Wales

Due to the ridiculous amount that people are charging for internet (1 euro for 10 mins of the Greek Islands!) I'm a wee bit behind on the blog. So bear with me and I'll try and fill you all in as best as possible.

Wales was beautiful. It was really the perfect way to start our trip. We headed to a little place called Betws-Y-Coed which is up in the North and is at the edge of Snowdonia National Park. It took us 3 train changes to get there from London but I love the trains so I didn't mind one bit. Our hostel was quite small and quaint and we shared a dorm with 2 English lads who were in the town for field work. Geologists. they were so lovely and considerate. Their mothers should be proud!

The main activity to do in Betws-Y-Coed is to walk. So that is eactly what we did. Armed with our walking shoes and waterproof jackets we picked up a booklet with walks around town from the tourist info centre and headed for a short 4 and a half mile stroll. This walk took us though some woods and along a beautiful clear reiver. It was so quiet in there, eventually we makde to Swallow Falls which were a bit disppointing but a good conversation with some fellow walkers made up for it.

Our mian objective for the trip was to climb Snowdon Mountain. This is the tallest mountain in Wales and England standing at 1085m. The Geologists in our room advised us to head to one particular spot as they knew one of the paths started there. So this is where we headed nice and early on the Sunday monring. Now what you need to know is that there are 6 paths up Snowdon with degrees of difficulty. Being the novis walkers we are we needed the easiest path. The one we went ot was no this. The sign at the start of the path stated "this is the most difficult of the walks, NOVICE WALKERS ARE NOT ADVISED TO CLIMB THIS" Eek! So luckily we had picked up a leaflet of the easiest walk and tour delight it started in the next town over. While waiting fo rhte bus, 2 men n a mini bus offered us a life (it was safe Mums and Dads, they were part of a charity climbing the mountains!) as they were headed that way. So eventually we started the walk. There was a defined, nicely sloping path, views were beautiful and things were great. It was about 2/3 up the mountain that it all started getting harder. The path was getting steeper and we were now up in the fog so it was quite cold. It also didnºt help that the last mountain we had climbed was last summer and we are extremly unfit! Towards the summit I think I was taking 20 steps then stopping, 2o steps then stopping. Just short of 3 hours we finally made it to the summit! HOORAY! And wah a spectacular view - fog and more go. You couldn't even see 2 feet in front of you! By now I was cold and sore so we went into the shelter for what was the best cup of hot chocolate I've ever had! What an achievment! Now we were faced with a tough decision - to walk 3 hours back down or catch the trin. After much umming and ahhing we decided on the train for 2 reasons; #1 we were stuffed and #2 the buses back to our hostel stopped around 4:30pm and I did't want to miss it. We slept very well that night and woke up surprisingly good the next day with no sore muscles!

The rest of our time here was spent doing other small walks around th etown. There are so many beautiful woodlands in this area it was amazing walking through them and their Gorges were lovely as well. The weather actaully held out for us and we only had one day of rain and even that wasn't so bad as it stopped and stared. Even got a couple of walks in!

Quick Update

Hi All! We're doing well, we have been to Wales and are now in Scotland. We have been having trouble getting on the net to update but hopefully soon I can write a bit more. We are off to Greece on Monday which we are very excited about as there will be sun!! Love to you all
xoxo

Music! Music! Music!

Last week was an exciting week! On Thursday evening we set off to the Royal Albert Hall to see George Benson (if you have no idea who he is you tube him and you'll soon know at least one of his songs!). Mum and Dad bought us the tickets for our birthdays and although we really had no idea what George Benson sung we wanted to see the Hall and they seemed excited about it so we thought it couldn't be all bad. And it wasn't. The Albert Hall is amazing. It is round and all the seats face the stage and it doesn't really matter where you sit you can still see the stage. It's really quite tall and our seats were right up the back (second to last row!) and although we couldn't see his face properly we could still see everything. We had a horrific comedian come on first to 'warm' us up. He was rubbish! Kept telling jokes that really only appealed to the senior citizens of the audience. Which was most of them. Yes, we were one of the few young people at this concert. Finally he came out and he sung some Nat King Cole songs which were lovely and almost sent us to sleep due to the fact that I had one beer at dinner and also it was the hottest day on record at 32 degrees that day and good old Albert Hall does not have air con so it was quite balmy inside and the perfect temperature and songs to send you off. But, after he sent off his orchestra he started playing his music and that woke us up quick smart! He's such a groover! And Liz and I were both quite surprised in that we ended up know about 4 of his songs!! He had the whole audience up on their feet, including the 70 year old women in the front row! Fantastic!! Thanks Mum and Dad for the tickets!

