Aussie Land - The Baby Tour

Well we are currently back in Aussie Land, which is - I think - my new and affectionate term for our little piece of Australia.

We are here on the Baby Tour, as opposed to the Ashes Tour (that of which we are currently beating British butt) to meet all the new babies including the adorable Oliver (my nephew) whose Christening is the main reason for our trip. Its also my Nana's 80th birthday too - GO Nan!

There are some positive general side affects of visiting Australia this time of year and some of you non-Aussie people will be jealous because we are experiencing, oh you know;

FABULOUS weather - its around 30 degrees everyday with bright headache inducing sunshine.

I actually considered for five minutes that it might be a good idea to invest in a welding mask just to walk out the front door at 8am (yes - amazing that its super sunny at that hour!!!). Though we shortly became accustomed to sunshine complete with obsessive compulsive sunglasses requirements, once again and thus headaches have subsided.

I think my pupils will become crazy enlarged when we get back to England in the effort of finding light, so the other extreme maybe required, so I am talking about a head lantern to find my way in the dark!!!!

BEACHES...the white sandy non-English kind (rocky) and non-European kind (they actually go for miles with out being obliviated with sunbeds and umbrellas) BBQ's, even the ones where there is a fire ban so it becomes more a picnic deal.

FUN in flip flops and floaty dresses...certainly did miss those when the temperature began to drop in London..thus a summery shopping trip ensued on arrival....

THE ASHES, though not me of course, not being a big test match fan myself - Aussies or no Aussies. The current test is the Adelaide test and so being completely sold out (as usual) its also going to be on the tele here too.

Mark and his brothers have set up a pool with shade cover in the backyard of Michael and Scotts house. Then, being ever industrious, they have put Christopher's mastery in cabling experience to good use with him creating a 15 metre cable to enable them to put the TV outside in front of said pool. One designated person is then assigned Eski (cooler box) / fridge duties to deliver a never ending supply of alcoholic beverages to the crew in the pool (and no........ its not me!!!!).

We are loving seeing everyone here, our families, friends and of course the babies.

Coming up next...........Lisa's 30th Birthday Celebrations Blog and another Baby Bonanza Blog....

Go Socceroos..... Football is back

What a night...still sleep deprived from working late Monday night and a hectic touristy weekend Mark and I squeezed in one more event before making our way home to Aussie land on Thursday night.

It was the Australia vs Ghana football match being held at White City, Loftus Road Stadium. We took a few friends - one Aussie, Ahmed (though his is of Egyptian decent) and one English bloke, Michael, of course. Oh and Skippy Roo, as he was originally christened by Bob and Shawna way back when he visited Canada a couple of years back, was with us too.

After being nearly trampled on the way in via the tiny entrance...think herd of elephants squeezing through a single mouse hole....we had a great time. It was hilarious and we were all thrilled when the Aussies scored early in the game, though it wasn't long before Ghana scored and boy did they like to rub that in. The supporters drums in the far right corner of the stadium (miles from us) could have been heard back in Adelaide.

Then our very own supporter turned on us - he knows who he is. Even despite love and affection shown to Skippy Roo, sharing of weird pizza pies (which heaven forbid should ever be a substitute for a pie at the footy), he whipped out his Ghana flag and tortured us to the sad sorry "1 all draw" end. The end where Australia, who dominated the field should have won!!! Oh well there is always Denmark to quash in January.

Game On......
All watching (not sure who the bloke on the end is.....just a ring in for the night)
The Boys - Skippy Roo, Michael, Mark and Ahmed
The Aussie Crowd
A foul...
We are on a winner...for now...

Michael with our mate Skippy Roo
Michael shows us his true colours....arghhhh













The website for game details...because I so don't want to bore you with that detail - http://www.footballaustralia.com.au/default.aspx?s=aus_soc_news_feat_news_news_item&id=10457

Borough Market...some pictures...

What a crazy week.........and a bit.....

Since last Saturday (4th November), we have been non-stop!

