OCS: One Continuous Shindig?

Hello all! Sorry about the lack of updates lately - we were flat out until last Friday, and now there's so much to write about that it's just overwhelming! So here's a little entry to ease me into it...

My last day of work was Friday 18th July. These are some photos of the farewell dinner we had at a local Chinese restaurant for my workmate Aliya and I the week before I left, and also the beautiful presents I received in my last week. We enjoyed the flowers for 2 days before we had to give them to our favourite neighbour when we moved out and headed across to Europe, and the Thorntons chocolates went down a treat in the girls' dorm at convention in Germany!!!!! ;-)

A message for Roxy...

Guest blog entry #1 from Delle – THE FIRST DAY

A HUGE hello to all back home and to those who haven't met me yet, 'Hi, I'm Delle (obviously!) - I'm an Aussie girl from Brisbane, Queensland, and I am very very very VERY excited to be in England visiting Anna and Ben!!!!'

My adventure begins after many many many hours of flying - these I have attempted to block from my memory so we'll move right on to arriving at Heathrow at about 6am local time on Friday the 4th of July. I travelled over with Lachlan, the younger brother of Dotti (another Aussie girl living over here at the moment who has previously featured in this blog). Anna and Ben were quite easy to identify at the airport due to Anna's wild and enthusiastic arm-waving. :) Very handy!

After stuffing our assorted luggage into the car, we drove to a nearby station and caught the tube into London. Our next stop was the Russian Embassy where we were to meet up with Dotti and hopefully obtain a visa for Lachlan. Anna, Ben and I left them in the rather lengthy queue (see picture below) and headed off to explore a little of London. Our first stop was Notting Hill and the Portobello Road Markets (see photo below).





The first place we stopped at was a cute little hat stall and tiny shop – which turned out to be the site of my first significant and spectacularly clumsy moment. Now at this point I must defend myself in advance:

1. Take note that I had only maybe a few hours of sleep within the last 30 hour period.
2. That brief slumber was taken virtually upright on a plane and therefore not exactly what you would classify as the highest quality.
3. I have very poor spatial awareness at the best of times and so it wasn't particularly surprising when the following occurred...

Wandering leisurely into the back of the tiny shop, I browsed through the selection of hats – along the back wall were row upon row of them. What I failed to notice was that although the hats were in neat horizontal lines, the floor was not!!! As I ran my eye along the hats I literally stepped into thin air and tumbled down one flight of stairs, around a corner, and down a second flight of stairs, eventually stopping a few steps from the bottom and nearly ending up in the poor shop-owner's storeroom.

Ben was directly behind me and quickly ran down the stairs to check I was okay. Anna had been outside the shop but her attention was caught by the sound of a multitude of hats falling off the wall inside the shop. Upon realising that it was me as well as the hats that had fallen, she suddenly had visions of VERY terrible things having happened to me – and I had only been in the country about 3 hours!!! I did have to be helped to my feet as I was absolutely hysterical with laughter...this was just so typical! For Anna it was probably a relief to discover that I could still walk, talk and breathe, and emerged from the experience relatively unscathed – albeit with some minor bruises on my arms, legs and ribs and a couple of bumps on my head (don't worry Mum! - just assume this is a significant exaggeration of the true events :P).

That experience past, we wandered happily for an hour or so around the rest of the markets. Afterwards we headed via Baker Street to Regent's Park, where we had a lovely lunch and rejoined Dotti and Lachlan – back from their unfortunately unsuccessful trip to the Russian Embassy. We then wandered alongside the Thames and saw a few more of the sights of London.

After that, we caught the tube back to where the car was parked and headed north to Mansfield - where Dotti is currently living.

I have never felt so tired in my life and I have never been so glad to finally shower and flop into bed – completely and utterly exhausted!!!!

Jotting down June

Well, life is crazily busy and we are having a wonderful time galavanting around the country with Delle (just looked up actual meaning of galavant: "to travel around with no purpose except enjoyment"), in between counting down our last few days of work and preparing to move out of our flat and head across to Europe this Friday! Delle is meant to be writing a blog entry about what we've all been up to since she arrived, but I've got a few bits and pieces to fill you in on from June, so here goes...

