunday morning. They were starting their trip home which involved some time in Europe and the Middle east and Africa. After dropping them off it was clean clean clean, sneeze, sneeze, sneeze the flat in preparation for handing the keys back to the landlord and ultimately back to Mark and Gordon and Chris who were moving in.

On the Monday Gem moved everything to Leytonstone to Sara and Sam’s who were putting us up til we left…. Hmmm perhaps we kept to much stuff?? We cultured it up at Sister Act during the week – although it was entertaining Gem was disappointed – there was no music from the original score which she had been looking forward to. So Dunc had to download the movie when we go home….

Once more by the time the next weekend ticked around we were off again. This time for Dunc’s birthday present a 4WD trip through wales which funnily enough Julian was also doing with his eldest daughter Izzy. This was a wicked weekend to learn what we and the car could do when put to the test. And not to mention some actually spectacular scenery.

I would like to say that what followed was some down time, but that would be lying. We caught up with Andy, Rhian, Damage and Leanne for some Japanese in by Picadilly Circus. And then two days later were off. This time no business all pleasure. We had 3 ½ days in the little Greek paradise Santorini.

We flew in on Thursday and arrived around lunch time-ish. On a whim we decided to hire a car, and met the most delightful man who rented us his ‘last car’ he then insisted we followed him to our first destination as he didn’t want us to get lost. He gave us his mobile number and insisted that we come and see him if we wanted any ideas of where to go. We were quite lucky we hired our little yellow Voula, as she had great air con and it was hot!!

Sara and Sam arrived in Port (from Athens) later the afternoon and we met them at the boat. First stop winery to sample some local whites. The wine was very metallic but Sam and I felt we could manage it for our time there. It was interesting to see how they farmed their grapes which was in little ‘baskets’ or what seemed like a little messy pile on the floor rather than stretched out along wire. This apparently protects them from the harsh sea winds.

We made it up to our apartment in Oia without to much drama, and headed out to explore and catch our first Santorini sunset. The island is famous for sunsets over the Caldera, why they are supposed to be so good we never really found out, but the crowds of people that gathered to watch the sunset was extraordinary.

We got ourselves ‘purposefully lost’ on the way home in the search for a restaurant that was not on the busy tourist path. With success we had a lovely meal.

Our plan for the first morning was to walk down to the fishing village below Oia (at ocean level. It was quite warm and a lot of steps down, but we were rewarded with a lovely flat coastal walk at the bottom and of course an amazing lunch.. the food on Santorini…. To die for…
The walk back up the cliff warmed us up enough to search for one or both of two things. Cold wine or a beach to swim. So we jumped in little yellow Voula and headed south. Our first destination was the red beach. Deceived on initial arrival to a dodgy little car park, we walked around the point to the beach to be astounded by the view. An azure blue ocean sheltered by red cliffs with more people than their were cars for relaxing on the red and black beach. We clambered down to the beach and set up our towels on the pebbles. Dunc and Sara and Sam heroically braved the water for all of about 5 minutes; while Gemma, demonstrating wisdom beyond her years after investigating the water conditions with her toes decided a much better course of action was to read on her towel on the beach.

On Saturday we cruised out to two small islands in the caldera. The first, was the home of the volcano crater that had erupted creating the island as it is today. We walked up the increasingly hot path to the steaming crater. The next stop for the boat was just off another small island where we visited some hot springs. To get to the hot springs you had to dive off the bridge and swim through the 18 degree water to a brown patch of water (from the silty bottom) by the shore. Now Gem was not keen after her red sea experience and almost didn’t go, but wanting to tick the box finally joined us. She was, and admittedly everyone was a little disappointed. The water was a mere luke warm tepid temperature, not sufficiently warm to heat the cockles after swimming through the cold water to get there and to top it off we had to swim through it to get back to the boat. In all seriousness though it wasn’t that bad ;)

Exhausted from our day of volcano trekking and deep sea swimming, we relaxed savouring local wines and produce at a nearby winery. Stocked with supplies for the evening we headed back to the apartment. The famous Oia sunset was no disappointment this night and as Dunc and Sam sipped wine and chatted Sara and Gem sipped wine and took photos of the sun as it dipped behind the clouds and then the horizon.

And before we knew it our time was over. The weather had been phenomenal – blue skies, and not too hot. We had been extremely lucky. Even luckier, I had made a mistake when booking the trip so that we arrived back on a Sunday and the next day was a bank holiday – hooray!!

June
The fact that the year was flying by and our departure date from London on our travels was fast approaching couldn’t have become more apparent when the calendars flipped over to June

Duncan caught up with his old JPMH crew for a couple of cheeky pints and poured himself into bed sometime very late for a school night ;)

Our major achievement for June was the construction of our storage system for the back of Hugo. After much research and discussion with those in the know, and after drawing some very precise plans, we just made it up as we went along. It’s not pretty, and you wouldn’t want to show anyone with the smallest amount of carpentry skills but it works (by works I mean, the draw slides in and out and the top holds boxes ;) It truly is amazing what a computer geek and a physio can do with a jigsaw and a drill and some bolt thingies – and without the supervision of anyone more skilled (you know who you are ;)

Work more work, boring

We caught up with Craig and Janine for a lovely dinner in London Bridge, following our stories of how wonderful sailing in croatia had been and how calm the water was they had gone for a week. Only to sepnd the first 2 days horrendously sea sick in rough weather… oops. Although they assured us that after the weather cleared up they had enjoyed themselves.

On the 20th of June we decided to try and see a little bit of London, we particularly wanted to see some of the churches that we had been meaning to see. Of course the public transport was all suspended for maintenance works which made it incredibly difficulty to get anywhere, but we managed to visit St Bartholomew’s church near Barbican which is supposed to be the first church in London?? On the Sunday we went to the Surgical and Apothecary Museum in London Bridge which was suitably macabre ; and in the afternoon headed out to where it all began in Acton and joined Andy and Rhian for their farewell bbq.

During that following week, Gem had managed to secure last minute tickets to the play Calendar Girls (an on stage adaptation of the movie). I am not sure it was as good as the movie; it was hard not to compare the characters to the actors who played them originally but it was certainly a great play.

On Thursday we went and had dinner with Kara (Gem’s boss at work) and her partner Darren. A fun evening that will always be remembered. You know that expression ‘where were you when…. Michael Jackson died?? Well we (Duncan) were sampling Kara’s fine whisky collection. We got so engrossed in the media reports that we nearly missed the last tube… not helpful when trying to get from Clapham to Leytonstone.

Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery were the destination for Saturday 27th of June with Sara. Westminster was…. good… however I was a little miffed at the entrance fee. Sure I know that an entrance fee is necessary for maintenance etc especially for these old buildings, but £15!!! That is a little bit rich. So for Dunc and I to see Westminster it cost £30 – to walk around a church! I mean it was cool seeing all the famous people that were buried there and the coronation chair etc, but still. It was even more in perspective when you go the National Gallery and see masterpieces like ‘Sunflowers’ and others by Da Vinici, Picasso, Tintoretto, Caraveggio, Botocelli etc for Free! Hmph. Anyhoo, it was a nice day to be out and about London, well it started off that way anyway. By the time we emerged from the underground in Leytonstone a massive thunderstorm had rolled in and it was bucketing down.

On Sunday we drove up to York and took Muriel to lunch in a nearby country pub that she quite likes. Muriel has recently moved into a new assisted living complex, and has not been there that long so I don’t believe that she feels that settled. Nonetheless she looked much better than the last time that we had seen her.

After much debating we had decided to get the air conditioning fixed in Hugo. As our itinerary is a little sketchy for where and when we will be on our grand touring holiday, we thought it would be a good idea incase we end up stuck in traffic in Turkey or in the desert somewhere in one of the Stans. The Quickfit guys had assured us they had re-gassed the aircon and that it was the compressor that was broken and the reason why the air conditioning wasn’t working. Well the air conditioning man didn’t think so. He re-gassed the beast, gave it a slap and tickle here and there and voila we had aircon; what’s more, I believe it rivals Fred (the old Honda Accord) for the best aircon ever.

We finished June with cultural flair by attending a Royal Ballet academy and Ballet Orchestra production for the summer festival at St Pauls Cathedral in town. It was a mixture of contempary and classical ballet, with piece of music from the orchestra for intermission.

July

Our last month in London and we are continuing to live with Sara and Sam, we have been so busy however that I think in the 10 weeks that we have lived with them we have managed to have dinner together about 4 times.

Of course we are in countdown for our trip and everything has revolved around that.

On the first weekend we took a final trip out to the Midlands. Duncan’s cousin Donna and their family were very kindly hosting a farewell barbeque. The weather was almost perfect (what English bbq is complete without rain), the food and company was lovely and Ian had even arranged entertainment, in the form of ride on lawnmower time trials  Unfortunately nanny had been unwell so was didn’t come for the day out, but on Sunday we called by her house for lunch and farewell.

It was on the way back from this trip that we first noticed the noise?!?!? da da daaaaa
(dramatic music). Well in fairness, Gem noticed it on the way up, but Dunc refused to believe her ;). And after stopping in to say goodbye to Magnus, Nicole and Matilda it continued, we pulled over a couple of times to have a look ‘knowingly’ underneath with so triumph. So continued on home. Later in the week Dunc emailed Julian about it and was given some suggestions, but it wasn’t until the next weekend that we got some answers.

Gem had her work farewell on the Friday night – Italian dinner and dancing – followed by an MRI early Saturday morning (as her ankle has been continuing to play up) so she was staying in London til Saturday afternoon, whereas Duncan was going to drive the car up to Hereford for it’s final check.

So while Gemma was eating, dancing, catching cabs, losing bank cards and oyster cards, Dunc was driving up to Hereford… and driving would be a loose description as he spent quite a bit of time under the car removing prop shafts, as the sound had worsened significantly. First the rear which made no difference and then the front hooray sorted the problem temporarily.

On Saturday while Gem was cancelling her lost bank card, going to her MRI, getting subway for lunch and catching the train to Hereford, Dunc and Julian were removing the Front Diff which was broken and trying to find a replacement in the UK – found one – in Derbyshire, awesome!!!!! So while Gem was driven from the train station to the farm by Julian, and relaxing with Gilly and the children, Dunc was driving Gilly’s car all the way to Derbyshire to get the part required.

But in any event it was done, and after another weekend of fixing car things in an extremely manly fashion (even if the overalls were a tad small ;) it was back to London.

Of course the more things you have to do and the busier you are the quicker time passes, and the less it seems possible to fit in. On the following Monday we went to dinner at Mark and Gordo’s new place (also known as our old apartment in Bermondsey); on Tuesday Gemma worked late trying to finish a presentation before she left; on Wednesday Sara and Sam took us out for an amazing dinner at Boundary in east London – highly recommend; on Thursday we made time for the new Harry Potter Movie which was great and on Friday we had leaving drinks.
Held at a gorgeous little pub on the river in Wapping we had a few farewell bevvies with our nearest and dearest (minus a few of course ;). Having chosen the pub on a sunny Sunday afternoon we chose it specifically for its gorgeous large beer garden over looking the river, because July is summer right? It is bound to be fine! Ha! Despite being a little fresh and breezy I was determined to sit outside and we did for about an hour, until the heavens opened and rained on my parade.

The morning after was the beginning of our last weekend in London – aaahhhh – where did all the time go.

The next few days flew by. Dunc had officially finished work on the Friday so spent Monday doing some last minute (prop shaft balancing) stuff for the car. Otherwise our time was generally spent turning sara and sam’s place into a disaster site as we packed, unpacked, washed, dried, repacked etc. On Sunday we went to Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen for which Vic and Grant had given us a voucher for. Monday night more last minute shopping and Tuesday was a somewhat emotional dinner and goodbye with Belinda, Gav and Sara at Providores.

You may note that we have put up some (quite a few) more galleries. So please check them out.

And with that we’re done! That is it….. this blog is officially retired. For all future stories see www.hugosbigadventure.com

A long overdue post...

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:18:00 +0000

Back by popular demand. Well with only 20 days before we leave London it seemed necessary to complete to blog. Leaving it unfinished after all this time would seem pointless after all of the varying effort that has gone into it over the last few years.

The end of November 2008

For Vic’s birthday the three of us got her a ‘Big Cat Experience’ this was at a conservation park in Kent giving an educational experience for us and a chance for Vic to stroke (through the fence) and feed (also through the fence) a variety of different cats such as Snow Leopards and Tigers and Hybrids and such. I was thankful for the fence – they are a lot bigger than they look.

The big cat experience was on a Friday and so we thought as we were already out that we would make a weekend of it. So from Kent we went to the coast where we sat for 3-4 hours waiting for the eurotunnel. The service was still recovering after the earlier fires and the delays meant that it was 10 when we got to France and even before we had the long dark drive to Luxembourg. Granted I don’t remember all that much from the trip because rumour has it I may have been asleep, but the bit I do remember (when I was driving and not asleep was of a blustery road with sleet and rain all the way to the hostel. I suppose it was not a great surprise that we were the only ones in the hostel as it was Luxembourg on the verge of winter.

In the Morning we ventured to the capital. We became a little mis-directed (Duncan was driving – need I say more ;) and fortuitously ended up at the bottom of a gorge, one of the many levels that make up the city of Luxembourg. This area was quieter than the hustle at the top of the gorge and with a small river idling through it picturesque in its perceived isolation and solitude.

When we did make it up to the top level of what is purported to be one of the wealthiest cities in the world we found ourselves immersed in the chaos of a Christmas Market. So we did what all good people do in Christmas Markets, we ate, we drank and we were merry J

Following that we headed out to the Luxembourg part of the Moselle Valley, and I think that we all know what the Moselle valley is known for… Wi-ine!!! Visiting the Moselle was a little like visiting Margaret River for me, the wine was sensational and unlike a lot of the wineries that we encountered in France, tastings were readily available. We had a crazy wine tour and tasting experience at one of the local wineries before buying a couple of bottles and heading back to our hostel. We ate in a very quaint local bistro and were very impressed by the beautiful food and wine.

We spent most of Sunday taking our time to drive through the Belgian countryside. We tried to stay off the motorways to make the best of the scenery, although this plan was foiled by the constant attempts at snowing We did a little offroading ;) hit the supermarkets for some Belgian Beer, had some pomme frittes and made it back to the tunnel in time to get to our train. Some might say – Success!

December

The trip to Luxembourg seemed to mark the beginning of winter, this December semed much darker and colder than the others that we had experienced. Was this because it was or were we just tiring of London winters.

We did not have long to ponder this as the following weekend we were off on another road trip. This time to Germany. With our friends from netball, Alex and Lisa, we drove from London to Rothenburg ob de Tauber. This is an extremely well preserved medieval town famous for its Christmas traditions, and so romantic. We stayed just beyond the town wall down by the river in the old mill. Each day we walked across the river and up a steep path to enter through the impressive gateways. We drank mulled wine ate sausages and schneeballen and generally soaked up the festive atmosphere. The wall that surrounds the town is almost completely intact and has a covered walkway around it which was a good way to explore the town. We did also climb a bell tower which I think violated every health and safety regulation in the world, however the view at the top although a little grey was spectacular

The first night we were in Rothenburg we had the most amazing dinner from a german chef who trained in Sydney, and was serving kangaroo. It was a little bizarre but absolutely delicious.

As Christmas drew closer we had what turned out to be one of our last Restaurant clubs – Jimmy the Greeks, it also marked the farewell party of Rob and Anthony who had been regulars throughout the year but had now decided to return to Perth. I guess in some ways their leaving was sort of the beginning of the end, with Vic and Grant, Belinda and Gav and Duncan and I all planning our farewells to London to one extent or other.

Following that night I had a ridiculously hilarious Christmas Party, after work we all got dolled up before hitting the town for some dancing. My chivalrous husband was only too happy to pick us up at some awful hour of night and to run my boss Kara home (in the opposite direction) an act that she has very little recollection of ;)

And finally it was Christmas!!!! After months of organising a group of ten of us headed to La Plagne in France. Dunc and I were celebrating the occasion with some new snowboards. I think the only person who wasn’t really happy was Craig, and that was because his partner Janine had not been able to get her passport back from Border Control (where it was getting a new visa) and therefore couldn’t go. A friend of theirs went instead, but poor old Janine had to stay in London.

Overall, once we got there it was a very successful boarding trip. To say that there was a hitch with the transfers would have been an understatement… an absolute debacle. But when we did get there, Dunc and I put in some good runs and managed to avoid serious injuries. Unlike those (sorry Brookie) who became extremely bruised and battered in an attempt to maintain correct orientation with respects to gravity. And then of course there was poor old Chris who broke his elbow L. But all in all I snowboarded, I butt-shovelled and I even tried skiing (yes even 15 minutes counts), I threw snowballs and made snow angels so I had a fab time. Our host was sweet and cooked some lovely meals and for Christmas we had a secret santa amongst the group to keep up the cheer. Especially for those who were missing their fams!

New Years was back in London. We were meeting with Belinda and Gav and some of their mates at their place before heading over the road to the pub to see in the new year. It was a curious evening… firstly it was so full in the pub that it took 20 minutes to get a round of drinks and that is not an exaggeration. And then there was no countdown…!!!! Who does that, the DJ would not stop talking all night and then somehow manages to miss the countdown… disappointing!

It is amazing how quickly another year ends... the speed at which time moves is alarming, yet it remains oblivious to our preferences. And so begins our last year in London

January

The thing about January is you gotta keep busy, Christmas is over but it is still so dark and cold and the warmth of springs seems as far off as it ever was. But this need to do things and keep busy is antagonised by the post festive season wallet blues. Nevertheless we have had a pretty good. As Vic and I were not ready to stop spending, when they arrived back from Canada, we went shopping online for kitchen ware to ship home when the time arrives.

