Madame Tussauds & other fun stuff

Gina and Ben arrived from NZ on Thursday morning! It was awesome to see some familar faces and we went to the pub to watch rugby and have a couple of drinks Friday night. They were only in London for the weekend as they are actually going to be working in the Isle of Wight. Saturday afternoon we caught up for a picnic in Hyde Park and then went to Footloose at the theatre. It was pretty cool. We hadn't planned to see it but I had found tickets for only £10 each that morning so I though it would be a cool treat for Gina. Sunday we went to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum..don't pay full price! book online 24 hours before and pay only £10 by not going until 4.30ish...still leaving us with plenty of time to see it all. I was pretty impressed with the mueseum, it was loads of fun and we took a trillion pics...my fave ones are below - to see more see our album. After the Museum we headed into the centre a bit more as the Thames Festival was on. There was an amazing parade, soo many fantastic costumes that must've taken hours to make....we grabbed some dinner and waited for the sky to darken and then the firweorks display started...it went on for a good 10 minutes and was absolutely incredible.


Cutest Baby in the whole wide world...

Brrrrrrrrrrrr it’s cold in here

Wednesday night we had a date at the Absolut Ice Bar. Sheree and Marty are moving to Ireland this weekend so was a good excuse to catch-up and spend our money on over priced cocktails! I had been raving about the Ice Bar as I had been to one in Sydney about 2 years ago when I was staying with Pam, and had absolutely loved it. Unfortunately the London one just didn’t live up to my expectations, nor anyone elses cos I’d been talking it up.

The Sydney Bar had a lot of awesome ice sculptures, great atmosphere and a warm outfit, including ugg-boots. The London one was a bit more budget, and we just got a throw-over poncho thing & gloves. It cost £12 incl a drink which since we are all working over here is pretty good price…but I wouldn’t recommend it to any tourist. Anyway we still had a nice time, you’re only in there for 40mins as it’s too cold, so we took a dozen pics and enjoyed our cocktails, drunk out of glasses made of ice, and then ran out of there quickly as our fingers were about to fall off from the cold! After that we wandered down the street and found a bar to have another drink in. Lee-Ann and I splashed out on a jug of a cocktail =) soo yum. We were feeling a little bit peckish and Sheree had ordered some nacho chips & dips so we decided to get wedges…see photo… yes there are 5 wedges in total! Enough for one each!

Long Weekend Away 6-9 Sept

Thursday we finished work early and headed out to Stansted airport to catch a plane to Newquay, which is a beachy town in Cornwall. Only took us an hour to fly but those catching the coach or train had to deal with 6 hours of travel. Newquay is gorgeous, you could compare it to the Mount or Whangamata, mainly because of the massive increase in population in summer and basically every shop is either a surf shop, souvenir shop or a restaurant/bar.

We had a group of 6, Niki & I, two of our flatmates Hilary & Nick and his mate Roz, and Tarns (cousin of the Riddingtons). We had found the trip in the TNT Magazine, which is a publication put out for free aimed at Aussies, Kiwis & Saffas. There were 180 people there with the TNT group, and they'd planned a surfing comp (which got cancelled cos no waves!) and had beach volleyball, a DJ etc set up on the beach. We had fully equipped 3-bedroom caravan, with kitchen, lounge and bathroom. They ran a coach from the holiday park down to the beach and back again and then down to the clubs and back at night.

We had a great time, Friday was especially awesome weather. Niki, Nick & Hilary even braved a swim in the ocean on Saturday. I escaped hangovers the whole weekend... YAY! Must be getting more sesnsible in my old age! Saturday night was a bit special cos the others had secretly bought me a birthday cake! aww so in the middle of "circle of death" (drinking game) out Roz came with my cake (even had candles!) .

Sunday we left at 4pm and took the train home...not the best way to spend a birthday but the weekend had been awesome so no worries!


Thanks to everyone for all the birthday cards, texts, gifts, e-mails etc. I truly appreciate everyone's thoughts and felt very special and loved...I should go away more often huh! =)

TRAVEL PLANS

We have booked tickets with Busabout to tour around Northern Europe in October!!! (Amsterdam, Prague, Paris, Bruge...etc etc). The tickets were 50% off so we are stoked! It's kind of like Contiki tour...but not really. You pay for the coach travel, but u can stay in each place as long as you want. The coaches come on certain days to certain places. Basically it's a lot more freedom but without the hassle of missing trains and finding hostels yourself in foreign language countries, which was the worst thing about our Italy trip.
There is a tour guide on board and you can do actiivites as a group, but if you didn't get along with your group you could just stay a place an extra night and meet up with a new crowd. Friends have done it and sounds like lots of fun and a great way to meet people so we are looking forward to it!! We are in the process of quitting jobs and moving out of our flat... It's all go. We have to have our trip completed by 30 Oct as the Busabout season ends...but we may travel a bit more after that - possibly visit a few friends in different places! And then after that we are either doing a ski season in France or moving to Scotland or Ireland for a wee while! Just in time for a freezing winter!!

GMT

Friday night we went partying with a couple of our flatmates and their friends at a nearby pub. Had a neat time, there was a live band and from midnight the DJ started up. I was very much the sober one...mostly from a budget conscious point of view, but also a teeny bit because of the fresh memory of last weekend's drunkeness! At about 2am 5 of us walked home and right by our tube station were about 20 police officers all with their shields...but there was nothing going on so i don't know if we just missed a gang fight or what! scarey!!!

Saturday we slept in, mooched around, cleaned up a little etc and later ventured out to the National Portrait Gallery by Trafalgar Square. We're not really art folk but we managed to last an hour, another London attraction crossed off the list!

Sunday we went to Greenwich...the home of GMT (nothing to do with PMT!) Greenwich Mean Time. Anyway it was pretty cool, got to have a look around the Royal Observatory and have our picture taken with the meridian line. It was a bit confusing though as we are currently on daylight savings but GMT doesn't switch...so the clock was wrong! or were our watches technically wrong?? i'll let u ponder that.


We looked around these amazing buildings and a church which are now a university/music school. And the best thing about the day trip was that it only cost £6...and that was for Niki's travel and a snack. We're getting good at this "travelling on a budget" thing! London is actually very good for having loads of free attractions