Christmas - German style

Things are really cooling off in London and last weekend we visited Bremen in northern Germany in search of some of Europe's famous Christmas markets. We had a rather large group of 8 this time flying into Bremen on Friday night and wasted no time in locating some delicious late night German sausage. Some of us ate 8 sausages (including one 1/2 metre in length) in the less than 48 hours that we were in Germany. We wandered the markets for the 2 days eating everything in sight browsing other stalls and consuming large amounts of very warming Gluhwein (German mulled wine) and also sampling a few of the famous German beers.

Bremen seems like a nice quiet town with not many claims to fame other than being the home of the world famous Becks beer. A few locals that we spoke to were quite suprised that we travelled just to Bremen, but I would definitely recommend it for a nice friendly town and excellent Christmas markets. Anyway - as I write this it is only 5 days until we return to Brisbane for a few weeks Christmas festivities..bring on the heat - Morgan

Check out our Bremen Christmas markets photos here

We wandered the desert for 12 days..

Hi folks, Morgan here reporting on our 12 day Egyptian adventure that we went on recently. This has been the longest holiday that Esther and I have had since we have been married (2 years on the 5th Nov) and it was possibly the most memorable holiday I have ever been on.

We went on a geckos tour called the Nile Valley & Western Desert if you are looking for a relaxing tour with a lot of lazing around, I would not recommend this tour, it was very full on with quite a few early starts as early as 3:30am. (The Egyptians are very concerned with safety and apparently people that want to kill you can't be bothered to get up early). Our tour started in Cairo with 14 people where we did the mandatory things like Pyramids, Sphynx, Egyptian museum etc.. we then caught an overnight train to Aswan where we visited one of my highlights, Abu Simbel, and then cruised down the Nile on some sort of riverboat for a few days to Luxor where we went on a dawn hot-air balloon ride and then rode donkeys into the Valley of the kings.

We then farewelled the rest of our group as they headed back to Cairo to end their tour and Esther and I and another couple got in a 4x4 and headed for the desert with 2 arabic speaking Bedouin guides and a new egyptian guide (who basically translated between us and the crazy desert people). We spent the next 5 days on this "desert safari" where we basically drove around the Western desert stopping at various sights and Oases all the way back up to Cairo. On this final part of our trip we slept 3 nights under the stars in various deserts and spent one night in some strange mud huts in a Bedouin camp. I have to say it is quite an amazing experience sitting around a campfire with absolutely nothing for 100's of kilometers in any direction - the stars are spectacular.

The trip was quite an experience. One thing that surprised me is how well preserved a lot of the temples and various buildings are in Egypt. I also didn't realise how poor Egypt is, over 60% of people live below the poverty line which is quite confronting when traveling around.

Some of my highlights were, The Tutankhamen exhibit in the Egyptian museum, the pyramids, the sphynx, riding donkeys into the valley of the kings, riding camels to our second desert camp, a dawn hot air balloon ride over Luxor, Abu Simbel, visiting early 2nd century Christian tombs, and seeing the preserved mummies of many Pharaohs including Ramses II and Tutankhamen was quite a surreal experience to see the preserved bodies of people who were around as long as 2,000 years before Christ!.

Anyway - I have said enough, check out some of the pics

bar-ce-lo-na!

Barcelona was a bit of a surprise for me - I have only heard good things so I had pretty high expectations! I loved all the things to see and do in Barcelona and the weather reminded me of home which was a nice change to the cold weather we've already started having here in London. I was surprised at how big Barcelona was and that it was rather dirty & smelly in a lot of places (reminded us of Bangkok), but probably the worst thing was that there were SO MANY tourists!! Oh well, I guess we contributed to that too ;) I was surprised at how little Spanish I actually recognised - I'd never even heard the Spanish word for hello before which seemed odd.

Over the 3 days we spent there we visited a lot of Gaudi stuff which I really quite liked - not all of it, but most of it was really cool. We walked to Park Güell which is a big park like 17ha or something which this Guell guy got Gaudi to design. It has heaps of awesome stuff with mosaics which I absolutely love. I just read that he uses the practice of trencadis tiling (using waste tiles to clad buildings), and that he actually worked with another architect, Jujol, whereby Gaudi would do the general design and Jujol would develop this further, sourcing new tiles and creating ceramic tiles etc. Needless to say I bought heaps of postcards and a Gaudi book :) A lot of Gaudi's designs actually mimick those found in nature which was really interesting, including tree tops, tree trunks, shells and ocean waves.

Another highlight was visiting Camp Nou which is the Barcelona football team's home ground. That was pretty cool as although not a premier league team, I have picked this team as my team (morgan's is tottenham), and also I've never done a stadium tour before and it was cool to see they have their own press room and broadcasting room for the Barcelona football TV channel. One thing I did like was the fact that the change rooms have a spa over which there's a whiteboard where they discuss the game plan... talk about preparing for a game in style!

We did see a lot of other things in Barcelona - we walked heaps; in fact, so much that morgan swore he had a broken foot at the end of the second day! After checking in to our "hotel" we went for a walk and the first thing I saw.... was a rat! The only other rat I saw was a dead one and in the most bizzarest of places too - washed up on the beach!?? Very strange.

We wandered around Port Vell on our first night, grabbing some tapas for dinner at 1am. Far out, I have never really been a fan of calamari... that is, until now. Oh my goodness, they really do the best calamari - so fresh and tasty - I shall have to learn to do this myself I think ;) We checked out the beaches and back streets in the Barceloneta area and enjoyed a tapas meal at an authentic local restaurant where morgan had a great time trying to order and pay for things which involved a lot of gesturing, taking waiters outside to point at the menu on the wall, and all 5 of the waiters trying to explain how much money he had to pay. We stumbled upon an extremely busy local fresh produce market which I later read was the infamous Mercat de La Boqueria. It was a bit crowded for my liking, but very interesting and we enjoyed a nice fruit salad for breakfast. Walking up the Las Ramblas was extremely overcrowded, but I did enjoy seeing some rabbits and what we think were small Korean squirrels that I wanted to take home!

Apart from the sites, we also enjoyed sampling all the food delights - lots of tapas, paella (I definitely prefer the Italian risottos), my favourite drink definitely being the Lemon Damm which seems to be a mix of their Estrella Damm beer and Lemon Soda = delish! For some reason I hadn't expected the tapas to be so much seafood, and I was extremely excited to see pictures on the menu of some tasty-looking big prawn-like creatures, and proceeded to try and order these but for some to-this-day-unexplainable reason, I ended up ordering cuttlefish?? So needless to say I was surprised when what should have been my prawns turned out to be a whole cuttlefish complete with disgusting little tentacle things. Morgan then issued the ultimatum saying that I wasn't allowed to order prawns unless I ate the cuttlefish - ugh! We got through it and then got the prawns - they were SO delicious! just as well, as when we got the bill it turned out that the prawns doubled the bill of our whole meal making it our most expensive meal of the trip!... oh well, it WAS our last meal :)

Barcelona is definitely somewhere I could go again as I'd like to go inside the Casa Battlo and apparently they found a whole city underground that would be interesting to see. I think my favourite thing I saw was the Palau de la Musica Catalana which is a concert hall full of Modernista style architecture - lots of flowers decorating the roof, lots of tiling everywhere on the ceiling and on columns, and most importantly - lots of colour! Unfortunately no photography was allowed so we resorted to buying postcards. We actually took the tour in Spanish as there were no more English tours for the day and we were leaving that day, so we didn't actually learn much! The tour wasn't very good either (and not just cos we didn't understand it!) but it involved just sitting in the concert hall and not being able to go walking and exploring :( Apart from this, I would definitely recommend a visit there anyway!

