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I hinted in the earlier chilli entry that we’d been away for the weekend, so here’s the lowdown…

As is pretty much usual about this time of year, there was a feeling that we needed a bit of a long weekend escape to somewhere a bit warmer to get over the winter blues, and to maybe get a head start on some summer colour. This year’s choice ended up being Marrakech. Or Marrakesh. Or any other way you want to spell it. And this year we had the company of Rach and Rup too, so we wouldn’t get bored of talking to each other again.

An early Friday afternoon flight out meant we had time once we arrived to dump our stuff at the riad (hotel/house) that we were staying at and go and have a quick look around the medina (old town). Blam!  Straight into our first real dose of the chaos that is medina life.  Shopkeepers calling you in to their shop, a constant stream of mopeds making their way through the pedestrians wandering the narrow “streets”,etc.  And then it was time to find something to eat in the medina main square.

The main medina square gets filled with all sorts of things at different times of the day.  Over the time we were in Marrakech, we saw snake charmers, story tellers, monkeys, people fishing for fanta and coke, and of course the food stalls in the evening among other things.  The stalls are set up in the late afternoon by the locals and they are all trying to sell you their food.  And that too is chaos.  Over 100 stall holders all trying to convince you that their food is the best, freshest, cheapest etc.

But we eventually settled on one to eat at.  A vegetable tagine turned up that was pretty much carrots and swede.  At least we think it was swede. “Unidentified vegetable” might be a better description. And not really what we’d really call a tagine.  More a vegetable soup. Rupert had more luck with his kebabs though, so maybe tagines just weren’t this stall’s specialty So would we go back to eat at the square?  Quite simply NO! (Bec says it was a bloody rip off and pretty disgusting.  But we’re glad we tried it and had the experience)

Saturday was a slightly more relaxed wander through the stalls and markets of the medina, otherwise know as the ‘souks’ (Bec says – relaxed?….. mopeds, push bikes, taxi’s and carts coming at you from both directions down narrow streets, and not to mention people asking you to buy something or for some money…. not relaxed, more like bloody tiring!)  But an experience in itself and by the end of the break away we’d almost managed to get used to it.

We managed to find the Cashbah area and have a wander though the ruins of the old palace (El Badi palace), and then on to the new palace (El Bahia palace) as well, then to the Saadian Tombs. In the new palace there was a huge amount of intricate decoration everywhere.

Dinner Saturday was a bit more upmarket than the square, at a nice restaurant, though as it was in the depths of the medina it was pretty hard to find – both times!  We went there to book earlier in the afternoon, but it still didn’t make it particularly easy to find at dinner time.  The medina really is an ever changing maze, and a map really doesn’t seem to help much.

Sunday we took a taxi ride to the Atlas mountains, stopping on the way to visit a different kind of market.  The local weekly Berber market. One not so much (if at all) targeted at tourists.  What gave it away?  The lack of painted bowls and brass sinks maybe? Or the camel heads hanging around dripping blood maybe? The complete lack of a shortage of miscellaneous sheep, beef, camel and goat parts and offal laid out for inspection? I think D. All of the above… But an interesting place to visit, and our taxi driver/guide gave us a good tour and the low down on what it was all about and was going on.

Then we drove up to the mountains proper.  Snow on the top of them and everything.  Apparently they’re the highest mountains in North Africa, and they block the desert from taking over the relatively lush and green plains that lie around Marrakesh, irrigated by the snow melt from and rain caused by the mountains.  Or something like that. Whatever. They were impressive enough.

When we had driven as far as the road would take us we had a local guide take us on a walk into the mountain to a couple of waterfalls.  Most of it was pretty good, apart from one part where we had to mountain goat it up a small rock face with water dripping down it……  (Bec says during which she found out her fitness levels are fine, but her wimp levels are off the scale). Thank god for the guide (who must’ve been only pushing 20, and had obviously done the trail several times before due to his hop, skipping and jumping over the rocks) who was able to pull us up, with another guide helping behind to give us a shove when we needed it.  But the effort was worth it and we had a well deserved local lunch at the end of it. This time the ordered tagine of meatballs and eggs was delicious!

