Welcome back to another long awaited update in the world of Kathleen and Keith.  I’ve changed the format a bit, due to time constraints.  Text at the top, pictures at the end.  Works better for me, and I hope you enjoy clicking through the pictures (click to select, then click to enlarge).

We just took out last road trip before our flight back to Australia (if you don’t include us taking our cat to the pet export company for her flight home).  Originally we were planning on a few days worth of travelling back up into the depths of Scotland, but we realised that wasn’t financially possible, so we went for something smaller, a weekender trip, comprised of three destinations.

The first location we drove to was in the Lakes district, the world of Beatrix Potter.  Now, we can already hear some of you saying ‘Beatrix Potter?! Didn’t she do children’s books? Won’t that be for kids?!’

Well, not entirely so.  Considering the books have been around for 100 years, it caters for the Adults who grew up with the books, which were introduced to them by their parents, and have since introduced their children to the stories.  One day we hope to be counted as one of those (the parents introducing the stories to their children, just in case I need to clarify for anyone).   Since we were still in the country, we made the effort to check this out for ourselves, and for some friends of ours.

After checking out the Potter attraction, we had a bit of a drive ahead of us (the use of ‘us’ is purely because there are two of us in the car.  ‘I’ had a bit of a drive ahead of me, Kathleen had a bit of a nap ahead of her) for the next destination.  About 3 hours of drive from the lakes saw us arriving at the famous Rosslyn Chapel.

This has been a place Kathleen has been wanting to see for years, and especially since we were in the country, and Kathleen is a fan of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ (though it should be noted Kathleen wanted to see this long before the book).

Right now, I will say that ’The Da Vinci Code’ is a work of FICTION, using real-world references! No-one should ever believe that there is any relation to Christ within, or has been within, the chapel.  There is no secret cellar with manuscripts depicting the lineage of Christ, and there is NO star of David above the stairwell going down to the lower basement.  Hollywood put a plaque of the star there for the movie, and once removed, has left a circular mark on the wood, which the people there call ‘The mark of Hollywood’.  Its all taken with humour, because since the release of the book and movie, the popularity of the place exploded, bringing in much needed money to restore the ancient chapel.

Before the book, the Chapel was known for its amazing stone work, especially the pillars (which the movie sort of misses altogether, for some reason).  Almost every stone surface has intricate carvings, depicting various early christian beliefs.

To say the least, its quite a place to see, and definitely worthwhile if anyone has the chance.  Though you will have to excuse the scaffolding around the building and the tin roof over it.  Its been there for almost 20 years now, in an effort to dry out the stone.  Since some botched preservation work involving coating all the stone in a concrete caused the sandstone to hold all water in itself, the chapel was almost lost as the water started to cause the stone to crumble.  The Tin roof keeps most rain off, and the chapel is showing signs that it is drying out.  With the money that the Da Vinci code has created, there are plans to put central heating in, not for the worshippers, but to dry the chapel out even more. I wish we had more photos of the place, but photography wasn’t allowed inside (but we did buy the CD of photos at the gift shop).  For a quick look, check out http://www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/. We will be more than happy to show our friends the photos when we get home.

On the Sunday we took a little drive down to the town of Bath, to check out the Roman baths.  Its amazing to think these were only discovered because someone complained to their landlord that warm water was seeping into their basement.  If you want a more historical info, feel free to look it up, as its quite good.  The whole place is set up to allow visitors to wander around the site (within reason, of course), with audio tours for adults and children (which I thought was a great idea).  They also have two or so people who dress in period clothing, I’m sure for photographic purposes (Though they have a great sense of humour, as I heard one of them say when a camera failed to take a photo ‘The mystic box has fallen asleep’).

Squizz the photos at the end, peoples.

I apologise if you were expecting a greater narrative, but we are quite busy with getting our house packed for the eventual fly home.  Not long now (or according to Kathleen “49 days and counting”).

Love you all, and talk again soon,

Kathleen and Keith

It has been a while since the last entry (excuse me while I remove the dust and cobwebs).

We finally got to do the touristy thing in London!

Considering how much time I have available for writing this, I will let the photos do most of the talking (picture = 1000 words, therefore = normal length blog).

Highlights of the trip was seeing the following:

- ”Joseph and the Technicolour Dream coat” at the Adelphi Theatre, in the West End (Kathleens Highlight)

  Keith was worried our seats would have a poor view of the stage, and there would be no leg room, but it proved quite excellent.

The star of the Show, Lee Mead

 Go, go, go Joseph…

- Trafalgar Square

 Nelsons you-know-what…

- 221B Baker st (Keith’s Highlight, and If you don’t know its significance, I roll my eyes at you)

An Elderly Gentleman actually lives here, and keeps his apartment how it would have looked in the books. How amazing is that?!

 Madame Tussauds handywork

 One Hot looking Watson

- Harrods (the bank card got a bit warm there)

- Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

 All the stage is a world

- The Tate Modern art Museum

- Tower of London

not very towering, but still nice

- Buckingham Palace

There was something going on inside, so no Busbies today

 The Fountain out front

And odds and ends, stuff that you have to see while you are in London

 Westminster Abbey

We got frowned at by one of the Priests for sneaking out of a prayer session (Yes, yes, we already know we’re going somewhere warm).

Did you know they have muffled the bell, due to complaints

 An area of London. Doesn’t beat Wonglepong, but its up there…

We must have sat for half an hour waiting to see whether the Liner was going to come through.  It didn’t.

Thats one big ferris wheel.

This sphinx has holes in it where shrapnel hit it during WW2 (thats definitely one life of nine gone).

Cleopatra’s needle, actually brought over from Egypt, since no-one wanted it as the time.

City Limit markers, where London city use to end (or start).

To commemorate our arrival, they named a street after Kathleen.

I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with T…

Thats right, “TOURIST”.

 This one is for you, Jan.

  Gorgeous Green Park near the palace.

 The weather was a bit on the grey side, but didn’t drench us too much. Only sore points were our feet due to all the walking.

Our flight home was delayed too, to the point where the plane had to line up (literally) with the International flights to take off on one of the international runways.

For all you that have given up on seeing the end of our previous trip (eg. France), I will try to finish it off.

Till next time (when-ever that will be), Love you all,

Kathleen and Keith 

Wow.  Has it really been October since we last wrote something here?  Our apologies to all you who have been regulars to this website, and are suffering from dust mite bites as the cobwebs were building around here.

We will finish writing about our French trip (still have two days to go), but in the meantime, we wanted to talk about our most recent Christmas excursion.  We will warn you now, past blog entries are like short post-it notes compared to this entry.  If you haven’t got much time on your hands, print this, and take with you for some bedtime reading.  We ensure the soundest sleep you will ever get.

For all that we had managed to talk to over the phone during the few months before December, you were given a little white lie, being told that we had plans to enjoy a week in the Lake district for our Christmas.

The truth was we had planned to travel a little further than that, and make a surprise return home.

After returning from Paris, with its wonderful clear blue skies and warm temperatures, we both got extremely homesick.  The Sunday after we arrived back, we were sitting in one of the local restaurants after going to the gym, and both expressed our want to go back home.  Keith, being the level head when it comes to all things financial, up till now has always said that we couldn’t do it; it would cost too much, and be too much of a strain on the wallet.  But the desire to see family and friends got the better of him, and he agreed to us looking into flying back to Brisbane.

Kathleen, being one to never let a golden opportunity pass, jumped on that, and the next day was doing circuits of the Manchester travel agents, pitting them against each other, to see which would give her the best deal.

We ended up getting for the both of us return flights to Brisbane on Emirates airlines for an excellent price, which we were able to pay off over the months leading to the trip.  The price was enough to prevent us doing any sort of major travel during that time, but not enough to prevent us from paying for essentials like rent, food, and the occasional dinner/movie outing.

The biggest problem we had with this trip was that we wanted it to be a surprise, so we couldn’t tell anyone the truth about what we were doing.  We made sure we had a planned out story to tell all who asked, but it wasn’t easy.  Keith, being a bit of a goodie two shoes sometimes, did find it a bit troublesome telling his folks the little white lies, but took one for the team.

Though, as the departure date loomed closer, we realised we were going to have to tell someone that we were coming.  The reasons were that, we were going to be extremely jet-lagged when we arrived, and would need someone to be there to help us out; we needed to drive a lot while we were back home, and why pay for a rental car if we had our own car; and lastly, we wanted to visit friends up north in Rockhampton, and couldn’t just appear on their doorstep.  So, after much consideration, we decided we had to tell our Friends in Rocky, so they would be prepared for the visit.  We also felt that it was best to let our great friend Nic should know as well.   Nic along with his lovely wife, Jo, has been too kind in looking after Keith’s car during our time in the UK. Since they had the car, Nic got shortlisted as the prime candidate for being the secret keeper.