Click here to see some photos. - esther :)

We went and visited the Queen

Hi folks, a quick update to tell about our trip to Buckingham Palace last weekend. We have been to the palace a few times before (the official residence of the Queen) but you are not allowed inside. Apparently the State rooms are opened up for a few weeks every summer. This kind of event seems to be very popular with both the British and tourists because the place was absolutely packed. We were not allowed to take any photos inside - but needless to say the rooms were fairly decent. One thing that was kinda interesting was that the palace has taken many forms and was initially just a nice house called Buckingham House.

Other than that - generally staying out of trouble. Our next trip will be to Barcelona, Spain in a few weeks which will hopefully be a bit warmer as it is starting to cool off in the last week (not too bad though) - morgan

a nice drive around south-west england

On the weekend, Morgan and I hired a car and went for a drive around Devon and Cornwall - absolutely beautiful! The weather was nice and sunny for our drive down (we saw chickens and sheep roaming free in the same paddock!) and we had our first stop at the beach in Torbay. Quite a nice spot with a long row of beach houses and lots of people obviously just come down and spend the whole day relaxing by the beach. Morgan was determined to be able to say that he's swum in English waters, and was quite surprised to find that it was actually not that cold! Following the road south we stumbled upon Brixham with nice views over the water and a quaint little village with a cute harbour.
Back on the road, our next stop was to find and eat the famed lasagne that morgan's family had been raving about ever since their trip down south. We got a bit lost driving around Plymouth, and after finding the place, finding a park and walking there, we discovered that not only was the pub closed but that it also was a JD Wetherspoons pub - ie a chain, one of which we have down the road at hammersmith!
By this time it was starting to get dark and continued our drive to Fowey and to find a place to sleep. We found a sign to a YHA Hostel and followed it down a loooong dark windy road which seemed to take us to the middle of nowhere. About 2km in we finally reached a house, and a bit scared, we walked in to be greeted by a friendly guy who informed us that we could have a whole dorm room to ourselves for only 15pounds each - done. I'd seen a sign advertising good food at a pub down the road so we followed the road into Golant and just before rounding a corner saw the sign "water may cover road at high tide", then rounded the corner and indeed the water had covered half the road and there were ducks happily swimming around the dinghys that had floated up onto the road! We ate at the pub - morgan ordered me a pint of prawns?! and I got a pint overflowing with prawns.. and nothing else.. not too impressed ;)

Sunday we awoke to the most beautiful view from our dorm window - I could've stayed there forever. We both felt like we'd woken up at the farm in chinchilla and were a bit sad to leave - was definitely the highlight of the trip for me :) We attempted to take photos & video but it was so cold our lenses kept fogging up. Fortunately some of the photos turned out okay so you'll have to check them out. We then drove into the "Ancient Town and Port of Fowey" (pronounced Foy), and went for a wander. I'd recommend everyone go check out this area; Fowey is another quaint little village with a natural harbour and is a great place for a wander around.
A bit of an overcast day but we ventured onwards to Lizard Point which is the most southerly point in England. We had some of Kelly's cornish ice-cream (which I was excited to find in Tesco's today!) and walked along the extremely windy coastline. From here we then decided to skip going to England's most western point and headed straight up to Newquay, home of the surfing beaches. Almost like my trip to the famous Bells Beach in Victoria which was flat, Fistral beach wasn't much better, but there were plenty of people out in what I can only imagine was freezing cold water. I get the feeling that surfing here is definitely not so much an image thing as in Aus, since only the dedicated people would go out in that kind of weather! We spent the night here in Newquay after finding some nice steaks for tea (beef for me, wild boar for morgan!).

The next morning we had a quick stop at the Bedruthan Steps and enjoyed the drive along the coastline up to another historic village called Clovelly. The thing that I love about the English coastline is how much of it remains untouched. There are plenty of sheep grazing on pastures that go right up to the cliff lines, something I can't say I've ever seen in Aus. Clovelly village was interesting but after being to Fowey the previous day it wasn't that exciting; however I did enjoy some clotted cream with my tea and scones :)
Homeward-bound we detoured through Dartmoor which I hope to come back and visit as all we had time for was to stop at Postbridge and grab a map for next time. It was quite cold in Dartmoor - 10 degrees the guy said, apparently it had been 20 previous days. There were lots of sheep roaming freely around the roads and amongst some awesome landscapes that I absolutely loved!
On the way home I had my first taste of English KFC - terrible! They don't even do the seasoned chips - talk about missing out big time! There's also a cool overpass towards the west end of the M4 where the cows cross from one side to the other which was quite funny to see ;)
All in all, we had a great trip and hope to get back down to Fowey and Dartmoor sometime in the future - click here for photos.... esther :)

Oslo City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty!

Hi there folks, Mørgan here reporting on our long weekend in Oslo, Norway. It was the first trip Esther and I have been on by ourselves and we certainly made the most of our time. We had to get up at 2am on Saturday morning and only got back home at 2am on Tuesday morning.. to get up for work a few hours later!

All these crazy times were caused by the fact that we got some very cheap 1pence flights one way from RyanAir which then dropped us in Thorp (not Oslo) which is 1hr 40mins coach ride away.. but after a few hiccups along the way we made it to Oslo by eary Saturday afternoon to some beautiful warm weather and a city with a really happy, friendly feel to it.

I would have to say that Norway is possibly the most beautiful place I have been, we definitely have plans to come back. I also found Oslo to be a very low key capital city.. it feels even smaller than Brisbane, and its not touristy at all, there are no tourist/souvenir shops to be found. We purchased a thing called a Oslo Pass which gives us free entry virtually anywhere and free use any transport for 48hours.. it was great! So we got upto all sorts of things in the few days we were there, visiting the castle which overlooks Oslo harbor, cruising the Oslo Fjord, the Viking ship museum, a strange cultural village (where a nice girl served us "Blood Pancakes with cloudberry jam", was actually quite nice), walking around their "beaches", visiting a few other strange museums, eating dinner on the harbor, taking a train into the mountains to check out the famous Ski jump go for a wander through the alpine forest hunting for Reindeer and Elk (didn't see any). I did have some Elk for lunch on the last day though.hehe!