My uni exam was halfway through June, and since I had to go to London for it anyway and our London-going days are fast drawing to a close, I decided to make it worthwhile! After my exam, I had a quick look aorund the British Museum (free entry), saw the afternoon show of The Phantom of the Opera on West End (ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL!!!), wandered from Piccadilly Circus to Trafalgar Square via the beautiful tree- and flag-lined road that leads to Buckingham Palace, and went to an Intrepid Travel event night on Peru, Bolivia and Brazil at their Angel Islington store! Here are some photos from my day...



The next day was Ben's exam, and he also spent a full day making the most of his time in London. He went to the Natural History Museum and Science Museum, and saw Avenue Q on West End (which he really enjoyed). Here are some photos from his day...



Then, to celebrate the end of our exams, we went to see Les Miserables (booked before we'd thought of going by ourselves on our respective exam day to a show that the other one wasn't so keen on seeing - hence how between us we saw three musicals in three days!!). Anyway, was great to finally see Les Mis and understand what all the fuss is about. :) It was extremely good - but, Phantom having been a long-loved favourite of mine and the musical I've most wanted to see live ever since arriving in England, I'm afraid not even Les Mis could hold a candle to it (and certainly not a crashing chandelier)!

Also, the evening we went to Les Mis, we FINALLY found the Australia Shop in Covent Garden - it was about the third time we'd looked for it! Here are some photos from our day - particularly the moments of indescribable joy when we were reunited with Twisties, Chicos, Bundaberg Ginger Beer, and the visual familiarity of many other well known brands whose products we exclaimed over but were forced to leave sitting on the shelves...



The following week, we went to London again to see Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare's comedies that was being performed in the Open Air Theatre at Regent's Park. There were eight of us and it was a very enjoyable night watching a rather tangled web of a story about a girl who disguises herself as her twin brother. It started raining halfway though and a canopy of umbrellas instantly popped up over the heads of the well-prepared audience, but the actors carried on as though they hadn't even noticed they were soaking!

Before heading to Regent's Park that evening, we stopped off at Covent Garden again to raid the Australia Shop. Whilst there, we enjoyed a show by an amazing busking magician from Texas and saw some strange goings on outside of Lush (promoting an in-shop bath products party - London, I tell you...!!!). See photos below!



At the end of June, we stayed a night in Worthing (a coastal town south of here) with Mike and Jo, their daughter Charley and Jo's dad Gordon, and the following day we went to a picnic with them. We met a lot of new people, ate delicious food, and played rounders (a cross between cricket and softball). On the way home, Mike, Jo and Charley took us to Arundel - a quaint village with a castle perched in the middle of it - where we strolled around the streets for an hour or so and ate some dessert. A lovely day!



Well, that was June, and that's the least amount of words I've yet condensed a month's adventures into!! Time to do some packing. :) Goodnight!

Scotland with Jim and Jenny, Post 2

Well, life is extremely frantic and Delle arrives in just 10 hours!!! :D However, I really need to finish telling you about our time in Scotland with Jim and Jenny, as we're about to launch into a new round of adventures and I'm already more than a month behind...

On Wednesday morning, we woke up in our bunk beds at the Chase the Wild Goose Hostel in Fort William, Scotland, and after breakfast and packing up the four of us set off in the car to the starting point of a wee 2.5 mile hike I'd planned through the Highlands. Well, it was beautiful!! We parked at Glenfinnan and walked up into the hills, first walking under and then looking down on the impressive Glenfinnan Viaduct, which as far as I could tell is not visible from any roads. Check out the photos below - recognise it? Yes, it is the very one from the Harry Potter movies!!



From the hills, we also had a beautiful view of Loch Shiel, beside which there is a monument to Bonnie Prince Charlie. And just after Ben, Jenny and I had rounded a hill and could no longer see the viaduct, a train came over it, which we'd lingered as long as possible for in the hope of seeing. So Jim was the only one to see that! The train then stopped for quite a while at the train station around the corner, so along with all the people from the train, we had a look around the station and listened to the busking bagpipe player. Then, we continued on with our walk and made it back to the car approximately 1.75 seconds before it started raining. :) A lovely morning!



