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!

It's a sauna! It's a sauna! It's a sauna! It's a sauna!

Sorry Merran, I know it's been almost 3 weeks since you left us and there is no good excuse for not writing this earlier, so I hope you like this blog about your stay in London.....

Liz and I had the immense pleasure of having our good friend Merran come and visit us in this fine city they call London. She arrived after a busy trip in California so it was safe to say my first encounter with her was waking her up after school whilst she was napping on our super small comfy sofa bed :) Our first trip out was of course, to a local pub where we had good old English food, pies, mash, peas and a pint.

We had a fun filled packed weekend up ahead. On Friday evening we had a few drinks and headed into Heaven which is one of the bigger gay night clubs in London. Of course we went there early and with vouchers so we didn't have to pay the ridiculous cover charge. It was an evening of drinking and 80's dancing with Merran being on the prowl but alas like The Beat, the males out numbered the women. But at the end of our evening we had a really fun hour long bus ride all the way home...it was super. NOT although Merran and I did manage to amuse ourselves.

Safe to say Saturday was quite slow and I do believe we only left the house to find food....but that geared us up for sunday. FOOTBALL DAY! We had bought tickets to see a Premier League match between West Ham and Manchester City. Turned out our seats weren't the best but regardless we were able to see all of the game AND the a way supporters area. I found it quite amusing to watch the banter between the two crouds of supporters. It's all so serious! The game itself was ok, not very exciting though with loads of dives, but West Ham did eventually score in the second half to win the game. After that we headed straight to a pub in Camden for some food and more beers. Which ended up with Merran and I quite tipsy. Lucky I had Monday off!!

Monday Merran and I had decided to pack it with loads of touristy stuff, the Tower of London was first on the list, followed by The British Museum followed by a trip to the theatre to meet Liz and Emme and finally see Wicked! It was a super fantastic day and I was so buggered by the end of it. My favourite of the day was the Tower, it was so surreal to stand in the exact same spots as Kings and Queens from the past...way cool. The Royal Jewels were pretty impressive too, as was the travelator that takes you past the jewels, we rode it 3 times just to make sure we got a good look at jewels in all their glory.

We waved off Merran bight an early Tuesday morning as she had to head to Heathrow to catch her plane to take her back to the wonderful land of Oz and begin her festivities at the Sydney Mardi Gras. I contemplated squeezing myself into her suitcase but it all seemed too much effort that early in the morning....

Leeds and York

With a little bit of time off Liz and I decided to head up north for a few days rather than stick around London. Our choice was Leeds and York. Well actually it was my choice as Liz has seen most of this stuff already. The main reason for choosing these areas are as they are in Yorkshire, where they film the tv series Heartbeat. It just looks so nice on tv!! But alas, the areas that we were in were not where they film the show but further north in Yorkshire in an area called the Moors...however after that little bit of a disappointment I was still able to have a brilliant time.

Our first stop Leeds was really nice, it reminded me of Brisbane where everyone is nice and the pace is alot slower. There really wasn't much to do in Leeds as it was mostly filled with shops. I swear we saw 5 different shopping centres plus the main shopping mall area. Crazy! There were lots of buskers though in the mall which I really liked listening to. One in particular stood out and I'll include a picture as it was just awesome! This guys gets his dog Bess to sing certain parts of the song by either blowing on his harmonica or saying the word love. Awwww :) We also stumbled across these markets towards the edge of the city and they were filled with everything you could imagine, from fresh fruit and meat to gladwrapped teles and VCRs...haha loved it!


We caught a local bus to York on Sunday afternoon and fell in love with York as soon as I saw it. It is one of the oldest cities in the UK being built in AD71. Holy! What I really liked was the walls which still circle the town. We were able to walk all the way around the city on them and had tea in one of the gates, Walmgate which was just fab. York is also home to the Minster which is the largest Gothic Cathedral in the Northern Europe, it is awesome! We spent most of our time just wandering around all the small streets and looking in all the cute shops. York is also apparently one of the most haunted cities and so with this in mind we decided it would be best to go on a Ghost Walk tour at night. Ha! Actually it wasn't at all scary but it was really cool to listen to all the strange happenings that go on in the city. We even went and had lunch at the oldest pub built in 1503 and whilst deciding what you'd like to eat you also can read about about all the ghosts that live in the pub! Cracking. But what would a visit to one of the oldest places in the north be without an afternoon break of scones, jam, fresh cream and a cup of tea.

Snow!

Well, I know it was 2 weeks ago but I thought it best to write a bit about our snow experience here in London. It was so much fun!! What was even better was that we had been at the pub with Emme Sunday afternoon (£3 pound cocktails...how could we leave?!) and both Liz and I were not looking forward to the prospect of work on the Monday but it was our lucky day as there was no work due to the amount of snow fallen. Nice!! haha

We made snow angels and a wee little snowman. I feel ashamed of ours after I saw Emme's efforts with her gianormous snowman but in my defence, my boots were completely wet and my socks were soaked through so a small one was all I could manage. What a sook!!! But I did enjoy playing in it...it is just so pretty.

School that week was awesome...Monday and Tuesday off, Wednesday was a play in the snow day, Thursday I actually had to teach and Friday it snowed again quite heavily. So even though I made it to school before the snow fell, I still only had half a class where we went and played in the snow and then most of my class left at lunch leaving me with 4 children all afternoon. Sweet!

Blasts from the Pasts - January 2009

We had a lovely catch up with 2 old friends of mine from good Ol' Wello Point. Sally and Beth came to London after travelling around for a short stop over and I was lucky enough to have them squeeze me in!

Ice-skating at Sommerset House

We have ended our weekend on a high note. By heading to the open air ice-skating rink at Sommerset House. It was beautiful. Now I know ice-skating itself is not so beautiful...well not when your watching Liz and I attempt to skate gracefully around and around. But the rink is in the middle of the courtyard at Sommerset House and there is these lovely blue and green lights that made the ice glow and was therefore beautiful. What wasn't beautiful was the 150 other people we had to share the rink with...luckily we escaped without any collisions and we came off the ice after the hour without being knocked down OR falling down ourselves. HOORAY!