Build up to a Winter Christmas

So its only 2 sleeps till Christmas!!!!!

And what a Christmas its going to be, very different to any we've had before. I guess that’s all part of the experience of travelling!!!

I haven’t seen any carollers on the streets yet or any Robins resting on frosty holly branches which are the traditional images I have of an English Christmas but there were carols from the St Mary’s choir at the official turning on of Warwick’s town Christmas lights at the beginning of the month and there was some pretty frost a week or so ago.

On Christmas day Jeremy and I will be working at the hotel for Christmas lunch and then hanging out with our housemates for the rest of the day. I'm sure that Santa comes to this part of the world even though we don't have a chimney (did you know that Santa visits Hungary in early December and leaves gifts in shoes for good children and twigs for bad children!!) and we have already received heaps of parcels from the postie, so we're not totally neglected.

Christmas in the winter time is a very strange thing. Overall I think that a summer Christmas is better but I might just be being prejudiced or homesick, i don't know.
It gets dark at the moment at about 3.30pm which is horrible!!! It is cold outside and fairly grey but with no chance of snow (which would make it magical!!), the up side of that is that we get to see all the christmas lights that are up all over town everyday, not just if we stay up really late. The down side is that there are no barbeques outside to catch up with friends, no walks in the sunshine to burn off all the christmas mince pies (there are always heaps left over at work, o dear). And the worst bit is that everyone has got sick with colds (as you do in winter).

The traditional English Christmas Food is defiantly suited to winter however. I thought that English Christmas Food was just turkey, Brussel sprouts and Christmas pudding but actually its much more that that. Apparently an English Christmas involves yes turkey but also Gammon (a cut of pork meat as far as i can tell), goose or duck, salmon, bacon wrapped sausages, chestnuts in everything (and roasting) , cabbage, and yes lots of brussel sprouts ( I saw a woman in the supermarket with 5 massive bags of the things!!). And probably much more that I haven’t yet worked out despite watching a lot of the food channel.

I believe we will be having Hungarian Goose thanks to our house mates who are Hungarian. I’m going to try and make a Pav just to keep the Kiwi Christmas alive so far from home!!!

We have decorated our house with the decorations which were left over from the hotel. So we have a massive Christmas tree which has heaps of lights and an ever diminishing (cos greg and I keep eating them) number of homemade iced Christmas cookies to decorate it. Plus we have branches up the stairwell and a big wreath on the front door. All very festive.

The hotel has been really busy with Christmas parties and functions which has kept both of us busy too. As far as I can tell there is no difference there, everyone lets loose and drinks too much and has crackers with bad jokes and hats (the jokes are no better on this side of the world!!) It has been fun working all the parties as the atmosphere is usually good (as are the tips) and the work is not to hard. Ours is next Sunday which I am looking forward to a lot. We’re going to a bar in Stratford for dinner and a few (or more for some people) drinks all put on by the hotel which is very generous. And we are exchanging Secret Santa pressies which is always entertaining!!!

We have been attending church with the wonderful Christmas carols and readings over the last few weeks. Many of the carols are ones neither of us knew but everyone else definitely did so must be traditional English ones. The Nativity play at Castle Hill was wonderful with all the Sunday school kids doing readings and all dressed up at the characters and the newest arrival (only a month or so old) as the baby Jesus. Awwh

So that’s how our Christmas has panned out so far. We feel very far from home but its not so different that its not still Christmas and despite missing everyone a lot at this time of year we will still enjoy our selves.

I hope that everyone has themselves a Wonderful Christmas with much joy, laughter, family, food and pressies and make the most of the warm summer all those who are lucky enough to be in it.

Lots of love and Christmas wishes


Gem and Jez

Long walk for lunch

Hey everybody. So yesterday we had a day off and no plans so we took a look in the National Trust book and headed off to Baddesley-Clinton House. Its an old tudor manor house which is surrounded by its own moat! The nearest train station is 2 miles walk away but that was fine so we bundled up in our warm coats and scarfs and hats and set off down the country road. It was another one of those estates that has a really long drive way so that when we actually turned off the road we still had like another mile to walk! Then we got to the house and found out that the house was closed for the winter. Oops. Only the garden and restaurant were open so we had a nice lunch and a walk around the garden and the fish pond. We did get to look around the outside of the house so I guess that's not too bad. So afterwards we walked back to the station and luckly caught the 2:35 train back to Warwick (because the next train wasn't for another 2 hours!).

So thats our story.

In fair Stratford, where we lay our scene...

Today we visited the home and birthplace of the worlds most famous playwright! thats right William Shakespeare himself!! we stood in the very room where he was born and walked on the same floor that he once had!

We went to Stratford on Avon today.! It was pouring with rain and freezing cold but it was a great day out! Having decided to go today on our day off a wee bit of nasty weather wasnt going to stop us.

There are three Shakespeare trust houses in the town which we visited all of them, the first is The Birthplace. This was the house where Shakespeares parents lived and he grew up. They had costumed guides on each room telling you about the life and times which was quite interesting, including John Shakespeare (williams father) telling us all about his house!!!

Along the main street there was a Christmas shop!!! with so many christmas decorations it was awesome, it even smelled of christmas. i reckon it would drive you insane to work there tho with the music all the time!!!

We had lunch at a quite quaint tea rooms where the lady was really chatty and friendly and all the locals were popping in and out to exchange news and gossip with her.

after lunch we made our way to New Place which is were William Shakespreare and Anne Hathaway lived for the last years of their marriage untill his death. All the buildings (in fact most of the buildings in the centre of Stratford) were in the black and white tudor timber style which was really cool! all of the houses have really amazing gardens too so it was a shame we were visiting in the rain and winter.

The last house was Hall's Croft which is where Shakespeares daughter lived with her husband who was a doctor in the town. there were some interesting displays of doctors equipment and again a really informative guide who explained the history and stories of the house to us.

We then made our way to the church of the holy trinity other wise known as shakespeares church to see his grave and had a look around what is a really lovely church.
We walked along th banks of the flooded River Avon past the Royal Shakespeare Theatre company theatres. Romeo and Juliet is playing next montha nd January so we might come back for a performance sometime.

By this time we were freezing and a bit damp so we made our way back to the station and home again.

This is an Ox, This is Gravy, This is Oxford

Ok so we have a weird sense of Humor, but what can you do....?

We visited Rosie in Oxford last week. it was fantastic to catch up with someone from home and get all the news and really there is nothing like hanging out for a day with an great friend that we've known for ages after spending so much time lately with new people. Not that we mind meeting new people and making new friends but hanging out with old ones really rocks!! We miss you all.


Our pro tour guide Rosie got us a walking tour of the town so we followed that around and tried to look at stuff while we caught up on each others lives for the past few months!!! this only resulted in us getting lost once so pretty successful, not anything to do with my geographical skill at map reading i might add!! my bad that we went the wrong way!!!!

We saw all the main sights, the outsides of all the colleges and other old buildings. like its arch rival Cambridge Oxford is a really beautiful town and the Architecture is stunning. we think it would be awesome to have studied in one of those old buildings (wouldnt you be gutted if you got put into a new modern college building) but reckon that it might be atad daunting having to do exams in the "Examination School" as if exams weren't bad enough just having to go to the C block!!!

We had lunch at the pub where C S Lewis and Tolkien and various other famous academic ex students once hung out a lot in there time, randomly named (as many english pubs are, yesterday i drank at the slug and lettuce, but i diverge) the Eagle and Child!!! lunch was a prolonged affair cos its easier to chat when not trying to cross roads and it was freezing outside!!!!! The weather even threw a random Hail storm at us!!! BRRRR

Then sadly Rosie had to go back to being a diligent hard worker and so me and J investigated the inside of Christchurch College. Really how could we not? As expected it was stunning and especially the chapel/catherdral!

J and i decided to make the most of being out so we went to the movies in the evening. really i couldnt believe that they actually played over half an hour of adds before the actual movie!!! no kidding cos i looked at my watch!!! the movie was 'how to loose friends and alienate people' it was hilarious.!!! and on that highly unacademic and scholarly note we ended our Oxford day out!!!!!

nothing much

hi all
nothing much to report really!
i'm just sitting at home on sunday night while J is at work doing the grave yard shift at work. sunday nights at the hotel are totally dead, the only thing you realy get to do is cleaning!!! and really boring cleaning like skirting boards!!! wahoo!

