Impressions of Belfast

UPDATED - Full Post below

*Disclaimer - I mean no offence to anyone in this post, this is simply the observations and impressions of a tourist

So irritating, I had this entire post trying to publish when IE and Blogger shit themselves and it deleted all the text.

*scream!*

So. Belfast was not what I expected and the beautiful sunny day did even more to make the experience surreal. We did a Black Cab Tour, where an ordinary taxi comes and picks you up, and then he drives you to the "trouble spots" and gives a good background and narrative of the events in the areas. Highly recommend it if you go to Belfast.

This is a wide shot of the Protestant area's murals. There must be 15 or so within sight of the spot this photo is taken on.

I thought this mural was weird, as its essentially commemorating a United Freedom Fighter (UFF) Commander, who is known to have perpetrated some of the attacks on Catholics. I couldn't help but wonder if the families of the dead found it offensive.

Interestingly though, you'll note the year he died, 2000, after the ceasefire, he was killed in retaliation to an attack from the UHF, or, HIS OWN SIDE. The two Protestant factions are now squabbling with each other for control of that modern scourge, the Belfast Drug Trade.

The Peace Wall/ Peace Line -

I've really struggled to articulate for myself what the impact the Peace Wall had upon me. Words like creepy, bizarre are bandied about in my head. I just find it baffling really. Even having seen it, I still struggle to relate it to how their everyday lives must be.

I mean, who wants to live near a giant wall for your own safety? But as the driver said, politicians can't pull it down, the people that live with it and near it have to want to pull it down. They don't seem in any rush though.

There's even these massive iron/steel automatic gates that close at night. During the day passage is unhindered between each side, but at 10pm these big sheet doors automatically close and you have to go all the way round, for kilometres in parts, to get to the other side.

This shot is from the Catholic side, where the houses are built right up to the wall. The cages are built onto the back of the homes so that if and when projectiles are tossed over the wall, they roll off the cage and land at the base of the concrete wall. So if said "projectile" explodes, the wall bears the brunt of the explosion, not the home, saving lives. Yep, thats bombs we're talking about.

Belfast was impacting because of how recent the events are that were discussed. That people go to war about whether they're part of the United Kingdom or not strikes me as weird. I couldn't help but wonder how different would their lives really be if they joined the Republic of Ireland in the south and became their own country. Why does it matter so much?
I suppose I just can't see Australian's caring so much about anything that didn't involve a bat, ball, pool or stadium.

European Holiday Wrap-up

Favourite spots, worst spots, and any other random stories I can conjure up.

Working on a "best of" Photo Album on my Flickr page, so will try to co-incide the post with the album completion so I can link to it.

Some "top shots" to be included at the very least.

STAY TUNED!

Home again home again jig-edd-y-jig

Ahh where to begin. Our journey has ended, and we’re home again.

Why don’t they serve the food in accordance with where you’re going instead of where you’ve come from? Doesn’t that make sense to anyone else but me? I’d prefer breakfast in the AM time of the destination, which I’m trying to eventually acclimatize to.

Pleasantly surprised we weren’t over-weight with our baggage, which I thought was almost a certainty. Although, we did have a small wheelie carry on, a backpack, my handbag, the laptop AND a secondary bag full off “stuff” all as carry on bags.

I wish we’d had more time. I wish we could go back with the benefit of hindsight and give ourselves another 2 weeks at the end. We could have spent a week in each country exploring all the little nooks and crannies and the hidden gems.

There’s so much to see, and you miss so much. We didn’t see the “page” of Kells (so named as you only get to view two pages of the Book of Kells; the oldest book so far discovered and its an illustrated copy of the Bible.

We didn’t see The Magna Carta.

We didn’t see Dyfed, which I had hoped to visit.

We didn’t go in to Penryn castle in Gwynedd, because it was 12 quid or something p/p and it was too expensive.

We accidentally missed seeing the Castle in the Harry Potter movies, that features as Hogwarts. 