The following Saturday we had tickets to Wireless which was a concert in Hyde Park. The headlining acts were Dizzie Rascal, Paul Okenfold, Sneaky Sound System and BASEMENT JAXX!! We were so excited to see Basement Jaxx. They're set right at the end just knocked our socks off and we just boogied especially as they played all of our favourite songs. The ticket was worth the money just to see them as they played for over an hour. So good! I didn't like Dizzie Rascal but Paul Okenfold was good and Sneaky just rocked their tent as most of us there were Aussies and Kiwis and everybody danced and jumped around for their whole set. So. Much. Fun.

Timothy, Liz's brother arrived last Friday. He is taking over Liz's job as a Manny and Liz has been showing him the ropes. We've gone out and done some London things with him, most importantly, Hampstead Crepes mmmmmm delicious. This weekend we are off to Platform 9 3/4 in preparation for the new Harry Potter, which we have already booked tickets for. Oh, just such a busy last week!!

London Days Out!

Last weekend was jam packed with all things to do with London. Saturday was an early start as we were heading into Leicester Square for 'West End Live' (a free event), unfortunately our bus was running a little behind schedule so we didn't make it there until half an hour after the start, which seemed on the bus not such an issue. But upon arriving at the Square we were to find 2 giant lines of people waiting to get in. Bugger. Luckily, Emme and Kit were also late, unfortunately thought, Chris and Kat and 2 friends of theirs had been a wee bit smarter and had arrived early and were already in! However our line up (45 mins!) was fine as there were screens all around and we could still see and hear what was going on inside. And I can hear you saying, Nicky what is West End Live? Well my dear friends, it is where some of the musicals in West End get up on stage and sing a few songs from their wonderful productions and us, the public who are too poor to go and see them all, can feel like we're not missing out. Some were a little disappointing due to their lack of costume and song choices (Sister Act) and others were fab (Jersey Boys, Thriller). All the good ones finished by 1pm and so we all left and headed off for lunch where afterwards we hit up the National Portrait Gallery (one of my last things to tick off my London List) and I finally got to see the portraits of the Tudors whom I have been reading up on since being over here, such a scandalous bunch they were! We did head back to the West End Stage to see the London Men's Gay Choir, the biggest in Europe for an entertaining 3omins. We also got to see Stomp which was freakin' awesome...I want to be like them, they're so buff!

This then brings me to the next adventure of the day, catching up with Kimmy and Emme with quite a few pints and £1 burgers. Could you ask for a better end to a day?? Kimmy had been travelling around Europe for the last 6 weeks so we had lots to catch up on. We all left that evening for our night trains before they shut suitable tipsy. Well I was anyway!

Sunday we were up early again to meet Kimmy in the city for a full day of sightseeing! Kimmy had already seen most of it when she had arrived at the beginning of her 6 week trip but the one thing she hadn't done in which I needed a partner in crime for....the London Eye! The line up was huge but it moved quite quickly. Liz left us in the hope that she had 3 hours of freedom but not so! We had lined up, got our tickets, lined up again and went for our flight in just over an hour! I can't say that it was the most exciting thing that I have done in London, it moves quite slowly and there are about 15 other people in your capsule so you don't get a perfect view the whole time. But we had a lovely clear day so we got to see everything and as much as all cities look the same from up high, it was still fantastic to be up there.

We caught back up with Lizzie and decided our next stop was Harrods where our highlight was the luxury toilets (that's right, luxury! and not up to Kimmy's standards at all, hehe) and Oxford St. Since it was a nice day, we walked to both places. It was quite a walk as we went past Buckingham Palace and though Hyde Park. This was much preferable to the stinky, dirty, old tubes. By the time we finished we were buggered and stopped in at a pub for a roast dinner. Delish! Another great end to a fabulous day. Thanks Kimmy!!

Punting in Oxford

One dreary Sunday morning Em, Kit, Liz and I left London and set off for Oxford. Our first stop (well mine and Liz's) was a freshly brewed coffee before boarding our train and Kit being so lovely and organised had bought the paper to be divided up among us for the short train trip, the sport pages of course being the most sort after! Oxford as most of you know is a University town and is made up of lots of different colleges and we were so lucky as to have our very own personal guide of the town as Kit had gone to Oxford for his studies.