I worked this morning so i;m glad for the evening off, not that i;m really doing anything, just surfing the net and reading my book. whoops, i went to the library on wednesday maybe and got fiveb books out, i'm half way through my 4th one already!!! that's what happens when its too cold to go outside!!!

we had the end of daylight savings last night, so got an extra hour of sleep which was pretty cool! but it means that the sun is dropping behind the trees at 4.30 now, and there are still 2 months of it getting darker to go!!!!!

i'm pretty proud of myself, i managed to change the picture at the top of the blog all by myself!! and i created the pretty collage too!! i'm so clever. it is the whole evening's achievement tho!!!

well hope everyone in NZ is enjoying the long weekend!!!

Love Gem

Kenilworth

Hey all!
So after a while of just working and hanging out at home watching food tv and the fishing channel we decided that its time to become tourists again (not that there is anything wrong with watching the food tv and the fishing channel, they are fantastic but it was time to get out of the house!!!)

Last week's day off we caught the bus to Kenliworth castle which is in the village just down the road. it was so fantastic, its a really atmospheric ruin especially i think cos it was built out of a really red sandstone which is a cool colour and the weather which started out promising looking turned into freezing cold and very dark clouds so gave the skyline a cool appearance.

the castle it's self was interesting, built in several stages by its various owners. including Robert Dudley of Queen Elizabeth I fame. she stayed there several times and he extended the castle for her visits. There was an interesting display on Elisabeth and dudley in the Gate House.

Since it was freezing we had a great pot of tea in the cafe which was in the old stables. mmm pot of tea!!!!

one thing i find interesting is the reason that its a ruin, during the civil war the parliament troops purposely destroyed the main walls of castles so they couldn't be held against them!! its a shame cos there was nothing wrong with he castle otherwise and people could have kept living there but its also cool cos now its an awesome ruin.

well thats my story, sorry bout the history lesson!!!


in other news it was Jeremy's birthday on Monday so we went out for dinner at Prezzo, mmmm italian food is soo good!! then had a few drinks in Warwick after everyone else finished work in the evening. it was a fun night! poor J had to work the breakfast shift on his birthday tho so i think he enjoyed his day off today and didn't getup till after lunch to make up for it!!!!!

Love Gem

Photos of Paris

Hi gang!

We've finally gotten around to putting photos and links in our posts of our Paris adventures. So if you haven't already read them head to:
Day One and Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five and Six

And even if you have already read them, go read them again and click on the photo-links and look at the photos!!!

Cold!

Not outside, but inside!

We went to Coventry yesterday with Mike from work to watch his brother play ice hockey. It was (obviously) pretty cold in the ice rink but we went and got hot chocolates after the 2nd period to warm us up and they were sooo good (even if they were out of a vending machine).

The game was pretty fun to watch and i even started remembering some of the rules from playing playstation icehockey, but it was mostly amusing just watching them smashing each other into the walls all over the place. The team we were supporting lost 4-0 but it was a fun night out.

Photos

Finally i have managed to upload and sort some of the 300 odd photos we took in Paris, so they are all in our Picassa now and i'm going to try to convince jeremy to link some into the paris blogs too, so if you want to re-read the paris stories with pictures you might be able to!!! maybe!!!

It is really good to have our own computer at home now. i have put all 1051 photos we have taken since we left onto it and am really pleased with how they have all turned out. the screen on the camera shows them looking kinda crappy but then on the computer some are so nice. there is definatley some that i'll earmark to get blown up when we gt back to NZ.

We have been pretty busy the last few days and working quite long shifts. which willbe really good for our bank account, getting paid monthly is taking a bit of getting used to!!!

On saturday night there was a huge wedding on at the hotel which we both worked in the bar. it was really hectic but was great fun at the same time. all the people that we work with are great and now that we kinda know what we're doing its going well. but are feeling pretty tired cos we both worked on sunday also (me till 11pm) then went out partying with our friends for Jodie and Jeff's leaving do, and had to work on monday!!!

We wwen to Stratford for the Party, which was really funny and quite a lot of drinks were had by all but suprisingly few hangovers at work on monday, lots of tired faces tho!!!

I've just started learning how to do the receptionist job as well. at the moment its going pretty well (today was my second shift) but there are tonnes of things to learn and to remember!!! so i'm learning heaps and finding out the answers to loads of questions that guests ask so thats good. Its keeping my sleep deprived mind sharp!!!!! hehe

toodle oo

Love Gem

Yay!

Yay! We have our laptop now!

Also, here is our Paris Wordle


The most noticeable word group is "beautiful amazing city"

l'anniversaire à Paris..... le Louvre and so on...

On Monday we spent the whole day in the Louvre museum, o my gosh that place is sooo massive!!!!! its unbelievable how much stuff they have there.

we decided that a good idea would be to get the audio guide cos all the labels of all the things were in french so if we wanted to know what we were looking at we'd need something in English!!! the audio guide was one of those fancy multimedia ones which was cool it had a couple of guided tours on it. we started with the 'masterpieces tour' which took us around the most famous pieces of the museum and told us all about them. we saw the Venus de milo and the mona lisa again and also the Victory of Samothrace and others and it told us about the architecture of the building too cos it was originally a royal palace.

we looked through the large scale paintings (by large they mean really large like whole wall sized!!!) and after that we looked around the antiquities collection and saw tonnes of Egyptian things and Greek and roman stuff. and around some of the Napoleonic apartments (more gold everywhere) there was so much and we were exhausted by late afternoon so we headed home! the museum was amazing but its just so big, we thought the British museum was big but we actually made a dent in that we could go back to the louvre tonnes of times and still not see everything.

The next day was our last in Paris... :( sadly. We took a boat cruise down the Seine River and looked at all the sights from a different angle. The bridges are so beautiful we got off at the Eiffel tower and had our lunch in the shade of the gardens beneath it. and took more photos of it!!! (by the way not long now till we get out laptop and can put up some of these photos i keep going on about!!!!)

We cruised back to Notre Dame and walked up to the Pantheon which is a huge big domed church that throughout history has been used for both religious and civil purposes and is not actually a church anymore. Lots of famous historical people are buried here including Victor Hugo (author of the Hunchback of Notre Dame). we were lucky enough to be just in time to join a tour up to the towers and the outside of the dome so we climbed some more stairs and had another view of this beautiful city.

and that was all there was time for, we went back for our luggage (its so great not having to carry round everything you own on your back!!) and caught the euro star back to London. (which caught fire two days later and closed the tunnel for a few days, lucky timing us!!!)

Overall it was an amazing trip, Paris is a city filled with beauty and for us it was such a romantic way to spend our anniversary. The most memorable bits for me were - The Eiffel Tower, the food and climbing so many steps to get views of the city from everywhere we went. :)


So now we're back in Warwick and working hard again, but still enjoying ourselves. We went out for a few drinks on Monday night. I have discovered 'cider black' apparently what all the students drink, which is cider with blackcurrant cordial in it, mmm tastes mostly like sugar!!!

Much love to all
Gem and Jez

l'anniversaire à Paris..... La Tour Eiffel

Sunday was our actual anniversary the 7th of September, one whole year!!! WOW

We decided to have a leisurley day and had our breakfast delivered to our room!!!! yay for room service!

Then we headded into the city to have a look through the Musee national de l'Orangerie, an art museum which contains some of Monet's waterlilly paintings. They were absolutly beautiful and very worth seeing. There were two large oval rooms each with four of Monet's huge waterlilly painitngs. It was quite an experience to see them displayed in such a way. We also saw some other impressionist paintings by famous artists.

We then relaxed by the fountain in Jardin des Tuileries, and ate the most massive icecreams which were two flavours of soft serve mixed together, mmmmmmmm

This evening we dined in the resturant on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower!!!! which Jeremy was very proud to have booked over the phone in french!!

We arrived while it was still light and took heaps of photos of the tower from the national theatre which has the best view. Close up it is the most amazing building and really huge, Jeremy was suprised about the colour of it (its kinda dull brown), he was expecting it to be more copper-ey, not to be painted. we got to skip the hour long queue cos of our dinner reservation and go straight up the lift to the first floor. We had a look around the view was beautiful, the river runs next to the tower and we could see all of the landmarks we had already visited.