We’d like to say top marks to Nic for keeping quiet about all of this.  Not even Jo knew we were coming, only thinking that a parcel was coming from us (a small deception, which we’re sure Jo forgave us for).

The Flight over wasn’t as bad as what we remembered flying over to the UK (probably because we stayed with a single airline this time, instead of changing partway), with us only making two stops, in Dubai, and in Bangkok.

Dubai is quite an impressive sight.  To sum it up in a very simple way, if you grabbed the CBD of any major city, Skyscrapers and all, plonk it down in the middle of a desert next to the sea, and you get Dubai.  Unfortunately, Its got a small pollution problem, something we could see as we landed, and they are also rather lax in their smoking policies, as we had to walk through areas of thick cigarette smoke in sections of the Dubai Emirates Terminal.  The Terminal was going through some construction work, so when we got off the plane, we were transported in buses for almost 20 minutes, passing the entire terminal to the other end, only to be informed that we had to get back to the gate at the other end of the terminal, in order to get on our plane.  Once we did get to the gate, we were then put on buses, and taken to our plane, THE PLANE THAT HAPPENED TO BE PARKED NEXT TO THE ONE WE JUST GOT OFF! 

 We understand they have to do that sort of thing for security reasons, though it did make Keith laugh in disbelief as we pulled up at the plane.

The combination of the pollution and the cigarette smoke played havoc with Kathleen’s Asthma, and didn’t help Keith out much either.  While we would have loved to have more time to explore Dubai, we were rather happy to get out of there.

 Our other plane

 Edge of Dubai

Our stop at Bangkok was just a fuel-up and staff transfer, but still we had to get off the plane for about 30 minutes.  Since it was so short a time, we couldn’t go anywhere other than to make a quick pit-stop, and then get back on.

We’d like to take this opportunity to comment on Emirates as an Airline.  We were told by a good Friend of ours that we shouldn’t fly with them, and to roughly quote her “We should give our luggage a hug, take pictures, then grow cold and distant with them, as when Emirates gets a hold of the bags, you will never see them again”.  While we truly respect her opinion, we had already booked it, and felt we could at least be prepared for the lost of our luggage.  Thankfully, Emirates didn’t lose our luggage for the trip over.

Another plus for Emirates was the seating.  Keith was extremely pleased with them as there was legroom, enough for his long legs.  Also each seat had a entertainment unit built into the headrest, so you can watch movies or play games on it.  Depending on the age of the plane, you can have the option of watching from a set of movies playing automatically, or, if its a younger plane, you can choose what you want to watch, when you want.

The service was quite good too, with the Hosts giving us meals almost every 4 hours.  You never go hungry on one of these flights.  Though I could say the hosts could be a little bit more friendly and understanding.  Considering we are on a plane for up to 8 hours at a time, I would have thought they would understand that we would be rather thirsty quite regularly, as the air in the plane can dry you out.  It started getting to a point where I think the Hosts were getting tired of us asking for drinks.  Perhaps they had the mindset that we were in cattle-class so we shouldn’t be pushing for too much, we should be happy with what we get.  Not saying they were rude or anything, but I could tell they weren’t exactly pleased to cater to our wants.

 Sunrise over Australia

 Over QLD somewhere

We finally arrived in Brisbane at about 6:30 in the Friday morning.  Prior to the flight, we had organised with Nic to pick us up from the Airport (Which we were extremely grateful for), from which we would head to Nic and Jo’s home, to surprise Jo.  Jo was at the time waiting at home, expecting a courier to deliver ’our package’, while thinking Nic had just gone to work early.  How surprised she was to have him come back home, with us in tow.

In fact, we have some Piccies of how surprised she was.

 Surprise!

  hehehe

Another great thing about us coming back to Brisbane was that we finally got to meet David, Nic and Jo’s baby boy, who was born early February while we were in the UK.  Please find attached some pics of us getting acquainted.

  Keith with Davie

 Keith playing with David

We did have plans to go visit Keith’s Mum and Dad shortly after Lunchtime, and then have a get together with some of our close friends in the evening. Unfortunately, our friends weren’t able to come, mainly due to the fact they can get rather busy, and thought it was just a gathering to collect presents from us, and didn’t know we would be there.  That was no matter, for Jet-lag decided to kick in, and we crashed until about 5pm.  By Nic was back from having a half day at work, and was able to drive us over to Keith’s Mum and Dad’s place.  Now, Nic had given Mum the red herring of they were coming round to give them some gifts we had put in the fictitious package.  When we arrived at Mum and Dads, Keith’s Mum and sister Michelle (who was over at the time) was more interested in seeing little David, and came out to the car to see him.  It couldn’t have worked better, as when Mum looked through the window to see Davie, she saw us both as well, smiling and waving.  We surprised both Mum and Mish so much, they were almost in tears.

We went inside, getting to shock Keith’s Dad(Kathleen says she’s never seen Keith’s Dad look so confused), and Mum rang Keith’s sister and Brother to come over, so we could surprise them too. Claire, we would agree, was the best, doing a classic double-take when seeing us, and almost knocking over a glass cabinet, jumping up and down with surprise.  Vince was more subdued, having sort of sussed that we might have been there.

After having a quick catchup with everyone, we had to head back to Nic and Jo’s place, so we could get a good nights sleep.

Saturday, we did a bit of driving around, checking out old haunts, and marvelling at how much some areas of Brisbane had changed (the work on the bypass tunnels was spectacular).  We also dropped by the Taekwondo grading, and caught up with some old friends. It was so good to see them all, and made us determined to start going again when we finally came back to Australia. 

We also had to do a bit of hunting for some decent Sunglasses for Kathleen, having misplaced hers somewhere between back in the UK, and arriving in Brisbane (Don’t worry, people, it turns out the Sunglasses were accidentally left behind in the UK, under a chair in our study where we packed).  After finding a pair that worked, we headed to Kathleen’s Mum’s place to surprise her.  On our way we stopped at Gympie to pick up two crabs and a whole lot of prawns have with Kathleen’s Mum for Dinner.

It was quite dark by the time we got to Kathleen’s Mum’s place, which is a bit of a blessing it help in concealing our arrival.  Kathleen’s Mum saw the car pull up outside, but because it was dark, thought it was the Avon lady dropping around.  While Keith parked the car and started unpacking the car, Kathleen snuck up to the front door and surprise her Mum.  Keith could hear her exclamation from the road!

Once unpacked, we all enjoyed the prawns and crab for dinner, got to talk about everything that’s been happening, and once it was quite late, when off to bed.

On the Sunday, we had to head up north to see Keith’s old friend, Jason, and his family.  We didn’t get away until just before Midday, leaving us with a good 5 hours of driving.  It was so good to see the Queensland countryside, even more so as it had just been raining after a very long drought, and everything was looking so green.  On the way we made a few stops, one being at Mamminos Macadamia Ice-cream, who make quite a wonderful range, our favourite being the Jaffa flavoured ice-cream.  YUM.

We arrived at the Bell’s place just before 6pm.  They were expecting us, so no surprise here (we didn’t want to risk us travelling all that way for them not to be at home).  The last time we had been able to see the Bells was Keith’s School reunion, and Jason and Chrissy had only one little baby girl, Laura.  That was quite a while ago, Laura being a good 3 years old, and now there was another, Little Katelyn, who came into the scene early January after we arrived in the UK.

We had such a wonderful time with Jason and Chrissy, having fun with the girls, catching up, and playing pool.

On the Monday,  after spending the morning enjoying Jason’s company and raiding his computer of stuff, we headed over to see Kathleen’s friends, Sandra and Theo, who lived over in Emu park.  On our way we took the time to take some pictures of a Crocodile farm, just for Kathleen’s UK school kids (considering the worst they usually get to see is Badgers).

Sandra and Theo also knew we were coming, for the same reason we told Jason and Chrissy.  It was a lot of fun seeing Sandra and Theo, and like everyone else, we so look forward to seeing everyone again when we finally get back to Brisbane.

 Local croc farm

We travelled back to Brisbane on the Tuesday, stopping off at Mamminos, Kathleen’s Mum again, and Mon Repos Turtle Rookery out near Bundaberg.  It was a long trip, with us arriving back at Nic and Jo’s after dark. 

We finally got to surprise the rest of our friends, Marshall and Alison, and Nicole and Stuart, mainly through subterfuge, and downright lies about reasons for visits.  Thanks again Nic for your help.  We still can’t get over the look on Stuarts face (I do believe its the first time he has been speechless).