On the Saturday, a lovely clear and sunny day, we caught a train up to Bicester (pronounced Bister), which is about 12 miles from Oxford, to do a little retail therapy at Bicester Village. Well my goodness, they said it was outlet shopping, but I was not aware that it was designer outlet heaven.

Passing the yet to be finished Wembley Stadium on the train!

Thank goodness it was open till 7pm, because after arriving at 1pm (lazy sleep in thingy...its dark in the morning here now you know - daylight saving ended on 28th Oct) we needed a whole 6 hours to browse the entire length of the cute cottage style shopping strip.

Bicester Village in the evening

You name it they had it - Dior, Quiksilver, Burberry, Diesel, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Jaeger, Hobbs, French Connection, Ted Baker (my fav), Mulburry, Nicole Fahri, Pringle, Mexx, North Face, Versace, Paul Smith, MaxMara, and the list goes on. Good thing we saved up our pennies.....but now we are broke and will be poor when we come home....nah just kidding, but I will need new feet though all that walking around.

That Saturday was also part of bonfire "Guy Fawkes" weekend so the whole town of London went a little silly with fireworks from Friday right through Sunday night. Well the whole country really, even in Bicester they had a huge fun fair set up with a bonfire about 5 stories high and fireworks were going off left right and centre.

Bicester bonfire from bus stop

Thus the urge to go and see one of the millions of fireworks displays on was much diminished, especially when they go off anywhere all weekend!

Sunday we fortunately had a relaxing day and the weather was a bit greyer, but still ok.

Monday, aside from work as usual, we finally (we got tickets back in April) went to see Little Britain LIVE at the Hammersmith Apollo. David Walliams and Matt Lucas are hillarious, they had us in stitches, especially when they pulled people out of the crowd to be in the show for certain parts. No photos though, not allowed!!!

Oh and it turns out that Matt Lucas, apparently lives around the corner from us in West Hampstead, though I have never seen him. Must try to hang around at home more often, which is hard when there is lots of other things to do around London.

Then Tuesday night we had Jet at Brixton Academy - per last blog. Then lots of work, lots of work....for the next two days.

Though Mark had to, well its a tough job but someone has to do it, go on the London Eye on Wednesday night and be entertained in one of the capsules by some suppliers of theirs. Lucky him, I was very jealous - especially when he told me they got the special deal with champagne and a little book that points out all the main landmarks that you can see from the eye!!! So not fair....

Our weekend consisted of a late drinks night at the The Patternoster pub, near St Pauls on friday night. This ended up with Mark and I in Oxford Circus checking out all the pretty Christmas lights, we fortunately were there late enough to avoid all the crowds, as its certainly getting busier with Christmas around the corner. The shops are open till around 10pm at night all week with Xmas shopping. The night before, the Thursday, there were 60,000 people there when they turned all the lights on.

Saturday we headed to the Borough Markets, yet again, but to get chocolate brownies - now these are to die for and are the best in the world - for a girls dinner that I was going to that night.

We did have good intentions of going to watch the Lord Mayors Parade, but alas between eating lunch at the Markets and a dash back to Covent Garden, by the time we'd gotten back to Embankment it was all over!! Bugger, but we did get to see all the lovely poppy wreaths on one of the memorials for Rememberance day. My girly dinner was lovely, my Croatian friend Maristela is so sweet and stuffed us all full of good food and girly banter!!

Sunday - today - was the craziest day of all this week. We even slept in till 10:30am or so, so I don't know how we still did so much. We went down to the Tate Modern to go down the slides........yes the slides. There is an exhibition on with cool slides created by an artist called Carsten Holler - http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/carstenholler/default.shtm, check out the link for more details. We unfortunately got there after 1pm, its free but first in best dressed for the slides, so were too late to get tickets for the 2 big slides (from 4th and 5th levels) but we got them for the 3rd level slide at 5:30pm!

Fortunately that was our plan, to go at the end of the day that is. We had booked London Eye tickets for 4pm and had time to wander around a bit prior to that.