Dinner was yummy and we had champane, it was very romantic especially as there was the most incredible sunset over the city which lit up the whole resturant in red and orange. we finished with super decadant mentling chocolate cake, mmmmmmm it was soo good!!! By the time we had eaten it was fully dark and all the lights in the city had come on and the tower had been lit up all blue.

we took the next lift up to the second floor for more views over the city, each time from a slightly higher angle. then took the next lift to the top floor. the lift went up and up and just kept going up, oh boy it was very high at the top and the lifts have windows so it was a wee bit scary!!!!!

The view from the top was so worth the wait in the queue and the scarness, we were so high that the wole of paris was laid out in every direction, the hill of Montmartre looked flat and it was a clear night so we could see for miles. it was so beautiful, the streets with the tall (6-7 story) treeaced houses looked like channels in the cityscape, it was really quite amazing. Absolutly beautiful, i cant really describe it and i cant get over it!!!

It was such a beautiful romantic evening, the perfect anniversary.

l'anniversaire à Paris..... Versailles

On Saturday we braved the crowds and took a trip out to Versailles. The palace of Louis XIV (there are so many Louis' its hard to keep track)and subsequent French royalty was HUGE!!!! and there was lots of gold everywhere!!! here we were very lucky to skip the queues as the line for tickets was massive, haha!!! the state apartments were beautifully furnished with old furnitaure and loads of beautiful paintings and sculptures, all very lavish. unfortunatly all the information was in french so we missed out a wee bit on understaning quite what was what. The best bit was the famous Hall of Mirrors which was a long light room with more gold and elaboratly framed mirrors along the interior wall so so it was all shiny and reflective. (not a very good description wait for the photos!!!)

The gardens however needed no translation. Again HUGE, and all set out in a formal style but on a very massive scale. To walk to the end of the Grand Canal would have taken an hour!!! and there was parkland beyond that!!! we decided to take a rowing boat out on the Canal for an hour which was fantastic fun, neither of us is particularly good at rowing but Jeremy is much better than me!!! It was a really lovely was to see the gardens and a beautiful view looking back at the palace

We walked further to the Grand Trianon which is part of the same grounds but really another palace where the royalty could come to get away from the court!! This was where Marie Antoinette spent a lot of time. More stunning interiours, each room had a different colour scheme!!! There were two sets of bridal parties having their photos taken on the porch and the gardens!!!

We left when it closed after relaxig in the sunshine in the gardens some more. (thats right sunshine, we had super weather!!!)

We came back into town and had dinner at a cafe on the corner of the street by our hotel, jeremy had an 'original saussage' which was a bit weird and an undefinable meat!!!

stay tuned
love G + J

l'anniversaire à Paris..... day one and two

Paris was AMAZING!!!
We has such a great time, did heaps of the touristy stuff and it was a great celebration for our first anniversary!!

Thats right we have now been married for one whole year!! I cant believe how quick the time has gone by, it seems like yesterday we were rushing round getting all organised for the wedding but at the same time it seems ages ago and we've done and seen so much and had such a great time this year!

So Paris...
We traveled by the Eurostar train through the channel tunnel, which was a really quick and easy way of getting there, we arrived about 11 in the morning and the first day we went and had a look around Montmartre. At the bottom of the steps to the Sacré Coeur there were heaps of guys selling string bracelets, which i got succered into getting one. i was just a bit too slow to say no and it was too late once the guy had tied all the knots... jeremy thinks i'm silly and a push over. ;)

we looked through the beautiful Sacré Coeur which looks out over the city from the top of the hill and even climbed to the top of the dome for spectacular views ( the first of many sets of stairs we climbed this trip!!!). As we came back down there was a man singing on the steps in front which was cool, he sang 'in the jungle' in french which was hilarious! we wandered around the wee streets and markets looking at all the amazing paintings that people were painting and selling on the roadside (not that we could afford any sadly cos they were lovely) and ate crepes which we ordered in halting french!!

we walked down to the Moulin Rouge thinking that we might go to see a show there but it was massively expensive so we settled for just looking through the window and we had dinner is a wee cafe somewhere!

the next morning we ate heaps at the buffet breakfast at the hotel (this was the best bit of the hotel mmm) there was heaps of food to choose from including croissants and rolls and ham and cheese as well as cereal and fruit. mmmm unlimited croissants!!!!


We had bought the Paris museum passes which meant that we didn't have to queue at most of the palaces we visited on the pass which was super. so day two took us to Notre Dame, splendidly huge and filled with tourists, included on our passes was the climb up the towers of the cathedral, even though it was raining the view was again amazing, paris is such a beautiful city, it seems very white and all the central city buildings are several stories high and the river running through the center is lovely. The Seine is much prettier than the Thames in London.
we had a look around the Crypte Archéologique du Parvis which is the archaeological remains of the original city of Paris under the square in front of Notre Dame!!!!
We then headed along to Sainte Chapelle. we had to queue for a bit here cos they had to security scan everyone cos its in the same place at the justice court!!! Sainte Chapelle has the most amazing stained glass windows ever, they go right the way around the upper story of the chapel, depicting most of the old testament and are so detailed. (I'll definitely put up some photos once we get our computer).

we wandered around the streets again in the afternoon looking at the beautiful bridges crossing the Seine, especially the Pont Alexalandre III which has golden statues on it, and the huge buildings. Like London they're very keen on their Gold everywhere in Paris!!! we ended up at the Musée du Louvre which is open late on friday nights so we poped in to look at the most famous things whilst it wasnt too busy. There was still a pretty big crowd around the Mona Lisa which was actually pretty small and not as amazing (to my uncultured eyes anyway)as a lot of the other paintings, some of which are huge!!!! The Venus de Milo was lovely though and worth the hype. how cool anyway to say we've been there and seen all these famous things!!


Later in the evening we went up the Arc de Triomphe to look at all the lights of Paris. The view was again amazing, the Eiffel tower was all lit up blue and looked so cool. we didnt manage to get any good pictures cos it was really windy so they all came out blurry but we tried anyway so have heaps of pictures of the Eiffel tower in the camera!! it was awesome watching the traffic negoiate its way around the roundabout which surrounds the Arc de Triomphe, there are no marked lanes but about four lanes worth of traffic!!! actually watching the traffic everywhere was pretty funny, drivers seem to change lanes with no warning and it all seems pretty chaotic, luckly we were walking or taking the metro!!!

Thats all for now, stay tuned for the next installment of our trip

Love Gem and Jez


PS Happy Birthday to Mum, Rosie, Zanny, Jo and Karyn for the beginning of September

Still no computer

Well still don't have a computer because the computer company decided to stop selling that particular model and so were out of stock. But we got a discount on a better computer and so we got it for the same price. Just have to wait longer for it and we won't get it before we go to Paris. Oh yes that's right, we're going to Paris tomorrow!!!

This limited internet time is getting annoying as we've getting more and more things to blog about so we're getting more and more behind.

As a quick update on the hotel, we're absolutely loving it here. The rest of the staff are really friendly and has a great family feel to the group. I'm getting the hang of the waitering now so hopefully I'll be able to remember some it when we get back from holiday. The living situation is great as we get all our food cooked for us at the hotel by the great chef's Jeff and Dave (who also live with us) so we haven't had to cook a single meal since we got here (awesome!). We got our first paycheck last week and it feels great to have a decent amount of pounds in the bank (yay!).

Anyway, as a side note I found this cool thing called Wordle. It creates a word cloud based on the word density of our last few posts. So the bigger the words, the more we've used them. The winning word is 'much' but I don't think we've really used it that 'much' have we? (haha). Also I'm ashamed that 'confused.So' has shown up as a word - I'll blame that one on Gem.

From Gem and Jez

No internets

Okay, just a short wee post today letting you know why there haven't been too many posts recently. We've now started work in Warwick (which is great by the way) and I'll tell you all about that later on. But not much posting is going on since we don't have a reliable internet source. Right now I'm at the Library but I can usually only get about 15mins interent time which isn't really enough to do everything in. We'll be getting a brand new laptop next week though and so we'll have all the internet time in the world. So until then, don't expect to hear too much from us.

News that we need to blog about:
* Lymington
* Christening of twins
* Warwick
* New Jobs
* Warwick Castle
* Out on the town
* and much much more in the exciting new installment...

So goodbye for now as I'm just about to run out of internet time...

Burleigh Burghley House

My Auntie suggested that we go to Stamford for the day just before we left Cambridge. Gem wasn't that enthusiastic because we needed to catch a train there and back and we didn't have a clear idea where or what Stamford actually was. She almost convinced me into not going at all but we had already seen most of what there is to see in Cambridge (short of going into each and every college) so we did end up hopping on the train. Stamford turned out to be a cute wee town that is apparently England's finest stone town. The reason for this is not due to any one building but because pretty much all of the town is constructed out of the same type of brick giving it a lovely consistency (it sounds like I'm talking about cake or something doesn't it?).