All in all a great long weekend.. Coming up, we might be visiting Belgium, then Dublin, Egypt and Bremen (Germany) before we visit Brisbane for Christmas!! wooo, i hope I can handle the heat

Don't forget the photos

Working for the Swiss and we're off to the football

Hi folks, Morgan here with a quick update just to assure everyone that we're still alive. Since our trip to Scotland etc..we farewelled my parents & eliza and have just recently welcomed Luke and Renee Wolfik to our house of goodtimes for a few weeks. Recently on the work front I have started on a new project for a big client who have offices in Pfaffikon SZ (a tax haven on Lake Zurich) in Switzerland. I have had one trip out there already and will probably have a few more trips out there before I am done. I love Switzerland. When I was there it was quite hot (about 35 degrees) and everyone in town was gathered around the lake.. Its so green and the towns have a small country town feel.. I even saw a cow with a bell on its neck..haha

In other news we are very fortunate to be off to Wembley stadium this Sunday to see Manchester United take on Chelsea in the Charity Shield. Normally there would be no way we could get these tickets but a friend of ours' brother works for Manchester United and so has managed to get us some employee's tickets! not bad

So, thats all I have time for now, stay tuned for some more stories from the road.. next stop will be Oslo in Norway for a long weekend in a few weeks.. Should be an interesting one, I have no idea what to expect. Morgan

Scotland: the land of beautiful scenery...

I had been looking forward to our 5 day driving trip (with Morgan's family) up to and around Scotland, and I was not left disappointed - it was absolutely, overwhelmingly, amazingly beautiful! Everything was SO GREEN. Our trip basically saw us drive up to Edinburgh for the first night, then drive up through the Highlands to Inverness, down the Loch Ness and just over the bridge to the Isle of Skye to stay in the tiny village of Kyleakin for the second night. The third day was spent driving around the Isle of Skye - 2 hours of which Tammy, Greg, Eliza and I were left stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with no phone reception (in an absolutely amazing place though!) whilst Morgan played good samaritan to some guy whose car had 2 busted tyres... everything is shut on a Sunday so they had to drive back to the mainland. After seeing most of the island we then left and drove down to Fort William where we spent night number 3. Fourth day we wandered down the west coast, through Glasgow, detoured off to find Hadrian's Wall (the drive there was through some of the most quaint and quiet little villages - so peaceful and delightful!), and then made our way to Lake Windermere for our last night in comfort in a B&B (all other nights were spent in hostels, the state of which declined from night-to-night). And finally, the fifth day we drove around the Lakes District some more and headed on back home with a quick detour into Birmingham to Cadbury World only to find it shut 1/2 hour before we arrived; however, the shop was still open so we stocked up on cadbury delights and drove home.

It was somewhat funny in that the fourth day of driving (down the west coast of Scotland) was planned to be our scenic part of the trip; however, the most amazing scenery was definitely seen beforehand. I was so overwhelmed with the landscapes that I would constantly be wanting to stop and take photos and video footage and regretted that I hadn't been able to film the entire journey, or take more photos. Unfortunately the roads don't really cater for people wanting to stop and take photos (tiny, narrow, windy roads) so we didn't get enough photos for my liking. I think I shall have to find a really good coffee table book of Scotland and the Lakes District to make myself happy! My favourite landscapes (in order) are these: driving from the bottom of the Loch Ness west to the Isle of Skye; driving around the Isle of Skye; driving through the Lakes District; driving down the west coast of Scotland; driving through the Highlands. The Highlands were far from what I expected too - I thought the enormity of the hills I saw driving out to the Isle of Skye covered in green grass would be what I would see in the Highlands. But the Highlands just seem to be exactly that "higher land" and there are lots of big hills, but with no trees or any green. Quite amazing really just how sparse it all is out there and how the landscapes differ throughout the country.

Other things of note:
- we shall have to revisit Edinburgh sometime as all we did was a really quick walk around the new side of town and down the Royal Mile in the old side of town. The old side of town is absolutely stunning. It's what I expected Paris to look like actually.
- There are heaps of cool castles all over the place - we stopped at quite a few and just wandered around and took photos. I really wanted to stay in one but they're pretty expensive :(
- We also saw 2 lots of cygnets (baby swans are so much cuter than adult ones!), highland cattle, belted cows, and various varieties of sheep (so many sheep, I thought I was in NZ!) - white with black heads, grey with white heads, brown sheep, normal white sheep; but unfortunately I didn't get to see any otters.
- the great thing about travelling in "summer" over here is that you get lots of daylight in a day which meant although we drove about 6-7 hours each day we still got to stop and see a lot!

All in all, I had an amazing time, and if you're into scenery like me, then I'd definitely recommend driving around the western side of Scotland!!
- esther :)

ps. we had only one decent CD, that was (fittingly) Roddy Woomble singing about Scotland, that we had on repeat throughout those 5 days - needless to say we won't be listening to it again anytime soon!


... photos here ...

we've been busy!

hi all, thought I'd give a bit of an update on the other things we've been up to recently. The weekend after Paris, we went to what is now my most favourite live concert ever - MUSE AT WEMBLEY!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was soooo good! We booked only a week before (after I managed to convince morgan we could go) and so got seated tickets, but they were just to the right of the stage and raised so we got a great view, without losing our spot :) [btw, the handdryers in the toilets are crazy!] They played for ages and then did 2 encores, far out they're awesome! If you haven't heard them yet... go listen to them! Matt even played a grand piano with a transparent lid (ando - the drumkit was see-through too!)

Also that weekend, on being shown a review in TNT mag, larissa and I went to covent garden and got our hair cut at Hair by Fairy. Sounds dodgy, and when we went there they were playing loud heavy metal music and all the hair photos on the outside of the shop were of people with dyed pink/green hair and dreadlocks etc... a bit scared, but we went in and about 15 minutes later (and only 13 quid!) we were new women :) Definitely be going back there again.

the next week saw us come to thursday 21st ie aleisha's 21st birthday! I had the day off sick as I was coming down with a cold, and morgan just had a day off, so we took aleisha to the london eye in the morning. Then we walked around piccadilly circus, leicester square and walked to carnaby street. We also found some discount We Will Rock You tickets so we bought those (which we saw later that night...was okay, not too awesome). Then we surprised the Johnston's at the airport and later we all went to Luigi's around the corner (highly recommended) for some delicious Italian pizzas.

The weekend saw us take the Johnston's to the Borough Markets - so much yummy food! We tasted strawberry champagne chocolate truffles, greek yoghurt cheese cake, delicious basil pesto genovese (the real stuff!), dried strawberries and had spanish chorizo burgers. So much good food. Make sure you head here if you're ever in London. Then a walk around the obligatory sights - Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, St James' Park & Buckingham Palace. The great thing about going to the food market & duck pond in the park today was the fact that morgan just bought a crazy 70-200mm zoom lens, so we got some sweet photos with it (which we will post...sometime). He even attracted another crazed photographer with a similar-sized lens who started talking to morgan. After this we took the Johnston's to Holland Park to see the squirrels, and then had some Ethiopian food at a restaurant in shepherd's bush.