Southbank is always bustling with people after all down that way is; the Tate (of course), the National Theatre, the Millenium bridge - which takes you across to St Pauls,the National Film theatre, Oxo tower, various pubs, Shakespeares Globe Theatre, the Golden Hinde (a ship), HMS Belfast and way up the other end is the Tower or London and Tower Bridge.

The bank itself is always lined with people watching at least a dozen or so street performers so its a nice walk, if you don't mind dodging tourists if your in a hurry.

Down towards Tower Bridge we came across a movie being filmed, its called "Run Fat Boy Run" and it stars Hank Azaria (from Mad about you and more obviously the voice of Homer Simpson) and is being directed by David Schwimmer (formerly of Friends).We were just watching for a bit, while they were filming a scene in which the characters are beginning a race (fun run type thing).

It takes forever, seriously after 5 minutes we moved down to be "a part of the crowd", as they were asking for more people to go down. Though we were in the wrong bit for what tiny part they were filming, so we certainly won't be in the movie at all. After another 30 minutes or so they had only just filmed like maybe 10 seconds of footage. I had absolutely no idea so much work goes into just a tiny bit of movie. I managed to get some photos of David Schwimmer pottering around with his little movie camera viewer attached round his neck. Very exciting - a real movie.

Last time I saw a movie being filmed was on a work day when I went to get a coffee at the Borough Markets (I was working in the office there that day and i cannot stay away from that place - clearly) and it was a Bollywood film!! Hillarious.

Well we could hardly top that for the day, even the London Eye was looking pretty boring after that. Anyway, we still had plenty of time and our plan was to visit the Tower of London gift shop...alas it was really lots of overpriced crap so none of you will be getting goodies from there.

Next stop a flight on the London Eye. We got there on time but it really wasn't that busy, despite the fact it was a clear day and we were on it earlier than planned as we'd hoped to see the sunset (the sun sets a 4:30 at the moment) while we were up there. Nevermind, we can go again, i actually think it would be nicer at night.

The London Eye - Pod...
House of Parliament and Big Ben (note the distortion from the pod
The start of Sunset
Lisa on the eye....
Mark on the eye...





Since our ride, flight, was earlier than we planned Mark had time to stop in the pub for a pint to watch the Arsenal vs Liverpool game, Arsenal won 3 nil, but we didn't see that bit as we were back at the Tate for our ride down the slide....weeee.. all the way down. We will go back again to do the top two slides as they are supposed to be quite fast.

Dinner was Greek, at a place called The Real Greek, nothing gourmet but nice and light. And now for another fun filled week.. more soon...on that.

Zooooooommmmmm....JET...

On Tuesday night Mark, Michael and I headed down to Brixton Academy to watch Aussie band Jet peform to a smallish crowd of around 5,000 people. They were great and made better by a brilliant venue.

Basically it used to be a theatre, but they have taken out the seats so its tiered, sloped, so if you are at the back you can see to the stage without having to dodge heads, to a degree anyway.

It was a long night and we were exhausted the next day...but we had been out late on Monday night too (we went to see Little Britain Live at Hammersmith Apollo theatre - hillarious!!!)

The Emerald Isle - Part 2

Ok, this has been a long time coming but here it is.... the continuation of our great Irish adventure... Enjoy!

Day 6 – We had gotten into our hotel around 8pm the previous night and we were both too tired to even bother going down to the pub for a drink and a little wander. We should have though, as it was pouring down with rain in the morning, with a heavyish fog milling around. The lady in the tourist office even told us not to bother with the Ring of Kerry because it would be fog bound, and we would see nothing.

Ah but she was wrong, the rain was only drizzly and the fog quite minimal when we got there, but it was cold (Mark was lazy and didn’t get out the car much during this bit – so the cold etc had no effect on him). Along the drive we stopped at an old stone ring fort near Sneem, which dates back to around 2,000 BC, so it’s quite amazing it’s still standing. We did end up seeing quite a bit and the overall view from the tip of the peninsula over Derrynane is quite amazing with all the beaches and sweeping green all the way down to them. It would have been good, granted to see across to both the Beara and Dingle peninsulas, but on a holiday in Ireland in unpredictable September, you take the good with the bad.