Vic and I had been researching a new tourist attraction that had been opened in London – the London Bridge experience which was supposed to be an historical interactive attraction outlining the sometimes gruesome history of the bridge. In a word – crap! Well maybe that was a bit harsh, there was a history lesson, albeit a mediocre one, and then instead of being able to examine the excavations under the bridge that contained all sorts of human remains from the life of the bridge, they had turned it into a derisory haunted-house style amusement, with ‘monsters’ jumping out of corners to scream at you or make hideous noises down your neck. Don’t get me wrong it was quite startling in the pure sense of the word, and Grant was extremely brave to go first…. But a bit of a let down.

For Duncan’s birthday we went to Baltic restaurant for dinner, which was really lovely. I got Dunc a 4WD holiday for later on in the year and Vic and Grant got Dunc tickets to go and see a Milwall football game (our local club)… sort of.

A highlight for me in January was going to the theatre to see Oliver. The production was HUGE!! Not just sets but the cast as well. And the children were brilliant. But furthermore the character of Fagin was played by Rowan Atkinson and the performance was just sooo good. A little like Mr Bean in some ways but just fabulous.

The week after Oliver we spent the weekend in Berlin, we loved Berlin. It is a fantastic city, probably one of the most invigorating and inspiring cities in Europe.

We got in to Berlin on Saturday afternoon and spent the afternoon exploring on foot. We walked down to the East Side Gallery to view the remarkable works of art the were commissioned of international artists to celebrate what freedom and unity meant when the wall came down. The pictures now are covered in messages from Berliners and people all around the world – is this graffiti or is this the evolution of art?? This was a question that repeated itself throughout the weekend.

We had dinner on Saturday night in a restaurant that doubled as a beer stock market. Filled with beers from all over Germany and Europe the prices of the beers changed every 7 minutes according to the popularity of the beers. And of course as the prices of other beers dropped they became more popular and their prices rose in response and so on. As I understand it several times during the night they will have a stock market crash where all the beers are incredibly cheap, however we weren’t there to witness that. We had our schnitzel, strudel and beer and made our way back to the hostel.

On Sunday we went on a free walking tour of Alternative Berlin. We both found this tour very interesting, it explored the more bohemian aspects of Berlin, from artist communes, to famous street art (like Bansky) as well as other areas of Berlin which may have had a more infamous role in Berlins history but have now become ruined or abandoned and adopted for another purpose. We finished the night at one of Berlins famous Markets.

Before we had to catch our plane on Monday, we were able to sneak in another free walking tour – this one a more conventional history tour of Berlin; from the age of the Prussians through its role and dissection through the wars and its resurgence to the dynamic energetic city that it is today. This year is the 20^th anniversary of the wall coming down and there is certainly to be one wicked party there.

The last weekend in January we went camping. After being inspired by watching so many Bear Grylls tv shows we decided that a couple of nights in the Peaks District in the middle of winter was the perfect challenge. So a group of us (Me, Dunc, Vic, Grant, Belinda, Gav, Mark, Godo and Katie) drove up on Friday night after work. We had booked a camping barn which had a slightly ineffective gas heater, they were all going to stay in the shelter of the camping barn, while Duncan and I tested our roof tent.

It was a chilly evening for those in the camp barn, and ironically, Duncan and I who were sheltered by a mere sheet of canvas were quite warm. It wasn’t so much the subzero temperatures than the gale force winds whipping across the moors and threatening to remove the tent from the top of the cruiser.

On Saturday Grant had planned a pub tour. This was a walking pub tour we had to follow an ambiguous map through the peaks district which allowed us to take in the scenery and the beer (well for the boys anyway). I fear we may have spent too much time taking the beer because I don’t even think we made it half way before we started to think we were going to run out of light and turned around. Sure enough we did run out of light but the grant followed his nose and we made it back to the pub we started at in no time.

We had dinner in the camping barn – Chilli, mmmm yummy and it appeared that the accompanying wine and beer and music that accompanied the dinner remedied the cold, because everyone reported sleeping much better that night. Not so much us though. Again, not because it was cold we were quite warm in our tent, but merely because of the wind. It blows relentlessly there… I seriously thought that take-off was a certainty a matter of when not if!

As we packed our tent up in the morning there was the very occasional snow drop. By the time that we were doing our scenic drive back to London the snow showers were occurring at fairly regular intervals.

February

We arrived back in London right on time about 5pm. We were so lucky at about 6pm the heavens opened and it snowed for about 24 hours straight. An unlikely occurrence in London, we expected the pristine white to have been replaced with slushy grey by the time that we woke up in the morning but no, Snow Day!!!!! This meant no work. No work because no tubes and no buses woohoo. Well no work for Dunc and I anyway. Grant decided to walk the four hours into work – and Dunc and I went and frolicked in the snow at the Park. One of the most entertaining aspects of the snow day was the traffic. For those of you who don’t know we are on an intersection which has lights. The teeny little one wheel drive, 1L engine cars would come sliding up to the lights. The approach to the lights is probably on a 2 degree incline so once these small little cars paused they could not get going again. But I ask you what sensible person thinks that their small one wheel drive, 1L engine car with no chains or snow tyres is going to be able to do that!?!?!?!

I had an appointment with the physiotherapist during the month who advised me that I needed an MRI on my ankle and I should give up all fun activities like netball and snowboarding in the meantime. This posed quite a problem as Dunc and I had planned to go boarding at the end of the month. I felt it was worth the risk so we booked tickets to Morzine region in France

The hotel we stayed at Le Viking was on top of the slope, you actually needed a lift pass to get there. This was perfect for getting a good start on the slopes. It was sunny on arrival and then we had a quite a bit of snow which made the conditions just perfect. But the best bit of the whole week was coming round the corner on one particular run and finding a pig! Yup a big pink pig just wondering up and down the slope. Hilarious.

The service wasn’t fantastic at the hotel, it was staffed by 18-20 year olds doing their ski season, but as we had got a last minute deal we couldn’t really complain too much J

So that gets us up to March... more to come :)

A couple of new galleries

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:43:00 +0000

Hi people,

Quite a while ago we did two long weekend trips away. First trip was with Grant and Vic where on the friday we went to Kent to a Big Cat Encounter that Vic had. Here she got to feed tigers and other big cats, through the fence of course, and we got to watch. It was really well done and you got to get right up next to the cats. Seeins as we were already down on the south east coast, we took the car ferry over to France and drove to Luxembourg. Why? Well why the hell not :) Not many people seem to go to Luxembourg so we thought we'd add it to our list. We spent a great couple of days there and even did a wine tasting tour in the Moselle Valley.

The following weekend me and Gem took two of our friends, Alex and Lisa, in Hugo and we drove to Rothenburg ob der Tauber for the Christmas markets.... Seeing as Rothenburg is supposed to be the home of the Christmas market. It was quite a drive (about 900km each way), but it was a fun drive through England, France, Belgium, Netherlands and then finally Germany.

Anyway, the galleries are now up.

Toodles!
Duncan.

Sister site

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:23:00 +0000

"...and in English that means?" is proud to bring to you our sister site... Hugo's Big Adventure (http://www.hugosbigadventure.com). Here we will be telling you all about our upcoming final trip around Europe and Western Russia when we leave from London sometime around August 2009. Why not pop over there now and bookmark it! Go on. You know you want to. Give yourself a treat :)

More of our travel updates and photos to follow soon!

Ciao,
Duncan.

More November

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:14:00 +0000

Wednesday the 5th of November was Guy Fawkes night, but Dunc and I had accidently booked theatre tickets and we were off to see French and Saunders. Still on crutches I thought that I would not try and negotiate the underground, I am sure nobody would have stood up for me anyway... evey with crutches.

Mini - cabs were my friend

French and Saunders were very funny although courtesy to Vicar of Dibley I am much more of a French gal than Saunders. Saunders is... well.. let's just say... no one needs to see an old lady running around in a pink leotard pretending to be Madonna.

The fervid, fevered, frenzy that was my week at work finally ended. And my boss and my new physio Katie went for a quite beverage at the local wine bar. One quiet beverage turned into two slightly boisterous ones and then three that were a little rowdy :) Needless to say I was a little late to our fireworks party.

The boys decided as it was possibly the last guy fawkes night that we would 'ave in Ol' Blighty that we would celebrate with a little sparkle. They each put some money in and then bought some fireworks, then invited a whole heap of people round to launch them off the top of the building. It was cold and the roof top was probably a little smaller than was safe for such a fireworks display. Beer and yummy home made chilli (courtesy of Vic) warmed us up.

I was supposed to work the 8/9th of October, however due to my ankle I had swapped off during the week, so we had a lovely weekend.

On the 15th Dunc and I went back to Hereford. This time we took the Landcruiser with us. We stayed with Gilly, Julian, Izzy, Georgie, Imo and Charlie, who treated us to some wonderful hospitality in their beautiful farmhouse which dates back to the 1500s. It was a treat for the soul to spend some quality time in country england. In exchange for this experience we got down and dirty with Julian, or rather should I say with the Landcruiser. Under Julian's close supervision, we stripped and cleaned the front axle. Sound impressive.... i thought so.

Monday we spent the day assembling roof racks, attaching roof tents, eating roast lamb and playing with the children. Julian drove us to the train station on Monday night and we headed back to London feeling the weight of the city oppress us as we approached.

Duncan started his first week of his new job. He says he is enjoying it but he feels a little in the deep end.

Vic and Grant had headed to Portugal during the week so Dunc and I had a little time to ourselves. It was quite nice but also quite lonely with an empty house.

On Saturday Dunc and I went to the Borough markets, Sara and Sam were coming to dinner and we were going to be prepared. It was soooooooo cold, sunny but cold. Borough markets was predictably packed and with good reason, although when i found out that rhubarb was £8.60 (17AUD) a kilo!!!!! can you beleive it? But what is rhubarb and apple crumble without the rhubarb? (well actually it is apple crumble) but it is not as good. So we bought the rhubarb.

Once again Duncan excelled himself in the kitchen, I however have lost my baking mojo. Sure enough my crumble was delicious but the cake i made for lunch the next day not so good. I cooked it for longer than necessary and the insides were still uncooked.

I iced it and the next morning we took it to Hereford anyway (along with some 'rescue' ANZAC biscuits that cooked to the paper). We were going back to Herford to collect the Landcruiser. He was supposed to be ready around lunch time, however when we arrived we found Julian cursing under the bonnet and suggesting that we go inside for a coffee. So in we went, for coffee, for roast lunch, for uncooked cake, ANZAC biscuits (and the occasional bit of paper), and more coffee. Duncan went out to do manly things with Julian and Gilly and I relaxed in front of the fire with newspapers. Finally at 10:30pm the car was not finished but was as complete as it could get (waiting on parts) and we got in the car to drive back to London.

On Monday night Duncan and Belinda and I went to Le Trois Garcon a very flash French restaurant. Other than that little excitement in our lives it has been cold and dark and work is the same. (Although I did have another important meeting with important people that I had to wear my suit to)

And now I am off to bed.

Iceland photos finally done!

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:19:00 +0000

4 more galleries there on the right... all of Iceland. One of best trips yet... amazing scenery so well worth a look through.

kthanxbye.

Duncan.

The longest post ever.

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:18:00 +0000

The beauty of me being so behind with the blog is I can’t go into too much detail, because I can’t remember it all :) So you are in luck. While I try to capture the last four months I will not be able to tell you for example, what time and with what toothpaste I cleaned my teeth.

July

Well after our fantastic holiday it was back to work of course!! For me that meant back to Kings College Hospital, I was changing teams from medical and surgical but still staying in the Respiratory team. Duncan on the other hand had resigned from his job, but never fear his work hadn’t gotten around to replacing him yet so that meant that they had asked him to go back contracting!!

We had another catch up with Mrs P and Janine and Craig before she headed back to Australia.

On the weekend we drove out to Slough to visit with Aunty Alice who was visiting her cousins. She had been out to see Muriel on arrival in the UK and was now catching up with her other family. We got out to the countryside much easier than we had thought and as we had some time to kill before meeting with Aunty Alice we found a ‘Pick Your Own’ farm and picked two punnets of summer raspberries.

That evening I excelled myself by making a white chocolate and marscapone cheesecake with raspberry coulis and fresh fruit. It was good, even if I say so myself :)

On the 15th of July we had Restaurant Club at Mimosa restaurant in the city. This month had a Mediterranean flair.

On a negative note Dunc and my bathroom became out of action. The shower was leaking through the floor and dripping down into the garage (fortunately there was no one living below us or the problem for the land lord may have been worse).

Although there was no actual travel in July we booked our Christmas ski trip to La Plagne in France – a whole group of us are going and have a catered chalet right on the slopes which should be grrreat!

August

Well July and August saw the four of us get quite hooked with the Long Way Round and Long Way down series. This prompted a lot of discussion between Duncan and I about how we were going to see the remaining parts of Europe. So on the rainy morning of the 9th of August, before Gordo’s surprise birthday party Duncan went to look at an old Landcruiser. By the time he met me at Gordo’s birthday he had bought a Landcruiser! :)

So it seemed it was decided, sometime in 2009 we would be leaving London in our Landcruiser (now called Hugo) and travelling all through Europe to the places we haven’t seen. I guess we are only limited by our imaginations, and of course border crossings ;)

Gordo’s birthday was supposed to be in a Park along the river side, but being the consistent London summer it was it was absolutely dumping down with rain. So we found a pub and weathered the storm there.

On Sunday 10th of August Dunc and I took a day trip up to York to visit Muriel. We had a lovely lunch with her and showed her some of the pictures we had taken on various trips we had been on. The only dampener on the weekend was that on the way home in the rain (again) we were rear ended. Fortunately the only damage sustained was to the car and not to us, but what a hassle!!! And what a strange coincidence that it happened one day after we had put the deposit down on Hugo.

We didn’t go to August restaurant Club 15; instead Dunc and I and Vic and Grant took Hugo (we had picked him up during the week) up to Shropshire. We visited Dunc’s cousins Donna and Ian, staying in their beautiful house which is a restored historic barn. On the Saturday morning we went and explored Stratford upon Avon – home of Shakespeare. There was a great farmers market where we had some amazing fresh soup for lunch, as well as the obligatory Shakespeare gift stores. In the afternoon we went to a safari park which was quite cool – we drove around in Hugo, feeding all the safari animals like deer and bovines and camels out the window (or the sunroof in the case of the camel). We weren’t allowed to feed the big cats though :) They made us shut the windows when we drove through those sections, can’t imagine why? We had a great dinner in a local country pub with Donna and Ian and Ian’s kids, and we got to dinner and back in record time – Ian drives very fast!

On Sunday 17th on the way home from Shropshire we went to Warwick castle – it was clichéd and overcrowded with tourists and school children on holidays but I really liked it – it was very well done. They had falconry displays with birds of prey of all shapes and sizes from all corners of the world. One of the birds – a giant eagle - had been let out for a fly in the morning and hadn’t come back yet so they were asking everyone to keep an eye out for him. There was jousting on horseback and duelling re-enactments. The castle itself contained museum rooms dedicated to times gone by. Unfortunately we were unable to stay for the trebuchet re-enactment as we wanted to get going back to London.

On the 20th August, a new season of netball started. We moved locations because the umpiring was lacklustre and it was very expensive. Our new sports centre is half the price and indoors! This of course takes all the fun out of playing netball in the winter rain, sleet and snow.

Friday 22nd August I was introduced to Chopper Reid, not the real one of course because that might be a bit scary, but the one personified by Aussie comedian Ronnie Johns. The show was called: ‘Make Deadsh*ts History’, it was very funny, and afterwards Grant, Vic, Magnus, Nicole, Duncan and I had a cheeky pint or two with Ronnie.

My contract at Kings was finally coming to an end. After what was supposed to be a six week contract I had been there for nearly six months. I had enjoyed my time, and loved working in the ITU but it was time for a change. Unfortunately there was not a lot of ITU jobs around so, I took a community job in a new team in Mile End (east London) I wasn’t due to start for a week or so, but I bought a bike in preparation. Distance wise my new job wasn’t very far away, but public transport wise it was a bit of a trek, so I thought this was a sign to get off my laurels, where I have been resting for a while, and do some exercise:). In the spirit of enthusiasm that the bike was bought, I thought I would get warmed up by cycling to Kings in my last week of work. Who would have thought that the Hospital was only 15 minutes away by bike, all of those 30min journeys on public transport and long waits on the platform if I missed the infrequent trains – doh! C’est la vie.

On the 28th of August, Duncan and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary, 3 years and 351 days longer than Brittney Spears’ first wedding. An achievement I think to celebrate. We went to a little pub in Rotherhithe and had a lovely dinner for two.

Vic’s Parents arrived that weekend and shortly after they headed for a week in Ireland. We were still hoping in their absence that the bathroom would be fixed, because it was going to require some scheduling to put 6 people through showers each day. Thank goodness that our toilet was working… that could have been very interesting.

September

To celebrate the end of my contract Duncan and I went to Portugal for 5 days. We spent two days in Porto, two days in Lisbon and 1 day exploring the region around Lisbon.