Monday we wandered out of the old town, and down to the new town.  The only good thing from our experience of the new town was Jardin Majorelle, a garden acquired and restored by Yves Saint Laurent.  Blue, yellow, painted pots everywhere to add colour to the garden.  As for the rest of the new town, its just like any other new town really… we much preferred the old, even if it is completely chaotic.

We spend the later part of the afternoon sitting up above square watching all the mobile restaurants being wheeled in and set up for the night.  Slightly disappointing as we were promised lots of donkeys descending on the square, but the only donkeys were of the 2 legged variety.  I’ll see if I can get around to doing something fancy with a few of the pics we took of that some other time.

My main course on Sunday night was another meatball and egg tagine from another more upmarket restaurant.  I have to say that I actually preferred the more rustic, robust one that I’d had up the mountian that must have cost about a third of the price, if that(?)!  (I’m salivating thinking of it now! I’m having to wait for my lunch to cool now, and all this typing about food is making me very, very  hungry!)

Everywhere you look in the old town there’s also a heap of colour. Whether from the displays of spices, vegetables, metalwork, the pottery, and even some the prepared foods. And everywhere there’s different smells form the spices, cooking, (mopeds!) etc.

As we’d found in Egypt, you can really see a difference in people’s status there.  There are some really, really poor people, living and working right beside those that are obviously very well off in local terms, if not in global ones.  But they all seem to coexist quite happily.  And although it was all chaotic, I’m not sure we ever really felt unsafe, even wandering back through the narrow old streets late at night.  I’m not sure we’d feel the same in London!

There seems to be 2 speeds of life there too.  Manic and hurried, then calm and relaxed at different places and times of the day.

Arriving back, what did we find?  That London had been hit by another cold front, and was freezing in comparison to the sun and heat we’d just had.

And the problem is that we’re not in Houston any more!

As we had no room in the new flat for a Christmas tree this year, we decided to go somewhere rather than sit around staring at each other for the holidays, and as it’s less than half the distance to home we decided to visit Megan and Michael and the kids in Houston.

The trip started as well as could be imagined when we found we’d somehow managed to score a random upgrade to business class!!  Upstairs on a 747 in a flat bed is certainly a bit different to riding cattle at the back and trying to find a comfy position to sleep in that doesn’t involve chopping your legs off above the knee. Just a pity that we didn’t really make the most of it and couldn’t really sleep too well at that time of the afternoon/evening UK time, but as we were stuck on the tarmac for an extra two hours before we left as the technicians examined a dodgy wheel or something, it was all good. They kept bringing around more champers to keep us happy, and the extra room to stretch out was lovely.

So we were still relatively refreshed when we arrived in Houston, and didn’t need 3 days to get over any jetlag.  Good to hit the ground running.

Christmas was fun. A bit different for us to have kids around getting excited about their presents, although luckily if my memory’s right they stayed in bed longer than us on Christmas morning!  (We didn’t really do presents this year, except for the kids.  We’re at the stage where we seem to have everything we need or want, so spending for the sake of it seemed a bit stupid. If we see something we like during the year, we’ll buy it and think of it as a Christmas gift.)

As we’d never been to what seems to be the sole tourist highlight in Galveston, just out of Houston*, we took a trip out to NASA.  All good fun having a look at the space shuttle cockpit, and hearing a talk on how to go to the bathroom on the space station…  Walking along a Saturn rocket, seeing all the different stages and how much tubing was involved in getting a motor going was cool too. It really brings home how much fuel you need to get a little bit of stuff up into space.  Bring on the space elevator!  And Dylan was lucky enough to require Mum and Dad to buy him an astronaut suit – and he looked very cute!

New Year’s eve was just as much fun as Christmas.  We were joined by some of Megan and Michael’s friends, and also by seemingly most of the neighbourhood for dessert and drinkies.  Good conversation, good dessert, and a few nice drinkies kept us up far, far longer than we’ve managed for the last few years. (Last year it was just to two of us at home, and we’d fallen asleep on the couches by about 10, woke up about 20 to midnight, looked at each other and just decided not to even bother waiting till midnight, and went straight to bed before we woke up too much. Sad really!)