The following week saw the arrival of the Heazlewoods, and just last weekend, the sad departure of leishy :( :( :( It was so lovely to have her here. On her last morning we all went out to Chelsea stadium so leish could get some photos for her friend and on our way back this nice old lady said to aleisha "your friend looks like prince harry... except he has red hair I think... and lots of money... (and then turning to morgan) do you have lots of money?" HAHAHAHAHA I laughed for ages ;) Morgan and I also attended a 1st birthday party for Zac (extremely cute baby!) who's the son of a guy called Charles that morgan used to work with, out at Reading. And the day before, Morgan, Leish and I travelled up to Cambridge and wandered around some absolutely stunning colleges. It was so beautiful!

This past week has seen a bit of panic around town what with the terrorist activites and a bit scary how close to home some of it is. Like I get out of work and pick up the daily paper to find out that our tube station at Hammersmith was closed because of a suspect package. And then I read that someone associated with the explosion in Glasgow had been detained back home in Brisbane. And Heathrow airport apparently closed about an hour after aleisha's plane departed from there. In the midst of all this, it's comforting to know that my life is in God's hands and that there is nothing I can do about any of it. So, with that in mind... we're off to Scotland this weekend ;) Driving up there and around the island - we leave tomorrow morning!! So you can look forward to lots of lovely photos :) - esther

Leishy's Birthday Trip to Paris!

A couple weeks ago morgan, myself, steve, larissa and aleisha set off early on saturday morning to catch the eurostar to paris for aleisha's 21st celebration!! After working out where to go on the metro (fortunately we'd had lots of practise with the London tube so it wasn't a real drama), we set of for the hostel in Montmartre. Such a lovely area!! AND it had the best pastry shop just on the corner which provided us great treats for breakfast everyday...all we had to do was master "deux croissant s'il vous plaît".

After finding the hostel, we set out for a walk up the hill to the Sacré-Coeur which was pretty awesome. It's the coolest looking white building right up on the top of the hill overlooking Paris, and from there we headed on down the hill through what I thought were some fairly ordinary and smelly places (reminded me of bangkok) so I was not too impressed. However, then we arrived at the Louvre and surrounding areas which were incredibly impressive!! After resting our feet for a bit (was quite a walk from the Sacré-Coeur to here) we set off walking down the dusty path through the gardens (where I got a dust-thong-tan) and halfway up the Champs Elysees. I really enjoyed that part.

Then onwards to the Eiffel Tower where some guy tried the Gold Ring scam on us, but steve kept saying "no no no" and shaking his head with a smirk on his face, and the guy got really quite angry, yelling french into steve's face and then walking off only to turn around, stare at steve, and then spit at him. HA! what an idiot. You could see everyone he tried it on getting really angry too. Eventually we reached the Eiffel Tower and decided to wait in line for about an hour before getting to go up. I'm glad we did it, cos it was a cool experience. You go up a lift (there were stairs..as if) to the first and second levels at this really weird angle which kinda freaked me out a bit. Then it's a bit annoying cos you have to wait again on the second level before catching a lift right up to the top for some awesome views of everything. I never realised though, that the Eiffel Tower wasn't right in the centre of the city near the Louvre etc which was a bit strange.

Following a short nap in the park, we walked around the southern side of the river in search of some food... I've heard that French food is amazing... we obviously didn't find it. We did try snails though (even aleisha did!) and we all quite liked them funnily enough. We finished off the day with more walking around the Hotel L'Invalides and then catching a tube back to the hostel.

Sunday morning we visited the Louvre = AWESOME! The building it's set in is massive. I really enjoyed looking at everything - only thing is that you'd think being a big tourist attraction they'd have written everything in English as well as French, but only in some rooms did they have cards with English on them, so we couldn't really comprehend what significance most of the things had which was a tad disappointing. But we saw the mandatory things - Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and Napolean's state apartments were so awesome - almost better than Windsor Castle state apartments except that Windsor Castle's are actually used today.

After the Louvre we walked around the 2 islands and visited Notre Dame. I was overjoyed to see that we'd arrived just in time for the free pipe organ recital held every Sunday afternoon, until morgan pointed out that his watch was still set to London time, so in actual fact we'd just missed it by an hour :( But, just as we were about to leave, a sung eucharist started with 2 really good singers with the pipe organ - the guy's voice was SO good... we stayed for a bit ;) Then we wandered over to the other island, had some ice-cream from one of the shops with many flavours where there's a line down the street, and found some dinner. Not much better than the night before, but the people were really quite nice :) Morgan and I then walked home as morgan was sick, whilst steve, riss and leish climbed the Notre Dame and then went and visited all the sites that were lit up at night.

Monday we walked around Montmartre, found the Moulin Rouge, then morgan and I went and climbed the Arc de Triumphe. That was really cool looking from the top as you can see all the roads leading off from the Arc de Triumphe outwards. Then we enjoyed a pleasant walk down the Champs-Élysées and visted the Musée de L’Orangerie where we got to see 8 of Monet's waterlillies where they had 2 rooms, with 4 in each spanning the walls. Needless to say they were massive - and unlike everywhere else, we were actually allowed to take photos of them, so check out our photos.

Some lunch in the Jardins de Tuileries (I had a cold crepe.. not so good) and then back to the islands where we visited the Sainte Chappelle. This is an amazing old chapel with huge stained glass windows that have all the stories from the Bible on them, so we spent about half an hour just gazing around. Of interest, the chapel used to allegedly house the Crown of Thorns, some pieces of the True Cross and a few drops of Christ's blood.

To finish off our time in Paris, we then walked around the Luxembourg Gardens and found a nearby chocolate shop (supposedly the best..hmm), then walked through the Latin Quarter before heading home.

All in all, I don't think I'd go back to Paris anytime soon, but I would like to have a stopover there one night just so I could see it all lit up at night - that would be nice :)

some photos HERE

Time to visit the Bath

Hi there folks. Morgan here reporting on last weekends festivities. On Saturday morning we woke up early, hired a car from nearby Shepherd's Bush and headed west with the white cliffs of Dover in our sights. It took ages to get out of London but once we hit the highway it didn't take long before we were there. We had a look around the town, had lunch and drove up to the castle and the cliffs. Its a very scenic place around there and the cliffs did not disappoint. One funny thing that did happen, was that while we were looking out on the ocean wondering if we could see France, I got a message on my mobile saying "Virgin mobile welcomes you to France" So it must not have been far away at all. We next visited Deal Castle which was a strange round looking castle and had a walk along the beach. This was a very surreal experience as their sand was more like medium rocks and the fog was so thick that you could only see perhaps 10 metres in any direction - the strangest beach I have seen. We took a scenic route home and drove through Canterbury and had a nice dinner at a pub at Faversham.