We didn’t see “Britain’s most beautiful beach”, which I suppose isn’t a patch on a Sydney beach anyways…

We could have spend weeks just in Wales, which apparently has more castles than any other country in the entire world. Plus they obviously care about preserving them/making money from them, as they’re well maintained, unlike all the numerous “ruins” we saw everywhere in Ireland.

You could spend every minute you have traveling just along the coastline of all these countries. Perhaps I feel that way because beautiful coastline can simply take my breath away.

I wish we’d had more time to spend (a week?) in the Scottish Highlands. I loved them, my second favourite place from the trip, and that was quite unexpected for me. I mean, you know you’re going to these places to “see the countryside” and everything, but it was amazing. We were there late afternoon, and dusk, and I just wanted to pull the car up and stay forever. The lochs, and the mountains, I hope I return some day.

We spent a day chasing Hadrian’s Wall. We weren’t to realize that it sits several 100 metres from the roadside. Should you wish to go and see it, prepare to hike over to it, its not set up for a quick photo op, and having spent 5 hours trying to find it and stuffing about, we ran out of time for the 4 hour round trip walk along it, which would have been fantastic. Next time!

We spent over 2 hours in Bath trying to get a hotel room, having not realized we’d be there on a Saturday night, and its clearly a hopping town for a weekend away from London. Having found a Starbucks, and PAID for Wi-Fi (After seeing free wi-fi all the other times we didn’t need it of course) we paid for an hour, knowing they were only open for 25 minutes more, because we were getting desperate and had to get online to find a room (www.laterooms.com) for the evening. We arrived in Bristol (a short 15 min drive from Bath) to a wonderful Mercure hotel for a bargain ₤69. Then, due to a stuff up in the restaurant with their receipt printing, we received a (very late) but Very free dinner, which was exquisite.

We DID visit the Roman Baths @ Bath and they were amazing.

We DID stand astride the Meridian Line @ Greenwich AND got a certificate.

We DID go to Stonehenge on a gorgeous 21°C day with blue skies, on a Sunday (didn’t think that through!) When you’re a tourist days mean little though and its easy to lose track.

We DID fluke being at Windsor Castle in front of Victoria Barracks when the changing of the guard marched out and we walked all the way to the Castle with them which was hilariously fun. We then also had to RUN back to find where we’d parked the car as we’d been looking for Tourist Information when we chanced upon the Barracks, and had only put half and hours worth of parking in the meter. 

Didn’t expect to have to remove my boots twice at Heathrow Airport which was annoying! Having only just put them back on from walking through the Security point, they have another check where the sole purpose is to make you take your shoes off. Very strange.

So, very depressing to come home to open piles of mail, including one from our home loan lender that our mortgage is about to go through the roof (as of tomorrow!) since our fixed period ends then. Annoying!

Oh and BTW- I've just clicked over the 700 post mark!

Things I hate about Hotels

The water save stickers/cards you find in EVERY hotel bathroom now

So much water is wasted in the hotel industry every day for washing...... towels on the floor mean please replace them, towels on the rail mean I will use them again…thank you for your cooperation in helping the environment…

Now clearly I have nothing against this policy, but I am thoroughly sick of housekeeping ignoring the pre-arranged signals! We hang our towels up every day mostly out of habit, and I couldn’t care less to be using the towel more than one day, we certainly use them for longer than that at home! Housekeeping have changed them every day, in every hotel we’ve stayed in, regardless of where we put them.

Housekeeping taking the spare key card we have left in the electricity slot, meaning the power stops running while we’re out of the room and charging the laptop/camera battery/AIR CONDITIONING!!!

Housekeeping throwing away the single cake of cheap(-see below) soap we’ve unwrapped and only used three times to wash our hands. What a waste.

Housekeeping! – hell we don’t need to get used to this, no one’s tidying the room and making my bed after I leave the house when we get home!

Tiny showers and showers that have the head/rose directly above your head. Why oh why do they do this to women? I don’t always want to get my hair wet!

Hotels that don’t provide toiletries. I never use them, but it would be nice to think they care enough about my comfort to provide them at least. I’m also going to throw in really cheap cakes of soap that leave my hands really dry. I’m not even considering using them anywhere on my body.

