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!

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!