Other than that it was just a relaxing time, filled with shopping (not so relaxing, but still hugely more enjoyable than trying to shop in London), eating in and eating out (though our two attempts at producing a dinner showed us that simple ingredients like pastry and coconut milk seem to vary across the ditch, and we need a bit more practice with the American versions to be able to cook things as we’d have liked and expect to), and sitting around or playing with kids. And occasionally communing with lizards in the back yard.

Unfortunately we  didn’t manage to repeat the upgrade luck for the return trip, so had to decide whether or not to chop our legs off, but as it was only Sunday midday when we were landing we decided that we could grimace and bear it, and even managed to get a bit of sleep anyway. And here we have to add another little grumble.  We were looking forward to landing at the brand new terminal 5 at Heathrow as it’s meant to be great for a quick exit…  But then we noticed that we weren’t actually pulling up to the terminal but parking a wee way away for the dreaded bus ride from the plane to the terminal again. ARRGGGHHH!!  A completely full 747.  And buses. You have to be kidding!  BA, sort it out!

And also on arriving back we found that the UK had entered a small ice-age, with temperatures barely above freezing all week, even in central London. Not nice after the heat and sun!

Thanks for having us, Houston (and M&M!), can we please come back until spring?!

*Although I’ve since been told by someone at work that the art galleries in Houston are lovely to walk around if you’re into that sort of stuff. Apparently they’re completely empty all of the time.

In contrast to any stories about bread, this post is one we’ve been putting off for ages, as it’ll probably take a bit more effort!

Every now and then we feel the need to get out of London for a day or two, and a perfect opportunity came along to do that one weekend. The village that one of our friends live in was having a fundraising night for the local hall. A night at the races!

Well, not really at the races.  It was all based in said hall, which was fine by us, as it was nice and warm, and the bar was only a few steps away.  All good!  The races themselves were videos, which you bet on by buying a runner, or owner of a runner in each race, or by placing bets.  Notice I didn’t say horses there. The runners turned out (once the video started – you didn’t know beforehand) to be horses, dogs, and even pigs. All good fun. But I’m not sure we really got into the fundraising spirit of things, as we seemed to be quite good at picking winners so came out ahead on the tote for the night. But not on the bar, so that presumably worked out OK.

The afternoon before ‘race night’ we had a great walk around the village. A pleasant Autumn/Winter day can be a great time to have a stroll. As a bonus we got to take a neighbour’s dog for a walk with us, and a very well behaved chappie he was too. Didn’t even object too much to being dragged past a dead rabbit or two.

You never know what you’ll spot by the roadsides. And this mushroom/toadstool/fungus was pretty impressive.  As were the apples we cadged from one of the trees by the road…

All quite a different pace and feel for a weekend. Very enjoyable.  Thanks Liz and Dave!

A few weekends ago (actually must be just about a month ago now), we decided to go to Scotland to watch the All Blacks game. The atmosphere at Murrayfield is just fantastic, the only problem was as I had got the tickets through work we were sitting in the Scottish supporters’ area. But on a good note the game wasn’t sold out so we had plenty of room, and the All Black reserves were sitting about 10 rows in front of us (I was tempted to fall into them on my way to the toilet….. but was too shy).

The ceremonies before the game were great, I think my favourite was all the lights blacked out and the bag pipe band playing, then followed by the haka.

From memory we enjoyed the game itself and then the walk back into town with all the rugby fans (it is great to look ahead and there is just a sea of people everywhere – poor people trying to drive anywhere, but then what were they thinking?!), to go for a few drinks in a pub in the city.

The next day was poppy day (we pinned ours to our wooly hats) and an absolutely stunning day. Well the sun was shinning, but it was bloody cold!!! But we had a really nice time wandering through the city and seeing the sights.

(I’m sure one day this is just going to take off! – Mike)

Our legs did get a bit heavy though! We’re really not used to hills in London, so never seeming to stand on a flat bit of road all day took its toll!

Then at the airport we were joined by the All Blacks and I must say I was suprised how small they were when they are stanging just a few feet away from you (I am not so sure why I thought they were giants before, perhaps it is all the padding they wear at the game).