NOT having a bar fridge in the room. Its just SO annoying not being able to chill your water or whatever, because for the most part, it doesn’t inspire us to go down and buy your €5 water from your bar, it just annoys us.

(side note- bottled water is REALLY cheap in Europe, like €0.20 for a 1.5L and commonly like €0.30 for a chilled 600mL bottle.)

PET HOTEL HATE #1 – shoving two singles together without a padded overlay to disguise. We even got beds that had two single flat sheets as well, not even a pretense that it was a double size bed. This was very common in Europe which was a bit annoying.

London; redux

Location Belfast, IRELAND

Weather cold! Avg temp about 10 degrees, but getting used to it 

Local time 8pm 

Well it appears the Punk/ Alternative scene is still very much in style in London. Or at least parts of it. We visited Camden having been recommended to see the markets there. I wish we’d walked as far as the Lock however, as I am a fan of all things water control, not sure why.

Could have owned almost everything I could see, and very much felt like re-joining the Goth scene for all the fantastic Pink and Black clothing you can own. As I said to M, if Sydney was like Camden, I’d never have gone back to “normal”, and clearly part of London never did. Bought a few things, but not all I could have.

The London Eye, and a classic Telephone booth

London in general I have found to be much more “out there” than Sydney. I suppose this is to be expected, but it is still weird to find. There are many more strange looking outfits and combinations that are accepted here without question, and they have well and truly embraced winter/fall fashion for the season, temperatures dropping to the early teens whilst we were there for a few days after the tour. I have bought a myriad of things in London, particularly at a wonderful shop called Primark. Best shop ever. Wish we had one in Sydney, but alas, will have to be content with SES and Temt. Got a fab pair of jeans for only 8 quid!

Some other London highlights, A West End show; The 39 Steps, which we kind of got roped into going to, in that it kept us in London a day or so over what we initially planned, but it ended up being a good time frame as both London Tower and Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace took WAY longer than expected. Changing of the Guard I would not do again, due to the ridiculous crowds (and its late September, certainly not “high season”!) and the push and shove. And the fact that they take a break for the marching band to serenade you with love ballads in the middle of it all?!?!?

Me Buckingham Palace, front side-great weather this day

London Tower was awesome, even though London put on some typical weather for the day by pissing down, we paid a few quid extra and got the Audio guides and managed to spend 4.5 hours there all up. Highlight would certainly have to be seeing The Crown Jewels (and no I don’t mean M pulled down his trousers), which M didn’t realize we were seeing at all. Unfortunately there’s no photography allowed in that area, I would love to show you the incongruously enormous security door that they have in the middle of this medieval building. Until that point I must admit I was getting skeptical that we were going to see THE crown etc, but once I saw the door, it was all ‘on’.

Another big highlight was managing to squeeze in on the last day of the exhibition that was the Summer Opening of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. I am REALLY glad we did that, it was just incredible. This year, for the first time (so the guidebook says) they also laid the Grand Ballroom tables as though for a State Dinner, when a Head of State comes to the Palace for dinner (Yeah Hi Liz, look we’re just going to pop around for a bit of a barbie, you put on the snags, we’ll bring the Coleslaw?)

Buckingham Palace was the first place we encountered the self paced Audio guides as they are included in your ticket cost, and they were great. With options to skip or “hear more” they were very informative and are what prompted us to get the one at The Tower.

Me, Buckingham Palace Gardens.

S o yes London was great for a second visit, and I could surely see us being happy to live there, if we so decided (not on the cards quite yet)

Lastly, quick note on London, that I think I saw Prince Harry near Victoria Tube Station, but M doesn’t believe me :P 

Currently sitting on the ferry over to Ireland, (though this will be posted sometime/somewhere later I imagine). Am thoroughly sick of boats and ferrys, this being the……ninth water vessel we’ve been on this trip. Ferry’s have come to mean hours of entertaining oneself, however the last few we caught got to be quite fun with the tour group, with drinks and conversation.