Next morning we were at it again this time heading north east. We first visited Windsor castle, which I would very much recommend, its not really a castle though its really a fortified town or so our audio-guide said. We had a look around the inside of parts of the castle which was really interesting especially where she entertains guests etc.. and the queen was in the castle that day, this is signified by the flag that they fly over the castle. After lunch we drove to the city of Bath. Its quite a big town, very very old looking. We had a bit of a look around and then headed for the Roman baths, which the Romans built over some naturally occurring hot springs, a very interesting experience - especially when I got in trouble from a person who works their posing for one of Aleisha's photos, I could tell the guy thought it was funny though. Also we drank some water from the hot spring.. absolutely revolting. It tasted like hot meat water. I thought I would never drink water again.. but that only lasted about 1 hour.hehe. Overall an interesting couple of excursions. Just a couple of days now until we head to Paris for 3 days on the Eurostar train..
oui oui! A few photos

life at lochaline street

So, aleisha arrived on tuesday morning which meant I had to get up at 4.30am! It was aleisha's first ever plane flight so I was a bit concerned when she didn't appear for an hour after landing. But then she came out smiling and said that not only did she have a good flight, but that she loved it!!!!??? who loves flying long trips??? crazy girl. She even slept for the first 8 hours of her second leg and woke up to find there was only 4 hours left.... if only we could all be so flight-friendly. Anyway, my new work let me have the day off, so after getting leish settled & freshened up, we headed out to see the sights.

It was a fantastic day - the previous day and week had been overcast and rainy, but tuesday was blue skies and plenty of sun :) I took leish to the tower bridge, followed by the houses of parliament and westminster abbey. Then we had lunch and I took leish to Primark (which she loved!), and then after a quick rest at home we walked up to Holland Park to see some squirrels... which we did :) We had dinner at home and then watched the Champions league final between Liverpool and AC Milan, which AC Milan won. All in all, she's loving it over here and left this morning for Germany to meet with Fran and drive down to Italy until next wednesday.

We were delighted to hear that the Maroons came back from half-time to win the first state of origin which I proudly stated to the 3 other aussies at work - all from Sydney.. however they didn't really care :( Work is going well - this is my second week now. Nice bunch of people and great to work somewhere where the majority of people are actually British and not all aussies and kiwis!! I'm working on a project at a company owned by Sky. Sky have a speak/see/surf offering, and our company does the Sky Talk part of it, so I'm learning all about provisioning of phone services etc. There's 6 Java developers, 1 PL/SQL developer and the system is a mix of Java/Spring MVC/Hibernate and Oracle PL/SQL components, so needless to say us Java devs are pushing to rewrite the PL/SQL components into Java...especially since they're using TDD and it's hard to unit test the non-Java components.

Today Morgan went to the Microsoft UK headquarters to do a presentation in front of all these Microsoft & other companys' technical architects! He was a bit nervous since he's only been using Sharepoint all of 3 months and had to present his issues & solutions with trying to integrate it, but I hear it went well, so I'm proud :) Anyways enough with the technical talk...

That's probably about it for the moment. We've got a long weekend this weekend, so hopefully we'll get up to something fun then :)

Cinque Terre = Fantastico!

Hi there everyone, Morgano here with another update. Last weekend was a long one and we (Alun, Anecia, Esther and I) decided to make the most of it by taking a trip to Italy, in particular to Pisa and the Cinque Terre.
For those of you who haven't heard of the Cinque Terre it is 5 small coastal villages built on steep picturesque cliffs on the north west coast of Italy; from the most northern - (1)Monterosso el Mare, (2)Vernazza, (3)Corniglia, (4)Manarola and (5)Riomaggiore. We flew out of Stansted on Friday evening and arrived in Pisa at around 11pm local time, but still hungry for some Italian cuisine, we found a place in the back streets which was open and were treated to some great Italian food and hospitality - the guy serving us was a champion, he even gave us a garlic pizza on the house.

Next morning it was time to try and figure out the train system in another country. We jumped on a few trains and instead of arriving at our intended village of Manarola(4), the ticket inspector informed us the train wasn't stopping at Manarola and so we found ourselves at the most northern village of Monterosso el Mare (with ticket fine in hand!). We checked out the scenery on the beach side of the village and then caught the train to Manarola. A very very lovely spot. We arrived and our accommodation which was right at the top of the hill, was closed, so we had some lunch and then ascended the mountain again to check in. We stayed in a nice 2 storey villa with a great view of from the top of the village and the coastline. That afternoon we walked along the famous Via del'Amore (lover's walk) to Riomaggiore(5). We checked this place out, had some evening drinks overlooking the coastline whilst the sun set (which is quite late.. about 8pm) and then had some nice Italian fish at La Lanterna, a highly recommended seafood restaurant, and then we walked back along the path in the dark.. tough life!

Next morning we had breakfast at the place we were staying and because our ferry port was shut had to quickly walk again to Riomaggiore to catch the ferry from there. There are lots of pet cats around the villages - we saw one that had just been given a fish from a fisherman - talk about satisfied cats! However because of the rough weather conditions, they had cancelled the next ferry so we instead caught the train to Monterosso(1) and checked out the medieval side of this village. We wandered around until we found ourselves at an amazing spot called the Cuppucino Convent at the top of the village. It was so peaceful and beautiful as we wandered around this clifftop catholic cemetery, a very memorable experience. That is one thing that really amazed me about the Cinque Terre, it was very quiet and surprisingly not a particularly tourist driven region although it apparently gets extremely crowded with tourists later in the year, so we were fortunate! There were some tourists (mostly Italian), but it was still quiet. Next caught a ferry to Vernazza(2), during which it decided to start drizzle, and then fueled by some more Gelato we embarked on our longest trek to Corniglia(3), a really scenic coastal walk which is broken up by a visit to a remote bar at the top of the mountain with more of these amazing views. Halfway along the hike, we came across some cats along with a sign saying "Please feed the cats" and a small hut of tinned cat food that they expected hikers to open for the cats - how strange! We strolled around Corniglia which was nice but nothing particularly unique from the other villages except that this was the only one not accessible from the sea. We then made our way to the train station where we found we first had to descend a ridiculously huge staircase (33 flights, 337 steps apparently). We caught a train back to our home village and had dinner at a traditional Italian restaurant.

On Monday we walked again to Riomaggiore(5) with breakfast in hand and caught a 30 minute boat ride south to Porto Venere. It was a hot day and I got some decent sunburn, which annoyed my workmates in London as it rained through most of Europe over the long weekend! The boat ride was very scenic and Porto Venere is an amazing spot, set high over the coast and a huge bay with historic ruins and a castle. We wondered around and had lunch here, then caught the boat back to Manarola(4) where we walked to a spot to get some nice photos looking back on the village (see the photos), checked out of our little Villa and caught the hour long train back to Pisa. It was about 6pm by then, but there was still plenty of light to check out the leaning tower etc. I quite liked the tower, it leans a lot more than I expected, a very bizzare picture, I found it actually quite hard to photograph because I kept rotating the camera to make it look straight..weird. We then had dinner at a decent pub, followed by our last dose of Gelati, which I proceeded to get all over my face.

Woke up on Tuesday at 3:30am London time in Pisa to catch our plane back to London hopefully in time for me to get to work.. Well, it didn't quite work out, we were delayed for quite a while in immigration and I didn't get into work until about 10:15, but with such a fantastic holiday it was well worth it. Pfew, well I'm tired of writing this, so I'd best be off. Stay tuned for our next travel installment in a few weeks where we will travel to the city of luuurve (Paris). 'Till next time, Morgano! PHOTOS here!