The rest of our time back home was spent travelling around, revisiting places we use to haunt, and seeing old friends and family.  We regularly visited the lovely Pizza and pasta restaurant, Tomato Brothers, getting re-acquainted with the Owner/chef and his delightful wares.

Another place we planned to visit while back in Brisbane was the Old Church up on Mount Tambourine, where we plan on being married. We had plans to travelled up with Nic and Jo, but due to a bit of mucking around on our part, we had to arrange to meet them up there.  All was well, we had a great picnic lunch near Para-glider takeoff, and then checked out the Church.

It was as beautiful as we remember it, though Keith thinks that we may have to invest in some mosquito coils, depending on how wet it has been over the time before the wedding.

Please find attached some piccies of the church and reception.

 The front of the church

 out the side

 Inside the reception

After the Church we stopped at the Polish Place B&B, so enjoy a couple of their wonderful Polish Hot Chocolates, and feed sugar to the local Rosellas.  We had so much fun with these little birds last time we stayed at the B&B, they just can’t get enough of sugar, honey, or anything sweet.  We know its not a good thing to encourage them to have the sugar, but considering there had been a drought over the past 6 years, we didn’t think it would hurt too much.

 The Polish place

 One of the birds

 SUGAR!

 Wadayoulookinat?

 I shall call him… MINI-ME.

Another rather memorable experience we had was taking Keith’s Niece, Lc, with us to visit Maria.  Maria is in charge of the reptile section of the Stafford Pet superstore, not purely for her friendly temperament, but also for her extensive experience with a wide range of reptiles, most of which she owns.

We were invited around to Maria’s place to see her vast collection of snakes and lizards, after giving her a thank-you gift for being the Saviour of our friends who are currently looking after Kathleen’s snakes. 

We all had quite a lot of fun, Lc included.  Please find attached some piccies. (for those with weak constitutions, just quickly scroll to the next part).

 Nice, slithery

  Lc playing with the snake

 How cute

  Lc with a lizard

We also took Lc to Wet and Wild world, in which we all had a lot of fun too.  Writing all this, Keith has realised he has two, soon to be three, other niece and nephews to take to the various theme parks.  Hmmm.  Lets hope we win the lottery or something

We had a wonderful Christmas, having Breakfast over at Nic and Jo’s (nice crispy bacon), Lunch at Mum and Dads with the family, and then Dinner at Kathleen’s Aunts place, with Kathleen’s relatives.  We had a wonderful time, despite all the driving around.

Speaking of driving, Keith was debating on putting together a map of where we had been during this time, and realised, you all would be asleep by now after going through this thesis.  Overall we must have travelled over 3000 km.  To say the least, when we arrived in Brisbane, Keith was really looking forward to driving his car, when we left, the novelty had worn off.

The flight back was fine, though Keith suffered from some severe pains in his knees, and it didn’t help that he wasn’t able to get up regularly to stretch his legs. It took almost 4 days for it to pass, making stairs a real pain literally.

 Pic flying back

 another shot

More recent events, Kathleen is loving her new job as a Teaching Assistant, and with Australia day, Kathleen thought it would be great to do something Aussie-ish, so we decided to make Lamingtons.  By the way, all Aussies know Australia day is on the 26th, and this year we had the holiday on the 28th.  Try telling everyone here that, when all their calenders tell them Australia Day is the 28th.

No matter.

Now, making Lamingtons over in Australia is easy with some very easy choices, either buy the Lamingtons outright, that way you know it will be right first time, or you can grab a plain sponge cake, slice it up, choc coat it, cover in coconut sprinkles and hey presto, LAMINGTONS.

Over here, no Lamingtons to buy.  Ok, go to plan b.  Hmmm, they don’t sell plain Sponge cakes.  Hmmm, the only choice we have is Sponge cake mix.  Goodie.

So, Keith took the time to bake the sponge cake, and after a fair amount of trial and error, we managed to create a whole batch of Lamingtons.  We think we did alright.  We were so proud of our creations, here’s the pictures.

 Our lamingtons. You can see our learning process, from the dodgy to the almost acceptable.

 The pick of the litter

An another note, we had some late cold snaps here recently, causing some hail and snow to fall in the area.  We woke the other morning to find the cars covered in the stuff.

 Chilly

 Snow or small hail?

We would like you all to know that the Daffodils are starting to flower, looking very lovely, and Fred and Jo (the local swans) are nesting.  We think we will call the newbies Bob.

We shall end with letting everyone know that we have already booked our flights back home for good, and so look forward to seeing you all again.

This Christmas Trip definitely felt too short, and we hope to spend more time with everyone once we are back.

Until next time, Loving yous all,

Kathleen and Keith

 We know we’ve been away from here for a little while, and we will pick up where we left off shortly.  We’ve got some great (and we mean GREAT) blog entries to post, so you should hear from us again soon.

In the meantime, we wanted to share with you our wonderful encounter with one of the most inspiring people in the world.

Kathleen discovered in one of the local papers that Sir David Attenborough was signing books at the WHSmith Bookstore at the Trafford Centre, so we HAD to go.

Since Kathleen finished up work earlier than Keith, She went in there to line up, and it was a good thing too, because there ended up being hundreds there by the time Keith arrived.

Sir David, was scheduled to sign between 6:30pm and 7:30pm, but one of his homies must have seen the line up and asked him to start a little earlier, because he actually started at 6pm.  Thank goodness, because it took us almost an hour to get to him, and he was still going by 8pm, when we had to leave. You’ve got to hand it to the man, Keith would of started suffering from RSI by then.

To add to the joy of the moment, we discovered a day later that Keith (along with dozens of others) got snapped by a local paper.  Subconsciously, Kathleen must have known it was going to happen, because she had wandered off (to stretch her legs, supposedly), so she didn’t get in the photo.  Please find attached the photo and article.

  Where’s Wally?

If we haven’t already sent a larger copy to you, let us know.  Please find below our own photos of Sir David.

 Sir David from afar

 We need a better digital camera

Anyway, we will be back soon with all our past adventures (after we blow the dust off them) very shortly.

Love you all,

Kathleen and Keith

 We were able to pick up a nice museum pass which allowed us into quite a number of art galleries and museums, as long as it was within two consecutive days.  So we choose which ones we wanted to try and see within those two days, had breakfast, and headed out.
Considering how many museums, art galleries, and general places to look at stuff, that were in Paris, we knew there was no way in a very warm place that we were going to see every single museum, art gallery, and place to look at stuff.  So, we had to be selective in where we were to go.  Thankfully, we only had a select number of places that we actually wanted to go see, so we were able to work it out well.  The first place we had to go see (Kathleen wanting to go there since she was knee high to a grasshopper) was the Louvre.

 An arch along the boulevardes of Paris

 detail of the Arch

The Louvre is bloody big.  It has four levels of artworks, sculptures, and pretty stuff to look at.  It has been said that if you were to walk through every room and look at every piece on display, it would take you well over a month.  A century or so ago it was actually bigger, being joined on to a palace.  Then one point a group of unhappy people (unhappy as in rebellious, and people as in Paris), burnt the palace down.  Thankfully, the whole place didn’t go up, and now the Louvre has a lovely view of the gardens of the Tuileries.
Since we weren’t going to be here for over a month, we wouldn’t be able to see everything, but luckily, we only had a select number of things we wanted to see.  The first of those being the Mona Lisa.
The Mona Lisa needs no introduction, everyone knows it, and everyone was there to see it.  It took us almost an hour to get even close to the painting, waiting for the crowds to gradually flow through.  I had my fill of the crowd about 15 minutes in, and ducked out to look at the outer wall paintings of the room, while Kathleen braved the crowd to get right up close.
After the Lady with the cheeky smirk, getting to the other exhibits we wanted to see was a piece of cake.  The only thing we had to watch out for was the little guide-women with little wands for pointing, and their guide-groups.  Some were quite rude to anyone that didn’t get out of their way. Personally, I wanted to tell them where they could stick their wands, but to keep good French-Aussie relations, I bit my tongue.  Besides, there was enough room for all of us.

 The other exhibits we aimed to see were the Madonna of the Rocks, Victory of Samothrace (sometimes known as the Winged Victory), and the Venus de Milo.  Winged Victory is easy to find, being at the top of the main stairs into the Denon wing, the Madonna of the Rocks is on a wall just outside of the Salle des Etats, the room housing the Mona Lisa. The Venus de Milo, on the other hand, requires us to pass through a reasonable part of the Louvre in order to see it.  Not a big hassle, as we were there to see the art anyway.  After seeing the armless lady, we wandered through the french area, and then we headed out, choosing to go via the inverted pyramid.  If you believe the ‘Da Vinci Code’, Mary Magdalene is currently buried there, though the Priory has probably moved her again by now.
While you all try to figure out where they could have hidden her, have a look at our pictures.