We have our hire car, a Holden/Vauxhall Zafira, which we would be quite happy to own at home for kiddles too (hehehe). We have called her Vauxy, which sounds a bit like Foxy, and the wonderful GPS lady’s name is Tina. She has been ₤10 well spent I can tell you. Ciao for now. :)

Oh Venezia let me hold you close a moment

Location - SWITZERLAND, Lucerne

Weather has been cold!!! More on Swiss experiences later, but at the top of Mt Titlus it was -5 degress C!

Local time 6.05 pm

My whole life (so far) I’ve always said if I never went anywhere else in the world, I wanted to go to Venice. I’m not even sure where my love affair with the Italian city started. Probably a film or book around my pre-teens or something. A romanticised notion of something that I imprinted upon the city, so Venice had a lot to live up to.

And it was every bit as wonderful as I was hoping. It has been my favourite so far, which I would have expected, followed by Paris and Rome I think, which I wouldn’t have expected Paris to feature too highly, and Rome I thought would be No. 2 for sure.

We took the optional extra of the Gondola ride, having asked the Tour Director early in the trip if it was worth the 39 Euro each (so approx $150 AUD for us both). It struck me as one of the type of things that could be inflated, us being the tourist bumpkins we are, and we will pay blindly. The tour director (Iris) said you can pay up to 100 Euro for a gondola ride, as they know everyone wants to do it, so they charge whatever they want!

For our money we got 40 mins, plus musicians in one of the 4 boats singing for the whole group, and there were 6 in our gondola (which was fine, 2 other lovely couples) and I never expected us to be on our own.

We overheard a quote to some people on the street for half an hour for 80 euro, no musicians. And we assume that was 80 for the entire boat, not each, so I’m happy with that.

It was just so magical, sitting in the gondola going through the little canals, it was a little lightbulb moment for me that we really WERE on the other side of the world. Just amazing.

We’re on the downhill slope now, the last week of our tour and its gone so fast. I will be relieved to stop “touring” but our two weeks at the end are shaping up to be very busy also so I may need to get back to Sydney for some rest! We’re taking it easy from now, I always kind of said that after Venice, everything was gravy. Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Athens, Olympia, Venice, they were all the places I really wanted to cover, and the Alpine countries we’re in now are just a bonus. Crossing into the Italian/Austrian Alp area felt like we were starting a whole different journey, which is great. Everything feels fresh again, and we’ve all been able to pull out our “cold” clothes, which no one on the tour has seen yet so its almost like starting anew, but with old friends.

Vienna was pretty, but kind of boring. After we did our city sightseeing tour we had 3.5 hours to kill, and their shops are all closed on Sundays so we just sort of wandered aimlessly, having lunch and a kleiner brauner, German for an espresso macchiato (of which in Europe you have to add the espresso part or you get a long one. They also have latte macchiato’s in Austria! So after wandering around, considering catching the train back to the hotel but giving up when we couldn’t figure out their systems, we ended up sitting in Starbucks for an hour. Now, in my defense, we did have a coffee in a local shop, but we knew Starbucks wouldn’t kick us out if we sat there for an hour and a half, which we did because it was raining and miserable. Sightseeing is decidedly less fun in the pouring rain, I can tell you.

Its all Greek to me

Greece is not what I expected at all. And I can’t help but feel disappointed with what I got, to be honest.

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, and perhaps on the whole, in comparison to Rome, Barcelona, and Paris, its MORE what I wanted than ever, in that those cities were so much more developed than I expected.

For me, to sum up Greece in a few words, I would say smog, desolate, and sad.

No lush green countryside, no beautiful skyline, and in a country that looked like it might not have rained in the last ten years, it rained our last night there. I know you can’t control the weather, but it was a little disappointing.

Athens for the most part is about 10 years behind Rome. In some ways it was refreshing to visit the ancient sites without the hawkers trying to sell you’re their junk, but in other ways its just a bit strange.

Greek coffee is the worst I’ve encountered. 

Undrinkable, and I gave it three chances. The first was even Illy, an Italian brand they have in Australia too that I quite like.

My third and final Greek espresso. 

Thankfully we’re back in Italy where the coffee is FANTASTIC. I remember my first sip of Italian coffee at a little roadstop on the highway. It was SO good, I had shivers.