All in all it was a nice wee break away. (And we won the rugby!!).

[Note: Images in this report should be clicky for bigger versions….]

With not much sun in London this year, I am glad we headed away to catch some sun in Slovenia and Croatia.  And it was a backpacking holiday – no hotels for accommodation snob Bec, how would she fare?!

The holiday didn’t start in the best way though.  Sitting on a plane at some remote part of the taxiway for 45 minutes while they waited to get clearance to leave, but eventually we were on our way.

Arriving in Ljubljana was a bit of a laugh though. Pulling up at the airbridge we had to walk down it, then up and  down some stairs, then onto a bus to take us to the entrance to the airport proper.  Nothing new there really.  Pretty standard for some airports here. BUT. The bus drove 10 meters to drop us off.  If they’d opened the door on the other side of the plane and dropped the stairs we would have been able to walk straight in the door anyway!  Just weird.

We had a couple of nights in Ljubljana. We spent most of our time walking around the lovely city, taking in the local sites and tasting the local delicacies.  And having the first holiday beer.  It always tastes the best! We even motivated ourselves to clamber up the steep hill to the castle.  Glad we did that early-ish in the morning, as it was pretty warm the whole time we were there.  Even in the morning we were sweating and having to take breaks hauling ourselves up there. Was a really nice city to wander around.  Pretty quiet and relaxed, with nice river-front walks.  Still a bit run down, but a lot of work seems to be going on to spruce some more of it up.

On the Friday morning we headed away on a train to Zagreb, Croatia, to meet up with Vond and Chazz and to start our tour of Croatia.  Ironically we had left London for sun, and all it did on this Friday was pour down all the way to catch the train, and all the time we were on the train to Zagreb. And when we got there. And while we were sorting out somewhere to stay, at the very, very helpful information centre. And whilst we sat in a cafe waiting till we were to met up with the others, and when they arrived. But luckily we had our first taste of burek (a great little spinach and cheese pastry). And the rain finally stopped just when Vond and Chazz arrived.

Dropped our bags off at the pension we’d organised earlier, and went and had a wander around town. We were lucky to be able to take in some of an international folk dancing competition that we stumbled across in a town square. Very entertaining and great to watch even though we had no real idea what was going on.  I’m sure that the cakes that were carried around on the older women’s heads have some great significance, but I have no idea what! I just couldn’t imagine getting kids in NZ, let alone London interested in participating in this sort of thing.  We finished our time off by walking around the old town (we were soon to find out that all places in Croatia have lovely old towns).

Now the travel adventure really starts…..

We got up early to head to the bus station to catch an early bus to Pula, only to arrive and find that that bus was all full, and the next one was a little while away.  So we had a genius (truely) idea to catch the train instead.  After a really comfortable train ride taking in the scenery we arrived at the end of the train journey to then catch a bus to another town through a huge road tunnel (over 5kms long) to catch another train to our final destination.  Only to finally work out whilst we were waiting for the 2.30pm bus that that bus did not run on Saturdays (our Croatian was not the best).  But there was one a little later on and eventually we made it to Pula around tea time.

Now to find somewhere to stay at this time of night on a Sunday.  One of the local accommodation places wanted to charge the earth for an apartment for the 4 of us, so we told her we would have a think and come back.  Luckily after we walked down the road 5m we were approached by our first little old (well, old-ish)  lady asking if we wanted to come and stay with her.  [This is pretty usual in Croatia, which we knew before we left.  It just seems to be the way things work there for holiday accommodation.] Well we took our chances, piled into her little car with all our baggage and off we drove.  The place was a little out of town, though still easily walkable to the centre, but it was clean and she was absolutely lovely.  She even walked us to a very local restaurant where we had some great food – one of those places you just would not be able to find on your own!

The next day was a pearler, the sun was out and we took in the sites of the old town and the amphitheatre – which has to be one of the site highlights of the holiday.  Basically its a mini Colosseum, but by mini I think it is still the third largest in the world.  The free (with your ticket) audio guide thingees were quite fun too.  I think we spend most of the time trying to duck between bits of shade.  It was really hot wandering around, especially when you aren’t used to 35 degree heat!

