Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Cutty Sark....


Just had to write that its such a shame such a beautiful old ship has been burnt to a shell. Here is my picture of it back in March last year.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Really Excited..

I have just got my photos back, well most of them, from the films that I took in Turkey and I am really super excited that they have come out so well. I hope to get them up and the Turkey blogs soon. Though my digital camera pictures from Turkey are already on the Picassa website already, which too, are lovely!!

Mark and I head off to Delft in Holland, not far from Rotterdam and the Hague, well its Holland so its not far from anywhere there really. Cannot wait, as usual will take lots of pictures and tell you all about it - right here :-)

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Totesport Victoria Cup Day - Ascot

It's not Royal Ascot, which is coming up in a month, but it was a good excuse to get all dolled up, break out the champagne and potentially win enough to retire comfortably on our own private island - sigh! Not that I'd ever bet that much for that to even be a remote possibility.

There was wine tasting on, which was a bargain at £5 to taste 7 wines, and they were generous too. Plus they had wine from Spain, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, France, Italy, South Africa and my favourite was a white English wine (they don't do many) called Juniper Hill. Somehow we managed to do this twice!

Dawn, Marks friend from work was there with her hubby and friends - we were there with Ahmed and Anais, but they drove in and after catching up with them briefly they disappeared - who knows maybe their retirement ride came up. We had come up to Ascot on the train, and we had a bottle of champagne on the train to get into the festive spirit for the day too.

We spent most of the day on the lower pavilion area, even though we had the Premier tickets which entitled us to viewing from level 4, and we would have probably spent more time there had we realised that further down there was viewing right over the finish line. Oh well all the better to know for next time.

We put on a few bets, lost a few, won a few - very annoyed when the favourite won the first two races - and ended up no better off for the day. But we had good company, good friends and good fun!!


Us on the way
Entry...
The inside
The outside
All of us at Ascot, Dallas, Julie, Mark and Chris
And the racing
Winners are grinners
Wine tasting at Ascot - so Mark in his element
Our shoes...
Lisa's outfit
Mark and Dawn

See more pictures at - http://picasaweb.google.com/WeekendTourists/Ascot

Its been a while...

Well my gloating about the weather has to end, which I am sure you are all very happy about. Yes we have THE Spring weather, seems its crappy all over the world and not just in Adelaide. I am a big Summer and Autumn fan!!! So its raining and cold and windy and wintery...burrrr, just going to turn the heating up now.

I am still doing Pilates which is lovely and even managed to purchase my beloved yoga mat, precisely one week prior to my Pilates instructor at Stratford deciding that he'd rather focus on his expanding "personal fitness" business rather than his studio class business. Well a Pilates studio in Stratford, was my dream, but clearly not a viable business option for anyone, after all its not exactly Highgate or Nottinghill! Oh well my Pilates studio near my flat is still going so I can still go after work at least.

Last week when I was in town, hastily and rather frantically shopping last minute for my Ascot outfit I saw a traffic accident. That was a little scary!! I had just come out of Debenhams and nearly about to wait to cross over one of the little side streets off Oxford street, when a scooter beeped his horn at some people attempting to cross on his green light; consequently risking their lives, and that's just from the ambulance ride they'd require.

Yes, its a given there tends not to be many cars or bikes that frequent , or coming too fast, off those streets, but people just go and they don't care about the cars. Anyway the people he beeped at got out of the way, but then closer to the corner another lady stepped out, he swerved, tires and metal screeched, sparks flew and in the rain with the wet road he went flying off his bike, with him and it skidding across to the centre of the intersection.

The lady screamed blue murder, and fell over, she was with someone, but people came rushing to her from everywhere. From my point of view, it really didn't look like she actually got hit - there was no blood, or appearance of broken anything - she just looked stressed and stunned, and with her lying in the road, this increased all the bystanders hanging around her. Then i thought that maybe the bikes wheels had spun out and hit her.

Later though, this point of view - of her not having been hit - was further verified when discussing this with a few other bystanders, some its seems who hover around to help, some just to comment - like one guy who saw us all talking and came over to push his point of view that it was because Londoners are just rude and this was verifed by the fact that people were just rude to him in a coffee shop - geezz poor old bloke needed to get a grip!

I was the first one to the guy, to see if he was alright, and when I got to him he had already picked himself and his scooter up and got to the side of the road. He was more stunned than anything, and just had nice wet marks up his legs from his slide, and probably a massive bruise to boot. He was very nice and the first thing he asked me was "Is the girl ok and did I have a green light?" - that, which he did. He was concerned about the girl and we discussed how lucky he was that he got up and walked away, as well as how he travels that way everyday and says people always just step out. I waited till the ambulance came and then wished him well. I was a bit worried that I hadn't left my details, but the cameras are everywhere and I was sure that they would show that he hadn't done anything wrong, plus there were plenty of other people around.

So there you go, Oxford Street is accident street - by far!!

Monday, May 07, 2007

New Wembley's first match, and Mark was there

Well it may not have made news back home, but the delayed opening of the new Wembley stadium was not appreciated at all here in England. Finally on the 24th of March the first competitive game was going to be played - England Under 21's vs Italy Under 21's - and I was going to be there (Yes, this is the first post from the until now silent member of the Weekend Tourists!!).

I was very lucky to get a ticket. The 55,000 tickets available sold out in about 4 hours, which was not surprising as they were only £10 each (they were selling for up to £250 each on ebay the week before the game). There were 3 of us at work trying to book them and in the end only one person actually got through to buy the maximum 4 tickets, this meant it was just going to be a boys day out with 3 friends from work.

So on the morning of the 24th Ahmad, Reshard, Michael and I all made our way together on the tube to Wembley. As soon as you get through the gates at the station, the stadium and its arch are there right in front of you. A short walk of about 500 metres and you're walking up the ramp to get inside.

After getting our programs and some food we went into the stadium proper. We had pretty good seats - fairly close to the ground, and almost in a corner so we could see the whole pitch quite well.

The game didn't start well, Italy scored first after only about 3 or 4 minutes - we'd only just settled into our seats by that stage! About 25 minutes later England scored their first goal and the noise from the crowd when the ball went into the net was amazing! It was at the end we were sitting at, and as it was from a free kick Reshard was ready and filmed it on his phone too. It was an attacking match, so it kept us interested even in the freezing cold even though the rest of the goals scored at our end were from Italy. An hour later and the match finished at 3-3.

Here's a couple of pictures...

The walk from the station

The view from our seats