One of the weirdest things in Greece is that you're still allowed to smoke in public places. And they still advertise cigarettes everywhere. I suppose we're lucky we don't have to put up with smoking everywhere anymore at home, but its very strange in Greece to have people smoking indoors! 

 Lots of public smoking means lots of cigarette butts EVERYWHERE. 

The rubbish in general was a problem too.

 

One of a million cigarette billboards around Athens. 

 

The first time I saw this billboard I thought it was A- an Ad for White Lady Funerals.

then B - a feminine hygiene advertisement, as the tones and feel of the billboard screams TAMPONS! Then I realised it was for "feminine cigarettes". Weird.

Come to the cabaret my friend

UPDATED with M's escargot video

oh boy did we go to the cabaret and it was totally worth the 60 euro p/p it cost (we have a Euro symbol on the keyboard, two actually, do I know how to make them work? No.
Grr.

We went to the Lido show, which is located on the Champs- Elysees, he main avenue in Paris. It was so magnificent, I wish we had been allowed to take pictures but alas we weren't.

Unfortunately this is as good as it gets. It really was as spectacular as this picture though. We also saw the Eiffel Tower with its lights blinking, which it only does for ten minutes a night, probably because it costs an absolute bomb to do.
We have noticed a lot of wind farms here though, so maybe their energy is greener than back home.

The last quick thing, I have eaten the escargot! Yay me! Of an entree of 6, I ate 5, and M managed 1. Video of his experience here soon! :0

Count as he gags. FOUR TIMES he says, while trying to swallow it.

English? *hand gestures* ???

LOCATION Olympia, Greece
Weather is VERY humid. Very warm, unpleasantly so with no breeze. Annoying the internet service is only working for us in the lobby, where they have no air-con going!!
local Time 9.02 PM

We've reached the half way point of the tour, and not for the first time we've counted ourselves lucky that we speak English at least. Because we're with a tour guide, we don't have too many hiccups with language barriers, but I'm now on my sixth book, and I would hate to be trying to buy books in another language. Not that its easy finding English books mind you, but generally the larger bookstores have the native language, and a small English section also.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat, no I haven't been reading instead of enjoying our holiday. I mostly read on the bus, when we're travelling down the highways. There's not much to see after you've looked out the window for half an hour, trust me.

One of our first times trying to "go it alone" was Day 3 in Tours, France, for lunch. Having had lunch the previous day in Paris we had the most beautiful baguette with salad and ham which we just pointed at (rudely I know) so it was fairly easy. Tours, we were hopng for something similar but no matter how many streets we walked somehow we didn't quite manage to see anything similar. Running out of time, and not wanting to eat in a full-on restaurant, we stumbled upon a Subway.

Even then we struggled!! And felt stupid for it, M particularly when the menu said Meatball, but they couldn't understand what he wanted. So that was a disappointing meal, in that we were trying to stay away from things we could just eat at home, but were running out of options.

After leaving London feeling very Tube-savvy, when faced with the option of catching the Metro (subway/tube) back out of the middle of Barcelona and to our hotel, we felt confident we could do it. The tour is structured, in the cities we have two nights in, that the morning will be an included sightseeing tour with a local guide, and the afternoon an optional (extra$$) excursion. The drawback however is that if you take the optional excursion, generally you don't get to see any of the city yourself. By the time you get back from the second trip, you're exhausted and don't want to go out again that night, so if you want wandering time you have to forego the excursion and make your own way back to the hotel. We'd done it mostly ok in Paris, so thought we'd handle it again in Barcelona. It was all fine, and nothing got stolen, but when we went into the underground to go home, the ticket wouldn't work. We tried again before asking a guard, only to be told we'd bought the wrong ticket, and we had to buy another one, EACH, to go through the correct gate! We felt like morons, but it was lesson learned, and unlike at home, the tickets are only 1 euro each anyway, regardless how far you go (why does Sydney's public transport suck so much?!?!)
Oh well, we laughed, and just bought the right one.

A few nights ago we went out and about by ourselves in Rome however, with great success. We caught the Metro in and out of the city all by ourselves, and had dinner, a very pleasant meal.
We also managed a few more sights that our included tours hadn't fit in, which was good.