Managed to get enough supplies to cook at home, including some really hideous wine from a petrol station.  We weren’t expecting much of it, and we weren’t disappointed.

It was a great little town to start the main trip in though.

Next day saw us get up early to catch a ferry to Zadar (great thing was our host got up just as early and had laid out tea, coffee and biscuits for our early morning breakfast before she dropped us off at the boat! Result!) Once we reached Zadar we then had to get a bus to a place called Sibenik – closest town to the Krka national park that we decided to visit.  None of us knew quite what to expect from Sibenik as the guide book we were relying on didn’t really sing its praises.  As it works out the book doesn’t really do it justice.  It was a great old town, with steep winding cobble streets, and the food in the restaurant, Bramosole, we found was fantastic – another found with a bit of local knowledge, from a guy in a shoeshop. We ate here twice! It was here that we discovered what we called ‘Donkey Wine’ (it was a litre bottle of red wine with a picture of a donkey on the front. And a beer bottle top instead of a cork.)  This was the start of many more bottles of Donkey to be drunk on this holiday – it was really, really, cheap and tasted a bit like a pinot noir.

Krka National Park was a short bus ride from Sibenik, then a bit of a boat ride up the river to the main part of the park, and we spent the day walking around the park (luckily it wasn’t a really hot day).   The park had great waterfalls and walking paths, and some old working mills that were pretty cool to have a look at. But we were glad we got there early, as when we came back out of the track to the main entrance it seemed like half of Croatia had come to see the falls.

The next day saw us get on another bus to Split, as we were planning to head out to one of the islands.  We basically just spent the night in Split wandering around the old town before catching the ferry to Hvar the following morning.

Straight off the ferry and a tirade of people waiting to rent their rooms to you.  We chose one of the newer ones from this guy. The pics looked nice so we toddled off after him. The apartment itself was pretty nice and new, with a great view of the sea front.  What amazed me about Hvar and pretty much every Croatian port is the posers on their huge yachts (yes, I too would love one) who had docked for the night, it was kinda like watching “my boats flashier than yours” – but their were some lovely boats and you could tell there was a lot of money flying around.  Anyway, 3 nights in Hvar saw us lounge around for a bit, do a day trip to Starigrad, take a walk around the peninsula and try and relax.

The day trip to Starigrad was OK.  It was a really quiet relaxed town after Hvar, but I think at this stage we were all just a bit sick of travelling, walking, and staring at stuff, so we all seemed a bit flat. And we were all feeling the heat a bit too. It was really pretty though.

We managed to find another great restaurant an Hvar too, just off the main waterfront – Marinero.  Great food, and quite cheap, with great staff.  Highly recommend it. We ended up eating there twice (and cooking ourselves for the rest of the time).

Probably the most disappointing part of the whole holiday was the place we stayed at. Although it was new and nice the guy who owned it was a real arse, hanging on to our passports for too long – we had to get quite shitty to get them back, and trying to tell us we had to pay extra tourist tax on the second day after we had already settled the bill (which we didn’t end up paying), and then when we left checking to see that toilet flushed, the door was OK and counting the kitchen equipment (of which there was pretty much none) and towels before we left!  I guess he has been jibbed before but I have to ask myself with an attitude like that, then go figure!  It could have been a great place to stay, but left us with a slightly bad taste in our mouths. We won’t be recommending staying there to anyone (I even subtly shook my head at some people who the owner was trying hard to convince to stay as we were off on a walk – I don’t think they stayed in the end).

After a really long day travelling (early morning ferry from Hvar and then about a 5 hour bus ride – which included 2 border checks as we had to pass though the small piece of coast that Bosnia and Hertzenagova were awarded after the war), we arrived in our final destination Dubrovnik at about 6pm on a Sunday, only to find that all the accommodation places had shut at 2pm. Ooopps, this was going to be hard work as everyone was tired and at this stage felling a little lost and homeless!  But eventually we found someone on the street offering rooms, so we followed them home to check it out.  It was probably one of the more dire places we had stayed in but we said we would take it for one night.  This meant Bec and I pretty much slept in the kitchen, and the bathroom was, well shall we say just a toilet with a shower over it.  It was pricey for what it was, but the lady was very nice. There was just no way Bec and Vond would be able to put up with that bathroom for another 3 nights (but Chazz might’ve been able to).

