My, what a big Eye you have!

On the last night before we moved out of our flat in England, 17th July, Delle, Ben and I went up to London to ride on the London Eye (a giant Ferris wheel - a ride on it is actually called a "flight") and see The Sound of Music on West End with Kat and Mel. We had tea at Covent Garden at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen (try it if you get the chance!), and Delle raided the Australia Shop for some Tim Tams, having suffered severe withdrawal symptoms after going approximately two weeks with only the one packet she'd brought over with her. :)

Although it was right in the middle of a frantically busy time for us (tickets bought before we knew we would be moving the next day!), it was a fantastic evening. The Sound of Music was absolutely spectacular and the kids in it were SO so adorable!! It's definitely one of the top three West End musicals we've been to. Here are some photos from our second last night in London...



And here are some links to videos... the first is of some buskers playing under the bridge near the London Eye (note the percussion instrument on the left!), and the second was taken when we were at the very top of the Eye. What a view!!!!

Buskers video
London Eye video

Anyway, in case you're wondering, we had a good flight back to Australia last week! We left Heathrow Airport on Tuesday night, flew with Qantas via brief stopovers in Singapore and Melbourne, and arrived in Brisbane at 8:15am on Thursday morning.

Then we stayed awake all day - I studied for my online exam the next day and Ben got his teaching registration sorted out and signed up for supply teaching. On Friday, I studied and did my exam while Ben got his first day of work!!! So it was certainly straight into it!

That night we went to The Mikado in Brisbane with a group of friends. I think everyone else liked it - I, however, fell asleep about 15 times. Woke up at one stage to find a completely new character on stage halfway through belting out a crashingly loud song! "Who's tha...zzzZZ"!!!!

The next day, Saturday, we caught up with my family and saw my sister Roxy's flat for the first time, and that night we went to a 30th birthday party of an old school friend of Ben's.

For the next 3 months we'll be living with Ben's parents, Jim and Jenny, who live east of Ipswich (which is just west of Brisbane, Queensland, for you non-Aussies!). If anyone who is reading this has not been getting our group email updates (please email me if you'd like to get them!), our trip home was motivated by our friends' Tim and Chany's wedding, but we decided to stay on for a while longer. We hope to be in Canada by Christmas, but have not organised any further ahead than flying back to England on 17th November.

This week my priority is finding a job. Ben got his second day of supply teaching today, so we're glad that's working out. It's a strange thought that we're home, but it actually feels completely normal to be here. I'm trying to readjust to being in this timezone (the first couple of days, I was chatting to Mum at lunchtime and thinking it was teatime for her), and talking in dollars and kilometres. Everything sounds expensive and a long way away!!! :P Anyway, we'll keep you updated, and please keep in touch - especially if you're from England, because it could just be that we're missing you!!!

Pride and Prejudice links

I meant to add these links to Delle's recent blog entry about our Pride and Prejudice weekend...

Click here to watch the lake scene from the BBC version of P&P filmed at Lyme Park (the first place we visited).

Click here to watch some scenes and commentary from the 2005 P&P movie filmed at Chatsworth (the second place we visited).

And here's a random photo from our Wales weekend...



PS. We're safely back in Australia! :)

Visits to towns-with-hyphenated-names!

On Delle's second weekend here, we set off for south Wales on Thursday night and stayed the next two nights with a friend, Gwen, who lives in Monmouthshire. (Gwen is the one whose parents we had morning tea with when we were in Scotland with Jim and Jenny in May.) Here are the highlights from our two days in the west...

Friday: Delle, Ben and I spent the day exploring Hay-on-Wye, "the town of books" - a small town just on the Welsh side of the England-Wales border where there are about 40 bookshops... including one in a castle, one where every book costs £1, and one called "Murder and Mayhem" dedicated to mystery stories! We only purchased a few books between us, but could have bought many more had we not had the issue of luggage space to keep in mind! It was an extremely pleasant day spent with our noses in books most of the time. :) We definitely recommend a visit to Hay-on-Wye if you get a chance!!



Friday night: We went out for a delicious dinner in Usk with Gwen and her friends Martin, Tania and Stephen. Had one of those delightfully small-world-ish experiences whereby we discovered during the course of the conversation that Tania's step-aunt had just become my aunt...!!

Saturday morning: The three of us visited Warwick Castle, which was absolutely huge and amazing. We only had a couple of hours, but enjoyed some awesome views from the castle towers, walked through the furnished rooms, and were scared silly by a ridiculous ghost tour! We also watched a trebuchet being prepared and fired, and I got my head stuck in helmet - the type worn by a knight, not a cyclist...