Nice is nice

LOCATION Nice, France

Weather is beautiful, but very warm. You're almost sweating at 10pm still.

So an eventful departure from Barcelona. When in the breakfast room, one of our tour group had her handbag stolen. It was so fast it was incredible, she put it down, went to get something, not even her whole breakfast, and when she came back it was gone. Afterward a bunch of people remembered seeing two dodgy looking blokes that weren’t in our group, I saw one of them myself but just assumed he was another guest at the hotel. As he left apparently, a different female member realized her bag was gone too, and looked at him, asking if he had it. He proceeded to open his coat, give it back to her and mumble something about “a mistake”.

Scary for the whole tour group, though we had been warned about not leaving our things unattended at breakfast, and thankfully the woman whose bag was stolen found her passport in her other carry-on, along with her “big” credit cards.

**updated-thankfully her bag was found near the hotel after we left Barcelona. As suspected, only the cash was taken, credit cards, camera etc were all intact and they will set about returning the bag to her somehow.**

Barcelona was beautiful, very hot, we saw a sign at 2pm saying it was 33 degrees, and when we got on the bus this morning it was 25 at 8am. So very warm! Not really the weather for boots, but I was determined to buy some anyway and we appeared to arrive just as winter stock was going out in the shops, so there was quite a selection. Boots in Spain, I’m “allowed” a handbag in Italy, and some new sunglasses would be nice. Perhaps in Greece? Heheheheh

We were warned a lot about pickpockets in Barcelona, particularly on the main walking mall area, the “rambla”. There was heaps of great street art and performance, but the consequence is to make you less aware of your person. Thankfully with two of us we could be hyperaware of what was going on around us, but it certainly dampens the experience of being in a foreign city. We definitely saw a few dodgy looking blokes, and I was pretty worried about any man on his own really. Apparently young girls can be just as bad though.

I was disappointed overall with the shopping in Spain, I think we were in the wrong area, because there seemed to be potential we just couldn’t find quite what I was looking for. One of my favourite Sydney shops is called Starfish Earrings. They started with a little shop in Hornsby and expanded to several stores, which was great for them as it was run by a family. The first shop in Hornsby started off only stocking earrings. Earrings from all over the world that are gorgeous. The consequence is though, that I’ve come to Spain looking for cool and interesting jewelry, and found all these things I’ve seen already! That’s a bit sad, but I suppose that’s the way the world is heading! Can’t wait for Venice, hoping to get some Venetian glass pieces.

Touring is interesting.

There is one super annoying Canadian woman on our tour. She’s traveling alone, I can only assume because none of her friends would have her. Unfortunately for another woman traveling singly also, they get lumped in the same room most of the time. She has an irritating habit of talking to herself, or sort of talking at the air, saying things that we don’t care about!!!! Trying not to listen to her, hoping she will curl up and die. Okay not really, but just trying to ignore her as much as we can. Without bringing the subject up, others appear to have the same opinion of her.

Most of the people seem good though, very friendly and middle class so we fit right in. A few younger couples which is nice, but wasn’t a priority for us, so its just gravy.

English people are weird

I have heard, on more than one occassion that Australians are in denial about the weather. Some people think we pretend its not cold, shirking warm clothing for thongs and singlets. While this is not always true, I agree with it for the most part. The sunday before we flew out of Sydney, the sun came out and I perservered with shorts, for the first time in 3 months or so. It was awesome, for about 12 seconds, and then the sun went behind a cloud, I put a jacket on, and it felt less like summer after all.

Me at Tower Bridge. Loved it.

The point is, I think English people do the exact same thing : in reverse. The convince themselves its really not that hot!
Our first full day in London, it was gorgeous weather. We walked the banks of the Thames, being utter tourists, but it almost felt like we could be at home, most definitely a bare legs day, thongs and sunscreen.
But the "natives" were all walking around like it was 10 degrees colder than it actually was. I think it hit 25-26 degrees and I spotted a woman in Ugg boots (sheepskin slipper boots).
It was insane! And people were carrying coats everywhere!! Nuts.
Sadly we even saw a little boy, whose parents were only wearing T-shirts, but for some reason they thought he needed a woolen vest. I assure you he did NOT.
I think I mostly found it weird because we're just leaving winter at home, and they're just leaving summer, but they were wearing very similar things. Jeans and boots, knitwear etc. Scarves!