We headed out to Burghley House which was about 2 miles from the town centre and its a lovely state home. Its very impressive looming up as you walk up the drive and it is massive (it has over 200 rooms!). The walk through the house was really cool and they gave you a wee pamphlet called the 'Burghley Code' (due to filming of the DaVinci Code there) which had little things to work out in each room and a code to figure out (quite fun, at least for me). There was also a funny dry moat around the house which Gem told me was called a 'haha'. I then had much fun saying 'haha' for the rest of the day.

They also had a Garden of Surprise there which turned out to be a fun courtyard/garden which had fountains and water spouts all over the place. There were lots of kids in togs running around through the water curtains but we tried to stay high and try. There was no hedge maze but we did go through a mirror maze where we got thoroughly confused.

College!

So Chloe kinda warmed up to us over the weekend. She actually sat on our laps without crying on Monday morning just before we were about to leave. But she seemed to be in a much better mood just after she had a big sleep. Didn't do too much sightseeing over the weekend, just went to Camden Market in the rain, which was pretty cool. Heaps of fun stalls and lots of people with umbrellas dripping everywhere. We picked up some 2nd hand books and bought a little light shade thing for our new room in Warwick. And some fudge and ate some icecream on a massive biscuit (Yes thats on a biscuit, no cone involved).

Right now we're in Cambridge and it is pouring with rain. But we've had a couple of good days where we've looked through some of the famous Cambridge Colleges. King's College Chapel was of course the most impressive and the King's Glass (the stained glass windows) are spectacular. Didn't managed to go into Christ's College because they aren't letting visitors in at the moment. Will have to come back and have a look around after the summer is over. We also went on a guided punting trip down the Cam and looked at the backs of all the colleges and the pretty bridges. We didn't try punting ourselves, I'm sure that would have resulted in people falling into the river. Even so we saw a fair few punt traffic jams because of gammy tourists. Even saw one guy lose his pushy-stick (Yes that is obviously the technical word).

We are staying with my Auntie in Cambridge and she own two chinese restaurants here and she is feeding us very well. She insists that we try lots of dishes and eat lots and so by the time we leave here we will each be the size of a house!

Until next time.
Love Us.

Westminster Abbey

Well we headed back to Westminster Abbey this morning and its a much different place when its filled to the brim with tourists. Just moving through the crowd you can hear a babble of audioguides handing out information in a multitude of different languages. It seems strange how something that seems very quiet and solemn during Sunday services can quickly change into such a tourist site.

We managed to get onto one of the small Verger led tours which I would have to recommend to anyone who goes there. The cost to get into Westminster is pretty steep (comparably) at £12 but the £3 guided tour in itself more than makes up for the high entry cost. The Verger who took us around was absolutely awesome. Sarah S, if you're reading this, I think he was the funny one you were telling us about (with the flags). He was really really informative and he was very lighthearted, telling funny jokes all the time so it keep all the history much more engaging. He started off with just a small British flag which he held up so that we could easily follow him through the crowds. But after he had worked out where each of us had come from he managed to get hold of a flag for America, Australia, and New Zealand so that he was leading us around with four flags, representing the members of the tour group.

We're now out of the hostel and staying with my cousins Yean Hong and Julian for the weekend. Their baby Chloe is still very cute but she cries whenever someone other than her mother holds her (We must be very scary people). We'll have to see if she warms to us by the end of the weekend.

PS: Wasn't the Olympic opening ceremony quite spectacular?

Disaster

I had a real muck up today. With all the new bank accounts and pin numbers we've gotten I got the new UK pin numbers confused with my NZ one. So when I tried to get some money out of the whole in the wall I put in the wrong one several times and it ate my card!!! DOH!!! Luckily we can still use Gem's card otherwise we'd be in some serious trouble.

ooo we got a Job!!!

So news flash time.

We have now got a live in hotel job in Warwick. We headed up there on Tuesday to have a look around and meet the manager (who was really nice) and have an casual interview. The hotel is really nice and there is a wee flat out the back where we can live. For those who don't know where Warwick is (and I assume that means pretty much all of you) its a wee town between Birmingham and Oxford (and so northwestish of London). Oh and by the way its pronounced Warick without the 2nd 'W'. Warwick has a castle (doesn't every english town?) and is near Stratford on Avon so there will be heaps of things to do on our days off. Gem will get to do some reception work as well as bar/wait and I will be doing bar/wait aswell and sometimes a night shift. I think the morning shifts might be a bit of a challenge for me since they start at quarter to seven in the morning!

In touristland we have been to a couple more museums (Natural History and Science Museums) and we went to Madame Tussauds today. The Natural History museum was really cool with lots of interesting exhibits. The dinosaurs is the most popular with heaps of bones and models. After we went through the queue to get in had grown all the way through the central hall and was a 45minute wait! We listened to a live presentation on Martian meteorites which was way more scientifically orientated than Gem thought (she thought it would be filled with kids). Gem's favourite bit (and mine too) was the ant farm. They had leafcutter ants in a big glass tank and we watched them busily cutting leaves and carting them back (across a wee stick bridge over water) to their colony. We probably sat there for about half an hour just watching them. We watched them all trying to cut up a big stick and watching them all work toghether, it was really funny.

We saw lots of famous people in Madame Tussauds and Gem even got her picture with the Queen!!! (photo will be up soon). There was a wax figure of a tourist taking a photo and whenever I saw it I kept reflexivly moving out of her picture. They had a scary bit downstairs where actors would leap out of the shadows and scare you and I'm not sure how it all related to wax figures but anyway...

Ooh totally forgot. After we got back from Warwick we managed to get some late tickets to Spamalot (musical of Monty Python's Holy Grail). It was fantastically hilarious. We laughed the whole way through and are still chuckling about it now.

You might think that things have gone perfectly this holiday but we've had a bit of a fiasco this week. We've had bugs in our beds at the hostel and been bitten all over. They're real itchy!!! The hostel have been real good about it and have sprayed the room yesterday but this morning the other people in the room found some more so they've sprayed it again today. Hopefully that will solve it.

So thats all for now.

Love Us.

Meusum Muesum Museum Overload

Okay where were we last? Oh yes, in Scotland. Were we in Stirling? Did we talk about Stirling Castle yet? No, okay.

Stirling Castle was pretty cool. It was kinda like Hampden Court Palace but for the Stuart Kings of Scotland rather than the Tudors of England. The great hall also reminds me of Hampden Court because their both big grand halls and the one at Stirling is the biggest of its kind in Scotland. They completely restored it by building a whole new roof because the army used it as a barracks for the last few hundred years. In the Chapel Royal (built specially for the baptism of Prince Henry the prince of wales at the time) they have three brand new tapestries from the Hunt for the Unicorn series. They're really brightly coloured and vibrant, especially compared with the old decrepid tapestries you see everywhere else. There is a tapestry studio on site where they are hand weaving the next panel in the series (7 panels in all) and they're not going to be done until 2011 (or something).

We almost had haggis the night before, but it was not meant to be. We had psyched ourselves up and were all ready to share a haggis starter at a haunted pub (yes that's right, haunted, as in with ghosts). But when we came to order they were all out of haggis!!! Must be a popular dish! I (Jeremy) had a burger instead and when it came it was absolutely massive. The meat pattie was the same diameter as a normal one but it was pretty much as thick as it was wide! I should've taken a photo but, alas, we didn't have the camera with us. Otherwise we'd be one of those tourists that take photos of their food.

So that ended our great Scotland adventure. We're now back in London and totally exhausted after a day at the British Museum (got the spelling right that time). We didn't even managed to see half of the galleries! We got a guided tour which was so worth it, but the guide took us through maybe a dozen rooms and the tour lasted 90minutes!!! We saw the Parthenon scuptures, Egyption mummies, the Lewis chess set (from Harry Potter, you know, when they play life size Wizard's Chess), plus a million other things that we can't even remember. We saw heaps of Egyption stone statues and Greek pots, roman mosiacs, celtic artefacts and much much more. We'll have to go back and I think we'll make it a point to do the British Musuem every time we're in London. Maybe in a years time we'll have seen most of it.