I really liked Porto, yes it is the home of Port. Although the birthplace of port it was actually the British that invented it. The region upstream of Porto was a famous wine producing region, and while the British took up residence in Portugal as they did in many other places in the world, they grew to like their wine. However the wine would not withstand the shipping back to the UK, so the Brits added brandy to fortify the wine for its travel home. The beautiful colourful old town of Porto is on one side of the Duoro river, and on the other separated by an amazing bridge, are all the Port Caves in the more sophisticated and understated Vila Nova de Gaia. We spent an amazing day walking around the beautiful streets of Vila Nova de Gaia, tasting the port and enjoying the sunshine and the river. We sampled white, ruby and tawny port, and learnt about vintages and which ports could be opened and kept open. We even sampled a small amount of port from 1904. It was nice but the 20 year old was the best for me.

Lisbon was only a three hour train ride away; we had a gorgeous little hotel right on the pedestrian highway in the middle of the old town. Lisbon was a beautiful old town and we decided to have a more relaxed and less structured time here. We wandered through some of the various districts such as Alfama, Baxia and Bairro Alto. Each of the districts has their own specialties. One district we walked through is very reminiscent of what we saw in Morocco and really reflects the Moors influence in Portugal.

On our last day in Portugal we took a train out to a village called Sintra and its Unesco World Heritage centre. It has a real blend of European and Moorish architecture and is just stunning. We walked around the village then took the bus up the hill to some amazing parkland and Disney-style castle of Palacio Nacional Da Pana. We walked through the gardens and down the hill slightly to a ruined 11th century Moorish castle called Castelo Dos Mouros. From here you can walk back down the hill for about 4kms and back to town. A quick bite of a late lunch and we headed back into Lisbon for our last night.

The next morning we took one of Lisbon’s famous trams out to Belem where we saw the beautiful and very gothic (and UNESCO listed) Mosteiro dos Jeronimos (www.mosteirojeronimos.pt). It had extraordinary stone carvings on the façade, and is the burial chamber of many great Portuguese naval people. We walked from here up the coast past the Padrao dos Descobrimentos a huge limestone monument overhanging the bay that somewhat resembles a ships bow. Continuing up the coast we came to another landmark what is the Torre de Belem (also UNESCO listed). The tower did sit in the middle of the ocean to protect the entrance to Lisbon’s harbour – that is of course until Mother Nature changed the path of the ocean and now it is part of the shoreline. We jumped on the train back to Porto and then ‘yet another on time’ flight back to London :)

Once back from Portugal feeling relaxed and rejuvenated I started my new contract at Mile End Hospital. The job is something a little different from what I have done so far. Although I guess at the end of the day a job is a job, I was mildly curious, and maybe a little bit excited about the possibilities of this job.

This year my birthday inconveniently fell on a Tuesday which meant that I had to share it with Netball. Vic and Grant had gone out for the evening, so it was quite a quiet night. Fortunately for me Duncan had made mum’s famous chocolate cake. It was his first cake effort so we won’t mention that it was a little challenged in the height department. (I don’t think the cake liked being made while the washing machine was spinning right next door to the oven. Regardless of how it looked it tasted delicious.

A couple of night later Duncan and I went and saw Rainman. Yes we have all seen the movie; well this was a play starring Hollywood actor Josh Hartnett (for all you Pearl Harbour fans). The play was very good. I did feel a little sorry for Hartnett – he was after all the headlining actor and despite getting his shirt off, the chap playing Rainman was outstanding.

The weekends often pass with out much to draw attention to them, I do however remember the weekend of the 13th September because while out shopping with Vic and Mrs Butefisch I got a £80 parking ticket!!! Outraged I was. Especially as I was running late to get home and get changed before going to my birthday drinks. I had arranged to have them at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, however when we got there the outside section was closed off for filming (don’t get excited it was only Peaches Geldoff, not some one really exciting). But we couldn’t stay indoors on such a beautiful day!!!!! It was one of the very few beautiful sunny weekends that we had had this summer. So when everyone had arrive we relocated down to the riverside to enjoy the weather.

So with my first week of work under my belt, I got promoted, bought a suit (for very important meetings with very important people), lost my bike (stolen), wore the suit, bought another bike and insured the bike!

The following weekend we went the Bavarian Beerhouse near Old Street to celebrate Octoberfest. We could not go to germany this year so had to choose the next best thing. We went in costume… and well… lets just hope that the photos never make the public domain.

And to see September out with a bang – I went to work at Harley Street – yay!

October

October kicked off with yet another dinner party. Logically the summer months with their seemingly never ending daylight should be the busiest, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. This year as the days have grown shorter and Christmas gets closer we seem to get busier and busier. We met with our old netball team in a bit of a favourite of ours in China Town – Hungs – best crispy duck in London

After working at Harley Street for the 1st weekend, we went to Hereford for the second. We were going up to meet Hugo’s prospective surgeon. A long overland trip like ours requires quite a bit of preparation for Hugo, so we were going to meet Julian who was highly recommended for the job. Whilst up there we stayed in a little B&B which used to be a station house. Very quaint and our window opened right onto the platform. Whilst in the area we drove through beautiful Golden Valley to visit Hay-on-Wye. Not only did we get to be in England and Wales at the same time we got to visit this small market town that has over 40 bookshops. It was fantastic, new books, secondhand books, antique books. There was even an honour system open air book store in the churchyard.

Vic’s birthday was on the 14th, so club 15 was in her honour. We went to quite a funky restaurant in Clapham called Lost Society. Some of the food was unfortunately mediocre but the service was great, and the waiter seemed to realise that the food wasn’t hitting the spot, so attempted to fill the void with plenty of free wine and cocktails.

On Friday (17th) our friend Brooke came over with her friend Jo for dinner and Poker, it was yummy and somehow I got out of cooking and washing up – kudos to me.

I spent the weekend of the 18/19 doing tax tax tax, and although it was almost done it is still not quite there…. Arrggh.

Courtesy of a ticket sale on Lastminute.com we got a few cheap theatre tickets, so on the 22nd Dunc and I went to see the Sound of Music. I was a little bit disappointed, I think I expected more or different or something, but at the end of the day who doesn’t love anything to do with the sound of music.

On the 25th I attended a course on “Acute exercise physiology and applications in critical care”. Wait wait before I lose your attention, that is all I will say about it. It was on, I went and felt I learned something. Moving on.

It was a pretty miserable weekend, I don’t think that it stopped raining. The boys used this as a good excuse to lift up the hood of the car, do manly things which they called ‘installing the stereo’

Our cheap movie tickets also got us tickets to the Umbilical Brothers on the 29th of October.

We bought a tent and a fridge for the 4wd.

We bought cheap tickets in an Easyjet sale to go to Berlin, then realised that we had already something booked that weekend so paid more than the tickets were worth to change the flights to another date.

Finally, finally finally the bathroom was completed!!!

Tuesday the 28th of October marked the beginning of the end of an era. Duncan was given his notice from JPMH. After being a contractor then a permanent employee and then a contractor again for over two and a half years, he was finally given is leaving date.

November

The beginning of November saw the opening of a new huge Westfield in west London that had everybody talking – yup just like Carousel or the Galleria, although last I checked the Westfields in Perth didn’t have De Beers, Tiffanys, Dior, Hugo etc. The place was massive and all the affordable shops were at the other end of the shopping centre from the train station! Typical.

On Saturday we had a baby shower/afternoon tea for Magnus and Nicole. I quiet affair but nice to see them before two become three and gave us a chance to give them some pressies.

Monday was my first night playing Versatility netball – played with only 5 players instead of 7 and after each point everybody rotates positions. Unfortunately I didn’t even get to play my game, because half way through filling in for another team I ‘did’ my ankle. My husband was too busy socialising [Duncan - I was waiting to meet Phil and he was on the tube so i couldn't call him!] to come to my rescue so I had to scrounge enough money to take a taxi home. Later that evening after picking up my bike Duncan took me to A&E, but I got tired of waiting so we went home again. I ended up having to use mini-cabs as I couldn't ride my bike. And Duncan was amazing and drove me around a fair bit too. He is wonderful :) In the end I had x-rays and it wasn't broken. Yay!

And that brings us muuuch closer to being up to date. Oh, and there are new galleries too!

Toodles!

Iceland!

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:32:00 +0000

So Iceland... well it was a while away but we have been busy so this post is a tad overdue. Anyway, we left London late on Wednesday night and arrived in Iceland just before 12am... just in time to watch the sunset.... Kind of gave us an idea of what sort of levels of daylight we were in for. Lucky for us we all bought eye-masks! We found our coach and got a ride, via various other hotels, to the hostel. Took about an hour and a half in the end so we didn't get into bed till about 2am... just in time to watch the sun start to get back to full brightness!

We had a good few hours sleep then got up for a massive breakfast in the hostel before setting out to explore Reykjavik on foot. Its a really clean and modern looking town. We wandered around the coast and up into town, got a coffee and a cake, then headed off later in the arvo to go pick up our car.

We were quite lucky actually that the person who had been bringing our car managed to damage it when getting it cleaned, so we got upgraded to a Ford Focus Station wagon... much more room for 4 than our mid sized car we had booked. We hit the roads and boy what roads they are... The main road that rings Iceland is basically the only major road so it is maintained immaculately. We booted along then saw some other cars turning off at a sign that said Faxi... so we followed out of curiosity. Turned out to be a massive waterfall that was just stunning. We took a few pictures (we took quite a few this holiday for some reason :) then headed further up the road.

Our plan for the day was to get out to Geysir, the original spouting hot spring that gave its name to all other such natural features. Its not very active anymore but only 50 metres or so away is another smaller geysir called Strokkur that shoots water up about 30m and goes off about every 3-6 minutes. Very impressive. There are boiling springs and steam coming out of all sorts of holes in the ground all around... very cool.

After this we headed further up the road again to Gulfoss, and massive two step waterfall. In winter apparently this waterfall partially freezes. We then headed to a small town not too far away called Arnes to set up camp. Having so much daylight actually makes camping a breeze as you can keep sightseeing till like 8 or 9, then set up camp in full daylight, and cook dinner, be in bed by 11 or 12, then up again at about 7 or 8. You just hardly even seem to stop as its always light. That night however it did get very cold. I think it got down to about 5 degrees, but Gem was a big shivering bundle next to me. We learnt for next time though and put on more clothes before going to bed :)

Brekkie saw us fire up the burners and have a tasty batch of beans on toast, then we packed up camp and hit the road for Landmannalaugar for some hiking. When driving the scenery changes so drastically every few miles, from barren dirt fields, to lush green to fields of purple lupins. Its quite stunning. We also got great views of the most active volcano in Iceland, Hekla. Hekla has blown its top quite a few times, and since about 1970 has erupted about every ten years. The last eruption was in 2000 so they expect it to go again in 2010.

Landmannaluagar is one of the most geothermally active places in all of Iceland... and that's saying something! To get out there we had to take an "F" road. On these roads you are no longer insured in your hire car, but we wanted to go out there anyway. Its all gravel, which the quite low Ford Focus handled quite well in the end, and there are a few bigger rocks strewn around which we could avoid at least. Closer to the hut where the hike we anted to do was there was a river which we had no intention of trying to ford. We parked by it (along with a few other smaller cars) and walked up to the hut. We got our directions then went back to the car for a quick bite of food. There were hundreds of small flies around which were very very annoying, but they didn't car for food. They seemed to just enjoy sitting on things as they swarmed around the car and around us if we stood together. If you stood apart and in a breeze they all disappeared! After lunch we set out on the 10-12km round trip hike to the Ugly Puddle, a red dirt volcanic crater filled with bright blue water. The hike was good fun and alternated between dirt, spongy moss stuff on rocks, loose gravel and the odd patch of old snow! At one point the guide book said you could take a path over a hill or a path around it. Unfortunately we couldn't really see either so me and Grant headed up and the girls headed around. It was a fairly hard climb up but well worth it for the views. The girls technically beat us to the other side but the ground on the far side was this strange spongy rock stuff so we ran down the other side in no time :)

When we got to the Ugly Puddle it was really quite beautiful. Bright red dirt and the water was storybook blue. Apparently its full of trout though no one is quite sure how they got in there. We rolled a few rocks down the sides for fun then started the walk back. Back at the hut there is a natural hot spring that yo can get into. Its got a wooden walkway out to this natural pool where cold glacial water runs in from one side, and a small stream of boiling hot water pours in from the other. There is a small wooden platform to put your stuff on then you wade up the fairly cold water to the main pool. Trick is then to get as close to the hot water stream as you can stand :) Was awesome to sit outside in a natural hot spring just taking in the surroundings. After about an hour the weather looked like it was closing in and we didn't fancy driving back along that f-road in the wet so we ran back up to the camping hut and made use of their showers to wash of the sulfur smell and the algae (not much but there was some in the spring).

We made it back out to the main roads again and started to make our way to our next camp ground which was nestled at the foot of a 62 metre waterfall called Skogafoss. It was quite windy here but really picturesque. We had a nice camp meal in a small alcove with a picnic table attached of the amenities block, then settled down to a warmer if noisy night, what with the waterfall and wind and all. Though we all slept well and I think it was quite relaxing actually.
In the morning we didn't have any bread left so we quickly packed camp then drove to a town called Vik. We found the only open restaurant and settled in for a breakfast/lunch at about 11. Burgers for breakfast. We continued our journey and later on came to a massive section of ruined bridge. That is kept by the side of the road. Basically, a few years ago a volcano erupted underneath one of the glaciers and melted heaps of the ice which poured out from under the glacier and down the river bed that the bridge spanned and out into the sea. This completely manged the bridge and it was testament to its power to see these massive steel girders completely bent at all angles by the power of the water and rock it displaced.

We continued driving east until we finally reached Jokulsarlon, a lagoon filed with icebergs that calve of the glacier Vatnajokull that comes right down to waters edge. It was absolutely amazing and we took so many photos. Some of the icebergs were small but there were some quite big ones floating around too. Some were amazingly blue too. There was a few small pieces that had washed to shore and when we picked them up they were very smooth and almost perfectly transparent. You could also take an amphibious vehicle out for a ride around them but we didn't bother... it was impressive enough from the shore.

After iceberg watching we headed back to Vik and found a campsite. We pitched our tents then went out puffin hunting :) We drove a short distance to the coastal cliffs and then walked down to the cliff edge. There were heaps of birds circling around in the air and coming in and out of the cliffs, but it wasn't until we got closer that we were able to pick out the puffins. They are the ones that were a fair bit smaller and flapping madly with their stumpy wings :) Walking further round the waters edge we found that we could climb up the boulders at the cliff edge and up a steep grassy section to get is closer. We were able to see the puffins from quite close from here. They are really cute little things, and again we got lots of pictures. Gem even managed to get one of a puffin that had just come back from the ocean with a fish in its mouth!

After this excitement we went back to camp and started some tea. Me and Grant "borrowed" a massive park table/bench from in front of a few small apartments and bought it to the front of our camp. We started cooking in beautiful blue sky but suddenly some very serious looking dark clouds came over the mountains. We watched them for about 10 minutes but they were very ominous and coming in fast. Lucky for us the camp site had a big kitchen area with benches and stuff so we took all our gear in there. About 5 minutes later the heavens opened and it absolutely poured down. Inside there was a group of about 15 Germans who had some serious cooking equipment with them, even including a drip filter for coffee! While we were cooking up our pasta they asked if we wanted to finish of their food as they had had enough and didn't want to waste it. We accepted and had a very tasty bowl of this curry and veg dish. After our meal the rain finally stopped so we headed off to bed.

In the morning the sun was back out and we had smoked bacon and eggs on our "borrowed" picnic table. We drove out to a geothermal power plant but the visitor centre didn't open until after lunch. We had a bit of a wander round but it was blowing an absolute gale so me and Gem retired to the car for a small power nap. Grant and Vic braved the wind and walked further into the hills for about an hour to see the bubbling mud. After this we headed back towards Reykjavik and skirted around to it and out to the western peninsula. There are two lighthouses our here, an old one which obviously didn't do a very good job as there was quite a few wrecks on the map at its foot, and a newer bigger one. It was even windier here that you could actually lean into the wind and stay upright. This was also the site of the free campsite, and judging buy the two flattened tents we thought it might be a tad windy to stay here comfortably. We continued on and went through a small village that supposedly had a really cool nature museum. Even though the opening times said it should be open it was closed. Poo. Further on we came to a place that you are, again supposedly, able to walk out across a sandy lava field for 30 minutes to get to a cliff edge where you can often see whales. After walking out for about 20 minutes we realised they had grossly under estimated that walk in our guidebook and it would be at least another 40 minutes to get to the edge for no real guarantee of seeing whales... so we turned around.

Next stop was "The Bridge Between Two Continents". This is a bridge at spans the Alfagja rift valley, the boundary of the Eurasian and North American continental tectonic plates. This bridge is about 30 metres wide and the two plates are moving apart at a rate of 2cm a year. Quite a massive amount when you think about the size of these land masses.

Following on from this we got to another very geothermally unstable area called Gunnuhver, named after the witch Gunna who was trapped by magic and dragged into the boiling water to her death :) There were massive plumes of stinky sulfurous steam coming out of the ground and huge pits of boiling mud. We went for a walk round this area but in some areas we sunk in a few inches into the soft soil and left steaming foot prints, so we sort of thought it best to leave. We found that we were covered in small dots of dirt and all smelt faintly of sulphur so we found ourselves a guest house to stay in for our last night. The one we found was brilliant, proper beds, a full kitchen to use, proper blackout curtains and breakfast in the morning. Heaven :) The owner also lived in Tom Price for a few years when she was younger so knew all about WA. We showered and relaxed then about 11:30pm we got in the car and drove out towards the coast. We wanted to get photos of the sunsetting over the water at midnight, but the coast was slightly farther off than we calculated so we ended up with just as pretty shots of the midnight sun over fields of lava. On the way back we passed the edges of the Blue Lagoon, where the waters come right up to the roads edge. It really is spectacular to see this azure milky blue water against the grey lava rock. We headed home and fell fast asleep in comfy beds.