 The glass Pyramid of the Louvre

 Closer

 One of the small Pyramids

 The Louvre

 The buses actually drive through there

 The Arch that use to have a palace behind it

 Statue outside the Louvre

 The girl with the grin

 Maddy that rocks

 One part of the Louvre’s roof

 another part of the roof

 Nice

 Winged Victory

 from the front

 Venus de Milo (gotta be made of…)

 The Denon wing floor near the Mona Lisa

 Just for all you “Da Vinci code’ buffs

 Kathleen insisted

 The inverted Pyramid

 The baby pyramid

 wasn’t sure if I should have knelt or not.

The next location on our list for today was the Musee de l’Orangerie. Its located at the end of the gardens that the Louvre overlooks.   While having a range of artworks on display, L’orangerie is world re-known for its collection of Monet’s works.  Kathleen is a huge fan of Monet, and has always wanted to come here. The works that L’orangerie was designed for specifically was his grand continuous painting, ‘Nymphéas’.  Its basically two paintings of a 360 degree view of the famous, beautiful, lilly-filled pond/lake.  By building L’Orangerie, with its two oval rooms on the top floor, Monet’s paintings would be displayed as he intended.  I should note that when he first presented ‘Nymphéas’, a lot of critics didn’t like it.  Personally, I don’t know what they were on about.  I think its nice.

 One of the curved walls showing ‘Nymphéas’

 another

 Its such a calming picture

 Sort of reminds me of when I don’t wear my glasses

 Round and round she goes

 One of the long sides

 it would be nice to have a room like this.

 Outside the L’orangerie

 A bust

After that, we were starting to run out of day, so we thought we end the day with a climb up the Arc de Triomphe.  I didn’t actually know you could climb up the thing, until we saw people on top of it.  Thankfully, our wonderful little museum pass allowed us up there as well, so up we climbed.  Because of the design of Paris, a good number of streets star out from the Arc, so you get some lovely views (and you get to watch the chaos of the roundabout).
While we were there, they must have had some sort of ceremony, because there were quite a number of fully kitted up soldiers, and some rather older looking ones, doing something at the Paris grave of the unknown soldier.

 Some of the views from the Arc

 Towards the centre of Paris

 more of the road

 Pretty

 Some of the names remembered on the Arc

 lest we forget

 Some of the detail on the Arc

 Some more

 quite impressive

 Quite a lot of detail

 You don’t realise how detailed it is

 until you try to picture it all

 some of the boys in green (Kathleen wanted to get a picture from the front, but was concerned she might get arrested)

 The eternal flame

 The grave of the Unknown Soldier

 The shield at the foot of the grave

 The grave

By now, it was getting a bit late, and we were hungry.  Kathleen thought it would be nice to go back up to to the Place de Tertre, and check out the various cafes and restaurants available there.  We got up there by a small road train (similar to the ones you see at carnivals giving children rides), which also gives you a brief tour guide of the local area.  If I thought driving in a car through the streets was fun, I thought differently after this train.  Not that the driver drove erratically or anything like that, he was quite good.  Just bouncing along the cobbled roads with just a rope between you and said cobbled roads, made me a little nervous.  Anyway, we made it alive, and found a nice restaurant.  I should mention that France only had restrictions on smoking in public buildings and structures, while they are more than welcome to smoke in public, restaurants and cafes.  This was a bit of a worry for us, not being too fond of smoking.  It was rather hard to find restaurants that didn’t have smoking, and unfortunately, this one was no different. We did get to enjoy a nice plate of snails and pasta, while being entertained by a wacky accordion player, before we had to quickly end our meal, or else succumb to cigarette smoke.  Despite the smoking, we really enjoyed our dinner, mainly because of our entertainment.  We told him we were Australian, and he automatically broke into a tune of Waltzing Matilda.  Never thought something so stereotypical could be so fun.

  The windmill with the lights on

 The little train

 He was fantastic

I should add that, while the french are a lovely people, they don’t seem very fond of the English (probably due to historical reasons, I don’t know).  Once we assured them that we were Australia, (whom they absolutely LOVE), we got on swell.

Well, that pretty well wraps up this day.  Until next time, with more Museums and art.
Love you all, really, really miss you,

Kathleen and Keith

First of all, let me say a HUGE g’day to all my old University colleagues, who just got together for our 10 year reunion.  Sorry we couldn’t be there guys, us being here and you being there, and not enough money at the time to make the two meet.  I hope it was a lot of fun.

On with the show…

We got up at around 8:00am so we could get down and have breakfast before heading out into Paris.  The breakfast was fairly simple, cereal, various breads (including croissonts, of course), juices, and tea of coffee.  We pretty well dug into all the above to ensure we would have enough energy to cope through the first part of the day.  We were anticipating doing a lot of walking around.
The Kitchen staff were very nice and polite, as we were to them.  I thought, considering how many people the staff would have to prepare and wash-up for, and seeing the size of the hotels kitchen, which was no bigger than most small household kitchens, I thought they did quite well keeping such a cheerful attitude.  The hotel at any time seemed to have around 30 or so guest, so it have to deal with that many peoples dirty utensils and plates over the course of perhaps two hours, I tip my hat to them.
Oh, a small tip for all planning to travel to France, or more accurately in our case, Paris. Learn the Language, if not that, know some of it that you can at least get across the gist of what you would like.  Like most countries, speaking in a totally foreign language doesn’t get you very far, and people can get rather tetchy.  We found that people were more receptive to you if you tried to speak in their language first.  If you just dived into English, they usually had no idea what you were saying and, were pretty quick to dismiss you.  As we had a little bit of french under our belts, we were able to sort of communicate with people, and they at least seemed to appreciate us trying to speak to them in their native tongue.
Back to the day. After having a full breakfast, we consulted the maps and found that we should be able to get on a tour bus that travels around Paris.  This bus worked in conjunction with about three other bus routes, allowing passengers to jump off and on each of them, seeing all the sights of Paris.  The plan was to get a day pass for us both, and do just that.  We wandered down the hill through the back streets until we got to a main boulevard, Boulevard de Clichy to be precise, where if any one has been here before, sits the world famous Moulin Rouge.  While we waited for the bus, we took some pictures like all the rest of the tourists.  Please find attached said pictures.

 The red windmill

 The neon sign

 Some of the artwork in the main entry

Our tour-bus eventually turned up, and we jumped on.  I got a bit confused with the pricing, never quite getting the knack of understanding french spoken at normal speeds, but eventually got it worked out.  I was a bit worried that my English Visa debit card wouldn’t work over here, but it seems Visa is happily accepted anywhere.  After we sat down, we quickly discovered that it would be better for us to get a two day ticket instead of one, since we had quite a lot to see, and definitely wouldn’t see it all in one day.  The bus-driver wasn’t able to change the tickets, but let us know we could jump off at their head office bus stop, and the tickets could be changed there.
This particular bus was the L’OpenTour Yellow bus, which went through Montmartre (where our hotel was) and travelled down the Grands Boulevards. It circled down passed the two big train stations of Gare du Nord, and Gare du l’est, turn at the Place de la Republique, and headed toward Place de la Madeleine, where it would loop back again.  At that point we jumped off to change our tickets at the head office, and went to go hop on the other bus.  At the Head office, we also discovered a handy two day pass book which allowed you to go into a vast number of the Museums throughout Paris.  We thought that was a great idea, and got them.  The book pass was flexible enough to allow us to choose  which day to start using it, as we planned to use today as a scouting day, and then use the passes tomorrow.

 Kathleen blew a kiss to him, but I think he wanted money

 Eglise de Madeleine

 Evidence of the beautiful weather

We had a little walk down pass La Madeleine to Place de la Concorde, which has in the centre of it a huge Obelisk.  For anyone that has read “The Da Vinci Code”, one of Paris’ past Presidents, Francois Mitterrand, had a bit of a fancy for Egypt, and filled Paris with all sorts of Egyptian stuff, to the criticism of many.  The Obelisk is decorated with various Egyptian symbols and pictures, one side having the details for one of the great boats of the Pharaohs.