The main event for coming to Oxford though was to go punting. This is a boat which is kind of like a canoe cross gondola and it has a huge long metal pole - the punt - which you use to push and steer you through the canals. This was so much fun! Kit of course took the pole first to give us all a lesson on how to punt then it was Emme's turn, she did a pretty fine job and managed to only run us into a few trees. I had a go and my forte was not running into trees but into the banks of the canal, but I have to say with the pole being more than twice my height I think I did a pretty good job. Liz had the crucial job of actually stopping Em and I from crashing more than we did by using the oar in the boat to guide the boat...I dare say, without her help Em and I may of had more run ins or worse, ended up in the canal!! And we actually had beautiful weather there, as I mentioned at the beginning, it was a miserable rainy day in London and the same had been predicted for Oxford but as luck would have it, the clouds were left behind and we actually got quite a fair bit of sun, especially for our punting expedition which was lovely as we were able to relax in the sun while Kit did all the hard work of moving us around the canal :)

We also managed to get a squiz inside one of the colleges as Kit showed us around his. They are so nice.My favourite are the lush green lawns that they all have, it made me want to go to sleep on them (unfortunately it had rained that morning and instead of being just soft and inviting they would have been cold and squelchy). And get this, at Oxford you are tutored on a one on one basis or sometimes two on one. No wonder they produce such smart cookies, unlike good ol' QUT and UQ with a twenty five to one ratio!!

The rest of the day was spent wandering around, having lunch and coming across a boost juice which made our day, especially Em's who could finally show Kit what a real smoothie was supposed to taste like!! haha All in all a great day out with great mates and some sunshine.

I love the North!!

This little trip has to be one of my favourites since being over here. We only went away for 4 days but it was to the most loveliest places. We first took a long bus ride (5.5hrs) to Liverpool where after a friendly chat with the hostel chick we were off to The Beatles Experience!! I was super excited about this and rightly so, it was a great museum with so much info on the band. By the end of it we both had an overload and probably really couldn't tell you what we had just read. So to digest it all we sat down with a coffee while I contemplated which Beatles memorabilia I was going to purchase from the shop! I think I have chosen well and only spent a mini fortune instead of an actual fortune...lucky Liz was there to help me see sense.

After a look around the city, which is just beautiful, as everything is shiny and new as they were Cultural Capital of Europe last year and had a huge revamp. Albert Dock was really nice and we were quite bummed that we only had 24 hours here. That night we went to a pub and watch Liverpool play Chelsea, was really great as all the locals were there in their Liverpool jerseys yelling and hugging everytime they scored. Unfortunately Liverpool lost by 1 goal. No one was happy then. But I have officially declared Liverpool as my favourite city and I think I will even by a I heart Liverpool mug.

The next morning we set off to the train station to head to The Lakes District. It was a short but scenic trip and I was reminded again how much I love trains in comparison to the evil buses to travel. The Lakes is actually made up of 10 or so lakes with little towns next to them. Our little town was Windermere where the biggest lake of them all lives. It was adorable. We stayed in a backpackers which was nice but with very uncomfortable beds. And as soon as we had dropped our stuff off we went straight to the tourist office to get some directions for some of the many walks in our area. We did a short walk to one of the summits, it was classed as a 'C' grade walk so it was really easy. The views were brilliant but the wind was so strong I felt like I was going to go flying off!

Over the next 2 days we did 2 more walks one which was a 'B' walk, now I looked at the 'A' walks and decided against them since they encouraged strongly for you to use a compass, since we didn't have one and I don't know how to read one if my life depended on it we thought it best to stick with the lower grades! What I loved about these walks was that you actually went through peoples farms, climbed over rock walls and past about a million sheep. It was fantastic!! We did have to learn new terminology where a 'cairn' means a pile of rocks, a 'stile' is a wooden or rock ladder over a fence and a few others which I won't bore you with!

We also managed to spend a few lazy moments by Lake Windermere which was just lovely and wandered through the both Windermere and Bowness-on-Windermere, which is the town right beside the lake. Had some great food, relaxed and was the perfect way to finish up our holidays.

The only bad thing to happen the whole trip really was coming back down to London, we had to change change 3 times just to get to Liverpool. At one change we were on a train that went all the way to London and arrived at 5pm. Our bus out of Liverpool only left at 4pm and we were looking at another 5 hours til we hit home. We decided to enquire on how much a ticket would be on this super fast train.....65 quid. Each. You can safely assume that decided that the bus was the best option for us!!