Last night we managed to catch a special service at Westminster Abbey. It was special because we got to see Sarah singing in her Wellington Choir which was visiting the abbey. We went out for a drink at a pub and then dinner after and it was great to catch up with her.

Ooh, ooh, almost forgot. Before seeing Sarah we went to Hamley's a giant giant toystore. It was really cool (since we obviously haven't grown up) and had 4 floors (and a basement) filled with all sorts of toys. They even had a 'Make your own Teddy Bear' thing. We wanted to buy lots of stuff be we can't really afford to lug any more stuff around on our backs. Our packs already weigh a tonne.

Okay, thats all for now folks.

Big tree and more in this exciting episode

Okay, so we've spend a few days chilling out in Pitlochry. Elaine has been so nice letting us stay here while we figure out what our next move is going to be. While we've been here we've been down to Dunkeld/Birnam and seen the Birnam Oak. It also has a Shakespeare connection as its the last tree that was part of the Birnam Forest which attacked at the end of 'MacBeth'. It was a massive sprawling tree which had branches that needed to be propped up with massive crutches. We also went to Dunkeld Cathedral and saw a lady 'ringing the bells'. She had a whole range of different bells which rang at different notes and she played a lovely version of Amazing Grace for us. It looked amazing (oops pun not intended) as she picked up each bell and rang it while picking up the next while still sounding the first and so on. Really spectacular and worth going to see.

We went to Edradour distillary which is the smallest distillary in Scotland. They only make 15 barrels a week of the finest single malt whiskey. We had a wee taste but straight whiskey really isn't my thing.

As of right now we're in Stirling and we just went to the William Wallace monumnet (you know... Braveheart). Its a great big spire with a spiral staircase (246 steps!!). Spectacular views at the top though which make the climb worth it.

Tomorrow we've got a mammoth train ride down to London again so that we can catch up with Sarah while she's on choir tour. I'm so looking forward to the train...NOT!

Ooh, almost forgot. We're on the job hunting scene at the moment, looking for some live-in hotel work. One of the likely ones is in Warwick but doesnt' start til mid-September. But we're enjoying traveling so much (and blogging about it) that we might just keep traveling for the next 6 weeks and worry about work then! Other possibilities are in Bath or in Bornemouth or around the southern England area. We'll keep you all posted as soon as we get something more concrete. And we'll get you our address so you can send us post (because we know you're dying to send us care packagaes!!!). Anyone who wants post from us (postcards) should email us their address (and keep a keen eye on their letterbox).

TTFN (Ta ta for now)

Lost things

So you've probably noticed that we've been shifting between hostels almost on a daily basis. This has an unfortunate effect in that we need to compeletely pack up our stuff each night, losing some stuff in the process. So far the biggist casualty has been shampoo. I've (J) lost my shampoo while we were in our first hostel in London, Gem's lost her shampoo and face soap in Ullapool, I left my (new) shampoo in Torridon.

We've also left behind my Jandals and our NZ->UK power adapter in Comrie.

As an added bonus we left some pepsi in Skye.

The sun and photos

Okay, Jeremy here. Just a short post about nothing much. I've tried throwing in some links to our photos in the actual text of the last two posts. Let me know what you think (do they all work? are they too big? too annoying? do i ask too many questions? etc?)

The other thing thats bothering me is the sun. Not that theres too much of it (summer is good) but that its in the wrong place. We were in Brodie castle and the guide said something like "he wanted to make this room nice and light so he built these big bay windows on the south wall" and I thought "well that was stupid, the sun shines in from the north!". Luckily I didn't say that since I would've looke really stupid (even more than I usually do :]) because of course, now that we're in the northern hemisphere the sun travels from east to west on the south side. Its quite offputting because its so very automatic to orient myself the old way. Hopefully I'll never design a house here otherwise it might end up with a north facing house!

And that's my story.

Sightings of the Loch Ness Monster and other adventures

where were we up to? thats right we were in Torridon last time we wrote.

we drove from Torridon to the Isle of Skye the following day, again the scenery was pretty stunning and the weather was really hot!!! i now have the worst tshirt tan line cos i forgot to pack any singlets for this trip not expecting that it would get hotter as we went further north!!

At Torridon we realised the we has no bread left for breakfast so we drove on hoping that we'd go through a town with a bakery or store where we could get something yum, the only place we went that had anything vaguely suitable was a really small place and the best we could get from the general store was waffles, now these werent any ordinary waffles, they were small and hard but had caramel syrup in them so they wer so sweet and almost sickly after having two each for breakfast!!!

we stopped at the Strome Castle ruins to have a look around, this was a bit of a disappointment to jeremy cos its the friest ruins we'd been to and jeremy was expecting a big stately house like all the other ones we've been to. the ruins were cool though and on a rocky outcrop with great views up and down the sea Loch Carron.

The next place was ruins once but has been rebuilt to look like it was ages ago. the most photographed catle in scotland and appears on every scotland calender!!! Eilean Donan Castle. it was pretty spectacular form the outside and it sits on a island in the Loch accessed by a pretty bridge. the inside of the castle had heaps of crazy passageways in the really thick walls but was teeming with tourists and the information boards were really randomly laid out!!!

We drove over the Skye Bridge to the Isle of Skye. unfortunately we didn't get much of a chance to look around Skye because the main road was closed for most of the afternoon so we were stuck on the bottom half of the island and all the interesting bits are at the top half, including where we were staying!!! by the time the road reopened we were pretty tired and all the castles and museums and other stuff had closed so we made our way to the skyewalker hostel. it was a really cool hostel and had heaps of starwars charactter cutouts all round the place wearing tartan scarves!!! even the carpet was tartan as was the duvets and pillowcases on the bunks!!! the chap there suggested we go for a walk after tea up a local hill to look at the sunset. this was a beautiful view and the sunset was lovely. we did get eaten alive a wee bit by the midges.

midges are a native scottish bug like a very small sandfly and there are heaps of them . the night after our first encounter with them i even dreamt they were getting me and i hardly slept at all i was so itchy!!!!

in the morning we had to catch the boat back to the mainland quite early so only had time to quickly look at a prehistoric round tower ruins before driving to Armadale to catch the car ferry. we did a wee forest walk while we waited and saw some seals on the rocks, apparently you can sometimes see otters there but we didn't. :(

the ferry took us to Mallaig and the next bit of coastline was completely surprising. white sandy beaches with super clear blue water, it was so tropical looking and very different to everything else we'd seen. we had lunch at the beach but even tho it was hot the water was freezing still so no swimming!!!

after that we headed inland towards fort william, we stopped at Glenfinnan where there is a monument for the place the Jacobites raised their standard in 1745 and the Glenfinnan viaduct which was on the harry potter films. the monument we climbed up, it was a very narrow spiral staircase and at the top you popped out a small trapdoor and climbed out onto the roof.

Fort William itself was not particularly exciting we just got some supplies and looked around the outdoor market and headed further along to Fort Augustus where we were staying. Fort Augustus is a cute wee town with a canal and some tourist shops.

Okay, Gem is tired after that mammoth bit of writing, so I guess its my turn to take over. Where were we? So running through the centre of Fort Augustus is the Caledonian Canal. It was built in Victorian times to connect Fort William on the west coast with Inverness on the east coast. It was great to watch in action and really tickled my engineering bone (yes i have an engineering bone).

But back to our travels. We stayed at a hostel in Fort Augustus which had nice rooms but the kitchens and dining room was really gross. And there was a creepy staff member who was drunk/high who kept coming up and trying to have weird conversations with us.

Anyway, the next day we headed back west and travelled along to Glen Coe which is another scenic wee area with lots of walks. We took a Gondola ride up Aonoch Mor (a mountain) which is a ski field in winter. It was right next to Ben Nevis which is the tallest mountain in Scotland at 1343m (for comparison, Mt Cook is 3754m). We couldn't see the peak of Ben Nevis since it was covered in clouds. We also looked at the ruins of Inverlochy castle which is a pretty classical square fort with round towers at each corner (the kind you'd make out of sand on the beach, at least thats the shape i make my sand casltes). That night we went on a boat cruise on the Loch Ness and even got of shot of Nessie herself!

The day after was the last day of our highlands trip. It was (yet again) another stunning day and we went to Urquhart Caslte (ruins again!). These ruins were much cooler than the ones before because they've put some walkways and floors back in so you can clamber all over the castle. Its quite sprawling and you can easily visualise medieval life back in the day. Afterwards we went to a Monster exhibition in Drumnadrochit where we saw all the photographic evidence of the Loch Ness monster. From there we had a nice scenic drive up through Glen Affric which was doublely nice because it got us away from all the tourists again.