Esther: The Cinque Terre region is famous for it's Basil Pesto Genevose and Cinque Terre white wine. We tried 2 of the wines, not bad at all :) and got a small jar of pesto to use at home. Also in Porto Venere we actually found a 24hr basil pesto vending machine! The food was sooo good - I am really missing Italian food! I am not, however, missing climbing all those steps since all the villages are built from the sea up the cliffs, and there are just stairs everywhere! On another note, thanks to all for your prayers - they have been answered! as I have now got a job and start work on Monday!)

a revelation about tube doors

as I sit here contemplating the amount of physical exercise we will be doing this weekend trekking between the five villages (Cinque Terre) in Italy near Pisa, the muscles in my body are already aching. Admittedly they're a bit sore from going to the gym the other day, but more so because I have discovered something about getting caught between tube doors - it hurts! The doors on the trains here are vastly unlike those back home in australia - the ones back home actually sort of stop and perhaps reopen if you get stuck inbetween them.. not so here. Once the doors start closing, they continue closing, meaning idiots like me who decide to make a runner (cos I couldn't be bothered to wait 2 or so minutes for the next tube) get rammed between them and get squashed. No wonder I'm so sore... :(

a place to call our own..

so what have we been up to? well after we came back from our easter break we spend the next week & weekend desperately trying to find a place to stay as steve & larissa were going to be kicked out of their place on tuesday 17th. We originally had a place to move into, but just before we went away for easter, the real estate agent decided to renew the current tenants lease leaving us with nothing.. and unfortunately there had been no contract/changing of monies yet (many lessons learnt!). Anyway, the saturday before that tuesday, we managed to find a place and moved in on the wednesday. So here we are celebrating our first night with chop-chop (delicious asian take away for only 3.30 pounds!)

next mission was to find a cheap TV. I was told it had to be at least 28 inches. Morgan managed to find one on gumtree for 50 pounds - a Sony Trinitron 28''widescreen. So we made our way over to the pickup spot in Brockley which was about an hour away by tube/train to pick up this huge TV and stand. What a mission! We got so many weird looks... walking around the streets with morgan & steve carrying a massive TV and larissa and I following with the stand.. haha. And then we got on the train. and then we had to carry it through the tube station where the guy wouldn't let us through - he called his manager on his radio saying "there's some people here with a whacking big TV". Fortunately he said we were allowed to go on... silly really cos there was hardly anyone on the tube then anyway!

And then we had to get off at the other end and try and get onto a bus. We only had 2 stops to go.... at the first stop the bus driver (who was driving extremely jerkily - people flying everywhere) stopped the bus and walked down to where larissa and I were - in front of the exit door with our huge stand there (the boys had the TV on 2 seats). Walks down, has a look and goes "what is this?" we said we were getting off at the next stop and and then exclaims "This isn't a removalist service" with a big sigh. Then this other guy standing near us yells out "Yeh, well this isn't a bloody racing car either" hahaha. very funny. except then the bus driver turned around and stared at stephen and says something about how he's been driving this bus for 15 years and he knows what he's doing. and then walks back down the front and then yells out "before this I drove bigger things in the army" to which everyone at the back of the bus just cracks up laughing and going "what has that got to do with driving a bus". ahhh funny stuff!! but then we got off and finally got it up into our lounge room :) needless to say, we were all pretty exhausted afterwards, but mission accomplished! The boys are pretty excited also cos we got Sky installed yesterday so we'll be watching ManU vs AC Milan on Sky tonight.

In other news, we have started going to 'the bible talks' aka TBT church services on sunday nights. Heaps of people around our age group and big focus on evangelism. One girl, Amanda, invited us to an ANZAC day BBQ they were having last weekend. So we made the hour long trip up to around Cockfosters area to the Oak Hill Theological College which is where they are living. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time meeting new people, eating australian foods and playing cricket!

After that morgan and I went and found an IKEA to get a mattress topper as our new beds were terrible - you could feel all the springs sticking out.... we have slept soundly since - it's so great to be in a normal bed after 3 months! And the landlord brought around some new IKEA couches on sunday, so now our home is complete :)

That's about it for now - morgan and I are off to Pisa to visit the Cinque Terre (see here) with Alun & Nec this long weekend. Can't wait! - esther :)

Is Dutch, Is Good

We've just come back from an absolutely FANTASTIC weekend in Holland! We had the best weather - blue skies & sun EVERY day :) We stayed 3 nights in Amsterdam and 1 night in Rotterdam and I'd have to say that if we went again... we'd probably stay in neither ;) We arrived Thursday night and gorged ourselves full with whatever kroketten we could get our hands on at the local FEBO (they cook the food & then put them in individual compartments where you insert money to open a window - vending machine style!). These croquettes would turn out to be the tastiest ones found over the entire weekend.

Friday was spent walking around Amsterdam city checking out all there was to see. The Royal Palace and Nieuwe Kerk were surprisingly not very exciting to see - the buildings were pretty dirty, unlike the historic ones here in London. Wandering around the canals was lovely, with lots of ducks everywhere :) The highlight for me would be our visit to the Amstelkring - in 1578 came about a new regime known as the Alteratie (Alteration). Catholic churches were recycled for Protestant use - the Catholics were still allowed to worship in private, so long as the building's exterior revealed no sign of their activities. Hence a number of hidden churches were built, the Amstelkring being the only one to have survived intact. It was actually built in the top levels of 3 adjoining buildings, and it actually looked like a proper church inside, complete with an organ. The other highlight was finding a delicious chocolate shop! We also visited the Van Gogh museum, had some traditional Dutch stamppot for tea, and then went and checked out the famous Red Light District which was absolutely full of tourists. It's pretty crazy & sad, all these women prostitutes rent a window enticing the men to come in, and there are tonnes that line the streets & alleys in this area.

Saturday morning we jumped on the canal bus and did a big loop of the city through the canals. This was pretty cool and I took a lot of video footage... only to find out later that I hadn't actually been recording at all :( Fortunately I got it right for the rest of the trip. Then on the advice of some friends, we got on the train and headed out to Utrecht, the university town. Utrecht was awesome. It's exactly what I expected to see throughout Holland - lots of canals & cute bridges, cafe's spilling out onto the streets and the sides of the canals, relaxed, and lots of good food! We had some poffertjes and I had some more deep-fried Dutch treats for dinner and we all shared a grand dessert (see the photos!). The highlight in Utrecht was climbing the Domtoren - I'd read that on a clear day you can see Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the distant, and indeed we could! But far out, my legs were hurting big time after all those stairs!! We'd actually intended on hiring bikes here, but they were all out of bikes so unfortunately we didn't get to terrorise the pedestrians on the streets like everyone else ;)