After a big breakfast we headed back to the Blue Lagoon. We thought it would be very touristy, and it kinda was, but it is done brilliantly. Not too expensive and very well thought out. You get this rubber bracelet thing with a microchip in it, which you use to lock and open your locker. You then stash your stuff, and head outside, The bracelet will also allow you to charge food and drink to it so you don't need to carry money. The Blue Lagoon water is kept at about 38 degrees but massive steam vents. There are also pots of this white silicon mud stuff around that you are supposed to put on your skin. We did but it kinda burnt (well me and Grant thought it did) so we washed it off. There are also waterfalls, a steam room, a sauna and areas to get massages on lilos.
We hung around here for a few hours then had a rushed if tasty lunch. Next up it was back to the airport,after filling up the car and putting back on a mudflap we nearly ripped of the f-road. When we had boarded the plane we saw a lady walk down the aisle that looked suspiciously like Bjork... but we assumed she just "looked" like Bjork as she was flying cattle class like the rest of us. Though we did think it odd that we knew she was doing a concert in Rekyjavik the night before. However, when we were clearing customs in Heathrow she came by us again and some Icelandic girls in front of us started taking pictures and a agent of hers came and asked them not to.. so it was Bjork! Whats the chances of seeing the one Icelandic person I could sort of pick out of a line-up on our flight!

We were in for a fairly nasty surprise when we finally got home about 10:30pm that night. We knew a painter was coming in to do the bathrooms while we were away, but he had also decided to do the rest of the house. We called the landlord and she was pretty mad. She had told him to do some more if he knew he could finish it and leave the place looking untouched. Yet there were spots of paint EVERYWHERE. On the floors, the best spreads, the laptop lids, all the stuff around the sink, the plants, the futons, our snowboard boots, the sleeve of Grants leather jacket, everywhere... Only small tiny spots but still... And it was a shoddy job too. I'm glad I wasn't paying for it. Though I'm not sure our landlord was going to pay for it either. Lucky for us they own and run a dry cleaning company so she came round the next day (Grant was home) and took all out sheets and stuff to wash for us. The painter had taken down all our maps and stuff off the walls and hadn't put anything back in its place, and obviously didn't use any sort of drop sheets at all. He even had the nerve to use one of our good containers to mix paint and leave it on the sink with a few dirty mugs! Not what we had in mind to come home to at 10:30. Still it was an awesome holiday, one of the best really, right up there with dog-sledding.

And thats about it. Bloody long post this... sorry 'bout that. Photos to come soon.

Ciao for now (brown cow).
Duncan.

A couple of weeks in July

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:08:00 +0000

Well after Duncan's last blog entry, I am not sure I will be able to live up to the standard of writing and story telling... but bear with me, I will give it my best ;)

So Monday morning after Italy, Duncan trudged off to work, whilst I stayed home and 'slept in'. And of course by 'sleep in' I don't mean getting up, unpacking the bags, doing about 3 loads of washing and sorting out the stuff that piles up after two weeks away :) No not at all....

Monday night Vic and Grant and Grant's folks returned from Bruges. Grant's parents had come to visit via China and the Trans-Siberian and the four of them had spent a lovely weekend in Belgium. We had a bbq on Monday night while we caught up on what every had been doing.

The next weekend in June I was off too work.... Yay for me... oh well I guess it all helps.

Tuesday the 10th of June (as well as being my brothers birthday) is Grant's birthday and lucky for him his mum was here to make him special birthday lasagne, and his wife was here to bake him a yummy chocolate cake. I am pretty sure that it was a win win situation for everyone not just the birthday boy.

To celebrate Grant's birthday we went to a medieval banquet in Catherine Docks close to the Tower of London. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to throw my bones on the floor, but we did get to drink awful wine out of cermaic mugs, bang rowdily on the table in response to our evening entertainment or in appreciation of our meal, and make noisy toasts at the Kings leisure.... "Drink Hail.. Washail!!!!" Our evening entertainment consisted of songs from the King's musicians and the queen), juggling and tricks from the court jester, and of course no medieval banquet would be complete without some duelling knights. It was very cheesy but good fun. One of those evenings where what you get out of it is in direct proportion to what you put in. And with Grant and Vic as the Lord and Lady of our table, we were all in fine form. We did leave before the medieval disco got pumping though, taking the bus back across Tower Bridge and home.

On Saturday the 13th of June, Victoria, Belinda and myself piled into Madge (the car) and headed down to Folkstone, boarded the eurotunnel train and went under the channel to France. We were starting our girly horseriding weekend, which was based in a petite village Sangatte in the Two Caps region. We stayed in a small guest house with views over the ocean. Luckily our meals were included as well, so the only decision we actually had to make was whether we wanted to go to the spa after the first afternoon riding.

So after lunch our guide Xavier picked collected us off the main road and we went to collect the horses, saddled up and headed up the hill. We rode between the the fields of wheat and barley and looked out over the sea to the white cliffs of dover, we trotted through woods and cantered up hills and about three hours later we arrived back at the stables.

A little saddle sore we went to a small champagne bar/spa/restarant that evening. We started with champagne in the spa, and it was well needed (the spa that is the champas was a luxury:), after a little time in the steam room and an unwind, we got changed and moved into the restaraunt part for dinner. Dinner was absolutely delicious (I had steak with gorgonzola sauce), but boy were we tired. We went back to the apartment and Vic and I just managed to muster enough energy to walk down to the coast and see the sun setting through the clouds.

After a very good sleep and breakfast we met Xavier back at the horses, saddled up and headed back up the hills. Lunch was a picnic in a field with fresh bread, ham and french cheese. We rode for a couple more hours along the beach before we literally peeled ourselves out of the saddles and collapsed on the floor. Don't get me wrong the riding was awesome the horses were not riding school horses so we actually needed to ride them, not just sit on them... I guess we were just a little ambitious thinking we were going to ride 8 hours in one weekend, after not riding for ages. Needless to say the first couple of days back at work were painful.

Monday was the 16th and we had rescheduled Restaraunt club to this night, because a whole lot of people were not able to make the Sunday (including us), turned out that not many more were able to make Monday and it was a small intimate group that arrived at Wagamama's (a franchised Japanese place... which was ok abut i don't think that I would rave about it)

Saturday the 19th was my only day off in June *sigh*.... I know I know it is all self inflicted so I cannot complain but we were both fairly worn out so spent the day relaxing. On Sunday Dunc and I and Vic and Grant drove up to Birmingham, partly to go to the Bullring and go shopping and partly to go and see Dunc's Nanny. It was a great day, all except one thing.. Madge as decided that she doesn't like driving between 65 and 75 miles per hour, which is prime motorway speed. She does the speed alright but vibrates through everyones feet and bottoms and sounds like she is a plane ready to take off. It was alright for short distances but would not be fun if we were going to be stuck in traffic for several hours.... really must do something about that.

On Monday night we met Mrs Pethick and Janine and her partner Craig for dinner and drinks in Waterloo. It was a really lovely night and the cafe which was under the railway had lovely italian food and mice that scuttled under the tables (there are always mice around the railway and they don't eat much)

Tuesday night was spent at home packing as we were off on our next adventure after work on wednesday. So stay tuned...... :)

Pisa & Florence

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:09:00 +0000

After Cinque Terre we got back on a train and headed of to Florence with a stop in Pisa. We stowed our bags at the Pisa Centrale station and started to walk into town to see the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. We walked through the streets looking at the shops and buildings, but didn't really stop at anything as we only wanted to be here for a couple of hours before getting the train on to Florence. Pisa itself is not as pretty as Venice or Rome but is still quite a cool city to walk through. We finally got to Piazza del Duomo and saw the famous tower and the three other structures in the Piazza, the Duomo, the Baptistery, and the Camposanto.

The Duomo is a medieval cathedral with some very impressive and massive bronze doors. The Baptistery is the largest in Italy, and if you take into account the statue of John the Baptist on the roof is actually taller than the tower. The Camposanto is a walled cemetery which is said to be the most beautiful cemetery in the world, and was build around a shipload of sacred soil bought back from Golgotha during the 4th crusade.... supposedly. They are all built of the most beautiful marble and are surrounded by lush green grass. Very impressive.

The Tower itself is the free-standing Bell Tower of the cathedral and, like the others, is built in white marble. It is just less than 4m off the vertical now, which doesn't sound like much but it actually leans much more than I thought it would. You can climb it but we just took some pictures from the outside... and of course took the obligatory pictures either holding it up or pushing it over. Even Sara, after a bit of persuasion got in on the act :) It was also quite expensive to get into the other buildings, so we just had a wander around and then headed back to the train station to head off to Florence.

When we got to Florence we found the right bus and got on to take us to our campsite... though we did take it the wrong direction of its loop so we got a nice preview of the town :) Our campsite, Camping Michelangelo, was very flash for a campsite, situated up in the hills with views out over Florence. Now we didn't bring our own tents here this time, we'd booked a pre-built jobbie that has a bunk bed and a single, and would have been about 3m by 4m, just right for three people and some bags and to keep the rain off.

After stowing our bags we took a walk to Piazzale Michelangelo which is right next to the campsite. This square has a great view out over all of Florence. It also has a replica statue of David. There is a little bit of a market up here too, and we actually bought a beautiful water colour painting from an artist, and got a smaller one for Sara as it was her birthday in 2 days. Obviously she was going to see that I had two paintings, but me and Gem hammed it up and pretended I got it as a gift for Gem and she wasn't allowed to open it. We then took a stroll down the hill into the city on our side of the river. Florence is a beautiful town and it was great to just walk around.

For dinner we found a small family run restaurant that was recommended in one of the guide books. The menu was all in Italian, as is to be expected, but luckily we heard the guy sitting next to us speak fluent Italian but with an Irish accent so we asked him to decode some of it. It was good actually as he was able to point out which ones were stomach and liver and things like that. In the end the food we had was brilliant... all three of us are big fans of Tuscan food :) On the walk back to the campsite we walked along the river Arno and took some night shots of all the lights and the major bridge in Florence, the Ponte Vecchio. We did think about getting the bus back up the hill, but in the end we walked up the massive flight of stairs. Back up in the hills we took a few more night shots out over Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo before heading to bed.

Day two in Florence took us out over the Ponte Vecchio. The Ponte Vecchio is a 4 story bridge that spans the narrowest part of the river Arno. It contains heaps of shops, mainly jewellers, artists and souvenir shops. The bridge is an impressive affair that was built in 996, then damaged and rebuilt in 1345 and has remained the same since. After the bridge we headed to the Duomo of Florence, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. The Duomo is a massive cathedral church that is decked out in white and green marble with a massive red dome. The inside is very impressive, and absolutely massive. Not quite as impressive or large as St Peter's Basilica, but quite a church. We queued for a while outside to climb up to the dome, but after about half an hour we found out that someone had had a heart attack up the winding stairs and they were waiting on the paramedics.

We left the queue and headed to The Gallery of the Accademia di Belle Arti. The main drawcard here is the original statue of Michelangelo's David. Now I didn't think I'd actually be all that impressed with it, I mean the Mona Lisa is well hyped up but is actually a very small painting, but David is an amazing piece of artwork. The definition and attention to detail is breathtaking, you can see every vein in his legs and the detail in his knuckles. David was actually built by Michelangelo as a "look how good I am" piece. A few other artists had started to work on the piece but all said the marble was too hard to work with. It got left for 25 years in the cathedral yard before Michelangelo at only 26 convinced people he could work it. It took him 3 years but the outcome was well worth it. There are other works in here by Michelangelo that are almost as impressive. There is also a statue called The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna (rape here meaning kidnapping, not sexual assault) which has three figures intertwined so that where ever you stand around it you see something different... there is no real "front" to it. Gem actually liked this statue better.

After our brush with history, we headed back to the Duomo to climb the bell tower. It didn't take us too long to queue (now that the person was helped down) and the climb up wasn't too bad, even if it was very stuffy and hot. The view out from the top was great as you could see out over all of Florence. We made our way back down then headed back up to the camp site (yep, up the stairs again), got ourselves a drink and sat out around the bar for a bit of break.

After a little while we headed back down to the town to a place where we thought we might be able to get a wine tasting as the Tuscan region is famous for its fine red wines. The first place we went to said they didn't but gave us a wine menu to look through, we sat outside for about 10 minutes and no one came and took our order so we shuffled off to another place that looked good. This shop had just opened and the guys inside were setting out the chairs but we again asked if they do wine tasting. They said they didn't but they could make something up for us anyway. We sat at the bar and the wine buff said he give us 3 whites, 3 reds and a desert wine. It sounded good to us so he started the tasting. He was a real wine aficionado and would even use a fresh glass for each wine. The pours were huge too, nearly up to the 100ml mark for each "taste". The other guy in the shop was the food buff, and he kept bringing us out different food that are supposed to compliment the wines... pecorino cheese with jam, garlic bread, prosciutto hams and biscotti biscuits. At one point one of the red wines he gave us had been opened yesterday... so he then cracked a fresh bottle and gave us another glass so we could see the difference. He even gave us a glass/taste of the regions famous wine, the Brunello di Montalcino. This bad boy costs 9.50 euro per glass but tasted fantastic. Lastly we had a desert/fortified wine called a Sciacchetra. Not my cup of tea but Gem liked it. When we were done we were all a little merry but were dreading the cost as we never actually agreed on a price seeing as they were making this up on the spot. In the end he asked for 20 euro’s each. An absolute bargain!

We headed off to a small pizzeria and had another great meal, then headed back up to the campsite (stairs!) and relaxed for a few hours before bed. Me and Gem were heading off to Bologna in a couple of days so we looked up some accommodation. We looked on lastminute.com which usually has some great last minute deal (who'd have thought!) and managed to pick ourselves up a four star hotel with breakfast for about 60 euro! Awesome!

The start of day three in Florence saw us surprise Sara with her painting for her birthday. She genuinely thought it was a present for Gem so the surprise worked well. After that we walked into town and got in the queue for the Uffizi Gallery, one of the oldest and most famous art museums in the world. The Uffizi used to be the offices for the Florentine magistrates (Uffizi = Offices) and now houses the largest collection of Italian art. The wait can be up to 5 hours in high season, but we got there earlyish and only queued for about an hour. There are over 40 rooms and supposedly it should take you a couple of days to do it all. We however managed it in about 3 hours :) The first 10 or so rooms contain mainly Italian religious iconography from the 13th century to the 16th century... which to be honest is not my bag. Waaaay to much gold and sad faces. As you progress through the gallery however it is quite interesting to see the progression of the trends in painting and skill levels increase. We also got an audio guide which was good in the way that it described each room and a few of the major works in there, rather than having to select an audio track for each painting. Though occasionally you wanted to know more about a particular piece of art and without a book you couldn't.

We were fairly art'ed out by now so we headed up to Forte di Belvedere, a Fort built in the 1500's up in the hills looking down on Florence. We couldn't get inside but it was nice to walk around an see the old fortifications. There were also hummingbirds in some of the flowers which were cool... I'd never seen them before... they are so small!

After the fort we walked to Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. Built in the 13th century it is the oldest Basilica in Florence. We wandered round the cemetery for a while, which is beautiful in itself, then headed inside. We were lucky enough to have the monks start their evening vespers so we sat down on the stairs and listened (along with about 20 others) to them sing in Gregorian chant. There would have been only about 10 or so monks, but the sound they produced in the crypt was amazing.

We walked back to the campsite, had a cheeky drink, got changed and then headed back into town for Sara's birthday meal. We picked a place not too far from our campsite that Sara liked the look off, and it was a good choice. The food was amazing. We even managed to slip some candles into Sara's desert, but she made it pretty difficult by ordering biscotti. After dinner we went back to the small wine bar that we had our wine tasting at and had a another drink there and a chat. It was a really good night and I think Sara enjoyed it.

On the last day we all went to the train station, Sara to head off to Rome to meet Sam, and me and Gem off to Bologna. Me and Gem couldn't get regular seats on the train we wanted, so we had to settle for 1st class. It wasn't too much more and it was nice to have big comfy seats. When we got to Bologna we took the bus out to our hotel, and it was pretty flash... 4 stars is good :) We knew we were going to basically head home and only get a few hours sleep before having to get up for work, so we were quite keen to just relax in some comfort. We spent the afternoon just chilling in the hotel, then went for a walk around the parklands nearby. Dinner we had in the hotel restaurant, and it was very good and also quite cheap. We slept for hours that night as the bed was massive and comfy :) Breakfast was also very good. I do love a good continental breakfast buffet... breads and cheeses and meats and fruit... mmm.

Our flight wasn't till about 10:30pm so we hung around the hotel till about 12 then took the bus back into the town. As it was a Sunday the town was quite quiet, but there were two crazy Italian guitarists in the main square. One guy was in a leather vest and would have been about 40ish... he was well greasy, but the older ladies loved him :) He had a kitted out scooter that had the amps and stuff built in... all class. The second guy was very talented, he played both the rhythm and lead of classic songs, and stored his cigarette in the strings... again, all class. We spent a couple of hours wandering around but it was very quiet and pretty damn hot too. We went back to the hotel again and relaxed before getting the coach out to the airport. The minicab picked us up and took us home, which got us into bed by about 1:30am. All in all a great holiday. Still love Italy, and love Italian food :)

Cinque Terre!