Then, it was back into Fort William for a bit of lunch and shopping (I bought some very eye-catching gumboots) and on to Edinburgh. This was the first time Ben and I had seen Edinburgh in the daylight, and what we saw boded very well for what we would see when touring properly the next day. After checking into our hostel and having a bit of time there, we went to the evening meeting and met some lovely people there.

Later that night, Ben and I ventured out for some dinner, and ended up at a Nepalese restaurant where I had a very unfortunate encounter with a whole green chilli. This painful experience ended up involving a jug of water, four presumably-hysterical-behind-my-back young male waiters, and a bowl of yoghurt. Guess it livened up their night anyway!!!

The next day, Thursday, was the final day of our trip. We got going early and headed into the city centre for our full day of sightseeing on the open top buses. We got tickets that allowed us to travel on all four of the available bus routes, and set off first on the bus that would take us to the Ocean Terminal.

At the Ocean Terminal, we toured the Royal Yacht Britannia - yes, the Queen's own yacht!!! It was commissioned in 1954, and decommissioned in 1997 after logging over a million nautical miles and averaging one trip around the world for each of those years. The yacht has hosted four royal honeymoons - the third being Charles and Diana's in 1981, which was the first time a double bed was brought onto the yacht (see third photo below)!

Our tour was very interesting - we saw the separate bedrooms of the Queen and Prince Phillip (nowhere near as luxurious as you'd imagine - see the Queen's room in second photo below), a huge drawing room with lounge suites and a grand piano, many private family photos of the royals, the massive dining room where important (non-royal) functions are still regularly held (see panorama), and the pristine engine room.

We had audio guides to listen to as we walked around, and they even told us about amusing traditions of the ship's officers, such as playing tennis (first shot into the ceiling fan) with a one-eyed stuffed wombat (see photo of the real thing below). I definitely recommend a tour of Britannia if you're ever in Edinburgh!



After that, we rode around on the buses, seeing varous sites of great importance (such as the cafe where JK Rowling started her writing), and then Jim and Jenny disembarked near Hollyrood Palace and Parliament House while Ben and I went to the Royal Mile and just wandered around.

The Royal Mile is a fabulous old street where there are many attractions, shops etc - very touristy but that's able to be overlooked since the location is so awesome!! We had a delicious lunch and in the evening we met up with Jim and Jenny again for our tour of Mary King's Close...

This is a fascinating and unique aspect to Edinburgh: until the mid 1700s, Mary King's Close was a lively thoroughfare of pubs, shops and residences (for fairly poor families it seems) on Edinburgh's High Street. Then, around the middle of the 18th century, the city needed a spot to build its council chambers, so it simply lopped off the top storeys of the buildings lining the narrow close (I think we were told they were up to 13 storeys high originally) and plonked the council chambers on top on this convenient foundation!!!

Mary King's Close was therefore underground, deserted, and forgotten about for a few hundred years. In 2003, it was opened up as a tourist attraction, and so it's this underground street and the now-empty bottom storey rooms that we explored in the pitch dark with the aid of an entertaining tour guide who pretended she was actually from the 1700s and kept trying to scare us. Good fun and certainly a very interesting tour!

After this tour, it was off to the airport in a screaming hurry, where we only made our flight home because (a) they reopened the just-closed check-in for us, and (b) our flight was delayed by over an hour anyway. :)

That day our opinion of Edinburgh rose to such heights that Ben and I declared it our favourite city in the UK - yes, better than Cambridge, which had toppled Bath from first place and seemed impossible to beat. Edinburgh is just so old and amazing and interesting - words can't describe it and nor can my photos adequately capture it! Perhaps some might not like it because it is so, well, brown, but I think it's beautiful. What a fabulous city!!! Here are a few miscellaneous photos taken throughout the day...



Goodnight! PS. Now it's 8 hours until Delle arrives!!!!