 La Place de la Concorde

 The Obelisk

 Detail on the side of the Obelisk
We then walked along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, a quite long stretch of road from the Place de la Concorde straight to the Arc de Triomphe. Half the Avenue des Champs-Elysees stretches through gardens, while the rest of it is lined with various stores and cafes.
As we were more exploring than shopping, we just kept walking, and walking, and walking.  At some points the only thing I was interested in was the fact that the Arc de Triomphe was getting bigger, hence we were getting closer to it.  Eventually, we did get to the Arc, and witnessed the organised chaos which is the Arc de Triomphe roundabout.  Again, no lines, people drove onto it when the lights told them to, and if you were on the roundabout, you had to stop for them, or else plow into them.  At first glance, I was quite horrified by how it was meant to work, yet, somehow it did.  Though, I can tell you, there are many a near miss.

 Avenue des Champs-Elysees

 La Arc de Triomphe (and some of the madness that surrounds it)

 Some of the detail on the Arc
The next bus we jumped on (much to my gratitude) was the Green bus (I sort of feel like I’m in a Dr Zeus book).  This bus was the PARIS GRAND TOUR bus, for it took you to practically all the big tourist sites of Paris.  We let it take us round, passing the Trocadero, which houses a range of museums, a big radio antenna better known as the Eiffel Tower (more on that later), and the Hotel des Invalides.  Since we wanted to have a quick passing look at some other major sites, we jumped off this bus to get on the orange bus which took us past Notre Dame.  By this time, it was starting to get very late in the afternoon, and unfortunately, the bus services stopped running around 6pm.  Personally I would have thought, since it was daylight until almost 11pm during the summer time, having the tourists riding until they couldn’t see anymore would be more profitable.  Hey, who am I to judge. We had to skip going onto the final bus route, the blue bus, and travel back to our final planned destination, the top of the Eiffel Tower.

 Some Paris architecture

 Some more architecture

 La Palais Bourbon Assemblee Nationale

 Hotel du Invalides (looked swanky)

 Notre Dame

 As much as I looked, not a Hunchback in sight

 Le Seine, the canal/river that runs through Paris.

 The big radio mast itself, the Eiffel Tower.
I always find it fascinating, and rather funny, to think that at one point the powers-that-be considered demolishing the Eiffel Tower, until someone thought it would be a great place to put a radio tower.  Not saying that the two are directly connected, but considering how much people come to Paris, sometimes just to see and climb the Eiffel tower, I wonder how many officials have looked back thinking “Mon Dieu, Tis a bon thing we didn’t hire la Frere Dean” (hopefully you Brisbanites should appreciate that joke).
The Tower is everything we expected, a marvel of steel, and bloody big. When we first passed it on the tour bus, the huge courtyard under the tower was packed with lines of people wanting to go up.  When we came back, it hadn’t really thinned.  Resigning to our fate, we joined one of the lines.  It turned out that they processed the people fairly fast, so we didn’t have to wait too long before we were able to get a ticket.  Unfortunately, we had hoped to get elevator tickets, but I think due to our lack of french, and the ticket operator’s lack of courtesy, we only got stairs tickets.  That proved to be a bit of exercise, while I’m sure most beneficial to our leg muscles, its something we could have done without, as Kathleen had to stop regularly to catch her breath or suffer an asthma attack.
Now, there are three levels to the Eiffel Tower, the first two of those having both stairs and elevator.  Due to our little misunderstanding, we had to take all 695 steps to the second level’s elevator (which you have to buy another ticket) to which we rode to the third and highest floor.  There is actually a restaurant on the second floor, but we didn’t partake, as I had heard that it was ridiculously expensive.  Besides, I’m sure we could find something just as good (and without need of a small fortune) somewhere back near our hotel. 
Up on the top floor, you get a panoramic view of the entire city.  they’ve got pictures of this view all around the inner deck, labelling all the landmarks.  Above the windows, they have the distances from the tower to various cities throughout the world.  We couldn’t help but take note of two particular cities shown.
There is a viewing deck all around the top floor, giving you a much better view.
We ended up staying up there to watch the sunset.  It was quite beautiful.  I found it quite interesting at how many people came up just to see it.  It got quite packed in the end.

 from the second floor

 La Place du Trocadero

 Place de Varsovie

 Allee des Cygnes

 Lets hope someone wasn’t arrested for that one

 Ecole Militaire

 Paris

 Stade Emile Anthoine

 More Paris

 Parc du Champ de Mars

 Tombeau de Napoleon

 Our capital (just in case you thought it was Disneyland)

 Google Earth says the same (give or take)

 Ah, L’amour

 oooooh…… aaaaaah….

 Sunset

 Practically over
Once the show was over, it was well past 10pm, and we thought it was a good time to head back down. We could have taken the elevator from the second floor down to the first, but it seemed to be taking quite a long time, so we took the stairs, but was able to take the elevator down from the first floor to the ground level.  Once we got out, we were practically swamped by a variety of merchants, trying to sell us various types of souvenirs. Not wanting a Glowing Eiffel tower, I did my best to seem as uninterested and intimidating as possible, but they had long since learned that their best bet was the females of a party. While I was distracted, one selling roses had managed to give one to Kathleen, and I had to pay for it.  Sneaky Bugger.  Oh, well, where better to get a rose than at the Eiffel Tower (even if I could have bought a whole dozen for what I paid for that one). 

 The tower’s glow

 The tower’s underbelly

 Lights spectacular

Since all the Tourist buses had long since stopped running, we thought it might be worthwhile trying out the metro system.  For those not familiar with the term, its their train/subway system (mainly subway, with some above ground stops).  For all the computer savvy ones out there, you would know about some colour systems using 255 different levels of Blue, Red, and green.  Well, I think the Parisian railway came bloody close to using every single variance of those colour types when making the guide map of their rail system. I exaggerated, but going on 11pm, and being very tired from walking up and down a whole lot of steps, I felt Jackson Pollock would be giving it a double take.  After quite a bit of time interpreting the map, we took what we thought was the right direction, and headed for a platform.
The subways are quite well set out in Paris, much like London.  They are very regular, almost every 4-8 minutes (being such a large city, I guess they can afford to run so often).  We jumped on a train, but after a couple stops, I discovered we had gotten on the wrong one.  It turns out my colour blindness foiled me again, but we quickly worked out where we were, where we needed to go, and switched trains to the right one.  We arrived at our stop, only to discover it must be one level away from the deepest pit of hell, as we had to climb a never ending spiral staircase to get to the surface. By the time we got to the top, all we wanted was to get back to the hotel and die (or better yet, just sleep).  Its ok, we took an appropriate breather, and made it back to our room for baths, and try to get some sleep from what was left of the night (it was about 1:30am by that time).

Tune in next time, people, for Day 3,  glass pyramids, quirky grins, and panoramic water paintings.

Love,

Kathleen and Keith

Kathleen organised this trip, going through a travel agent to ensure we didn’t have the same problems we had with our last flights.  Kathleen was able to ensure we didn’t have any problems with our baggage weights, and found a nice, cheap hotel for us to stay.  The flights were in the early afternoon, and we are happy to say we had no problems what-so-ever going through the airports.  Its so nice having British residency and right-of-abode (Not meaning to rub it in, sorry). We didn’t even need any sort of visa, just wave the passports and right on through we go.  Of course I go through the usual of stripping off all metallic wears, but I’ve got it down to a fine art now. I can be metal-less in seconds flat, and re-kitted again in no time.
I’m just waiting for the day they get us to strip naked for the flight (not that I’m inclined to public nudity, just the way these security measures are increasing, its only a matter of time).

We arrived at the Charles de Gaul in mid afternoon, and the temperature reminded me of back home.  It was a beautiful WARM temperature.  We found that we didn’t really pack appropriately for the weather.  Being so used to UK weather, overcast and cold, we packed the usual warm stuff.  I wished I had put in some shorts and t-shirts, as I was sort of melting under my leather jacket and trousers.
Now, the Charles de Gaul airport is big.  You know you are in a big airport, when you have to jump on a bus from the Plane, to get to the terminal.
Once we got to the terminal, it was just a case of showing our passports, pick up our bags, and we just had to jump on the train to get into Paris.

Now according to the travel agent, we just had to get off at the Gard du Nord station, jump in a cab, tell them where the hotel was (or point to the name of the street), and the taxi driver should get us there.
Well, we found a taxis in the ranks, driven by a little elderly lady.  Not knowing much french (my brain desperately scraping for any recollection of my high school french classes), and she not knowing any English, we tried the point it out on our travel details. She obviously didn’t know where it was, as she gave me that impression, but proceeded to get out the local street directory.  One would have thought, being in this profession, one would have a SATNAV, like every other cab in Paris, but who are we to criticise.  After some minutes of her looking up the place, it seems she didn’t have a much better knowledge of where it was, but seemed to have some idea.  So off we went.