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:07:00 +0000

So, next stop on our Italian adventure was the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Cinque Terre... which literally means five lands. The five villages themselves are Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. You can stay in these towns, but being the thrifty backpackers we are we stayed in a hostel up in the hills in a town called Biassa. The hostel was beautiful and quiet after the noise of the wine bar outside the hostel in Venice. We got to the hotel in the early arvo, put our bags in the room and took the bus back down to the nearest sizable town, La Spezzia. Hmmm, Sunday in La Spezzia is fairly dead... very little open. We wandered around a bit, took a stroll along a rather smelly waterfront, and then found ourselves a small cafe for an early dinner (one of the only ones we could find that was open). By now Sara was fairly tired and grumpy so we got the little bus back up to Biassa and chilled for a while before getting an early night ready for our big walk.

In the morning we took a 7am bus from our hostel down to Riomaggiore. It was only about 15 minutes away down a very windy road. We found the tourist office and bought our passes for the next two days then got on the train and took it out to the last of the towns, Monterosso. We'd decided that we would walk from 5 back towards 1 as the two longest and hardest walks of 4km and 3 km respectively are between Monterosso, Vernazza, and Corniglia, and we didn't think doing the hard ones last would be smart.

When we got to Monterosso we had a quick coffee and planned our day. We had originally decided to do towns 5 to 3 on the first day, then 3 to 1 the next, but we changed plans and decided to do all 5 on the first day and then use the train on the second day to get between the towns so we could wear thongs and buy stuff and go for a swim in the sea without then having to hike in salty shorts (ouch!).

We had a quick walk around Monterosso then started our walk... and what it was. It was probably about 10am by now and it would have been about 28 degrees or so. The towns are right down on the coast, but to get to the next town you have to walk back up into the hills, then back down to next town. The 4km walk here consisted of about 2km up hill, then 2km down hill... it was reeeally hard going. The views along the walk are stunning though. There are beautiful terraced gardens and wineries (7500km of man-made terrace walls alone the entire walk), and then as you come out of the trees and actually get to raise your eyes from the mountain of steps in front of you, there are beautiful views of the next town. At times the path is only about a foot wide and rocky, but its a great walk.

We finally made it to Vernazza, and what a beautiful town that is. Probably was my favourite of the five. We again had a short walk around the town and got ourselves a light lunch. We didn't want anything too heavy as we knew we had 8 or so kilometres left to walk so we found a place that sold pizza slices and sat next to the water and ate them... and they were sooo good. Pesto pizza!

We started our second leg and boy it had gotten hot. It would have been about 12:30pm by now and closing in on 35 degrees. Muggins here was the pack mule so I had the 5 litres of water... though I think I sweated out at least 3 litres on each leg. This leg was only about 3km... a pittance! But again, all either up or down, very little flats. The views were just as good though...

When we finally reached Corniglia we at least knew we'd done the bulk of the walk. Now the Cinque Terre is renowned for its white wine, so what was the first store we came to? A wine bar! And they did tastings! Me and Gem decided to do the tasting while Sara just had a beer. We sampled 3 whites and 3 reds. The whites were all from the region and were excellent. The reds were from further a field, though still from close Italian regions, and were also quite good... but the region really excels at the whites. It was really informational too which was good.

We had a quick wander around Corniglia then started the walk to Manarola. This was a much easier walk and was only about 2km... and this one includes a few more flat bits... yay! You often saw the same people on the walks and even met a few Aussies from Perth who filled us in on the latest gossip from the Eagles :) In Manarola we again had a quick wander then found ourselves a nice bar in the shade for a well earned beer for me and Sara, and a glass of white wine for Gem. The bar also bought out a nice big pile of peanuts and a plate of quite tasty olives too... very nice. It was great to get to sit there and know that we only had 1km left and that part of the walk was paved.

The final stretch is called Lover's Walk and its a paved path against the cliff shoreline. The far side is walled and is covered top to bottom in graffiti of "person x loves person y". It was built donkey's years ago by the townsfolk of both Manarola and Riomaggiore to allow them to trade and stuff... We got into Riomaggiore about 5:30pm and our bus was picking us up at 6:30... so we had a quick look around the town and guess what, found a pub :) We also had ice cream too.

The bus finally came and picked us up, and we headed back to the hostel. Quick showers all round then we headed down the road to the local pizza place... which could well have been the only restaurant in Biassa. We were damn hungry after our massive day so we all had a pasta for primi (first course), then got two pizzas to share for secondi (second course). It was all simple fare but so good. The region is also famous for its pesto and the spaghetti al' pesto was brilliant. After getting our fill of good food we were basically wiped out... so we wandered back to the hostel and got into bed. We knew we were having a much quieter day tomorrow so we could have a sleep in.... oh yeah :)

We had breakfast in the hostel then made our way out to the bus stop to head back into Cinque Terre. Once in Riomaggiore we took the train out to Vernazza, which was our favourite of the towns and had a beautiful swimming area. We had a quick wander around then headed down to the beach. The beach area would only have been about 200m wide but you could walk round the rock a little and lie on the warm rocks and get in the water that way too. We all sun creamed-up then got in... and boy it was a fair bit colder than we imagined! But after a while we adjusted and started to enjoy it. Then Gem managed to step on what could possibly have been the only sea anemone in the area and fill her heal with about 10 or so spikes. She swam back out to a big rock and Sara proceeded to try and get them out for her with a pair of pliers that a fellow aussie sun baking on the adjoining rock happened to have in his bag. She got a few out but most broke off.... It didn't seem to be bothering Gem much (she's a trooper) so she just sucked it up and figured she'd have a go back in the hostel with a needle.

We stayed either in or around the water for a few hours just relaxing, then headed up to grab some lunch from a restaurant that had been recommended in our guide book... and boy it was right. Gem had a lovely seafood dish, I had scampi pasta, and Sara thought she'd be game and try the black squid ink pasta. Looked awful but actually tasted very good. All three meals were actually.

After this we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Manarola and Riomaggiore and bought ourselves a few bottles of the white wine Gem loved, a marble mortar and pestle for me, some pesto, and few tiles for Gems art project when she gets back to Oz. Oh, and stopped for the occasional drink too :)

The evening saw us head back out to the same little restaurant in Biassa (not that we had much choice) and fill our tummies with more good food (picking up a pattern here are we?). After that Sara had a go at Gem's heal with a needle. I think she got out a couple but the others had sort of worked their way in deeper. Gem figured they'd come out on their own eventually like splinters. In the end they didn't and she still has them in her heal at the moment, but at the time they weren't causing her much discomfort so she just let them be.

Well that was the end of Cinque Terre. We got some sleep, and got ready to leave earlyish for our trip to Florence (Firenze to the Italians) with a stop at Pisa to the see the famous Leaning Tower.

More on that soon. :)
Duncan.

New Shiny Things

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:16:00 +0000

People,

There are 5 new galleries and 4 new movies to look at over on the left. We are now finally into 2008 with our pictures...

Enjoy!

22nd May - Venice

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:08:00 +0000

Yaaay for us!!! back on the Continent. It was a very very early start on Thursday morning when Sara, Duncan and I left for the airport, too early for coffee even which meant Dunc and Sara were a little on the cranky side :) I however was full of beans...

We arrived in Venice around lunch time and being the thrifty travellers that we are took public transport to our hostel. A bus you ask? Well yes, but a water bus, also known as Vaparetto. So we cruised down the Grand Canal on a little ferry type boat that stopped every so often on eithe side of the canal to allow passangers on and off.

Our "B&B" was located near the famous Rialto bridge, so location wise was perfect. I say B&B with tongue in cheek, as although marketed as a bed and breakfast actually had no breakfast during the months of april and may only.... (had we read the very fine print on the booking information).

That first afternoon we did a self guided walking tour around some of the churches, squares, canals and streets of Venice. It truly is beautiful. I had read prior to going in various reveiws that people either love or hate venice. Hating it due to its rundownness, crowdedness etc. I certainly did not hate it. Many of the buildings do have flaking plaster or paint, but we felt this show of age only added to the charm and beauty of the place. The forecast for the three days that we were in Venice was for rain and storms. Luckily for us the Beeb weather agency doesnt seem to get it right to often and it was nice and warm and sunny. (I have just discovered that this Italian keyboard seems to be lacking an apostrophe key, so apologies for the poor punctuation)

Due to our incredible early start it was a fairly early night for us after some good italian grub and vino, mmm. Fortunately for me I was soooo tired (and not grumpy :) that I slept soundly through til morning. Unfortunately Duncan and Sara were not so lucky and discovered that we were actually sleeping about a wine bar that mascaraded as a little sandwich/coffee shop by day, but by night transformed into a hive of veritable veneitan activity.

The next morning we feared we may have been too hasty in judging the Beeb, there were some dark clouds in the sky! But this did not dampen our enthusiams (ha ha). We took a path down past the fish market (the Venetians have been selling fish there since the days of Marco Polo). Fish markets sound incredibly boring, but you would be suprised the different creatures you can find at them. Next door to the fish market was a daily (except Sunday) fresh fruit and veg market. So bananas for breakfast it was as we continued on our way.

Heading south we crossed over the Rialto. A bridge of some sort has been in this location since around the 1100's (hey look i found the apostrophe!), but the present stone one was completed in 1591. It quite pretty with three pedestrian lanes separated with small shops.

Further south still we came to Piazza San Marco (St Mark's Square; since 1177) a large impressive square with lots of tour groups, over priced cafes and over friendly venetian pigeons (much to Sara's disgust, she does not like those birds). The Square is bordered by the Basilica, the Doge's Palace and the Procuratie (three interjoined buildings with a lovely facade of marble archways). We had arrived quite early to visit the Basilica but I was quite amazed by the sheer amount of people that were already in the square.

The inside of Saint Marks Basilica was quite opulent, but I think in a fairly subtle way.... that is of course if oppulence can be subtle. As you walked in it resemble many of the other Basilicas that we had visited although my eyes were immediately drawn to a wonderful mosaiced floor. Although very big it did not however have such a large amount of paintings and sculptures that other churches display, instead when you looked up you saw that the roof was decorated not just with frescoes, but with mosaics of gold, bronze and other coloured stones and tiles. Also on display behind the alter was a very old alterpiece full of precious gems and stones. Many of the art works displayed were thought to be looted from Constantinople or by artists from their following the crusades. It was also interesting to see the similarities between Ayasofya and the blue mosque in Istanbul (what was Constantinople) and the Basilica. We climbed up to the 1st level which afforded a splendid view over the square and also housed a small museum of art and information on how the church was maintained. The highlight of this section was some very old bronze horses (dating somewhere between the BC-AD changeover) which were once again booty from looting Constantinople.

The sky was continuing to darken so we continued our pursuit if indoor activities. The next on our agenda was the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, the same family that opened the Guggenheim museum of modern art in NYC. From what I could gather Peggy was an American with a lot of money, who knowing very little about modern art, became interested in modern art, sponsered (and married) many artists and became a collector. By modern art we are talking anything from the 19th century onwards. This was her personal collection and included works by Picasso, Pollock, Max Ernst. So after this I felt much more enlightened and cultured. I did find one explanation for modern art quite interesting: that with the introduction of photography there was no longer a need for 'realistic' paintings and portraits, and that these would become boring, so art needed to evolve to something different to maintain the veiwers interest.

It rained while we were in the Guggenheim... good old Beeb

We headed out to one of the small islands of venice San Giorgio Maggiore which has a Monastery and Church. Climbing the bell tower (via a lift there were no stairs :) gave a spectacular view back across Venice, marred only by the rain!

We headed back to the B&B buying some local vino and cheese along the way and we chilled out at the B&b for a while. We headed back over the Rialto for dinner and ate at a pizzeria. After dinner, some night photos of Venice and a much sought after Gelato we headed back to bed.

On our third day in Venice we sailed out to a couple of Islands in the Venetian Lagoon. Once again it was lovely weather sunny and hot, and not a cloud in the sky. Our first stop was Burano. Burano is a really colourful fishing village that became very famous for its lace. Our time was spent wandering the small islands along side its canals and gorgeous houses which were all different colours. So different and so bright that we wondered whether you could paint your house any colour or whether you had to get permission first. It turns out you apply to paint your house and they let you know what colours you are allowed to choose from. We didn't buy any lace.

The next stop was Murano, slightly bigger it looked more like a much quieter Venice. Murano is famous for its glass, and should you be in the market for glasses that cost 300 euro each or lamps that are over 1000 euro then this is the place for you. A lot of the glass work was beautiful.... but there was a lot of very over the top and dare I say...... tacky..... stuff, but hey who am I to judge, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

We were walking from the water bus into town and were accosted by a woman standing outside what looked like a private residence saying come in and see glass being blown. It was one of those situations where we were sure we were about to get ripped off or taken advantage of, but it was like putting chocolate on the table in front of me and saying it's alright it is free... taste it....
So we did. And it was actually pretty good. We saw to methods of fashioning glass, one 'blowing' a vase and one 'pulling' a horse. Very impressive! After that we were shown the way out... you guessed it through the gift shop!

From here on my luck in Murano when downhill, In one store while inspecting some very unique glasses I cut my finger on an unevenly finshed one and was bleeding 'everywhere!!!' Then i think it could have been the very next store, I picked up the only thing i could afford, and tried on a glass fashion accessory ring... In the process of prying this off my hot sweaty swollen finger, I threw it on the counter and in slow motion Duncan and I watched it bounce across the table onto the floor and break!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Silence ensued and we both looked at the door to see how quickly we could get out before the sales assistant reached us. My conscience got the better of me and I picked up the pieces to give to the sales girl. Luckily when I offered to pay for it she said 'oh that is only cheap it is not important do not worry' (it was still worth 20euros), so holding my breath I walked very carefully out of the store!

On our way back to the B&B that evening we walked along the coast near to Arsenale and past The Bridge of Sighs. Being hot and in need of refreshments we considered sitting at one of the canals and looking out over the water. This was going to be a costly experiment, so instead we bought some beer and wine from a tiny little street vendor, walked over and sat on the marble embankment next to the water. Watching the cruise ships sail in and the little water taxis ducking under the bridge to take their patrons into Venice central was a lovely way to finish up

We had dinner close by that night (Saturday) as we were heading off early to catch a train for the next stage of our journey.

....... Next time on the Blog: Cinque Terre...............

Who turned on the heater!!!!!???

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:35:00 +0000

It seemed to happen overnight, but now the trees are green and it is quite hot. Sure by hot I mean mid to late 20's which by Perth standards isnt all that hot, but to actually be able to leave the house without a jacket is, quite frankly, the bees knees

The best thing about a long weekend is it is always followed by a short week :). And it has been quite a quiet one.

We had netball on Wednesday night, I spent Thursday trying to do my tax stuff and Friday the 'family' (me dunc, grant and vic) watched episodes of survivor we had downloaded.... really exciting

This has been such a beautiful weekend, hopefully this means that summer is just about here, and it will be another few months before it starts to get cold again.

After doing some tax yesterday morning, we all went down to meet mark and gordo at southbank for some Pimms and then onto a little italian place for dinner which was lovely, and today we are just chilling out, dunc is doing a bit of work on the side so that has taken up most of his weekend.

Oh and by the way: Happy Mothers Day

mwa

Amsterdam May 2nd - May 5th

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Sun, 11 May 2008 08:08:00 +0000

On the first May long weekend, Duncan and I went to Amsterdam.

We headed into Amsterdam on Friday night after work, it was a short flight, we took only hand luggage and with online booking it was quite a painless commute.

Once at the airport we had to negotiate the public transport system. I think that if you were catching the train right into the central station it probably would be a lot more tourist friendly, but we were not. We were going to stay with Ludmilla and David (couchsurfing, http://www.couchsurfing.com/) who had given us instructions of how to get to their place but the signage off the major routes was not as clear. And at one point we spent 20 minutes trying to get a ticket machine to work only to find when it didn't that we could get tickets on the train!

So sometime late that evening we me Ludmilla and David and they made us very welcome and lucky for us, had a spare room and a double bed to stay in instead of just a couch woohoo.

On Saturday morning we headed out to explore amsterdam. The plan was to do this on bikes, but it seemed like this was not to be. The weekend that we were there was only a couple of days after Queens Day (a huge Dutch holiday), it was a long weekend and it was the first hot weekend that this year had really seen, so it seemed everybody had the same idea that we did and there were no bikes.

Instead we made our way to the Reijk Museum on the tram. Unfortunately the Reijk Museum is under renovation, however we found a silver lining in this cloud. Instead of getting lost in rooms and rooms of art and getting so inundated you don't really know what you are supposed to be taking notice of; only the masterpieces were on display! Brilliant! Dollshouses, Rembrant, Avercamp, Vermeer and Steen.

From the museum we made our way by tram to central station and took a cruise boat around the canals. It was a warm sunny afternoon and so relaxing listening to the descriptions of the area. It is true that Amsterdam does not have any enormous old buildings to write home about but the canal side architecture is beautiful, especially along Gentleman's canal (part of the Southern Canal Belt). In the old days tax was calculated on width of the front of the property which is the reason why there are so many narrow long houses.

After our canal trip we stopped for lunch funnily enough by another bike rental shop. We asked for bikes and still they had nothing, but by the time we had lunch they had two available.

So on top of our yellow bikes we went to Vondel Park. A very pretty park it was choccas with people enjoying the fair weather. The other thing we really noticed here for the first time was the frequent smell of pot. Apparently in the 60s and 70s Vondelpark was turned into an overnight Dormitory for all of the hippies that weren't able to find accommodation. Although you are no longer sleep in the park you can still get stoned (as with all of Amsterdam). We would be walking along I would smell it and think 'ummah someone's naughty' and then remember that actually it's allowed.