Ireland

With our tiny amount of luggage due to the restrictions of the wonderfully cheap flight by Ryan Air we set off for Dublin on a lovely Sunday. We got there kind of late in the afternoon but had just enough time to dump our stuff and go for a quick look around the city. We managed to see Trinity College, Dublin Castle and the main Cathedral, all very lovely to look at. We also went into the Temple Bar area and decided it would be nice to sit down with a beer/cider and listen to some traditional music. This was going well until I went to buy the drinks...13.20 euros for a pint of light beer and an alcopop. Holy shit!! So it's safe to say we only had one drink each. And yes, the music was good!

Our tour left bright and early on Monday morning, we were to set off on the 6 day all Ireland tour with 49 others and a tour guide....hmmm not too impressed with the 51 seated bus since we were under the impression most tours were only about 30 people, and the fact that half of the bus were rich gap year kids (18 year olds who take a year off after year 12 and become a teachers aide at a school exactly the same as the one they just left...hmm what a new learning experience) but this aside we headed off to our first sight seeing attraction with only 3 hours on a bus to get there.....but onto what we saw. Now I could bore you all with a day by day outline on what we did but instead I'm just going to give you the highlights in dot points as they are practical and easy to read :)

• Blarney Castle - no I didn't kiss the stone...bloody disgusting if you ask me and I definitely don't need the gift of the gab which is apparently what it gives you HA!
• Saw Inch Beach where Coldplays 'Yellow' clip was filmed just for all you music fans out there, it's a beach.
  
• Stopped in Annascual a small town with not much in it except the explorer Tom Crean's pub for the night
  
• Followed the coast line to Dingle which is a small but cute fishing village where due to the rain there was not much to do except have lunch and it is here that we had the NICEST fish since being over here
• Drove around the Ring of Kerry - not all of it since it is 192km long but what we saw of it was pretty through all the rain and mist of course
• Stayed the night in Killarney - due to the weather and the lateness of our arrival we didn't see much of it. Due to the shit organisation (lack there of actually) of our tour guide Liz and I were separated for the night, we weren't even on the same level! We only just survived....
• Crossed the Shannon River, the longest on in Ireland and the UK at a whopping 300km...can you believe it?!
• Cliffs of Moher - one of my favourites. These cliffs were amazing and we had such a beautiful day that we had our picnic lunch on the top of them
• Burren Mountains - a bit of an odd thing really, it's just this huge space of land covered in limestone rock but was such a cool thing to see, I think this was one of Liz's favourites.
• Galway was next - super cool town, we were actually really disappointed that we didn't have more time there. Listen to a fantastic local Irish band and had THE best Irish stew ever
• Derry was really cool, again we got in late and didn't get to see much but we had a walking tour in the morning and was shown the areas during the Troubles and found out some really interesting stuff. Got to see some of the murals that had been painted...amazing but strange at the same time
• Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge - we crossed. Not so scary at all really especially when you have a lovely calm day with only a sprinkle of rain! Beautiful walk down to the bridge though
• Giants Causeway - fantastic on our top 5 or Ireland. The Myth that goes with the rocks is so great that there is no way the scientific reason for their formation can be true....it just can't be
• Belfast - this is such a beautiful place, the people were so friendly and it just had a really great feel to it. We went on a black cab tour where you are taken to both the east and west sides and are told stories of all the troubles and taken to all the murals. Amazing, it's hard to believe that such a lovely city had such a horrible past...what is amazing though is that even though they're largely at peace, the wall that separates the 2 communities still exist and the gates are still closed at night times due to not being able to trust each other.
• Well this isn't really a highlight, especially not for Liz but I thought I'd put it in...we visited the Guinness Storehouse. Yeah, beer making is not that interesting but I got my free beer and that was that.

So there you have it. The main highlights. We really enjoyed Ireland but were quite disappointed by the tour.....it was lucky our guide (although disorganised) was really entertaining and knew her stuff about everywhere we went and made the long boring bus rides passable. Our accommodation was shit to say the least. Especially in Belfast where 22 of our bus got shafted to another hostel where we were put in a room, the same room, which was in an old building out the back of the actually hostel with no showers and no hot water. There was toilets but that was about it...safe to say we didn't enjoy that at all. It would be great to go back there with a car and visit all the places we didn't really have much time in and just take things at a slower pace..but that would take time and a fair amount of cash due to Ireland being so bloody expensive (well the Republic is the North is cheap as chips!