Driving in Paris, from what I witnessed, very much involved you knowing which way you wanted to go, and basically avoiding other cars along the way.  I didn’t see a lot of line markings on the road, and the right-of-way seemed to involve you had the right to go your own way. Of course there was a left side, and right side, traffic lights, etc, but lets just say, I was getting quite nervous after moments of travelling in this cab.
As we got sort of close to a certain area, the Elderly driver started saying something along the lines of she knew it was somewhere around here, and we wound through progressively smaller streets, until we got to a steep inclined, cobbled road, filled with pedestrians.  I though she had turned down into a footpath, and was quite embarrassed as we slowly edged through the people, with them looking a little disgruntled with us.  We finally stopped at a small plaza, where other taxis seemed to stop, and our driver seemed rather apologetic and annoyed that she didn’t find our stop, but this is the closest she could take us.  Accepting this, and got out.  We didn’t have much idea where we were either, and tried calling the hotel.  It turned out that the driver got rather confused with the name of the hotel, as it was similar to the name of the plaza we were dropped off at.  Unfortunately, the hotel wasn’t at this plaza (Place Du Tertre), and it was back down the hill.  We tried asking some of the other taxi drivers at the place (as ours had already made her exit), but they were not inclined to take us back down (perhaps too difficult, and not a big enough fare), but at least one tried to help us get an idea of where it was.  By this time, certain female members of our two person party was getting tired and irate, causing the other half of the party to slowly follow suit, we climbed down the stairs near Sacre-Coeur, till we got lower on the hill.  I enquired at one or two cafes along the way, and eventually, we found our hotel.
Absolutely beat, we didn’t go out anywhere that night, other than to get some food from one of the local stores, planned out our next couple days, enjoyed watching The Simpsons in french (what a laugh), and went to bed. 

I apologise there isn’t more pictures with this day, our main aim was to get to the hotel, which you can see, was a bit of a feat at the time.  I wish I had looked into it more beforehand, as I usually look up where we are staying on a map.
Oh well.

Stay tuned for day two in Paris.

 Love,

Kathleen and Keith

 The Legendary Concorde, forever grounded at the Charles de Gaul airport

 The sign over the security entry
 

Welcome back (by popular demanding) to another episode of Kathleen and Keith’s Astounding Adventures!

I thought I would let you know of some of the more normal stuff we get up to.  No, its not all wonderful trips to exotic locations! We actually get up to some other things as well, things that most may call ‘ordinary’.  ‘Shock horror’, I hear you all faint from disbelief!

Firstly, Kathleen convinced me to have another haircut, before I could grow it to the shaggy mane it was before (drats).  I mainly got it done because Kathleen happened to be going to the hairdressers too, and I figured, why not.  Kathleen decided to go a bit adventurous, and get her hair dyed to a near natural colour, and also get it straightened.  I was quite amazed by it, to be honest, as being used to the blonder, curlier look.  Please find attached the New Kathleen!

 Who are you, and where is my Kathleen?

I should add that due to Kathleen’s hair being naturally curly, this straight look only lasted about 2 days, before it sprung back to its natural shape, though brown.  This has posed a bit of a problem for me at first, as when trying to spot her in a crowd (or aisles in a shop), I usually look for the curly, blonde hair.  For a while, I would look past her brown curls as not my Kathleen, before mentally realising I’m wrong.  I’m all good now, and can spot my loved one easily.

A little while ago, We were invited to the reception of a wedding of One of Kathleens workmates. So we rented a car, got decked out in our best, and went to celebrate to the union of the couple.  Not sure if you got word of this, but at the time, there was a lot of flooding happening,  with major roads getting cut off, and lots of people getting stranded. Due to our lack of knowledge of the geography (we may have driven around the place, but it doesn’t mean we know every inch of it), we were a little concerned that we may not be able to get to the reception being held in Knutsford (thanks to the many stories from my workmates about getting stranded in their cars in such occasions. Oh, knuts).  But after a little map checking, we were pleasantly surprised the flooding was occurring a lot more south than us, and we should get there with little problems.
A fun night was had by all.

We had a pleasant surprise on our arrival home.  As we pulled into our small street, we spotted a small shape moving in the middle of the road.  I pulled up, not wanting to run over whatever it was.  Thankfully it was quite late on a Saturday night so there was little chance of someone coming up behind us.  We got out of the car to investigate, and discovered the small shape was in-fact a little Hedgehog!  He appeared unharmed, and quite tame (not that we knew he was a he, excuse me for the automatic masculine label).  Perhaps we had just blinded him with our car’s headlights, and he was still in a state of shock.  However he was, he seemed quite unfazed by us, and only got a bit jittery when our shadow crossed over him.  He even let Kathleen pick him up without the slightest inclination of biting (despite my fears of such things as RABIES).  After taking many photos of him, and Kathleen naming him Bertie (please don’t ask), we thought it best to move him off of the road, and deposited him in one of the grassy side alleys where there were hedges aplenty (not stereotyping the species, but on the hope they preferred hedges to open road).  We having seen hide, hair, or spine of Bertie since, but hope that he is well.
Please find below pictures of Bertie the Hedgehog.

  Bertie

 Bertie again

 Bertie in Kathleen’s Hands

 Bertie in Kathleen’s Hands again
Another little pleasant past-time we enjoy is spotting, and occasionally feeding, the Swans.  There are, from what we can work out, two pairs of swans on the canal, both of which have a cygnet.  We’ve been keeping an eye out for them whenever we jump on the tram, as the tram-line runs along parallel with the canal.
Every now and again, Kathleen’s work has an excess of bread, so Kathleen is able bring it home with the purpose of giving to the Swans, ducks, and any other water fowl that happen to be there.  The swans, while quite interested in the bread we offered, were conflicted with trying to warn us off getting too close to their baby.  So while they would come close to get the bread, all that time they would be hissing at us to stay away from their Cygnet.
Please find attached pictures of our fattening of the fowl.  You will have to excuse the excess of cute baby ducks and swan pictures (but they are SO CUTE!).  By the way, the Swans are affectionately known as Fred and Jo, and baby Eric (again, please don’t ask).

  Mummy Duck and Ducklings

 and again

 aww, aren’t they cute

 Mummy Swan and Bub

 Mum and Dad with Baby

 Isn’t he CUTE!

 Awwwwww.

Just to confuse everyone, we call the second Pair of Swans, and their baby, by the same names.  Why?  I prefer to ask ‘Why not?’.   So far, we haven’t seen both lots of swans at the same time, so it works quite well.

 Mummy and Teenager

 again

 I’m bigger than you so BACK OFF!

Ok.  I know I promised you all tales of our Paris trip, and right now you are crying out “WHATS WITH THE FLIPPING SWANS!”.   Sorry, Mum.

 Well, all I can say is that I haven’t had time to write it up yet, and edit the million or so photos associated with the trip.  We’ve had some very full weeks and weekends.  We are going to the gym more often as we both wish to improve our fitness and health, and in general been quite busy. 

I promise by next Monday, you will see PARIS, or you can nag me more.

Anyway, Definitely will be hearing from you after this,

Kathleen and Keith

Last Day.  We decided to sleep a little longer this morning (considering I was gradually getting absolutely wrecked by the constant late nights).  After breakfast, we packed our things, payed up for our stay at the guesthouse (which involved a quick trip into the town of Mullingar as we didn’t carry large wads of cash with us), and we bid farewell to our wonderful hosts.  Since our flight wasn’t until about 7pm, we thought it would be good to make a lazy beeline in the sort-of direction of Dublin airport, and stop off at a few historical sites along the way.

Our first destination we planned to see was The Tower and High crosses of Kells.  Though along the way we passed Delvin Castle.  I thought it was quite interesting as how the modern town has continued to grow around the ancient castle, practically keeping it a part of the town, dispite its gradual decay.  We did some castle admiring, and moved on.

 Delvin Castle

 Delvin Church (or whats left of it)

We got to Kells in the afternoon (I think it was about 2:30pm), to which is famous for its Tower, and its High crosses, one being known as the ‘Market Cross’.  It seems that Monks and Priests used a similar technique when it came to rampaging hords, as this tower was practically identical to the one we saw at Kilmacduach, and had the same purpose.  The crosses, as we discovered, were erected shortly after the monastery was built.  As you can see from the pictures below, the crosses have had a hard life, most of them being broken over the years by various not-so-friendly peoples.  One of the crosses was never finished, but they were always re-erected, if they could find what was left of them.
The Market cross, unlike all the other crosses, wasn’t within the immediate church surroundings, but was originally places at the entrance of the town.  With progress, the Cross had to be moved, and now sits under cover, well protected from rain.
As it was afternoon tea time, and we hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, we though it would be good to have a breather at the gift shop and cafe at the Market cross. After satisfying our hunger we pushed on.