After Vondelpark we followed the tram tracks back to Ludmilla and David's via the supermarket for dinner supplies. Following dinner and entertainment that evening (courtesy of David and his guitar) I went to bed with a very sore bum!!!!! It has been a long time since I have done that much cycling.....

Duncan and I got up for an early start in the morning. The idea was to get to the Anne Frankhuis early, before the doors open to avoid the inevitably humungous queues. This of course was good in theory, and began well, right up to the time that i got us a teeny weeny bit lost.... :). Luckily for us the roads are completly bike friendly, so much so that in most instances bikes have the right of way, and if car/pedestrian hit a bike, it is never the bikes fault. The result of this is you feel much safer cycling in Amsterdam than you do in London or Perth for that matter. So we took the scenic route into Central and ended up being there well after the doors open, and being well back in the line. It was worth the wait. If you have read the book you will be familiar with the fact that Anne and her family and another family were hidden in the attic of a warehouse for several years during the war, supported by non Jewish friends, until they were given up (never found out by who). Anne and her mother and sister died in concentration camps. When her father got out and went home, the Nazi's had removed all their furniture but not the decorations on the wall, and a friend had saved Anne's diary. Mr Frank vowed the rooms were never to be furnished again, so now they stand empty but displays cases show how it looked and include correspondance and artifacts. It was a really interesting exhibit, including video interveiws with the people that helped them and supplied them with information and food for the time.

We circled round the Westerkerk where Rembrant who then broke was buried in an unmarked paupers grave.

After that sombre start to the morning we head to Spui, not pronounced like we said 'spoo-ee' but 'spow'. Here the aspiring resident artists were displaying their wares. There was as with all art markets some incredible pieces, a couple that had us reaching for our wallets, there were also some other pieces that had us putting our wallets away. To get there we had to cycle past one of the oldest brown cafes in Amsterdam. To be a brown cafe means it has been selling beer for over 400 years!!! They can apparently have sand/sawdust on the floor, but we didn't get to find out because it wasn't open that early on so no beer for us!

On one side of the market square there was a cigar store. Who would have thought that a cigar store could be so interesting. There were all different rooms especially for the different cigars that were temperature and humidity controlled, then of course there were all the different cigar boxes and pipes and tobacco... no, I am not being facecious (?sp) it actually was quite interesting.
A couple of restaurants that were recommended for lunch were closed so we headed North to Jaardin, this is now the arty area with lots of cafes, after walking through the streets we found a little cafe on the canal where we had bread and cheese and tappenade and wine and beer. Every dutch man who owned a boat was out picnicing on the canals with their dog and their music playing, so it was fun just to watch the world go by.

We spent the late afternoon in Oudekerk, which is the oldest church in Amsterdam, but isn't really used as a church anymore. We went and saw the World Press Photography exhibit which was very good, and while we were there the choir and pipe organ were warming up for the evenings concert so that was lovely too. The strangest things about Oudekerk is it is right smack in the middle of the redlight district, so after confessing your sins in the church you can step out side and sample the ladies in the windows.... or vice versa i suppose.

We had a wander through the redlight district, but Duncan did not find anything he liked... :)
I found the whole notion of window shopping for women quite amusing, there certainly was someone there for every taste though :) (including granny undies and sports bras urgh)

Ludmilla and David took us on a nice bike ride on the way home and then cooked us a lovely dinner that evening, I tell you though after being on a bike for almost 12 hours my bottom was in serious trouble; ha ha

We were shattered that night, absolutely shattered!!! we briefly considered riding back to the centre for night time photos but that thought lasted only as long as our eyes were open, which was not long at all.

On Monday morning it was back on the bikes much to the alarm of my behind. We went up to an antiques market and had some yummy apple pie for morning tea. After that we had to return our bikes and grab our bags and head the the airport.

We were waaay early for our flight but this was for good reason; we jumped in a shuttle bus and went to the Keukenhof (http://www.keukenhof.nl/nm/english.html) one of the world's biggest flower gardens, and luckily for us it was in full bloom - absolutely beautiful. The weather continued to impress, and with the music, the icecream and the general feeling of happiness throughout the garden it was like being at some sort of floral disneyland :)

And so concluded our weekend away. We had an uneventful trip back, coincidentally met Vic and Grant at the train station on their way back from Bergen, Norway where they had spent the weekend with Belinda and Gavin.

Stay tuned ;)

Another post about Ireland

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:19:00 +0000

This time to say that we have put up the photos from our last Ireland trip (August last year)

Northern Ireland - April 25 - 27

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:46:00 +0000

Well Duncan and I maxamised our Carbon Footprint (not in a good way) by taking a cheap flight to Belfast on Friday night. Once we arrived at the airport we picked up our hire car and headed north to the coast.

Our destination was a small harbour village called Ballintoy, and a hostel called Sheep Island View. It is a gorgeous little town and true to its word the hostel did have a view of Sheep Island... this being more of a great big rock than an island, although it did have lots of green grass on top. It was said that the Island had enough grass to fatten 10 sheep, feed 11 sheep or starve 12, that is if you could get them up the sheer cliffs and onto the grass!

We had been a little worried about the weather because the forecasts had suggested it was going to rain all weekend, and as we walked down the driveway with Seamus the owner of the hostel, we though that this was going to be so. But as he said "four seasons in one day" and after a short intense shower in the morning, it fined up to be mostly sunny for the rest of the day. And although it was still quite cool with the breeze, I still managed to get sunburned on my nose.

Our first stop was Ballycastle the neighbouring town where we found the local bakery for breakfast. From there we drove to down to Ballintoy Harbour. One thing i found quite remarkable was the location of the harbours. It seems when you are driving around the Irish coast that nothing is at sea level but that all the towns and villages are raised up and separated from the sea by cliffs. Yet follow a small road or glen and your a sure to find a small harbour, beach or seaside town.

The harbour at Ballintoy was so quant and wild it was lovely, we found a little cave in the cliff which i tried to explore but it had a small lake to cross and I didn't quite trust the stepping stones.

Next it was onto the Giant's Causeway a natural wonder of Basalt columns, if you are a geologist then you would beleive that it was the result of some sort of ancient volcanic wonder, but however I am more inclined to beleive another story. It is said that there were once two fearsome giants. One named Finn MacCool lived in Northern Ireland and anothe Benandonner lived across the water in Scotland. There was much rivarly between these two giants as to who was the bigger and stronger and better giant, but they had never had the opportunity to meet to decide this. So Fin MacCool decided that the only way to settle this was to meet face to face. As there were no boats big enought to carry a giant, Finn MacCool built a bridge, a causeway if you like so that there would be no excuse for Benandonner not to come. However as he saw Benandonner coming across the causeway he panicked as he realised that Benandonner was a much bigger and stronger giant than he. He hurried to the hills to seek advice from his wife Oonagh. She dressed him in a night gown and bonnet as a baby and placed him in a makeshift crib. When Benandonner arrived at the giant's house looking for Finn MacCool, Oonagh invited him in asking him to not wake the baby. Benandonner took one look at the baby and fled back to Scotland, saying if that's the baby I have no wish to meet the father.... As he ran he tore the causeway up with him so that Finn MacCool could not follow.

On the way to Giant's Causeway we passed Dunseverick Castle, which was not so much a castle as more a pile of rocks, but the piece of real estate it was sitting on was certainly beautiful, and once again it had its own secret tiny little natural harbour.

In the afternoon we visited the Bushmills distillery. Bushmills is the oldest Whiskey distillery in the world and was having its Birthday the week we were there. Lucky timing... it was 400 years old. We did a tour which was quite interesting but i didn't find it quite informative enough, i felt there were topics left unanswered and so i was the class nerd asking all the questions. I did learn the major differences between Irish Whiskey and Scottish Whisky (apart from the spelling). The barley used for Irish Whiskey is dried in hot dry air, whereas Scottish Whiskey is dried from the smoke of peat fires. Also the Whiskey distilled at Bushmills is distilled three times which is unlike most Scottish Whisky's that are only distilled twice (although apparently this is not a hard and fast rule). The tour of course concluded with a tasting... 12 year old single malt only available for purchase at the distillery, fortunately for Duncan even this expensive one didn't appeal to my taste buds, so he got two.

From Bushmills we went to Dunluce Castle, which was very impressive, once again set on a rocky outcrop and once again like many of the old buildings, built just that bit close to the ocean, and during a dinner party in the 1600s the kitchen fell into the sea!

We headed back to the hostel for a nap before dinner and got sidetracked along the way by a van selling fresh chips......... mmmmmmmm local irish potatoes freshly cooked while you wait, not something that you get a lot of in the UK. It was soo good. So after the chips we went back to read our books and have a nap. The pub down the road had live music but it wasn't starting until 10. Unfortunately the live music wasnt quite as good as what we had become accustomed to following our trip to Doolin. It consisted of 1 man (who was struggling with his sound decks), his guitar (which you may or may not hear, depending on what setting his sound decks were on) and some interesting backing tracks..... we stayed for a few songs to be polite and then went home to bed :)

Sunday morning after breakfast, we went to Whitepark Bay for a walk along the beautful wild beach. We then went to Carrick-a Rede Rope Bridge which was used by local salmon fishermen before becoming property of the national trust and then a tourist attraction. Walking across the 30m high bridge with ocean pounding away below was fun for me, although a little nerve racking for Dunc... unfortunately his nerves affect his coordinaton and he accidently dropped the lens cap for my camera over the bridge. I think he enjoyed it though as long as he didnt look down :)

From the Rope Bridge we headed south east along the coast through the Glens of Antrim. We stopped for lunch at the gorgeous Cushendun, which I think I could have easily lived in.

From there it was back to Belfast, we folded Duncan in to the tiny space that Ryan Air sells as a seat and headed back to London.

Feb, March and 1/2 of April!!!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:57:00 +0000

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who would have thought that two whole months have gone by without updating this blog... so naughty so apologies but this will be a long one... you will need popcorn and probably some form of japanese torture to keep you awake.

February

So after Valentines day saw a couple of weeks of work work the weather was fairly mild in February this year, different from last year when it was cold and snowy. The Highlight I have to say was going to the West End to see Hairspray.... loved it!!! great energy and colour, Dunc found the first half a little slow but enjoyed the second half.

Feb also saw the debut of a brain child of Mark Radford and me.... Restaurant Club. The concept is that because we are all spread all over London and always seem to be so busy that we would set a date every month to meet up at a different Restaurant in London. This way we get to see our peeps and experience a bit more of London. So every month on the 15th this happens. Feb was a restaurant on Brick Lane. Brick Lane is a street in London that is famous for its curry houses, unfortunately I didn't make it to this first monumentous evening, although Duncan and Grant did. Duncan and Grant almost didn't make it back from 'Fifteen' (the name of the club), they socialised to late, missed the trains and decided to walk home! I think Duncan's reputation with sense of direction is well known and clearly Grant is not that much better after a few beers. Needless to say it took them a loooong time at at somewhere around 3am they rolled or should i say poured into bed.

A week later Duncan celebrated his 30th birthday, talk about dragging it all out; Eurodisney for the weekend, dinner out on the actual day and a month later a party. It was the highlight of everyone's February social calendar (probably because is Feb it is too cold and no one has anything planned hee hee), held upstairs in the Market Porter, an old Pub in the famous Borough Markets (the markets themselves have been running for longer than white man has been in Australia!) It was a really fun night, and great to catch up with so many people that we hadn't seen for ages, it ended up with a cab ride home late at night. Some friends crashed on our futon, which was great for them - not so great for our floor though which got covered in some red wine regurgitation. I think Grant and Duncan also had very sore heads the next morning ha ha!

I worked a few extra weekends in February, boring....!

It appears that that summarises February - either we had a particularly quiet month or it has just been so long since February that I can't remember any of it :)

March

So fly in March, and we celebrated the arrival of March with a trip to Cambridge. The sun was shining, the daffodils blooming and the day was gloriously freaking cold!!!!! But Cambridge is breath taking, it has all of the beautiful architecture and gardens that one would think of when one thinks of the 'toffey nosed English'. Kings College is beautiful with the spectacular Kings College Chapel, but I also loved the Trinity College which secrets its beautiful garden and chapel away from the crowds behind a big door. What I loved even more about Trinity though, was above this big door that keeps the crowds out or the students in is a stone statue of a Saint who in ages past had his golden sceptre removed by future world leaders and replaced with a wooden table leg that still remains today.

Best of all in Cambridge is punting!!! It was really really windy and a couple of the touts recommended that we didn't punt our own punt-oon, but hey you can't go to Cambridge, go punting and not punt your own punt-oon (not sure what the correct term is). So we paid a little extra for cushions and blankets (a worthy purchase) and out we went. Grant was our first captain, then Duncan, then me then Vic. It was more stable than I thought it was going to be, until Duncan stood on the punting platform and then it got really wobbly, so Duncan stood on the level that we all say and punted from there. Fortunately he had the height on his side. So punting although harder than it looks was great fun!!

The next week saw me start a new job at Kings College Hospital, the best thing about this is that Kings is only 1/2 an hour door to door. Woo hoo!! The sad thing though was I left all the friends I made at St Heliers. It was my choice though, I decided that travelling an hour and a half too and from work was getting too much.

That same week Dunc decided he would go skiing without me..... apparently it was a 'work thing' ;) He went Les Gets in France and I think it was good. Me I went out with the work girls a couple of times, and of course we had the second meeting of Fifteen. This time it was a Brazilian restaurant kind of a BBQ buffet, lots of swords with meat and chicken hearts, followed by drinks at the London institution Walkabout (?!)

Of course the beginning of this year has been thrown into turmoil with such as early easter. It was not far enough after Christmas to do any decent saving to really make the most of the long weekend. Nor was it far enough after Christmas for it to be warm enough to go somewhere warm or camping. So after much deliberation Belinda, Gavin, Dunc and I drove down to Cornwall.

We started the morning with a trip to the Eden Project, a series of Biodomes that exhibit different plant ecosystems (http://www.edenproject.com/ ) It was quite interesting with a large focus on carbon footprints, sustainable industry and what we can do to help the environment and live cleaner lives. It was quite interesting, although I felt a little overpriced. I guess we were comparing them to the Biodomes we visited in Montreal, where we felt we got more bang for our buck.

After the Eden Project we went to Mevagissey and had lunch in a pub on the Harbour. Due to the shape of Cornwall (http://www.cornwall-online.co.uk/corn-map.htm) so many of the villages are fishing villages on the coast. After this we drove to Truro which being right smack bang in the middle is the 'administrative centre of Cornwall' that means not a lot of site seeing to be done, but a convenient hub from which to access the other highlights of the region.

Belinda had organised a small terraced house on a hill in Truro that had a lovely view down over the town Cathedral. The main supermarket and the pubs ;) were within walking distance and we enjoyed that on Friday night!

The next morning we drove to St Ives, we parked at the top of the village and caught park and ride down into the car. St Ives is beautiful.... a perfect seaside resort with beaches as lovely as i have seen them in England. It was in St Ives that we encountered the weather that was to plague us for the entire weekend. Wind, and I am not just talking a little breeze, I am talking about blow you off your peninsular wind - it was incredible, it didn't stop us site seeing but it did stop us going for any of the scenic walks along the cliffs :(

After walking through the streets of St Ives we stopped at the Tate Cornwall, no encourage our taste for the arts but to go upstairs and have morning tea while looking out over the ocean. Dunc and I braved the wind and walked out onto the point while Belinda and Gavin staid in the cafe.

We headed north from St Ives to Watergate bay just north of Newquay, most recently put on the map by Jamie Olivers 'Fifteen - Cornwall'. The restaurant was impressive for a couple of reasons, firstly its location overhanging a long wide beach, secondly it is run by a charity, many of the staff are under priveleged/street kids who are learning a trade in the restaurant. Quite a good intiative. The food was... delicious, although Belinda wasn't all that happy with hers Duncan and I had the same dish and it was amazing... pork ragu with parpadelle pasta and balsamic sauce.... mmmmmm and an orange chocolate mousse cake for desert.

We drove back to Truro past a farm shop where we bought some local produce for breakfast.

Easter Sunday, I am ashamed to say did not start with us going to church.... very disappointing I know but we did have a sleep in :) ! We headed south and got sidetracked to the village Marazion, from here there were wicked views across the bay to the small island and castle that make St Michaels Mount. At low tide you can walk there, so we parked the car, got out and then it started to pour - it was big rain - so we got back in the car and kept driving. A little further down the way we stopped at a beautiful heritage listed manor house for cream tea, cornish clotted cream is THE best thing in the world. From there we contined on to Lands End where we were greeted with sunshine and more wind. We were "blown away " by the view (i know i know ha ha) and it was cool to be standing on the most southern point in England. Unfortunately the wind was so extreme that it was quite impossible to be out in it for very long. So back in the car we went.