On Easter Sunday, we got up early and caught a train out to Zaanse Schans - a small recreated Dutch Village, where they had actually transported 7 working windmills from the Kinderdijk (just south of Rotterdam, where there are still 17 or so windmills). Unfortunately only 2 of the windmills were actually working on the day, but this village was so picturesque you didn't even notice! There were even some goats & ducks with ducklings :) Make sure you have a look at the photos from this quaint little village. Then we headed back to Amsterdam and caught another train to Leiden. Here we went to the Keukenhof Gardens which my Uncle Bert had recommended - and I am so glad he did, cos there were tulips galore!!!!! I had a smile on my face all afternoon and was excited to see lots of gardens & huge fields of flowers in so many amazing colours! After this we continued our journey into Rotterdam, and after checking into our hostel (our Slovakian roomies couldn't believe how far we'd travelled when they found out we were from Australia!), we then met Tonn and Annelise and went out for dinner. I had some more yummy Dutch food - groentensoep and kroketten, YUM! After dinner we dropped in and said hello to Gerry and Donna - it was nice to catch up with people we knew from Australia on the other side of the world! :)

Monday (sadly our last day, however my legs were grateful), we were going to check out the Netherlands Architecture Institute, but decided we would be too rushed. So we went for a short stroll to the "cube houses" and then caught a train to Delft. Delft was amazing. I can't believe we had decided not to go the night before! We had actually come through Delft on the way to Rotterdam and decided it didn't look too exciting, but then Annelise highly recommended going there... so thanks Annelise! Out of all the places I've seen in Holland, Delft is where I would live - it's actually where my Oma grew up, which was nice, so we took lots of photos and video to show mum & Oma :) We enjoyed our last bit of Holland by eating poffertjes & pancakes in the glorious sun, reflecting on what an enjoyable holiday we'd all had :)

So now it's time to check out the photos... I'll put a link here once we've decided which of the 263 photos should go up! Click this link to view our photos.
4 weeks till the next trip.... Italy! - esther

spring is here!

hi everyone,
I thought I should update the blog seeing as I have all this time off ;) Yes, I'm still hunting for the perfect job...nah, just any job really. I had an interview last week at apparently THE agile shop in london. Half the people were actually just preparing presentations for the various agile meetings throughout the week, and the interviewer proudly pointed out the 2 beings in the corner who wrote JMock - I quietly whispered that I'd never used it before, but I'm sure it's good ;) Afterwards though I realised that they seemed to be more focused on being agile (the interview was a pair programming exercise!) and I realised I wasn't prepared to experience a true agile dev shop if it meant losing out on using Spring and Hibernate, so hopefully soon I will find my ideal job!

meanwhile, we have started being tourists and seeing some of the sights. For those who haven't already seen the sights already, here are some photos around town (a few more than morgan would like I'm sure but I like to put everything up, not just the good photos!).

last night we went and watched Manchester United vs Arsenal .......... U18 youth game ;) but it was just as good. It was in the new emirates stadium - they have padded seats! Last saturday night we were hunting around Hammersmith for a pub to watch the Real Madrid vs Barcelona game, and stumbled upon a Spanish pub - we were the only non-Spanish people there so the atmosphere was pretty cool! The people to our left were going for Real Madrid and those to our right (and us) were cheering for Barcelona. It was the best match I've ever seen, with the final score being 3-3, and Barcelona's 3 being scored by Messi .. apparently he's only 19. crazy. so good.

Nec and I are going to go and train with a women's football club next week and hopefully we'll be 'good' enough to play with them! Unfortunately the season's just finishing, but they have a reserves team that's going to play some friendlies so that will be fun :) Morgan and steve are going to play some football with morgan's workmates on wednesday night too; and larissa spends all day in her gym working out, so hopefully this will be our attack against the dreaded Heathrow Injection!

To all those people at Dialect who said that I wasn't going to see any sun - you're all liars!! We have had the most beautiful weather this past week, beautiful blue skies and sun - I keep forgetting my sunnies..but for some reason I've always got the umbrella? ;) - and the temperature has been really nice around 16 degrees or so. Apparently the sky hasn't been so clear before. Hopefully it will stay like this for a while and get even warmer.

Easter's coming up and we're planning a trip to Holland to stay with one of mum's relatives who unfortunately doesn't speak english, and we don't speak dutch! So we'll be brushing up on our pictionary & charade skills, and we've bought ourselves an english to dutch dictionary, so hopefully we'll get by!

We got a place to live on Richmond Way, Brook Green (just near Shepherd's Bush tube station on central line) so we'll be moving there come April 17th which will be exciting!

Well, I think I've covered everything. Keep those emails coming - I get bored at home all day! - esther :)

happy birthday to me

hey all :)
Thanks to everyone who sent emails/cards for my birthday yesterday :) That's the first time I haven't been at home for my birthday, so I was missing a lot of people yesterday :( Larissa took the afternoon off so we could hang out which was really nice of her :), so we went and strolled Kensington High Street & Oxford High Street (went to a discount sports store where I actually bought running shorts and am actually going to go visit Larissa in her gym and get some personal training from her... I think I've gone crazy! hehe). Then Morgan & I, Steve & Larissa, Anecia & Alun all went out for dinner to Zizzi's where we had some nice Italian food, and then went back home to eat the cake that Morgan made me (isn't he the best!) :) You can see his cake in the photo, and mum, thanks for the tulips!!! They're beautiful :)

In other news, Morgan started his job this week. He's quite liking the people there, but has a bit of a challenge ahead of him as he doesn't know much about SharePoint, but he's learning fairly eagerly .. so he doesn't get home till 7pm at nights :( The market here is pretty slow at the moment, but I've been told it should be picking up seeing as the UK financial year is coming up. I have only had 2 interviews a couple weeks ago, and I've got one next week, so hopefully soon I will have something :) Although I am starting to like this no-working thing - gives me time to do other things like shopping and beading ;) And I'm getting Neci into beading also, so we're going to the bead shop tonight.. another convert, hooray!

We haven't found a church to go to yet, so we've just been trialling a different one each sunday. The one we went to last week reminded me a lot of Tivoli, but somehow more traditional! Hopefully we will find something soon.

Also, I registered with all the real estate agents this week so hopefully something will come up soon so we can move out into our own place, with Steve & Ris.

Not much else happening, we hope to do some of the things we're meant to do as tourists in London this weekend, so any suggestions of where to go are welcome :)
Hope everyone is well, love to hear from you - esther

Estonia is cool. Literally!

Hi all! We (Morgan (or Morgon as he was known), Anecia, Alun and I) went to Tallinn, Estonia on the weekend just past. We were very lucky with the weather with it only going down to zero degrees (although Nec & I were in full ski gear with snow boots!). We got there on Friday evening, left Sunday and apparently the temperature dropped to minus 12 degrees on the Monday! Friday evening we arrived late, after a somewhat short flight (compared to the one that got us to London last week!) and we were hungry. After checking into the hostel, the guy there told us we'd be able to find some food at a place around the corner called Hell Hunt. We found it and were surprised to be able to get served food (it was after all midnight), and what great food it was! (except for the pickles with honey that Alun ordered...) This was very much an expat hangout and as we were to discover over the next couple of days, the Old Town was basically full of tourists only.