Saturday afternoon: We went to Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream", performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, the town where Shakespeare was born. Delle and I got bargain £5 tickets, but Ben was... er, too mature to qualify for such tickets... so his seat cost four times and much and was in a worse location than ours! But the play was absolutely hilarious and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.



Later Saturday afternoon: After the play, we wandered around Stratford-upon-Avon, a gorgeous town with lots of old Tudor buildings, a style I absolutely adore. We also visited Shakespeare's grave, which is inside a church, and drove past the cottage where he was born.



That evening, we drove home to the strains of P.G. Wodehouse's "The Girl in Blue" (one of Delle's Hay-on-Wye acquisitions) as performed by Delle and I. :P We spent Sunday back in our own neck of the woods - the start of our last week in our flat and our last week of work. By the following Sunday we were in Italy, but I'll save that for the next entry! Goodnight!

Guest blog entry #2 from Delle: A very mild obsession...

Okay so now we're going a long way back to the day after the London adventures – the story of my first weekend in England.

After a long, deep, blissful sleep, I awoke on Saturday morning (5th July) incredibly excited about the day’s events. We were going to visit Pride and Prejudice (often abbreviated to P&P) filming locations – more specifically, two Pemberleys (home of the gorgeous Mr Darcy – eeeek!) – ‘eeek’ ‘eeek’ excited screaming, jumping etc...

But before I run away with my feelings on that subject...

Before we began our day indulging our P&P obsession (well my obsession; Anna & Dotti’s high levels of excited interest; and the boys’ less significant levels of interest), we had to wait for Dotti’s English friend Joe to arrive. Joe arrived, we met him and then we were off!!!! YAY YAY YAY 'more excited squeaking and jumping’. (NB. Accuracy note. Jumping in car is quite restricted by roof so really more like very enthusiastic bobbing.)

Our first destination was Lyme Park – filming location of the exterior scenes in the 1995 BBC version of P&P starring Colin Firth. Any residual tiredness was completely compensated for by the extremely high levels of adrenalin coursing through my veins (dramatic I know but I was rather excited!).

We visited the gardens first. Much jumping and squeaking excitedly followed – by this time all the guys had started to pay out on my expressions of excitement but I was WAY too ecstatic to even be bothered in the slightest…

I eagerly pointed out the patch of grass where Darcy and Elizabeth first met at Pemberley, the stairs that Darcy runs down in his haste to stop Lizzie leaving, the view of the house that Lizzie first sees of Pemberly, and of course the driveway where Lizzie looks longingly back at Darcy at the end of Episode 4... not to mention the famous spot at the lake’s edge where Darcy jumps in and gets his shirt delightfully wet.

Yes I am tragically obsessed, I know. :P As you can possibly imagine, my levels of excitement and rapture were increasing rapidly with the discovery of each new delight. I did manage to stay still long enough for a couple of photos. :D



















Well I could rhapsodise all day, but to cut an obsessive girl’s story short… we also explored the inside of the house and had a quick picnic before heading to the second Pemberley location – Chatsworth (from the 2005 movie version starring the equally adorable Matthew McFadyen). More rapture, jumping, squeaking etc etc etc followed.

In a summary of two sentences, this place had amazing water features, a cute little maze and an awesome rockery. The house was incredible, with detailed painting all over the ceiling and walls of the big important rooms, and the statue gallery was beyond description – marble is VERY beautiful.

















After spending the second half of the day at Chatsworth, we headed back to Dotti’s where she made us a delicious dinner and we all got a (relatively) early night. :P

Sunday we went to Dotti’s meeting which was really special, and then after the typical ‘English Pub Lunch’, Anna, Ben and I headed back to Crawley – via Cambridge.

Cambridge was absolutely adorable... we explored around the streets and then hired a punt (Editor's (i.e. Anna's) note: punt = a flat-bottomed boat propelled using a long pole). Our punting guide was very cute and kept us entertained with stories of the various exploits of past Cambridge students.

Our favourite was the story of the witch’s hat on the right steeple of King's College Chapel (Editor's note: witch's hat = traffic cone). Apparently some student climbed to the top and left the witch’s hat up there to prove he’d done it (Editor's note: see tall building on left in photo of Delle below). The university then hired a crew to get it down – and was told it would take 4 days to put the scaffolding up to reach it. On the third night the climber climbed back to the top, removed the witch’s hat and put it on the opposite steeple. :P We assume that at some point they got it down, and now there are spikes around the edges of the steeples further down to prevent any more adventures of a similar sort.









After our relaxing cruise down the river, we headed back to the car and drove leisurely home – Anna and Ben ready to face another week of work and me… well, adrenalin can only get you so far… I had some serious sleep to catch up on. :P