Our next destination wasthe picturesque hamlet of Mousehole (pronounced mowzel) which was the cutest little harbour town. It had a two massive breakwaters built to shelter the entire harbour from the ocean force (and the wind), with only a small opening for the fishing boats to get in and out. The restaurant we had lunch in (as recommended by the parking attendant) was one of Brittains top 50 seaside restaurants.... and lunch was lovely. It was here in a bowl of mussels that Belinda and Gavin found and adopted Russel the Crab in the Mussel. A tiny wee crab that had obviously been captured before the mussel was cooked and also got cooked as well. Apparently Russel was too important to eat so therefore came site seeing with us for the rest of the weekend :)

Finally we reached Lizard Point, another spectacular peninsular with amazing views. Once again Dunc and I went for a walk along the paths while Bel and Gav went and had a coffee (i am seeing a trend here) We joined them later and had the yummiest piece of cake. We ate in in our little apartment that night, playing poker and watching Belinda get hilariously intoxicated and dancing on the stairs :)

Easter Monday was a long tedious day negotiating the bank holiday weekend traffic back to London, this was compounded by some excellent town planning and road infrastructre.. (hint of sarcasm) the main road in and out of Cornwall from London in about 5 or 6 different locations changes from 1 lane to 2 lanes and vice versa... it would be better if it just stayed as one lane because at least it would flow, but this way very one sped up on the two lanes and then ground to a complete halt as a general inability to merge took hold. I think it took us about 8 hours to get home and it took about 4.5-5hours to get there!!!

On Tuesday the 25th of March, just after coming back from Easter we got rugged up (coz it was really cold that week) in preparation to go and see the play 'Speed the Plow' which was starring Hollywood superstars Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum. We were standing at the door debating whether to drive or catch the bus when Duncan wisely checked the tickets and luckily he did because we were a week early!!!

One momentous even of March was the arrival of my Wii.... yes we have a Wii and I would like to come right out and say that it was not my idea but as we didn't pay for it since playing with it I humbly concede that it is good fun! My favourite game is the boxing although I was sooooo sore the next day after playing this.

The 29th of March was the day of 'The Boat Race'. Every year since 1829 Oxford and Cambridge have challenged each other to a race on the Thames. It attracts the crowds in droves but lucky for us it wasn't what we knew but who we knew, so we went to Gavin's place for a Boat Race bbq, it was raining all afternoon so we stood on the balcony and watched them start the race and then watched the rest of it on the tv.

So a week later and on the right day we went and saw Speed the Plow... it was really good. Short compared to the west end musicals that I am used to, but it was very energetic and had snappy fast paced dialogue that required your full attention - so it was a good thing that it wasn't quite as long.

April

I can't beleive its April!!!!! At the beginning of the year Duncan and I were commenting how sometime in 2009 we would be leaving London and now here it is and we are almost half way through the year... I can hear you saying, 'not quite..' but you just wait it is going to be christmas before we know it :)

Once again I started the month working at Harley Street.

Duncan and I also started playing netball (Can't remember whether that was March or April now) again, this time a little closer to home. We didn't have a team but just joined with a whole heap of randoms, and luckily have a great group of people - and more importantly a pretty good netball team :)

The 15th of April of course saw the third restaurant club and this time we went to Crispy Duck in China Town which was really really good and our biggest turn out yet I think we had 18!!!!

So that is halfway through April anyway..... I won't start more holiday talk in this post, but will tell you about Northern Ireland in the next one....

JibJab fun :)

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:25:00 +0000

Don't send a lame eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

January and Bulgaria

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:13:00 +0000

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

The week after disney land was pretty miserable for me as i had a bad cold and a few days off work. I did manage though to go out for dinner on Dunc's birthday :) We went to a nice little restaurant/pub with vic and grant and magnus and nicole. It was a fairly quiet affair as pretty much the rest of our friends had all gone home for christmas. Then on Wednesday we went and saw Lord of the Rings the Musical. It was.... interesting.... don't get me wrong it was really good, the sets and effects were amazing and they did pretty well at condensing the story into a 2 hour play..... but the elves... the elves and their hands - for those of you yet to see it I will let you come to your own conclusions.

That weekend I worked :(
The weekend after I worked :(

The weekend after that we went to Bulgaria Yay!

We went back to the same chalet that we stayed at last time we were skiing in Bulgaria. Matt and Jenny hosted us again, and once again Jennys cooking did not disappoint. We had a different home cooked breakfast everymorning, cake waiting for us when we came off the slopes, and then a delicious three course meal for dinner..... lets just say this was not one of those holidays that i lost weight on :) Nope! there is certainly no chance of me fading away. The weather was beautiful for the first couple of days and then we had intermittent snow for the next few days, which wasn't all that great for the visibility but excellent for the slopes. Vic, Bel and I went riding on Thursday in the Bulgarian mountains which was lovely. Dunc and I had a great time, although i don't think the same could be said for everyone else. Nicole (Duncan's cousins' wife) broke her wrist learning to snow board on the first day, then on the second day, Leann broke her wrist!!!! Who would of thought it was statistically possible for two people in the same group of 12 to break their right wrists in one week.

Fortunately dunc and I arrived back in London with no injuries apart from the scars left by the emotional trauma suffered driving home from Gatwick airport. We recovered on Saturday night and Sunday by watching the entire Lord of the Rings extended versions.... i know i know you are asking how could we, but seriously you need a holiday to recover from a snowboarding holiday.

Well tonight we will succumb to the mass advertising and commercialisim that is St Valentine's day and go out for dinner :)

Hope you are all having a good day and good week.

Poland and Switzerland and Finland Oh My!

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:42:00 +0000

Right, two months worth this time? Seems like we are getting worse at keeping this up to date. Oh well, its been a busy period for us!

So December... obviously like everyone else getting ready for Christmas takes up so much time, but it is fun to shop :) We did a lot of ours online this year as its soooo much better than braving the crowds in the centre of London.

On one of the weekends, Grant, Vic, Gem and I flew to Krakow in Poland for 3 days. Me and Gem had been before but it is such a beautiful city and there were really cheap flights on that we thought we'd go again. We were hoping that it would snow while we were there but unfortunately it had just snowed and melted and we didn't any fresh snow. The Christmas Markets were on however and they are always fun to walk around. We bought a few more beautiful baubles (Gem's collecting a few each year to take home) and Gem and Vic tried their hands at mulled rum.... which didn't go down to well, and nearly came back up even worse :)

Grant and Vic hadn't been to Poland before so they went to Auschwitz, while me and Gem explored more of the town. We wandered through the Jewish quarter at one point, and it’s strange to see Nazi and SS paraphernalia in the markets stalls. There was even a fairly nasty looking SS staff with the eagle and lightning bolts on it.

A couple of weeks later the four of us boarded our charter plane for the snowy peaks of Switzerland for our Christmas trip. Were staying in the Hotel Saaserhof in the Resort Town of Saas Fee, which is a swanky 4 star resort right at the foot of the slopes. It was an amazing hotel. The rooms were really nice, the bar was cool, the staff were exceptional, and we got a full buffet breakfast each morning and a 5 course meal each night, with about 3 options per course. Amazing :) Wasn't the cheapest place around but it wasn't too bad for what you got and it was Christmas after all...

The ski room on the ground floor lead straight out onto the foot of the slopes, which was great as the town is car free (though there are tiny electric buses) so lots of people on the far side of the town had to lug their stuff through the streets. Once again it didn't actually snow while were there but it had snowed heaps before we got there so it was brilliant conditions. Blue skies and enough powder to cushion a fall or two a bit.

We went snowboarding everyday and had a blast. Vic had a few more lessons and really started to get the hang of it and came down a few blue runs with us. Grant had picked it up quickly in Bulgaria last year so he alternated between the beginner runs and the blue runs. Me and Gem did the blue runs and the red runs. Gem was going to tackle a black run by the end of the week but a nasty accident that saw her wipe out quite badly knocked a fair bit of confidence out of her, and quite rightly so, so we stayed on the reds :) We both had helmets this time as our speeds are starting to increase a fair bit, and it was quite lucky she was wearing hers. I had a few stacks too but only one that caused damage... just a nasty scrape to my knee. Though by the end of the week all four of us had quite a few bruises, most of them from unknown origins!

On Christmas day we took the gondola and the words highest underground train, which goes "inside" the mountain, up to the Allalin, a revolving restaurant at the top of one of the mountains. The view was amazing from there and a great way to spend Christmas lunch. After lunch we wandered across to the largest "ice grotto" in the world that is carved into one of the glaciers up in the mountain. It was cool to wander through tunnels and walkways inside ice that is so old.

There was another awesome attraction in Saas Fee that we went to twice in the end.... the Hannig. This beauty is a 6km sled ride down switchback trails down one of the mountains. You pick up a small 1 person sled that is just a 60cm wooden frame with runners and a rope, hook it on the back of the gondola and head up the mountain. At the top you just sit down and pick up your feet. The only thing you have to steer and brake are you feet which you sort of tap down to adjust your line a bit, or ram into the snow/ice to try and stop. It was a blast! There are some fairly steep edges around so you do have to pay attention (as Vic found out), some very tight turns, and sometimes some serious congestion where someone has come off, but once you get the hang of it its actually quite responsive and so much fun. I managed to take some footage while going down so hopefully I'll get a movie uploaded soon. On the whole, one of the highlights of the trip :)

After our 7 days in Switzerland were up, we got back on the plane to London and had 1 night to wash some clothes ready for our trip to Finland and the husky tour. We did a quick Laundromat run, got some take away, and repacked our bags ready for the next adventure. And here was quite a bit of excitement just on the trip there!

To get to Ivalo in northern Finland we had to fly from Heathrow to Helsinki, and then 900kms north to Ivalo. The bad thing was that we had only 55 minutes between landing in Helsinki and when our Ivalo flight left. We did the run through the airport and made it just in time, but when we got to Ivalo we found our bags didn't make it. That was going to be a small problem as we were about to do 3 days in -20 gear and all we had were jeans and t-shirts. Lucky for us another flight was coming in from Heathrow a hour later and the lady managed to track down that our bags should be on it. So we sat in the baggage hall and played poker for an hour and prayed the lady was right. They finally did turn up and we got a transfer to the hotel we were staying at for a quick feed and sleep before the taxi took us to the husky farm in the morning. Phew!

The taxi came at about 9:30am, which seeing as we were actually in the Arctic Circle, was still almost dark. The noise at the husky farm was amazing... so many dogs! A group was leaving before us for a 5 day tour so lots of the dogs were being harnessed and boy the make a racket. They are so excited to go that thy just bark and bark and bark. We also got to say hello to some very cute husky puppies... who were so adorable :) After the first group left, we had our safety and instructional meeting... which lasted all of 3 minutes. Our guide Yoni showed us the sled, told us what sort of distance to keep, how to use the brakes, how to scoot if going up hill (or get of and run on steeper uphill bit), and the most important bit, what to do if we come off. The basic rule was try not to, but if you did then you just try to hold on as you might be able to get your feet back on the rails. If you came off completely then the dogs would just keep on going, so you ran after them until someone stopped them... usually Yoni but after a while we all got better at it and the next person in front would often be able to stop them.

The six of us (there was another Italian couple in our group) finally set off about 12 with Yoni in the lead on a snowmobile (which he called a snow-scooter) and a trailer. It was pretty challenging at first as the dogs were really fresh and dying to get running but soon we all started to get into our rhythms. We had a few spills but its all part of the fun :) We stopped for lunch along the way and Yoni just lights a fire with wood from the trailer right on the snow. We had a nice soup and bread and a warm drink and then set of again. By about 2pm the sun starts to go down again (not that it ever clears the horizon, it just gets "light") and by about 4pm its pitch black. We were still out on the sleds when it got dark but the dogs know where they are going and we have headlamps on that don't show much but you get an idea of whats in front of you... a least for the first metre anyway :)

About 4:30 we finally covered the 25km to our first wilderness cabin. We tried to defrost inside a bit as it was about -20c outside. Yoni lit the fire and we lit lots of candles. There is no electricity or running water, so the next step was to get some fresh water from the lake... which of course is frozen over with about 30cm of ice. Yoni just took to it with a hatchet and cut a 50cm by 50cm bowl in the ice. When he finally breaks through it just fills with water and we use smaller buckets to fill a massive bucket and take it to the house. Water also gets put into a boiler in the sauna, yes it has a sauna, where it gets heated for washing and for the dogs food. After tea is started, we went out and unharnessed the dogs and fed them. It's quite a slow process but the dogs are so good and don't mind unskilled hand such as mine trying to get their paws and heads through various holes. Dinner for them is a big bowl of meaty soup... mmm.

Our dinner was a bit of a mishmash of pasta and sauce and meatballs, but very good after a long day. As this was New Years Eve we were determined to stay up. We were hoping to see the Northern Light (Aurora Borealis) and we weren't disappointed. We could see this glowing band start to appear in the northern sky about 10pm and it slowly got brighter and greener. At about 11:30ish it really started to swirl around and dance in the sky, and reds and purples were visible. It really was one of the most amazing things I have seen. It wasn't as colourful as you might see in postcards, I'd imagine they are enhanced quite a bit, but it was much more spectacular than I ever imagined. It lasted for about half an hour before starting to quiet down again. So we actually got to spend New Years Eve, in the Arctic Circle, under the Northern Lights, with a whiskey :) Amazing.

The next day, after re-harnessing the huskies, we covered 35 km in various stages of light. Actually staying on the sled and controlling it properly was trickier than I imagined, but good fun. On straight bits you just stood there and enjoyed the scenery. When you were on the frozen lakes it was like this, just so still and peaceful. But this didn't happen often. Most of the time you are either cornering at a fair old clip which means you have to lean on the correct rail to stop the sled tipping over, pushing on the snow with one foot if it does slightly up hill (to help the dogs), running behind the sled if it gets steeper up hill to take your weight off the sled completely, or trying to stop the sled crashing into the dogs on the downhill bits. All good fun but damn tiring. The hardest time to stay on was going down hill and cornering at the same time. You only have one foot on the sled as the other is on one of the two brakes, but then if you have the wrong foot on the sled you can easily tip the sled and fall off. It got really tough when there are downhill chicanes between the trees... you end up running on one rail while ducking tree branches and trying not to let the sled crash into the dogs!

The second night the cabin was a little bit more spacious, but still definitely a wilderness cabin. We were a bit quicker at unharnessing the dogs and feeding them this time, and then later enjoyed possibly the best salmon we have ever eaten. Yoni hung this massive piece of salmon that had been rubbed with salt on a wooden board and had it just propped by the fire (what he called "glow cooking"). It took about 2 hours to cook, but the salmon top was nice and crispy and underneath was juicy. So good. The Northern Lights were still active this night too, but not to the same degree as last night... I guess they knew we were after a show for NYE :)

The final day we covered about another 35km back to the husky farm. Along the way, one of Gems dogs got ill or injured and quite abruptly stopped running... of course when its harnessed to 4 other dog who go all keep running it gets dragged along. It was quite distressing to see and obviously Gem jumped on the brakes immediately. Yoni checked the husky out and he couldn't see anything obvious, but he unharnessed her at the back so she wasn't pulling anymore (just clipped in at the neck to keep her in line). She ran like this for a while but then tried to sit down again. Again Yoni came back and this time he took her off and held her in his arms on the snow-mobile. The dogs are so good and she didn't complain or try and get off. A little while later one of my dogs pulled out one of its nails while running and tried to do the same as Gem's. Again we tried a few things but he didn't like running at those speeds with his sore paw so Yoni took him off too. Yoni later told us that he has been pulling sleds for about 12 years which is about as long as they are healthy enough to do that so they have been watching him closely anyway. They'll take him off the 3 day tours and maybe use him for a short while on the single day tours. It wasn't going to work very well with me only having 4 dogs, so they took one of the dogs from one of the lighter and smaller girls and we continued home. When we got within about 5km of the husky farm the dogs really pick up speed. They know they are nearly home and they put on this massive burst of speed.

When we finally made it home we helped unharness the dogs again and put them back into their kennels. It was quite sad to say goodbye to them, but at least we all got to have one final cuddle with them and thank them for pulling us along. We said our goodbyes to our guide Yoni too and headed back to the hotel for our last night in Finland before making the trek back to London. This time our luggage made it with us at the same time :)

Not too long after getting home it was of course my birthday. Gem planned an amazing surprise for me which I didn't know about until right at the last minute. She went to bed on Friday night setting her alarm saying she had lots of work to do in the morning, but when it went off at about 6am she woke me up telling me to get up as we had an hour to get ready before we had to leave to catch the train to Disneyland Paris. Now Gem has a habit sometimes of thinking she is still in her dreams when she wakes up and I can string her along with a few questions... I thought this might be one of those times. But it wasn't! So we got up, packed a few clothes and headed to catch the Eurostar Train to Disneyland.

We spent 2 days there and had a brilliant time... made me feel like a kid again :) We were staying in one of the Disneyland hotels that are about a 5-10 minute bus ride away, but when we got off the train we just walked straight to the park and stowed our bags there. The setup is brilliant for convenience. We spent the day walking around and seeing the attractions, and then had dinner at Planet Hollywood. We finally caught a bus to the hotel, checked in and got ready for the next day back at the park. Unfortunately Gem was coming down with a pretty bad cold so she climbed into bed and tried to get some sleep. She was a real trooper on the two days as I could tell she really wasn't feeling very well, but she was determined not to let it ruin our holiday and my birthday surprise :)

In the morning we packed up, had a good breakfast, and then headed back to Disneyland for more wandering and sightseeing. Late in the afternoon we picked up our bags, got back on the train and headed back to London. All in all a brilliant surprise and we both had a really good time :) Thanks gorgeous :)

Well, that brings us up to our Bulgaria ski trip. And the final settlement of our second house, but I think they will have to be separate posts.

Hopefully I'll do them very shortly.

November - all in one go (get comfy people)

noreply@blogger.com (Duncan) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:21:00 +0000

So we're into November already... oh, and if you are reading this then make sure you've read the novel below that was posted today also. And there are also a few new galleries on the right hand side there.