So Bec and I set off for a walk early in the morning. It was worth the slightly early morning start to go to one of the tourist information and accommodation places to find somewhere else to stay.  And what a find, they found us a great place to stay about 5 mins walk from the old town, had a swimming spot outside our courtyard door, a little garden in the courtyard to take some time out and read a book or two, and the apartment itself was great too.  3 nights there seemed a prefect end to the holiday.

Dubrovnik was great. I think we all enjoyed it.  It is a really pretty place to stay and quite relaxing for being such a touristy place.  The town has a lot of history, not just its old cobbled streets but also the fact that you can see the remnants of the war they have just come out of.  The food was on the whole a big disappointment though. Pretty standard and over priced because we ate in touristville (if you had gone out of the centre of town I bet there were some great eating places).  But it did mean we cooked for ourselves again.  We were getting pretty good at pasta dishes by this stage, and we had our bottles of Donkey to wash it down with. We did a bit of swimming, lounged around in our courtyard, and of course walked around the top of the walls – a 2km trip and 200m high in places.  It was hot even doing this at 6pm at night when the heat of the day had pretty much gone. Very hot!

On one of the days there we also took an hour boat trip down to another little town – Cavtat.  Pretty little town to have look at. And far less people around than Dubrovnik. Nice for a bit of a change for a couple of hours, then a (shorter) boat ride back.

Then finally we had to get back on planes to head back to our respective homes. Bugger! But at least we had the short trip back!

In summary, Croatia is a great place to visit. The people were lovely and mainly went out of their way to help you, the food was nice when you weren’t eating in touristville, and, the little burek snacks were fantastic, the ‘donkey wine’ was a great find, the beers were cheap (about 45p if you bought them in the supermarket)  and the sites we took in were great. The games of 500 at night time were entertaining and travelling with other people was great too, (generally we travel by ourselves so it was nice to have some company for a change) – thanks Vond and Chazz.

If you’re planning to go, a couple more hints: Check the times and days of ferries to the islands before you go.  They don’t go every day, and sometimes only twice a week on some routes. While you can sometimes pay by credit card for food and accommodation,  mostly it’s still cash only. Oh, and don’t expect sandy beaches. It’s pretty much all rocks or pebbles.  Most of the public spots reminded me of seal colonies with people finding whatever little bit of flat rock to lie on.

I’ve forgotten just how nice it is to be able to fly in and out of London City Airport and not to face all the travel chaos of Heathrow. Bec decided about a month ago that we needed a break away, so sourced options from London City airport only as we can just about reach up and touch the planes landing from our place. And the semi cheap flight option was flying to Geneva, Switzerland.

So off we set, but being the little internet travel research ‘queen’ that she is, she decided that after reading reviews we would stay a little further around Lake Leman (Geneva), in Lausanne. Arriving at Geneva airport we had another pleasant travel surprise. Free train tickets into the city are just beside the exit doors from baggage reclaim. As it did in Barcelona, this really makes you feel welcome, and takes a little stress and confusion away after a very early morning start. Not that the trip into town is very long. Less than 6 minutes, I think. Again, another big difference from Heathrow!

We stopped off in Geneva for a little look around and as it was a nice sunny day we spent some time walking around some of the lake, parks and local sites, then a quick spot of lunch. We hadn’t really done any research on what to see in Geneva, so we were mainly just wandering aimlessly. Apart from a huge fountain on the lake front we didn’t really find anything worth mentioning, or even taking many photos of, so we decided to head off to our destination – Lausanne – a short (45 minute) train ride up the lake side, past huge vineyards stretching right up the hills from the lake front to (seemingly) the tops of the hills. Well, I say hills, but you really wouldn’t want to walk straight up them, or have to carry a heap of grapes up them either. They were generally pretty steep! Huge amounts of work had obviously gone into constructing little stone walls to level out the slope a little bit so the vines didn’t all just fall off the side into the lake.