 Kells Tower

 One of the High Crosses

 Another High Cross

 Some of the detail on the cross

 Some more detail on the cross

 Whats left of one of the other crosses

  Kells church

 The Market Cross (That’s the hall with the cafe and gift shop in behind)

We had some trouble finding our next historical location.  It was getting on 4 pm and we found ourselves rather lost in the area of where the map said the Hill of Tara was supposed to be.  Unfortunately, While the map said we were there, our own eyes were telling us differently.  In the end, we stopped and asked a kind local if he knew where it was.  It turned out that we weren’t at the right place, and the Hill was more east, and after some looking at the map, we found where it was.  According to the map, there were two Hill of Tara locations.  Unfortunately, the one we were at, wasn’t the right one.  So after much thanks givings to the nice man, we rushed off to locate the hill.  Thankfully, our guides directions turned out to be quite accurate, and we finally arrived.   I’ll let the photos do the talking with this one (with small comments, as the pictures themselves, while quite nice, don’t explain everything)

  A statue of St. Patrick near the church on the hill.

 A burial mound

 A stone

 A more recent grave  on the hill (but not recent enough for us to still be able to read the tombstone)

 Another more recent grave (but, like the other, not easy to read anymore)

 This stone was found in the graveyard of the church.  Long since worn away, the details carved on it are almost lost, but we were told that at the base, there is a a fertility goddess’ image.  If we weren’t told this, I doubt I would have paid any real attention to it.

We had an absolute nightmare trying to fly back.  Since we spent a bit more time being out finding that last burial grounds, we were too late to drop the car off at the rentals, but we remembered that it was possible to drop the car off at the airport.  Unfortunately, when we got to the airport, we found every other rental place had a parking lot but the one we were with.  Kathleen was able to dive into airport and talk to one of the rental peoples (not from our company, they had already nicked off), and found out we could just park the car in the short-term car-park.  That’s after almost an hour of driving around and around and around the parking lot.

  After that little fiasco, we rushed into the airport, only to be met with a packed check-in area.  Thankfully, our check-in desk was reasonably empty.  Unfortunately, we discovered that the baggage weight for the return flight was less than coming over, so we had to fork over a good chunk of money to get one of our bags back.  Once we worked that out, we were told we had almost 10 minutes to through the security, get from one end of the terminal to the other, or else we would miss our flight.  So once got through the security (I must have stripped of everything metal, including my belt, to ensure a speedy check), we hightailed it to our gate, with me trying my best not to lose my pants, and Kathleen not to have an Asthma attack.  We got there later than they said (only by about 5 minutes), and the plane didn’t get boarded until almost 20 minutes later.  I was drenched with sweat, because I dressed for the cold, not a marathon, and poor Kathleen had to sit down all that time to recover.  From the grumbling of the crowd, we weren’t the only ones that were fed that bit of bull-flop, and had to run to the gate.  Anyway, we got on the plane, and made it back home safely.

So, fun was had by all.

I am sorry for the lateness of this final blog entry, being almost two months after the actual trip, but life over here isn’t all travel and sight-seeing.  Gotta earn the moneys to pay for these excursions.

Anyway, Please send us your emails, comments, letters, Owls, etc.  We miss you all sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much, and are dying to hear from you all.  We try to phone when we can.

May I also re-assure everyone, THE WEDDING IS STILL GOING TO HAPPEN!  No changes have been made, so your roles are still the same, if anything, we may add more people to the mix.

Tune in next time for the city of love, PARIS!

 Hug and Kisses,

Kathleen and Keith

Today, we decided we would have a nice, relaxing drive.  We were told that the city of Westport was worth having gander at, and we were also interested in doing a bit of driving along the coastal roads past Galway.
So, we thought, why not try to combine the two, and do a coastal drive towards Westport.

First we had to get to Galway.  Along the way we stopped at old ruin of a church.  There wasn’t any marking or anything to tell us which church it was once, so we can’t tell you much of the place, other than most of the graves were overgrown.  It looked like someone came round every now and again to trim back some of the more recent plots.
We noticed that it was rather common to find ruins of churches with still used cemeteries.
Anyway we had a quick look, and moved on.

 The church ruins

We also came across the Turoe Stone.  This stone is basically a rock with Celtic carving all over it.  The establishment that has been built around it  seem to be a petting zoo / play area, which the stone as an additional sight.  The stone itself was probably carved a good 1900 years ago (long before organised petting zoos).  No idea what it was for, but it was pretty to look at.
I guess I should mention at the time they had build a small hut around the stone to preserve it.  Unfortunately the hut didn’t have much in the way of windows, so it was a little hard to see.
We looked, and moved on.

 The Stone

 A representation of the patterns on the stone

Beautiful weather ensured that the coastal drive was really enjoyable (apart from the cold winds), and the scenery was just as so.  I should note that we ran into a problem we found when we travelled to Wales.
Around Ireland, all signs had Gaelic written under the the English.  As we travelled north of Galway, the Gaelic took precedence to the English, and then, the English was discarded altogether.  So for a good part of our drive, I could have been driving down one way roads down the wrong way and not even know it.  We sort of started understanding a word or two, but mostly, we had to rely on faith that they had the same road rules as what I’ve learnt.  It turned out alright, and we had a good time.

 Galway Bay

 A beach on the bay

 Stoney beach (The seaweed was a bit rank)

At about afternoon tea-ish, we stopped for something to eat at the small town of Spiddle.  We found a lovely little cafe/restaurant which had some wonderful mussels and seafood chowder.  After that delightful meal, we continued on.

One thing I should mention is that we had a slight miscalculation with how long it was going to take to go from Galway to Westport via the coastal roads.  After a good number of hours of driving along, with the sea on our left and very thin, windy roads ahead, we discovered that we hadn’t really gotten far.  In fact, we hadn’t even really started going north, just sort of west-ish.  It didn’t help that we couldn’t read the signs.
With the day rapidly coming to an end, We thought it would be wise to abandon the Westport destination, and head more back inwards (guesthouse-ish).  We did find some eye catching castles, thatched roofed houses, and got a little artistic with Celtic crosses and the sunset, but apart from that, we basically headed back to the guesthouse.
We will let the pictures do the talking in this part.

 Thatched roof houses

 Rocky Shores

 A sign we had a good laugh at (and paid good attention to)

 Owl Housing (clearing for grazing land has taken large areas of Owl habitats, so accommodation has been arranged for some)

 Burren like hills

 Pretty lake

 another pretty lake

 Ice cold waterfall

 ice cold rapids

 Castle on an island in the middle of a lake

 The lake with the island with the castle

 Ducks

 duck

 A bridge house

 Ashford Castle (its still in use)

 An example of Irish Cottage architecture

 The sunset crosses

 more sunset crosses

That’s about it for this day, Tune in for the final installment of our Emerald Isle capers, which include the 5 crosses of Kells, the Hill of Tara, and almost another night in Ireland.

Til then, Love you all, missing you all more every day, and hope to talk to you all soon.

Kathleen and Keith

Today, we thought it would be nice to travel to Galway, one of the biggest tourist cities within Ireland.  The main reason to go there was the desire to experience a true Irish pub, with authentic Irish music. 
We noticed a fair amount of interesting historical sites towards Galway (in a round about sort of way), so the plan was to head West-ish, going from site to site, and then head into Galway.

The first place we stopped at was Kilmacduagh, or more precisely, the Monastic ruins. The site is comprised of a few churches, housing for the monks, and a rather tall tower, dating back to the 7th century.  The churches now are mostly there, with one of the church’s cemeteries still in use.  The house had been re-roofed, so to show how it would have looked back when the monks used it (nothing in it of course, other than an old looking wood alter).  The tower was probably the most interesting part of the site.  On initial inspection, apart from it doing a bit of a leaning Tower of Pisa thing, we found that there was no entry at ground level.  The only windows were about 2-3 stories up or higher.  It turns out that this tower, while being used for storage, was also used as a escape for the monks whenever they came under attack (which must have been reasonably regularly).  They would probably use the tower as a lookout, and when the hordes came a-pillaging, they would hoick themselves up there via a ladder, and hide out.  According to the records, the site had been plundered many times over the centuries), but the monks continued doing their monk-y business (oh, how my side hurt), in fact, it was a seat for a bishop up until the 16th century.
We had a good wander around the site, did our appreciating, and then moved on.