Finally we drove back up to Inverness to complete our circuit and after driving through the 5pm traffic we dropped the car off, grabbed some quick Macca's for tea and jumped on the train down to Pitlochry. The End.

Highlands continued...

Okay, so next up was Culloden Battlefield. (as a side note we used to live on Culloden St in Dunedin). For those of you who don't know this was the major battlefield in the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745/46. The Scottish got absolutely hammered by the British English Redcoats (the Jacobites/Scottish were undefeated up to this point), with 1500 Jacobites dying vs only 50 Redcoat casualties. End of History Lesson. The information centre there is really really awesome, full of interative panels and great tour guides. They even have a birds eye view video/projector of the battlefield with little red and blue men that you can see fighting.

Next up was Cawdor castle which was another lovely state home. Shakespeare set part of Macbeth here (the murder of Duncan) but it wasn't very sinister while we were there (the sun was very sunny). They had a holly labyrith but we couldn't go in because if they let everyone in it will destroy the holly (since its shallow rooted). We're turning into maze enthusiasts I think.

We then intended to drive a short distance to Brodie Castle but we managed take a wrong turning somewhere (i still don't know where) and ended up 10 miles in the wrong direction, having taken a rather scenic route. We finally found our way there and just caught the last tour of the day at 4:30pm. We were so glad we did because the tour and the castle were really interesting. Really cool to hear the familiy history from the tour guide and how it got transfered into the National Trust. I even got to play on the antique piano (only because the benefactor wanted music to always be played in the music room (they also have concerts there too)).

We spent that night in Inverness too. Not sure if Gem mentioned but we had really cheap rooms with really uncomfortable bunks. You could feel the springs all the time as though there was just a thin sheet of material above them and thats it. You get what you pay for really.

The next day (which was yesterday) we had a lovely drive up to Ullapool. It is fantastically scenic and I thoroughly recommend coming up this way to have a look. We had lunch at Corrieshalloch Gorge which means Ugly Hollow in Gaelic but its really not. Theres a big suspension bridge over a massive ravine, with a gigantic watterfall. Gem got a little freaked out when the bridge was swaying and was even more scared when we got to the wee viewing platform round the corner (which sticks out over the ravine). Its weird because I was fine here but I was quite shakey when we were ontop of the dome at St Paul's, and Gem was the other way around. Before that we had a little walk at Rogie Falls which were also very pretty with deep black water, unsurprisingly called the Black River. We managed to lose our way on the walk with some confusing colour coded signposting.

We got to Ullapool in the early afternoon and guy at the hostel suggested we take a drive further north to Achiltibuie. Up there we drove through some stunning mountain scenery and found a lovely white sandy beach. It was blazing hot so we stopped there for a while. Its definitely not what we were expecting to be doing in the Scottish Highlands. There were also lots of pretty wee isles dotted around the coast (called the Summer Isles i think). We had fish & chips for tea and sat on the beach at Ullapool until 9pm because it was so hot. Go summertime!

Finally today we drove from Ullapool to Torridon. Drove through more spectacular scenery (is this getting repetitive?) and stopped for luch at the Inverwe Gardens. The gardens are filled with exotic plants, way more tropical than you'd expect at the top of Scotland. They even had a Bamboosolem (haha funny word) with bamboo! We stopped at another sunny sandy beach and we watched a real funny dog playing fetch. He would bring a tennis ball back to his master and drop it while she threw another one away in the opposite direction, and he went tearing after that one. Meanwhile the first ball would roll to his master's feet. So he basically was on the run the whole time, never stopping. Someone should teach Monty to fetch balls like that! (Yeah right)

We mosied down lots of one track roads which are quite common up here. But they're not as bad as you might think. They have heap and heaps of passing places (unlike the ones in the lakes district) so its really good when you want to stop heaps and admire the scenery and people can pass you easily. Its much better than narrow two lane roads where there's no safe place to stop or to let people behind you pass.

Torridon is a really small place where the only shop is open only 1.5 hours a day. Just chilling out in the YHA at the moment (back in seperate dorms again :[ )

We're finding the sheep kinda weird over here. They all have tails for one thing (we even saw one wagging it like a dog today), and they wander all over the place. We passed through one little town which had sheep grazing next to the pub!

I think that pretty much catches us up. Next up we're travelling to the remote Isle of Skye so might not be internet again.

Toodle-oo
Gem and Jez

Highlanders!!!

Waring... Cliffhanger alert...we only have a few mins of internet time left so will just write what we can post and fill in the rest later :)


the Ceilidh was super fun, we got up and danced heaps, and did fun dances like strip the Wilow and the white dashing soldier, there was lots of getting spun around and it didn't matter at all that we had no idea what we were doing, people showed us what to do in the ones in groups and we just copied in the ones that were just couples. there were even lots (well about four) people in Kilts, it was sooo cool!!! we were the youngest people there by far, maybe the only people this side of forty!!! but it didn't really matter :)

The next day (Monday) we headed up to Inverness on the Train. it was soo sunny so the train ride was really beautiful and the scenery was lovely, the hills became wilder and all covered in heather which is just coming out into bloom, a really pretty purple colour.

in Inverness we looked at the Castle, bit of a let down really, its only 200 years old (HUH 200 years soo young!! :)) and we couldn't go inside, its just the court houses!! but the view over the city from the top was cool. and we looked through the Inverness city museum which was really interesting, all about the history of the highlands and the geology of the area. so now we know what we're looking at when we go around the place.

in the afternoon we went for a beautiful walk along the river Ness, its soo cool you just walk for 10 mins out of the city into this woodland area and across some islands in the river and up the other side!!

the next day we headed off to culloden battle field but you'll have to wait to hear about that and cawdor and brodie castles and todays adventures in Ullapool and a tall suspension bridge!!
:) G + J

Oh and driving

Okay, story time about driving in Britain.

(side note: Gem had noticed that i keep starting my stories with "okay")

So we hired a car from Morcambe (more-cam) to drive around the Lakes district. A quick rant: its really annoying that we have to pay an additional £11 a day because we've both under 25. When the car itself is only £16 a day!! if only i was 3 months older!.

I'm finding driving a bit different over here. In the Lakes district there are heaps of little lanes which only just fit two cars (if that!) and they all are bordered by stone walls so there isn't much room for error, not to mention they stop you from looking around the corners. Sometimes the roads are single lane tracks so if you meet another car barrelling down the lane, you have to slam on the brakes and then one of you has to back-up until you find a wee passing place or something to pass each other.

To add to it all, the indicator toggle is on the left and the wipers are on the right so i keep turning the wipers on when we go round a corner and indicate when it starts raining. =p

We found a couple of amusing signs along our travels. One is the "elderly people" and it has the best little picture on it. The other amusing sign was because of all the little laneways criss-crossing the area, all the roads seem to go to the same place! We were staying in Arnside and we found this sign that pointed to Arnside in two different directions! Though after we noticed this phenomenom and wanted to take a picture of it, we couldn't find one for ages!

Scotland the brave!!!

we have spent a lovely 2 days in pitlochry with my (G) mum's cousin Elaine and Henry. pitlochry is a sweetly touristy village on the way to the highlands. there are loads of wee walks around the area and lots of lochs and rivers everywhere. the first night we were here we went for a walk up to the dam and looked at the fish ladder (which is a series of 30 or so pools that the fish can swim between so they can still swim upriver to spawn, even with the dam in the way!).

Its been soooo good to sleep in a proper bed. While we were in Comrie we were sleeping on a double air mattress which was alright but not the best of sleeps. but before that we were staying in youth hostels that only have separate girls and boys dorms so we weren't even sleeping in the same room! We're such a lame old married couple who can't sleep too far apart.

Its been really relaxing here which is great since we've been so hectic since landing in London. And we've still been able to look around since Elaine and Henry have been talking us out on walks around the area. We've only done two touristy things in two days which has to be an all record minimum.