Arriving in Lausanne we were confronted by a lot more step hills. But luckily the walk down to the hotel was all downhill, straight down to the lake. Thankfully when you check into your hotel you are given a free travel pass for the length of your stay (again, a brilliant move by someone), and boy did we make use of it in the steep town of Lausanne. I’m not kidding it is hill city after living in London (OK we know London has no hills, but Lausanne is built on hills), and especially because we were staying right on the waterfront.

We explored quite a lot of the city on the Friday : a big Gothic cathedral with an amazing organ right out of a Dracula movie, fought our way through the street markets, lots of walking around, etc… There was a big free concert/festival thingee going on on the waterfront the whole time we stayed, so every time we’d wander past there we could have a laugh at some of those (few) who were cutting shapes (dancing) at the front of the stage.

Perhaps an unsurprising highlight of the trip was a spontaneous visit to a place a little up the road (or railway line, as we used) called Vevey. A small town with a great water front. Including a big fork stuck in the lake. More grapes galore, some old ruins etc… All good for some more aimless wandering. And a special treat! A trip up and down the hill on a funicular! Certainly beats walking up!

On the Sunday back in Lausanne we used the handy free bus pass again to get up to the top of the hill behind the city to go walking through some bush/forest and climb up a huge tower. Lovely and quiet, with hardly any people around. Then back to town for wine and cheese on the waterfront. And there was even a wee farm up the hill too with some cute animals, along with some not quite so cute ones. Pigs, cows (including cow bells), goats and rabbits… All a bit random.

Monday was a bit of a weird day, as it always seems to be on the day you leave anywhere. A really leisurely morning around the hotel and close environs, then we decided to head back to Geneva airport early. And as luck would have it Swiss Air managed to get us on an earlier flight so we didn’t have to sit in an airport for a couple of extra hours. Always pays to ask!

And that was the weekend! A nice break to rest and feel able to face London and work again for a while.

It now seems I have a bit of a personal tradition when I go to the States. Dump a pair of boots!

This pair were nowhere near as good as the last pair, but it’s still sad to see them go. But they were really getting past being comfortable. So they stayed Stateside with all the nappies.

For a bit of a break, as we didn’t go anywhere for Christmas last year, we took a quick visit to the States to visit Meg and Michael. We, with the help of Michael and his folks, managed to keep it a complete surprise for Megan. And I think she was surprised! She says pleasantly, so we’ll happily take her word on that.

The full story and pics are here, as I wanted to keep this front page loadable in a reasonable time for when you all check back for more news, but here’s a quick summary…

First stop was Tucson, Arizona, where we arrived late at night to falling snow, only to wake up to a much brighter day in the morning. Tucson saw us dining out for lunch in nice weather, visiting the desert museum – where we saw lots of animals and catic, taking a ‘hike’ in a canon (what kiwi’s would call a walk), drinking margarita’s in the sun, taking pics of lots of cati, and pretty much just plain relaxing.

Then off to Cowboy country – Houston, Texas, to hang out at Megan and Michael’s. Houston saw us doing lots of shopping, visits to the supermarket (lame you might say – but they have such different things to look at), Bec and Michael eating lots of Coldstone, playing Wii, and more mooching around.

As we didn’t go anywhere for Christmas this year, and it had been a while since our last trip, we thought a weekend away somewhere would be a good thing to help us recharge a bit. As we’d always wanted to go to Barcelona, and as there were another couple that wanted to go too, we went.

I thought we’d have a great time when we got off the plane only to be given free train tickets into the centre of town. Not something you’re likely to get in London any time soon, and a great way to make you feel welcomed and wanted!

We checked into our hotel in central Born, called the Chic and Basic. Not like any other hotel I have stayed in before, they really had made an effort with the square box. A really old building mixed with modern design, the rooms had there own light system that gave you about 15 different colour sequences, and the shower was in the middle of the room. A really different but great place to stay.