We managed to squeeze in a Soccer/Football game while we were away also, and that was great.

 West Ham United vs Blackburn.

The atmosphere was just incredible, and one of the things I was amazed by was the tiny number of spectators for the other team. Go to an NRL game in Australia and the ground might be 60/40 home to away. But in a ground of 33,000 people that turned out for a regular round match of soccer, there would have been lucky to be 1,000 supporters for the other side. Their section wasn't even full.

The "away" supporters at the game 

Oh yes, Section. They're not allowed to sit together! The black mesh in this photo spanned about 5 rows of seats, (its not standing up) and there were police all over the section too. Crazy!

The other amazing thing was that we were at West Ham for the ground, and its Suburban! 33,000 had to then catch the train back to wherever they came from and they have it so wel worked out we were on a train within 20 minutes of leaving the stadium. That would NEVER happen in Sydney. We're very impressed with the Tube system!

We're almost away!

Whee! Busy packing, can't chat, looks like it will be warm tomorrow when we land in Tokyo though!!!

Its a lovely day today

Had one of those bizarre, do I know you.... moments this morning at the Post Office of all places. I locked eyes with this guy, pleasant surfer looking fellow, and thought where do I know you from....hmmm before moving into the line. I kind of got the vibe he was thinking the same thing....I couldn't stop wondering, and am still wondering where I've seen him.
I didn't ask him where I knew him from as I'm fairly certain he works somewhere I frequent, and we don't "know" each other for me to feel confident in asking where I knew him from.

Aha! As I type, I have figured it out. And I'm REALLY glad I didn't ask him where I knew him from now, as I was right, and I DON'T Know him at all, he's the bartender at the pub near work, where I have lunch once a fortnight.

*sigh* so glad I figured that out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Been CRAZY busy at work this week. My boss has popped off for a quick holiday before I take me leave for Europe, and its just exploded here. And its all the regular stuff, not even "I want to get X, Y, & Z done before I leave" its just the normal everyday work. Eeesh.
Not that there aren't things I need to do before we go, there are, but if I don't get to them, it will only be me thats disappointed, no one else cares.

This morning, in addition to my work, I had to
- Go to the Post Office (for work)
- Ring our airline and lodge my frequent flier membership. Spoke to someone who acted like I was mad, when the website says to notify them!
- Get M to ring and lodge his membership, mad conversation redux.
- Organise to get a postal vote ballot sent to me, and M, for the Local Gorvernment Elections that will be on whilst we are away. And annoying, you can't vote overseas for Local Govt. Grr
- Ring and organise for two Australian Will Kits to be sent to me, hopefully in time for us to fill them in before we fly out.
----As property holders and married people, I thought it prudent to organise our wills before we leave, just in case anything should go amiss (touch wood it doesn't of course. I can't see you doing it,  I SAID TOUCH WOOD! Do you want something to befall us?)

So sorry if I've been a bit quiet : )

Your Money, Starting Out and Starting Over - Anita Bell ****

Hmm Kind of hard to rate this book, it was good and everything, but different people will find it useful in different ways. Having read the first book, Your Mortgage: How to pay it off in 5 years (by a woman who did it in three), it was mostly same-old-same-old: an awesome way to make a budget and stick to it. There is also a heap of easy investing at the back but we're not quite at that point. BUT I got out of it exactly what I was hoping. A refresher, and a kick in the financial pants. It just reinforced principles I already use, and re-inspired me to focus on our financial goals.

For example one of our major goals is to buy a second property (ideally a house). Right now I can't see how that's ever going to happen. Especially as we also have a short term goal of starting a family, if there's a choice to be made, which side will we fall down on? We already made a choice some time ago that we wouldn't sacrifice family for another path. In that instance, it was living and working overseas. We knew we didn't want to have babies away from our families, but we wanted to have babies within the first few years of marriage. So working overseas for a couple of years doesn't work with that plan and we weren't prepared to sacrifice our desire to have a young family for "the experience" . There's plenty of people who make the choice differently, a couple we know are similarly placed but her parents are in the UK. They're now considering having the babies overseas with her mum for the first few years. Of course everyones different and we don't begrudge anyone elses choices either.