We looked at Blair Castle on Saturday which is another cool Scottish castle. It was white and fairy tale turrets (round tower). I (Jeremy) always thought of Scottish people back in the day as those highlanders like in Braveheart, but of course they had nobles and castles and all that too, i just never really thought about it. There was a piper at the entrance because they were having a wedding there and there were lots of people dressed up in kilts. Oh and Blair castle is only place in Britain that is allowed to have its own private army. queen Victoria liked it when she stayed there so she said they could have an army!!! apparently its mostly made up of old men now but they parade each year!!! i don't think they go to war anymore tho!!!

last night we went for a walk to see the black spout, a local waterfall, it was a pretty walk through the woods. the woods are really different to the forests in NZ, they have big tall trees like beech and oak then just bracken and stuff at ground level so you can see through the trees. apparently in the winter time red deer come down off the hills into the woods around the town.

we have seen a wee bit of wildlife so far, loads of rabbits obviously, and lots of molehills all over grassy areas (like the golf course!!!)but no actual moles (they don't come out much and only at night), Jeremy saw a fox as it ran in front of the car in comrie, that was exciting. we have seen grey squirrels in England but no red squirrels yet, although Elaine and Henry get them in their garden sometimes. we saw an eagle soaring in the sky above Queens View today which was pretty cool. they have loads of cute wee birds here which we've seen quite a few of but have no idea what they are.



Today we went for a drive to Queens View, a pretty lookout point over Loch Tummel, which is where Queen Victoria enjoyed to picnic when she came to the highlands. we then drove along the loch and visited a Crannoch!!!!!

a crannoch is a wooden hut over the loch where people lived about 2500 years ago!!! the one we were in was a reconstruction but they have excavated all the debris under where they were and found heaps of relics and stuff. it was really interesting and the exhibition also had how the crannoch people did crafts. Jeremy had a go at making fire from two bits of wood, he got a wee bit of smoke but no fire, the guy made it look so easy but j said its actually hard work!!! we also got to have a go a carving a bit of wood using a wooden lathe.



Tonight we are going to a ceilidh. Meredith should know what that is. All I (j) know is that it is some sort of Scottish music/dance.

we have planned the next leg of our journey, we are heading up to inverness tomorrow then spending a week touring around the highlands. we will then return to pitlochry and will attempt to get work after that. we have no idea where we'll be based but we'll let you know.

Love Gem and Jez

PS to add to the bank saga from before when we got to keri's house we each had two eftpos cards waiting for us and two different letters with the pin numbers on them so we now each have two bank cards one for the normal account and one for the savings and when we're allowed to have credit cards they'll be a different card again!!! what a mission!!! and we still do not have internet banking!!! its pretty ridiculous really but that seems to be the way they do things over here. o well, now we just need to earn some money to put in all these accounts!!!!!

Why no comments?

Why isn't anyone commenting on our blog? Doesn't anyone love us anymore? :(

If there is anything we should be talking about more or spending more time on, let us know. We're always keen to try and improve our bloggins style and get better at the whole live journal thing.


jeremy is such a geek, we're just sad cos we miss hearing from everyone at home if no-one comments then we dont know if anyone read it and we miss u. :(

Miles behind

So we're miles behind in our blogging. Its been quite hard to get sufficient time at a computer with internet in between our travelling. We only managed to put up those photos and a few blog stuff while we were in transit in Glasgow. So we're going to be a bit vague in blogging about what we've been up to in the last week.

In brief:
Still in the lakes district, the day after our excursion out to the stone circle, Pamela arranged a family outing on a real steam train from Carnforth to Ravenglass through some lovely scenery. We went over the bridge over the Morcambe bay (a big sandy tidal bay) (which is really long with 51 arches). Once in Ravenglass we took another rail trip on a mini-steam train on narrow gauge rails. It was called the Ravenglass & Eskdale railway and goes through some more lovely hillside scenery.

Next day we went to Sizergh Castle which is where Gem's Uncle Harry used to be a room steward. The gardens there are really nice.

That was the end of our trip in the Lakes. We dropped Auntie Kath back at the train station the next morning (and thankfully this time the train service was perfect and she got home with no trouble at all) and we caught a train up to Glasgow. We stayed the night there at a hostel right on the riverside. This turned out to be a little annoying as there we heaps of seagulls squawking away in the late and early hours.

The next day we headed up to Perth by train so we could catch the local bus through to Comrie to stay with Duncan and Keri (my cousin) which is where we are right now. It was a pain having our packs while we were in Perth because we couldn't really do any touristy stuff and we couldn't leave them in a luggage place because of these new age security reasons.

Its been really nice catching up with my Auntie Penny and Uncle David as they are over here vising Keri (their daughter). While we've been here we've been to Drummond Castle gardens and we went to Scone (pronounced skoon) Palace which is where the Scottish Kings were crowned and that was really cool to hear about the Scottish Royalty and how it all ties into the English royalty and the wars between them.



Anyway, we're about to head out to Pitlochry now so we'll blog more later and maybe flesh out the descriptions of what we've been doing.

Till next time.
Gem and Jez

We've added photos

Just click the photos link in the sideboard to the right. The new folders are London and Lakes.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

Not that we actually looked into Wordsworth's house, and not that there were any daffodils were about at the time, but we did look at the outside of Dove cottage. We had a nice we tour around part of the Lakes district with Pam and Andrew, although it did start with a bit of a hiccup. We were going to go to Hilltop farm (where Beatrice Potter lived) but although we all read the guide book none of us noticed that it is closed on Fridays! But we were still able to see lots of scenery and we had a nice walk around Tarn Hows (a lake).

The scenery is quite different from NZ. The farmland had cute stone walls instead of fences which are soo cool. and there always seem to be cows and sheep in the same paddock. around the lakes, although the mountains aren't very high (no snow at this time of year), they're still quite dramatic and they're beautiful reflections of the mountians in the lakes.

It was quite rainy and misty which kinda gives a cool feel to it. Although we got enough clear spells to eat our lunch in the dry and have a reasonably dry walk. We had lunch by Conniston water and continued driving north past Grassmere which is where Dove cottage is.

We got to Castlerigg stone circle which is near Keswick. Its really cool because you can go right up to the stones and touch them. There was a great view from there of the mountains right around the stone circle.

Diamond wedding party

The reason we stopped off in the Lakes District was to visit my auntie Dot and uncle Harry who celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary on thursday. thats 60 years of marriage!!!

all their family had gathered and they had a nice lunch party at the local hotel with their friends from the village aswell. it was really nice to meet all the family whom i haven't met before. Pam and Liz, Dot and Harry's two daughters were their with their husbands Andrew and Mark. Also Liz's two children Mark and Michelle. Mark and his fiancee Katie brought up their two new baby twins who are only 11 weeks old, they were soo cute!!! and Michelle and her partner Martin had their 1 year old son Harvey who was also soo cute!!! its fun spending lots of time with little babies, we seem to be doing quite a bit of it lately.

an exciting thing about the diamond wedding anniversay was that they got a card from the Queen!!! it was awesome!!! the postman delivered it specially to the door. hopefuly we're going to put a photo of it up soon.


i think that antie dot and uncle harry really enjoyed the party, it was nice for all their family and friends to be there. its so amazing how fit and well they both are considering they're in their 90s. My auntie Dot is a bit dithery and forgets and repeats things a bit, i've lost track of the amount of times she told me how pleased she was to have travelled so many interesting places and how we should we should be making the most of it while we can. although it got a bit frustrating answering that question so many times she's exactly right. We should be making the most of our travels and so we are.

The joys of train travel

Well Gemma loves trains. She finds them really exciting even (i was going to say 'interesting' but she thinks 'exciting' is more betterer). But I don't... they make me sick. But thats almost irrelavent to our eventful train adventure north to the Lakes District.

We set off from Euston station about midday on Wednesday. The train departed on time but only made it about a minute out of the station before stopping for 15 mins. The lady on the voiceover explained that this was due to a different train hitting a tree!! (How this is possible i don't know, it must've jumped out and surprised it). Then a line fault meant we were diverted through the midlands rather than up the main line. Then, yes there is more, there was an electrical fault on the line so they had to get a diesel engine to tow us (slowly) along. We had to wait for ages for the diesel engine to arrive and get attached and at the other end had to wait for it to be de-attached. Then, since we were so late (like 2.5 hrs by now) they needed the train back in London for the next service and so they booted us all off at Crewe (3/4 of the way) so we had to rush to catch another train! We almost missed it and we all just crammed into the little exit/entrance way between carraiges. Fortunately some nice person gave Auntie Kath a seat but Gemma and I took up 2 persons worth each standing with our packs (so we just hung out in the exit).

In the end the train was 2.5 hrs late and so we missed getting our rental car because the shop had closed for the day! But we managed to get a taxi the rest of the way to Uncle Harry and Auntie Dots house and Pam and Andrew gave us a lift to our hotel.