The first night saw some fantastic food at a tapas bar/restaurant – Cal Pep – one of the best in the city, apparently. And judging by the queues of people waiting for a spot at the bar as we pushed through to our pre-booked table (there was only about 6 small proper tables up the back) that must have cost someone their first-born child, or favourite shoes, to book for us, but we thank them deeply from the bottom of our stomachs!

We took in some local scenery and managed to pack a lot of walking and site seeing in on the Saturday. We visited the Sagrada Familia, and La Pedrera, Parc Guel, Casa Batllo, all designed by Gaudi, and of course we walked along Las Ramblas (the main most famous street in the city).

Then we wandered back for a bit of champers, a rest and then off again for more fine wine and food. Sunday we spent walking along the beach until we had to head back to the airport. (Again, free train tickets.)

One of the other best parts of the trip was the weather. Sunny, warm. Says it all really! Walking around in t-shirts in Jan made it feel more like being in NZ than in Europe.

Fantastic city to wander around though. Nice and compact, with a good Metro service for when the feet get a bit sore. We’d go back again, and probably will.

Once again, a late report. These are getting pretty frequent! We’ll try to keep more up to date next year. Maybe. But to make up for it, some of the small pics below are clicky for a change, in case you want a better view of them.

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago we hired a car and went to see some of the country. Well, we had a few ulterior motives like dropping off a few boxes of stuff destined in the future for NZ at friends a couple of hours north who are happy to store it for us (hence the need for the car). And the fact we had tickets for Crowded House in the Nottingham Arena on the Saturday night.

Luckily we were both able to take the Friday afternoon off, so we managed to pretty much avoid the Friday night motorway exodus from London, and the trip up was pretty smooth. And boring. Like really boring! Long boring stretches of double lane roads, with a long boring motorway stretch in the middle. Nothing much to see really. But then that all changed when we got near the destination, where the roads changed to skinny, no centre-line, dark (the sun had set by now), windy (and windy), poorly signposted (in the dark, at least) little lanes. So I guess it balanced out.

And we made it.

Despite Bec not realising that when she printed off the instructions on how to get there the right hand edge of the text was not on the printout. DOH! “turn …(missing) … at the restaurant”… “Turn into the road called B…(missing) “. You get the picture.

But amazingly we got there, with only one missed turn that we spotted at the time. Complete fluke!

Zapping over the nice dinner, conversation, sleep, yummy breakfast to the afternoon the next day… A mission to find a kitchenware shop that Bec had tracked down to a town a few miles away which was sort of but not really on the way to Nottingham, where we needed to be for the night. Ok. No kitchen shop there at all that any of the locals had heard of. Or we could find. We finally worked out that the “shop” must have actually been the distribution centre for this range, not a retail outlet.

But at least we had a nice scone in the tearooms there.

And on to Nottingham.

Dumped our stuff at the hotel and out for a few pre-concert drink and some dinner. Found a student Gothic bar after a bit of a wander that suited us just fine. Good fun sitting under a huge iron pendulum munching on a pretty reasonable tea. And finding the toilet door in a wall that looked like a bookcase.

Then on to the concert….

A superb show. As always. Crowded House always look like they’re having such fun playing, which always makes for a good gig. All the classics were heard, along with some of the newer stuff that we’d heard earlier at Hyde park, so starting to get to know. Still haven’t bought the album, but that wont’ be far off, I think.

So, as I said, a really good show, and a bit of a taste of home in the UK.

Back to the hotel. Sleep, breakfast, a bit of shopping followed. The boring stuff. Then back to our friends to pick up our car and head back to London. But a bit of a treat on the way back at one of the villages close to them. A village fair! Well, the end of one. There were two highlights there. A fairly odd dancing troop, obviously exercising a tradition, or old charter, or something…

And a trailer full of owls of all shapes and sizes. We didn’t pay to have one on our wrist though (or to take the photos…). Cool though.

And the back to collect the car and drive back to London again. Would have been a better drive if the torrential rain had stayed away, but motorway driving when you can’t see the lane markers, or the cars in front is always fun. Luckily only about half an hour of that. And we even managed to find our way back to drop off the car pretty easily in the end. Whew!

It’s always nice to get out and about for a bit. A good weekend all round.