Well before I get into what we've been up to I just might make a note about the weather. It is a lot colder this year that it was last year at the same time. I predict more snow this winter... well I hope anyway. Today, being the 18th Nov it was only 5 degrees as a max. Its been hovering around 10 - 13 for the last few weeks now and with it being wettish too it feels a lot colder. But anyway, on to the news.

Gem was oncall at the beginning of this month and ended up being called into work on the evening. On the monday night, the guy who owns the buildings in our compound was having a party for Guy Fawkes Day. He put on chilli and potatoes, punch, a massive bonfire and of course fireworks. The bonfire was just in the courtyard and was massive. It started as a pile of wooden pallets about 12 high, with wood piled all around it. Once lit, with a healthy dose of fuel of course, the blaze was about 20 feet hight and we ended up having to stand about 10 metres back from it. The fireworks were quite good and they even filled a few 2lt bottles with oxyacetylene... which when lit makes a huge bang but no flame. When someone filled a plastic container about the size of one of those big water bottles in office coolers with it we knew we were in trouble. The boom was immense, and you could feel the shockwave.

A few days later me, Gem and 3 girls from her work went to watch Mary Poppins in Covent Garden. It was brilliant and the set was incredible. There was so much movement to the set. The ground floor, top floor and roof tops all changed positions on the stage at various times, and Mary Poppins even flew herself. It fairly closely followed the storyline of the movie too.
That weekend we drove into Putney for Gavin, Belinda's new man's, 30th birthday. It was a really good night and we met some nice people. He had set up an ipod with lots of cheesy music so there was plenty of singing and dancing too. All in all a good night, but I think Gav might have been a bit worse for wear the next day :)

On the 10th the four of us took Gems camera and Grants tripod down to Southwark Bridge to watch the Lord Mayor's Fireworks. They were set of from between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge so we were only one away. They were quite good but not as good as the Perth Skyshow ;) We met up with Mark, Gordo and their friend Robbie and went out for dinner afterwards.

The next week when I was dropping Gem at the train station I had the sneaking suspicion that something was different. It was then that I noticed the missing car stereo.... yup, we'd been broken into. I did think the doors were unlocked when I got there but I wasn't quite sure. Lucky for us the thieves had been quite curtious. They didn't bugger up the door but must have got something down the window to open the lock. They took the stereo (but left the front fascia so we can make the next one look pretty and fit snugly), the satnav cradle, the traffic management aerial for the satnav, two cd's, and Gems handcream.... go figure. They also left us our ice scraper. All in all nothing is that expensive that was taken. The cradle cost me £16 and a new stereo is about £50. The traffic management is more expensive but we don't really need that... its handy when you get out of London but we tend to know where the busy spots are now and avoid them anyway. Gem stayed home to call the cops but they said they were a bit busy and would respond in 72 hours. Oh well. Could have been worse, they could have taken the car.

The following weekend we took the bus into Greenwich to go to the markets there. They were really cool and arty and very laid back. After that we went to a nice little pub called The Yacht that is the "First Pub in the West". The food was good and it was nice to get out of the cold. We thought we'd brave the weather on the way back and walk the hour back to work off the meal. It was cold but crisp. Not as cold as it has got in the last few weeks though, got down to about 5 degrees on one day.

As part of Gem getting her visa to stay here, she has had to sit a test called "Life in the UK". She has been studying a book you have to buy for the test for the last couple of weeks as the range of questions are quite broad and indepth, and I don't think any of my english friends would know the answers. It even has stats on religion in each country of the UK, and history, and government etc etc... In the end it's a 24 question multiple choice test that you have 45 minutes to complete and you need to get at least 18 right to pass. Gem did it on Saturday morning in about 4 minutes and passed. So she can now get her visa and will be allowed to stay.

That night we went to Shepherd's Bush for two friends of ours, Leann and Damage's (Damien), engagement party. It was good to see them again as they were part of the crew we used to see all the time from when we lived at the KEG (the sharehouse in Acton). Most of the people from the KEG and the friends we haven't seen in quite a while turned up and it was great to catch up with them all. Leann and Damage are coming to Bulgaria too which will be good. They are a really nice couple.

Sunday the four of us headed down to Kingston-Upon-Thames to do a little sightseeing and a little Christmas shopping. It's a really pretty area, and its got quite a nice shopping centre too so it's a lot quieter and a lot smaller than trying to do Oxford Street or anything like that. We had a few nice things to eat from the markets and then did a bit of powershopping. Was good fun :)

On tuesday night (the 27th) we had a big Christmas Dinner with most of our closest friends (Me, Gem, Grant, Vic, Belinda, Sara, Sam, Al, Magnus, Nicole, Gordo, Mark, Robbie). Quite a few of them are going home this year or away for Christmas, so it was about the only date we all had free. 13 of us (yes I know, but it was supposed to be 14) met in a nice restaurant in Covent Garden and had a really lovely 3 course chrissie dinner. It was really well done and we all had a blast.

Well that ends November except for one rather big point, but that will have to wait for a new post...

Not quite sure how many of you will read this as its getting close to novel length, but we will try to do more regular updates rather than bulk ones like this.

Hope everyone is well and everyone enjoys the build up to Christmas.

Cheers,

Duncan.

OK - so we haven't exactly been keeping this up to date.

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:12:00 +0000

We started off October (6/7) with a spur of the moment trip to Nannies, feeling incredibly guilty that we actually haven't been to visit since Christmas. Well I haven't anyway, Dunc of course visited earlier in the year when he went to do his course. So it was with tails between legs that we arrived. October 6th of course was also England v Australia in the Rugby semi final..... and what a craptastic game it was!!!! Not only did we have to suffer losing to England, we had to lose to them, without them acutally playing well and scoring a try!!!! It would have been easier to endure if England had played superbly..... but oh well *sigh*.... We went to the Olton Tavern for dinner (where I first worked in England) and it is amazing what new ownership and management has done for the place.

I think Nanny was pleased to see us, and sorry to see us go. She does love it when Dunc visits because apparently he makes cups of tea like no one else :)

The downside the weekend was the same as any weekend - returning to work. This was compounded by having to endure the plethora of English Rugby jerseys and supporters that decided to come out of the closet after their team won (although they weren't brave enough to support their teams on the Friday before the game were they, eh eh??)

The next weekend saw me nose the grind stone at Harely Street in London - boring!!!

Right, its Duncan taking over the commentary now.

So what else have we been doing? Well, I'm glad you asked. Vic had her birthday so we had a bit of a gathering at a Lebanese restaurant in Soho called Kaslik. We took the bottom room that was beautifully layed out with Turkish style carpets on the floor and walls and big cushions on the floor to sit on, and cushioned benches around the walls. The food was really good and we had a really good time. I have to admit the incensce was getting a bit strong by the end of the night but it was a cool atmosphere for a birthday.

We also had a few guests at our place during October. When we went to Canada we stayed with Gem's friend Becky for a while, and also with Becky's sister Charity, so this time it was our turn to return the favour. Charity had been visiting Becky, who lives in Sweden at the moment, and they both came to London where Charity was returning to Canada. Charity also had her 3 year old daughter Layla with her. She was quite well behaved and handled the travels quite well too. She loved playing peek-a-boo with Grant... especially in his bed ;) Charity and Layla were only with us for 3 nights. They did a bit of sightseeing during the day while we were all at work, then on one night we went out to a restaurant on the river down called the Mayflower. From there we can see Tower Bridge so its always a good place to take overseas visitors. We had a nice dinner a short walk along the river front. In the morning I had to drop Charity and Layla up at London Bridge ready for them to head to Gatwick Airport for their flights back to Canada.

Becky was staying with us for a few more nights. On one of those nights the three of us went to Avenue Q in the West End. Its a show with a few human actors and then some puppets, and would have to be one of the funniest things we have seen in ages. The people who control the puppets (who are usually just torso, arms and legs) are clearly visible on stage, but they tend to enhance the puppets rather than distract even though you can see them. The expressions on their faces perfectly match the puppets. The show has also got a few classic songs like "Everyone is a little bit racist", and "The Internet is for porn". On the whole it is a brilliantly funny performance and I highly recommend it if it ever comes to where ever you might be reading this from. Friday night Gem went shopping with Becky, and then about 3:30am I dropped her at the bus depot to catch her flight back to her new home in Sweden.

The next weekend we went out to drinks for a farewell for a couple of friends of ours, Jax and Josh. They are travelling through South America for a few months before heading back to Oz. It was also the Rugby World Cup final and we watched that in pub on a tiny telly :) I think most of the Kiwi and Aussies were going for South Africa as even though in an ideal world I wouldn't want them to win, I'd rather they be the second team to win it twice, rather than England win it twice in a row. A few days later we went out for a final farewell dinner in Covent Garden with them. It was sad to see them go as we'd had some fun time together with them in London.

The following weekend the Ski & Snow Show was in town at Kensington Olympia. Me, Gem and Grant (Vic was studying) headed into this and spent the entire day walking around looking at the various things to buy and Gem did what Gem loves to do and collect pamphlet after pamphlet. Grant ended up buying himself a new jacket and I got myself a helmet. Gem did have her eye on one but by the time we'd finished walking around they had sold out. We also got lots of information on what sorts of things we should be looking at in terms of helmets, layering for warmth and Gem looked at new jackets.

A few days later it was finally time for Vic's exam. She had been studying very hard for the last few months as she had an exam for a course in tax accounting. She had her exam during the day and we met her in Covent Garden after work to go shopping for the ski gear we kow knew so much about, and to celebrate her study being over. I bought two new thermal tops for snowboarding, and Gem managed to rack up a huge bill buying a new jacket, three thermals, new gloves, new wrist guards, and a helmet. Don't even think of asking what it all came too... :) Grant and Vic also bought a few items ready for this upcoming ski season. Can't wait! After shopping we went out to a nice little Italian restaurant and had a nice meal.

On a more boring note there has been two other things happening at home. One, me and Gem have started to try and get healthier so she has given up junk food for 30 days and I have given up alcohol. Its actually tougher than I thought, not that I want to go out and get drunk, but I do like to have a nice glass or red wine if we go out to dinner, or on fridays we often headed up to the Borough Markets at lunch at work and had a pint. But so far I have been good. It ends for me on the 20th of Nov. :) I'm also doing a cash in hand sort of job for the mother-in-law of one of the designers at work. Its a website to sell houses in a certain area, and its quite good as I get to play/learn the new programming language that I'm primarily using now... asp.net. It an be tough as I have to try and do it on the weekends but its been a good learning experience, and as she doesn't really know exactly what she wants, I get to try out new things to fill her requirements. But I must admiyt I'm looking forward to finishing it.

So... after all that we hit Novemeber... finally :)

From then til now

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:09:00 +0000

Wow!! this has been *the* busiest month.... I am currently sitting here snuffling and coughing but only have myself to blame. Burning the candle at both ends as they say!

I started my new job at St Helier at the end of August. I am in ITU (intensive care) at the moment and quite enjoying it. The only downside to it is that it is towards the outskirts of London so I need to take the overland to get there, and those trains are not quite as frequent as the underground. I did try driving as well but it ended up taking exactly the same amount of time so thought I may as well catch the train - at least I can sleep on the train :)

The 1st of September was Belinda's birthday and we had decided to have a joint birthday drinks which we had at the Station House http://www.priorybars.com/station/ which I know looks quite funky in the pictures but during the day with all the soccer players in it wasn't quite so nice. Fortunately the garden was lovely and as the afternoon wore on the customers became a little more.... approriately dressed. It was one of the nicer weekends that we have had this summer which was nice and was greatly complimented by Pimms.

Saturday the 1st was also the day that Gemma and Richie visited London on their honeymoon. It was really awesome to catch up with them at the pub, they also came around for dinner on Sunday evening and on Wednesday night we went to Browns in Shad Thames for dinner and a view of the Tower Bridge going up and down at night. The weather was supreme we sat out on the balcony.

On Saturday the 8th we went to China Town with Gem and Richie and had a great lunch before saying goodbye to them. They were leaving early the next morning and we were off to Magnus and Nicole's to watch the first round of the Rugby World Cup Australia destroys Japan!!

Sunday the 9th!!!!! My birthday!!!!!!! I had a very quiet morning, being spoiled by presents from all over the world and then we went to the Police! No we hadn't done anything wrong, I mean the Police Concert. It was an awesome concerty, the only down side was trying to get 85,000 people home via one train station afterwards. We ended up missing our connecting underground and had to catch a night bus but it was still awesome!

Vics sister and her husband were visiting London and came and had dinner with us on Monday night.

That week at work I met the boss who had been on holiday and officially got promoted!! Woohoo, I am still not permanent but until they fill the position I will have a little more 'responsibility'

Friday Dunc had an 'away day' at work on Friday 14th where his whole work went to Thorpe park - a big amusment park and played on the rides. Grant, Vic and I met him out that general direction to pick him up and then drove to Cardiff. Why? you may ask, because Cardiff was hosting a few games of the Rugby World Cup and we had tickets for the Wales v Australia game.

We got to the campsite we were staying at about 11:30pm Friday night and set up camp in the dark, and boy was it cold. The next morning after campfire brekkie we jumped on the train and head into Cardiff. The atmosphere was electric - fans everywhere and as it got closer to the time of the game the roads around the stadium were closed off to traffice. It was so much better organised than the couple of stadiums that we have been to in London. I think just because the stadium is pretty much in Cardiff rather than being on the outskirts so there were so many other things for the fans to do and see and there wasn't the bottle neck that normally happens. Dunc and Grant picked up the tickets while Vic and I went on BBC TV with a lot of other fans to support the cause. We had a quick pasta lunch and then headed into the stadium.

It was once we got in that we faced the biggest suprise, our seats were in the 2nd row!!!! We had paid a lot of money for our tickets (~350AUD) so expected that they would be semi - decent but we had bought them late so thought we would get what was left over! The roof on the stadium had been closed and fans on both sides were sooo loud and passionate, but still friendly. Needless to say Australia won convincingly. It was one of the best days ever! We finished up with campfire burgers, and went to bed very satisifed, luckily for us it wasn't quite so cold the second night.

We have started going back to the gym a little in an effort to get a little fitter especially with winter and snowboarding coming up quite quickly. Speaking of winter the last week it has definitely set in, it has been cold and windy and raining and the days are much shorter.

Last week was busy again. We had extra-curricular activities on Monday and Tuesday nights, on wednesday night Becky (from Canada's) parents came and stayed overnight with us for a stopover between sweden and canada, we went to Browns again :) I entertained myself on Thursday by watching an episode of Dog Borstal (for dog lovers everywhere) about a Great Dane who would not leave the house without his great big stuffed elephant in his mouth. Friday we went to Sara and Sam's for dinner as Sara's mum is visiting from home.

That is september in a nutshell!!

Later
Gem xx

Sat 9 - Friday 24

noreply@blogger.com (Gemma) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:35:00 +0000

Well, our life doesn't seem to have been any less crazy since i last wrote. I beleive when we left you we had just been for drinks on Southbank in London. Saturday we went outdoor shopping - I wanted new hiking boots, so not to be undone, Dunc decided he wanted new ones too. Vic and Grant bought a tent and some sleeping bags.

Sunday we had a 'Tennis Bbq' with the crew from our mixed netball team. This involved meeting at the park down the road which has the free courts, with little disposable bbqs, and all that would be associated with a picnic in the park. Then we just all rotated on and off the courts for the afternoon.

Monday to Wednesday were normal mundane working days, then wednesday night we went to Norway woohoo!!!!!

We flew into Bergen (After meeting Yvette and Turan - friends of Becky on the plane) and took a cab to Jermyn's (Yvette's cousin) house. It was amazing right on the hill looking out over Bergen. Bergen is the 'gateway' to the Fjords in norway, and apparently it rains like 280 days a year... i don't know of the exact figure but it was raining when we were there! On Thursday we did the Norway in a Nutshell tour which involved trains and mountain railways through the norwegian mountains (up where there was still snow), to Flam (pronounced Flum) which was only 2m above sea level. We tried to hike to a waterfall but were unsuccessful and after a lot of steep uphill climbing we decided that Duncan was about to turn into a sultana he was sweating so much. So we headed back and caught a boat through the fjords.... absolutely sensational!!!!!

The next day we were back in good old rainy Bergen for a few hours exploring the old town including the fishmarket. Yvette tried whale, i didn't though poor whales... and there were lots of seal skins... i assume they were not the endangered ones... but i did buy some new hats!! Three infact, I know i know a little extravagant it may seem but they are all practical hats. There were yellow rubber rainhats a virtual necessity, a funky traditional norwegian hat, so that the others don't lose me when we go boarding next winter and a normal beanie for next winter....

We caught the train up to Geilo, which in the winter is a big ski resort, but in the summer is home to 'outdoor junkies' like us ;) for hiking and stuff. We met with Becky and Rasmus, and headed to a cabin in the woods. The next morning we went hiking looking for another waterfall.... still didn't find it, but in true style we got lost - ish, and ran out of time.

In the afternoon we went white water rafting which was soooo freezing... damn that glacial water. They were fairly intense rapids though so scary and so much fun!!! A few brusied noggins, hands and noses.

We flew back to London on Sunday night, and back to work on Monday morning. And the excitement still kept coming.

We bought tickets for the Australia v Wales game in Cardiff for the rugby world cup!!!!

My contract was terminated!!! But before you can say "oh my goodness how will you pay for those incredible expensive rugby tickets?!?!" I got another job! I will be starting at St Heliers next Thursday whoohoo!!!!

Watch this space :)