Train travel is fun eh.

Parliament

Okay so we've been out of contact for a week now. We've done lots of things and are going to slowly blog about them all over a few posts.

Tuesday 8th July

We were lucky enough to get a guided tour around the houses of parliament. We went along with Gem's cousin Pamela as part of a Liberal Democrat group tour. We saw the House of Lords which is very elaborate and ornate and has a huge big gold throne where the Queen sits once a year for the opening of parliament. We also saw the House of Commons which is very green (just like the one in the Beehive). Then Pamela's MP, Greg Mulholland, took us up to on of the Select Committee conference rooms and talked about what he does in Parliament and stuff. It was really really interesting to hear what an MP's job is actually all about. And strange that we've talked to a real MP in England but never met one in NZ. He's also the most famous person we've met so far (but not that famous cos theres about 600+ MPs).

We spend the rest of the afternoon with Pamela and had a look through the Jewel Tower which is one of the only remaining bits of the original Westminster Palace (the offical name of the Parliament building).

Afterwards we lugged our massive packs out to Ealing to stay with Gem's great Auntie Kath. She live in a real cute little terrace house and I trimmed her hedges for her.

The next day we headed out of London by train... but thats a story for another post.

And that was London.

Henry the 8th i am i am

apparently that is a song... according to Jeremy, can someone confirm this? or is Jeremy just going mad?

We spent the day at Hampton Court Palace today, which was one of Henry the 8th's many palaces that he lived in throughout the year. its massive and has an amazingly beautiful garden.


we got two guided tours through different parts of the palace, the guides were dressed in period costume of the era the rooms were (Henry the 8th and William and Mary) they were really knowledgeable and told us heaps of cool information about the Palace and the court life. did you know that they had to keep moving to different palaces all the time cos after a few weeks in one place it would smell too gross to stay??? and did you know that Henry the 8th had a chap called the groom of the stool whose job it was to wipe his bum!!! haha but apparently everyone wanted to be it cos you got be spend heaps of time with the king!!!!

there wasn't as much gold today but there were some amazing tapestries hanging on the walls and heaps of massive paintings everywhere. some of the rooms were laid out exactly as they would have been in the time of the kings and with the original furnishings, like his actual throne and his actual bed!!! so we walked in the footsteps of actual kings and queens today, it was really exciting (especially for me cos i reckon royal people are super, in case you hadn't already figured that out!!!)

One of the most famous things about Hampton Court is the gardens and the Maze. we did the maze which was pretty cool, but it didn't take very long, the remaining maze now is way smaller than the original one. the rest of the gardens were stunning, each of the important rooms in the palace looks out onto a vista along the garden and they are laid out so beautifully.

And then we got WET, really WET just as we were leaving to go back to the train station it made thunder and lightening and bucketed down, we got soaking cos the wee umbrella doesn't protect from lots of rain cos it all falls off the sides of the umbrella onto you anyway!!!


this will probably be our last post for a few days, we're heading to my Auntie Kaths tomorrow and then up to Silverdale in the lakes district. we will probably next have internet once we're in the youth hostel there, in four days or so. we might try to post some photos then too so you all can see what we've been going on about!!!

lots of love Gem and Jez

The Lord Mayor!

Sunday 6th of July

Righto. So just had a quiet day today. The only tourist thing we did was go to a service at Westminster abbey. It turned out to be the annual Civic service or something and we got to see the Lord Mayor of Westminster (which is actually a woman so shouldn't it be Lady or something (gem says no)). We didn't get too much of a look at the abbey itself because we were only there for the service and had to stay in the nave (as we weren't nearly important enough to be up the front (we're just plebs)). We'll come back sometime later as proper tourists and get a tour which is apparently really good.

It rained after that so we didn't do any more sightseeing. But we did see some people trying to break the Guinness world record for the most people doing a Bollywood dance in Trafalgar square (and they did break it despite the rain)

Instead we went and visited my cousin Yean Hong and his wee baby. It was really nice to be normal people again instead of crazy annoying tourists. Baby was really cute and Gem was gushing as normal. It was really nice to meet Julian for the first time and spend time with family (i haven't seen Yean Hong for a decade).

Over and out

Where the Queen Lives

Saturday 5 July

Hello everyone!

Today we went to Windsor castle!!! it was so awesome!!! windsor castle is where the queen lives, sometimes, it seems that she actually lives in loads of palaces around the place but she goes here for most of her weekends, (how nice) anyway she was actually there when we were there and we know that cos her Royal Standard was flying above the round tower, which means she's in residence!!! cool aye??

we got a real train ( not the underground) from the actual Paddington Station to Slough (which it turns out is said to rhyme with though) and then changed to the Windsor train. it was really nice trip and good to get out of the city for a bit and see some of the countryside.

i brought some shoes in Windsor, turns out there are heaps of shops in windsor just by the train station, who would have thought!! they're just boring sandles but i need something to wear thats not sneakers, its still pretty hot here!!!

anyway enough rambling, what is actually interesting is the castle, it is huge and looks just like you expect a castle to look, not the fairy tail princess kind of castle but the knights in shining armour kind with battlements and arrow slits in the big imposonbg walls!!! its an impressive sight when you walk up the hill towards it.

we got audio guides to listen to whicvh were cool but got annoying after a while. they had some interesting information though. inside the castle grounds we had a look around and then went through the Sate Apartments whivch is where the kings and queens entertained, and got to see where the Queen holds massive important banquets, and where the Knights of the Garter are based (the olders order of chivlery). aswell as rooms from King charles the first's time and King Henry the eightths time. there were some amazing portraits and as with everything royal it seems, lots of gold on everything!!! it was all pretty overwhelming really but such an amazing place.

Also in the state apartments was the Queen Mary's Dolls house, now that might sound a bit dumb but it was actually one of the highlights, not a dolls house for kids but an actual miniature version how how the royals lived in the 1920s and everything actually worked, the hot and cold water plumbing, the electric lights, the mini vaccume cleaner and moterbikes, even the piano and the vaccume cleaner and the hose in the garden!!! it was soo detailed, even had a vault in the basement with mini crown jewls and the plates on the dinner table were real silver!!! it was sooooo cool!!!

after we'd oooed and ahhhed over all that we did some more and looked thorugh the St George's Chapel, which was also pretty spectacular. it is an amazing example of a gothic church and is very beautiful. the knight of the order of the garter all have their regalia up there too.
we stayed after the castle closed and attended the evensong service at the cahpel which was beautiful, the young choirsters have amazing voices and they were so small i think the youngest is about 7 years old!!!


right internet time is about to run out and i think i've rambled long enough

lots of love
Gem

That ANZ ad

Friday 4th July

Okay, so you know that ANZ bank ad with the Scottish dude coming over and setting up a bank accound in 20 mins. That was us, except replace 20mins with 1.5 hours. We can see why the Scottish guy was so shocked to get his bank acc so quickly. We spent with an hour and a half with the bank lady and we still have to go in on Monday once they've activated the bank no. and then they are still going to post our card 5 days later. Then i bet we still have to go in to put a pin on the card later! (and we have to wait 3 months before we're entitled to a credit card)

We met up with the Britbound people (a group we joined) and it sounds like they have lots and lots of cool events and stuff we can do. They arranged the bank account appointment for us and will also help set up our NI number for us too. We will have to come back to London to do some of the cool social events like the Monopoly pub crawl and High tea at the Ritz.

Once we escaped from the bank we headed down the river Thames on a city cruise boat. It was cool seeing the sights from a different perspective. There are heaps of new developement apartment blocks along the river and i bet they're all really expensive (£1mil+)

We got off the boat at Greenwich (not pronounced Green-Which) and strolled up to the Royal Observatory where they established the 0 degree Longitude meridian line). There was a queue to take a photo of the meridian line, i kid you not! So we didn't take one at the official spot, just round the corner instead. I (jez) found the exhibition on the Longitudinal problem really interesting (thats trying to find your longitude when at sea).

We also went to the planetarium next door and they had cool interactive exhibits and there were lots of kids that found it exciting (us too!)

We had tea at the pub at our backpackers which is way cooler than our first hotel. Its situated in an old nurses accomodation building and has like 300 rooms, its massive. We got free breakfast which was yummy.

Thankyou to everyone who emailed us and commented. Its so good to hear from everybody and what everyone is up to at home.

Cool bananas.

Love us.