The little town of Waterville on the tip of the ring is very pretty with a proper sandy beach and I can imagine it being supremely appealing on a warm summers day. From there we drove back around and up towards Limerick, via a town called Killorglin where we stopped briefly for lunch (it’s not a very touristy place – we couldn’t even find postcards!!).

On the way to Limerick we stopped in the very lovely town of Adare, which is quite touristy. This being due to is very English thatched cottages, along with; the Holy Trinity Abbey (founded in 1230 by monks in the Trinitarian Order…something to do with the crusades), a friary dating from 1314 (since restored more recently as a parish church), a Desmond castle from 1326 (which unfortunately was closed for repairs) and a 19th century mansion known as Adare Manor, that now serves as a very posh hotel.

Driving on from there we headed to our final destination for the day, and woo hoo I was allowed to finally drive. It’s very strange after not having driven for 8 months that is for sure. The worst part was I had to drive through peak hour Limerick traffic to get to the town of Bunratty where we were staying for the night. Not terribly amusing, especially since Irish drivers have taken lessons from Adelaide drivers and don’t let people in – very frustrating indeed.

Upon reaching Buntratty we plonked our stuff in our little B&B and headed straight to the local pub, called The Creamery for a dinner of delicious Irish stew in the company of Irish peoples. Ha – the place was full of tourists, German and American. Oh well what can we say after all we were tourists too! Though afterwards we realised that we should have gone to the 2nd pub there called “Dirty Nellys” as being established back in 1620 made its name as the oldest pub in Ireland.

Day 7 – After a delicious breakfast that included pancakes and maple syrup – trust me after having bacon and eggs for the last 6 mornings this was a delight – we headed down the road to Bunratty Casle, a mere 2 minutes from where we were staying. We figured we could get in when it opened and beat the crowds.

This was the case and we got to explore the castle in all its medieval glory alone (most furniture, paintings and tapestries dated from the 15-16th centuries), whilst it poured with rain outside. Fortunately that cleared away by the time we were back outside and we wandered around the folk park looking at all the replica houses (cottages, village school, blacksmiths, weavers huts, flour mills, and farmyard), which give a somewhat nostalgic view of ye old Ireland.

Lovely but again, as the tourist troops began rolling in, we were ready to be on the move to continue across the breathtaking Cliffs of Moher. Our journey was across the highlands of county Clare, where we were fortunate to pass through some charming little towns and we saw lots of rainbows – no pots of gold thus not a single leprechaun either!

Well the Cliffs were sure windy! Once we managed our way out of the car (an effort when the wind is more than 90 mile an hour and your doors threaten to blow away) and across through the overly crowded tourist trap slash gift/café shop we had to battle said winds, all up hill, to view the magnificent cliffs. It was well worth it though, and being it was relatively clear, we had great views of the cliffs for miles along with the waves crashing heavily up along the coastline.

From the cliffs we headed back inland, but not before I made Mark drive along to a stunningly windswept beach for a quick snap, which turned out to be one of my favourite shots. Driving inland was not so windy. We had a short stop in Kilfenora to visit the Burren Visitor centre as we hoped to learn a bit more about the impressive stone age settlement that we were about to visit.

The area itself is rich in flora despite craggy limestone desolateness and definite lack of trees. It’s also now quite deserted, but as we were soon to see evidence of former human settlement is plentiful in the area.

We first stopped to see the Caherconnell stone fort, which may have been established as early as 500AD and there is evidence it was still used in the 15th century. There is really not much to see aside from the outside walls there is not a lot there. We then stopped to see Poulnabrone portal dolmen (circa. 4,000BC), which is a square stone chamber with a huge capstone.

From there we continued our scenic drive (no photos I took here did the scenery any justice – the pinky/purplishness of the rocks simply cannot be portrayed in photos alone) along the R480 heading up towards the picturesque fishing town of Ballyvaughan, which looks across Galway Bay.