We leave for Europe in a scant 2 weeks, and while I'm looking forward to it, I'm really hoping we don't come home with too much debt, as I can't see how we're going to make our (financial) dreams reality right now.

4 / 5

For an interesting insight into how Anita Bell "fell" into having a financial book published, have a quick squizz at her bio here

Hard work CAN pay off

Almost a year ago, I bought a dress on eBay to wear to a wedding for friends of ours. 
Shown here
<---

It arrived and it didn't fit because I'd gotten fat, which was a bit devastating to say the least. I distinctly remember struggling to do the dress up and M standing behind me wrestling with the upper clasp (the part across the middle of the back does up like a bra) and I said to him "Will it do up?" and he replied "I don't know if you want it to do up" (Ma, these straps, ya look like a HAM)

 

So we abandoned the kerfuffle. I ended up wearing this black dress, which while not horrid or anything, and while beautifully made, was not how I wanted to look.

I've had some great success with Ebay dresses, and I refused to admit defeat with this one. So I kept it, in the hope I would eventually be able to wear it, as I was also refusing to admit that I was never going to be able to fit into it.

So I have mentally had it as a bit of a benchmark, and was emboldened to try it on.

I got the urge last Thursday night, home from the gym, showered at 10.30, I put it on, AND IT FIT!!!

Yay! 
(I went to show M in the lounge room, and he looked up from the computer saying "where are you going?" LOL)
Now I just need an occassion hahahaha

I've noticed actually a shift in the clothes I've worn this winter. Last winter I weighed a good 6-8kgs more than I do this year, and I realise in hindsight I was wearing a different set of clothes, lots of empire line/tummy hiding type tops, which I just haven't worn this year.
Pretty happy all round :)

I'm kind of thinking I'll lose/maintain my weight while we're in Europe as well (due to all the walking and stuff) but possibly kidding myself?

(And I'm thinking of doing the Lemon/water thing again)

We're going on holidays, did I tell you?

I woke up this morning, feel hungover, of all things. And yes, I do have the right day, its Monday. I haven't drunk any booze since Friday night, so I can only imagine it was severe dehydration, which even in itself, makes no sense, since I drank no less last night than any other night.
Odd.

We got a new laptop computer at home. Yay!
I wanted to take a picture with the webcam, and use it as the post, but I keep forgetting, getting distracted with all its other features. It has bluetooth, and a DVD drive, and a webcame built into the top of the screen. Its all very exciting. We've only had it a week, and its already got the majority of our CD collection on its hard-drive (160GB).
Woot.
So now I can blog from home again, whee! Our primary reason for getting it, other than the fact we were in need of a home computer, is that we're going to Europe in 9 weeks (Yes NINE WEEKS!) and we want to take it with us, so we can upload our photos as we go, and download our video and photos off the camera, making more space.
Our theory is that we're doing a bus tour, and then driving ourselves around, so it should be too painful to lug around.
Here's for hoping anyways :)

For those interested here is the bus part of our tour, in handy map form (I'm a pictures person)

I'm trying to get excited.
It was exciting when we decided to do it.
It was exciting when we put our deposit down.
It was less exciting and more stressful when we were frantically saving to pay the tour off in time for the early payment discount.
Now I'm trying to find the enthusiasm again. NOT to say that I don't want to go anymore, certainly not, more that it doesn't really feel like we're going, since we paid all the money, its just ...*gone*. Do you know what I mean?

So anyway, I'm hoping to blog while we're away, and not the "hey we saw the Eiffel Tower today, wow, its certainly huge hey?"
But more, about the little things, the coffee (of course), the weird customs, weird people, stuff like that.
Any thoughts? We've got plenty of time before we go remember :)

Phew! Not pregnant.

Not at this inconvenient moment in time anyway.