There are sort of 2 parts to Tallinn, the Old Town and the New Town. The New Town looks basically like any city, so we only looked around the Old Town (which is where our hostel was conveniently located). The Old Town is full of awesome old buildings, with highlights being the Alexander Nevski Cathedral, and the remnants of the fortified wall with towers. Be sure to check out some of our choice photos here.

The food is the other interesting thing of note in Tallinn. At lunch one day morgan ordered Pig's ears - fortunately for me, they had cut them up into strips (I don't think I could handle eating it if it was ear-shaped) - but they were quite tasty.. just imagine the taste of pork crackling = YUM! For dinner on Saturday night we went to this medieval restaurant called The Olde Hansa.
You can check out the menu from the website, but I stuck to "edible" foods ie beef steak, whereas morgan chose bear/elk/wild boar sausages, which I have to admit were quite tasty. Alun also ordered some dried elk meat (like beef jerky) which was fairly disgusting ;) The waiters/waitresses were all dressed up in medieval style clothing and talked as such. eg the waitress we had came to give us our cutlery and said "some tools to work with later", and when I asked her what sort of meat I would find in the "thick meat stew" she replied "oh, different meats, all in big chunks" to which I replied "no, what type of meat" and she said "oh, meat of animals from the forest of course..." riiiight. She basically kept this up all night which was rather funny/weird. When explaining what we had ordered, she would say "oh, and these are veges from the forest"etc etc. The other thing about this restaurant is that they supposedly don't run on any electricity, well at least not in the 3-storey restaurant bit. They just use candles, so it was all rather dark.. my theory is that it was to disguise the food ;)

Basically all we did was walk around the Old Town and take lots of photos, so there's not much else to tell! We did walk down to the port on Sunday which was half frozen. Morgan wanted to walk on it, but I wouldn't let him. We did however all slide around on the frozen lake in this park where they had made all these cool slides out of ice for the kids. Speaking of ice, we also drank local vodkas out of glasses made out of ice! at the Ice Bar too, where Morgan also tried the local Vana Tallinn; a bottle of which Alun and Morgan brought home. I also bought some locally made chocolate by Kalev which was delish!

Well I hope everyone is well, and send us some emails will you!! Btw, I've changed my email address to esther.johnston@gmail.com. See ya - esther (aka Estev). Photos

London aint so bad

Well, we're here! We arrived in London 2 nights ago, the flight was long but somehow we made it. When we arrived the local time was 7:30pm but our origin time was 2:30am so we were fairly stuffed. It was really cool because Steve & Larissa and Anecia came to meet us at the airport and took us back to Alun & Anecia's place who are letting us stay with them for a while in Shepherds Bush (yes I know, funny name). It was also really awesome to find a warm bed waiting for us.. these guys are tops. They have looked after us so much.

So yesterday Esther and I (still quite jetlagged) checked out Shepherd's Bush and then took the tube to Oxford Circus station and walked around central London and checked out some shops etc, it was a fairly uneventful day which concluded with us crashing again at about 5pm. Today we got up, I was starving so we went down to the local all day breakfast for some tasty fried treats. Next we headed off to the Borough Markets. This place is awesome. There was just about every kind of food for sale here including some of the weirder things like Wilderbeast, Donkey, Impala, Rabbit, Deer?? So we walked around there and tried a lot of stuff. Next on the agenda was the Tower Bridge, aka London bridge which was looking picturesque with BLUE SKY and SUN (e: all those who said we'd see no sun .. ha!) in the background and then onto Kensington Palace / Hyde Park to try and find a squirrel. Not many to be found, but we will return again. Tonight we had a feast of cheese and donkey salami that we bought at the markets and then Anecia cooked us some beef and couscous and we had the "worlds best" brownies for dessert (my mum's are actually better). So yes, a good day.

We have just been looking into Tallinn in Estonia where we are heading next weekend,, apparently they are predicting maximums of -6 and minimum -11.. so we're a bit terrified about that.. Anyway 'till next time - Morgan

A few photos from London so far

We Stopped in Bangkok

After saying goodbye to our families and trying to watch a bit of cricket in the departure lounge, we boarded our flight to Bangkok. The flight was very good and the aeroplane and food was top notch. Our first day in Bangkok yesterday we did some tourist stuff that we missed out on last time like going to the Dusit Zoo (and the worlds only now missing Albino Barking Deer) and checking out the Dusit Palace grounds and surrounding exhibitions. The palace grounds had lots to see but we were apparently underdressed and so Esther and I had to wear all sorts of scarves and cloths to cover ourselves - once I even had to wear some enormous puffy blue pants, which I decided to wear around my armpits to emphasise the ridiculousness of the situation. Oh and also no shoes and no cameras, so we don't have much to show for most of that day.

We also viewed one of the many exhibitions of the King of Thailand's photos. He also obviously thinks he is also the King of Photography, but he is not. There were all sorts of "interesting" photos of things like irrigation. The caption below the irrigation photo was this "His Majesty once said "I have had an interest in irrigation since early childhood" ". Havn't we all? Another humourous caption outlined how the king had saved people from a flood by taking "excelent photographs" so the engineers could understand what the problem was. Pure genious. We also went on the wildest Tuk Tuk ride of my life, I think this guy wasn't too happy with my negotiated price so he was trying to kill us, but we emerged unscathed at the other end.

This morning we have been down to MBK again and walking around some markets. We managed to find the filthiest and cleanest places in Bangkok and they are almost on the same block. This afternoon we're going to catch the skytrain down to Patpong to the night markets / red light district and see what happens there on a Tuesday night.

Check out a few of our Bangkok photos here

1 day until liftoff...

yesterday was a bit of a sad day for us - no longer can we say "come over to my cribb", as we moved out of our cribb street house. We also had to say goodbye to our cool neighbours Emanuel and Jill and to my awesome little mitsubishi mirage that I've been driving for the past 4 years :(

I have also discovered that I have muscles! we have been doing so much lifting and moving this past week - we thought we'd have a couple of relaxing days just before leaving... but it is not so. This morning we took our last load of stuff out to a shed on morgan's parent's property and now we have arrived home to start our final task = pack. Hopefully this won't be too time-consuming, I've already done a "trial" run and now I just have to work on culling my luggage back to meet the 20kg limit!

Tomorrow we leave for Bangkok where we spend 4 nights. Then we fly into Heathrow where our friends Anecia and Alun, and my brother Steve & his wife Larissa will be waiting for us :) So far the first weekend we'll be going to a travel show and then the following weekend (we're very excited about this) Anecia & Alun have arranged for us all to fly to ..... Estonia! Yeh! How exciting (I am going to be sooooo cold). I have already packed my ski suit... and will be wearing that proudly around ;)

So stay tuned for the next updates! - esther :)

We're unemployed!

Esther and I finished our jobs yesterday (the day before the Australia day holiday). I was kinda looking forward to it, but last night driving home from a little farewell thing it really hit me. I worked with some of the coolest people at my job and I can't bring them with me. I guess it had to happen one day but its never much fun when it happens.

Anyway, its looking like another hot day in the city of Ipswich and I had better get packing before the cricket starts.. because after that I'm going to be stuck to the couch. yeah! - Morgan