Around from there we bypassed Galway to drive straight across and up the N59 through the Connemarra (very west county Galway) towards Leenaun, our final stop for the night. We drove along, yet again, breathtaking scenic roads that took us through the heart of the lonely bog. This was made more impressive with the twin mountain ranges, the Maumturks and the Twelve Bens arising along either side of the road. That and sunset over the mountains was just gorgeous. Oh and we learned afterwards that we apparently took the non-scenic route!!!

Our destination Leenaun – place of the tides - (or Lenane if you convert it to English) was a tiny village, set on Killary Harbour. This harbour or fjord is known as one of the most beautiful natural harbours in the world. The 200 year old hotel was lovely and the food delicious too. After a good meal and a short trek to the local pub to watch the Leinster verses Munster rugby game, we called it a day.

Day 8 – We had a long day ahead of us so after breakfast we started early with a drive along the more scenic coast roads between Lenane, Letterfrack and Clifden. The area is dotted with lakes and trees line the waters edged, encircling the base of the mountains like ruffles on a skirt. There are sycamore, beech, oak, horse chestnut, conifers and evergreens, along with ferns and Lilly of the valley in more shaded areas. Just looking at the scenery reminded me of paintings seen in art galleries that were now brought to life.

We stopped at Kylemore Abbey, on the Pollacappul Lough near Lettefrack, which was originally built as a grand Gothic country seat in the late 1860’s and grand indeed it was. After WW1 a convent of Belgian nuns purchased it (it was going cheap at 40,000 pounds) and have since restored it to its former glory, including the beautiful abbey, gardens and kitchen gardens. It’s now also a very posh girl’s school – well I wish I went there! This website tells you all about it and has more photos, including from the inside - http://www.kylemoreabbey.com/

Next stop after driving through Letterfrack was Clifden, which officially is the only town in the Connemarra, due to the fact is has a bank, supermarket etc. It’s actually quite up market and costs a fortune to live there, even if it is on the edge of nowhere. We stopped for a wander and had lunch in a nice café, but again we had to keep moving.

We head back along more scenic roads, along the other side of the Twelve Bens, and we passed some lovely wild Connemarra ponies on our voyage. I got out to take a photo and got quite close without them even stiring (after all they are wild so I wanted to not spook them); however some psycho tourists, who also stopped to take a photo after us, went too close and were far to loud and scared them off. Oh well no decent photo for them.

We also passed quite a lot of peat bogs along our way. The peat smells quite strange; especially when it’s burning (they used it at Bunratty Castle). Around that area it is, due to previous geographical and cultural isolations of the past, a Gaeltacht (Irish) speaking region. Thus we had fun reading the road signs! The Connemarra was, for us, a beautiful spot and one that brings to mind images of rugged costs, turf cutting, steep mountains – a haven for poets and artists for sure.

Along the coast road was again scenic, but was not as beautiful as inland Connemarra. So after a long drive, that included; dodging a dog who apparently liked to chase cars (looked a bit like Jed – Marks brothers border collie x), a swag of people doing a fun run near Galway, we got a glimpse of Galway, but alas no time to check out the place. From there we drove pretty much straight 200km across Ireland, briefly stopping for dinner (and we also saw a horse fair…just horses and more than you could count…unbelievable) before ending up back in Dublin by 9pm that night…whew!

Day 9 – Our dodgy hotel, up near Dublin Castle and the Christ Church cathedral, didn’t included breakfast, but by the looks we were lucky for that to be the case, so we ended up going to a cute little crepe place back down near Grafton Street! Yummo. Since it was Sunday (again nothing open till at least noon) we had time to wander around the town, including visit St Patricks cathedral, before we headed to the National Gallery.

At the National Gallery we made an executive decision to view only the 16th century paintings (they had “Lady writing a letter with her maid” by Jan Vermeer, so I had to see that) and the Irish paintings. The reason for that was because the place is massive with over 2,500 paintings and 10,000 other works of art (not all out at once of course).

From there we did a bit of window shopping, more wandering and had lunch at an authentic Irish pub called the Hairy Lemon (which included my last pint of Guinness – made in Ireland anyway) before we made our short journey back to Dublin airport for our flight back to sunny London that evening.