 The Wooden Alter

 The Monk house

 The Tower

 The church and cemetery

As we were driving, we came across a small castle that looked like it had been quite well maintained.  Upon closer inspection, it turns out to be the Ballyportry Castle (technically a tower house), and it was getting conservation work done. According to the front sign, you could actually let the 500 year old castle.  Imagine that, living in your own castle (or tower house)!  We haven’t had a chance to look into it yet, but I like the idea of being able to say I am the King of my Castle (I’ll be here all week, try the chicken).  
 

  Ballyportry Castle

Next, we hit the Burren.  The Burren is a large tract of land in the west of Ireland, comprised of a light grey rock.  It was almost surreal driving though it.  There are great grooves in the rock, running for miles, all parallel, which I discovered was the result of the Glacier plains of the past ice age receding, dragging huge boulders over the terrain, and eventually leaving behind where the melted ice could no longer hold them.  You can find these boulders everywhere, and they sort of stand out, a massive rock in the middle of a large flat land.
If it wasn’t for the grey stone building and town along the road, you would think you were in a deserted wasteland, uninhabitable by any man. The lands of Mordor spring to mind.  We were almost expecting to see Orcs running across the plains.
Anyway, thousands of years ago, mans trek brought them here, and they learned to live off this land, relying on the grass that had grown in the cracks of the rock to feed their herds.  We found that if it wasn’t for the sheep and goats, the grass would actually totally cover this rock, and it would look like almost everywhere else.  I guess another things that makes this place more habitable, is that there’s no shortage of building material. If you want to construct another house or wall, just wander out to the backyard and collect the stone.

 The Burren

 The contrast of the Burren to the grasslands

In this alien landscape, there were a number of sites we were interested in seeing, the first being the Caherconnell Stone fort. The fort, basically a stone wall circle with a diameter of about 50 metres, which was probably occupied by the most important people of the tribe, as well as their cattle.  The rest of the tribe would live around the fort, where their crops would grow.
The walls of the fort are not as impressive as they probably once were, but to think this was in use over a 1000 years ago, holds quite a bit of significance in our books.
The site, by the look of things, is looked after by a local family, who has made quite a business out of it, including cafe, tourist store, and a small theatre showing a film about the site.  We didn’t bother with that, but bought some touristy stuff.
Also, we weren’t able to take any decent photos of the site, so we’ve opted to use web pictures to give a more accurate representation.

 Part of the wall, from the walkway into the fort

 The wall from the outside

The next place we stopped at was the Poulnabrone Dolmen.  A Dolmen, from what we could understand, was an ancient tomb, used by the local tribe to bury important peoples.    The Dolmen itself dates back thousands of years, almost a thousand years before Stonehenge.  What I found interesting also, is that it was in use as a burial site for around a thousand years, meaning it held its significance to the ancient locals for a very long time. Since pictures speak a thousand words (and I’m sure you would appreciate pictures to my words), so here’s some.

 The Dolmen 

 From the side

 That big, flat rock in front is a cap stone, for entry to the tomb
From there we headed out of the Burren, and wound our way along the coast towards-ish Galway, until we came to an art university, housed in large stone tower.  Nowadays, they’ve expanded a bit, so there are more modern buildings on the site, but the tower is quite well maintained due to its use. 
Also along the way, we stopped at one of the many seaside stone jetties.  At this particular one, we found it quite amusing to discover the locals (being of the artistic nature) had found a excellent use for the various plastic rubbish that had washed up on their shore.
We also stopped at a few places along the coast, with various towers in various states of disrepair.  Not much else to say about them, hopefully the pictures speak more.

 The Art Uni tower

 The tower up close

 Very arty

 A seaside tower

 Another tower
It was starting to get later in the afternoon by then, around 5pm, so we thought it would be a good idea to head into Galway so we could find a nice place to eat, and then find a nice pub to enjoy Guinness and music.
After a good hour of driving around the heavy traffic of the city (oh, how joyful that was), getting trapped at one point down a one way back alley (so joyful), we found a nice restaurant which still served mussels and oysters (food is very seasonal here), and enjoyed a lovely dinner.
After dinner we went to a pub across the road which we found had live traditional music every night.  It proved to be a great choice as the musicians played right down in the crowd, and after an hour or so, a couple girls got up and did some Irish dancing as well.  Very entertaining.  We enjoyed the atmosphere (I should add the Irish have had a non-smoking policy within businesses for the last year, which made this a hell of a lot more enjoyable), and once it got to about 9pm, we started our 3 hour trip back to the guesthouse.

 The wonderful musicians who made our night.

That’s it for this day.  Tune in next time for Celtic stones, more ruins, and seafood to die for.

Love you all,

Kathleen and Keith

Because of our rather late arrival that morning, we headed out about half an hour later than the previous day, because some of us needed some sleep (its fine for some people, they get to sleep in the passenger seat for parts of the drive.  For those that have to drive, its a different story).
This day, we were heading to the city of Cork, or more accurately, our destination, Blarney Castle.

Considering the distance we had to drive, about the same as getting to the causeway, we made the decision to head straight to the castle. Yesterday, we arrived at the causeway at 5:00pm. We noticed that most historical sites will only stay open until around 4:30pm – 5:00pm, so if we wanted to have a good look around the castle, we would have to arrive there early to mid afternoon.  So it was a straight, continuous drive to the castle.

Blarney castle, I was interested to discover, wasn’t always known as such, in fact there hasn’t been anyone by the name of Blarney who has owned or lived in the castle.  The ‘Blarney’, according to some history accounts, comes from when Queen Elizabeth I commanded the Earl of Leicester to take possession of the castle.  When the Earl tried to negotiate with the McCarthy’s, the current owners of the castle, they would delay with a banquet or something.  So when the Queen would ask for reports of progress, long missives would be given, basically ending with that the castle was still untaken.  The Queen got so irritated, that she said the Earl’s reports were all ‘Blarney’.  So, after some years, the name stuck.  To think that if the Queen never said that, the castle would have probably known as ‘McCarthy Castle’.

 The castle and its surroundings

 The castle

 The guardhouse

 The ground floor of the castle

 A wall off the castle

 a cavern showing the escape tunnels under the castle

Blarney Castle can be accessed through the Blarney estate (a name I think the current owners inherited, rather than named by choice), which was quite beautiful.  huge gardens and rock formations (one they say looks like a witch).  There was also a set of about a dozen rock steps through a rock passage, known as the wishing steps.  In true Irish tradition, in order for your wish to come true, one would have to go down and back up the stairs backwards, with one’s eyes shut!  I wasn’t prepared to do that, considering the height of the passage was rather low, and I knew I would scone myself, but I helped Kathleen out so she could get her wish.

 The stream running through the estate

 the estate viewed from the castle

 A tree plantation within the grounds

 The stream at a different point

 Bridge over the stream Blarney (it was filled with coins, those wacky Irish)

Of course, I am delaying on our partaking of one of the most famously known activities done high on the battlements of the castle, the kissing of the Blarney stone.  The Stone has numerous stories of its beginnings, one being said that it was half of the Stone of Scone, a gift from Robert the Bruce to Cormac McCarthy, for supplying four thousand troops at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
There is a story, one which sticks to the current tradition associated with the stone.  McCarthy saved an old woman, a witch it turns out, from drowning.  As a reward, she told him the secret of a stone in the castle, to which, if kissed, would give the gift of eloquence.
Hence forth, countless people have climbed the stone stairs of the battlements, for a chance to place their lips upon the stone, ourselves now been counted among them.

I had to put aside my initial thoughts about kissing the stone. Considering how many people have put their lips on this thing, do they spray GLEN 20 on it every now and again, or are we going to go away with our joyful experience, as well as some sort of fungal infection?
Now, the stone is not just some rock placed in the castle for all to just wander up to and plant one on.  You have to climb the tight spiral stairwells to the highest battlements of the castle.  Once there, the stone is still not easily accessed.  You have to lay down on your back, and reach almost half a metre out over a hole in the wall, down to the stone.  Thankfully, the last thing you will be doing isn’t kissing the stone, then plummetting to your death.  There has been erected numerous bars and safety rails, plus you have the assistance of a jovial Irish gentleman to ensure a safe smooch.
Each of us took our turns of puckering up to the stone, to much laughter from ourselves and the Irish gentleman that held onto us.
I feel I should add, I noticed that while the stone was smoother and darker around the smooching area, there was also a darker, hence slightly moistened area just above the stone.  At first, one would think that people have just not been able to reach, and thusly have just kissed the battlement just above the stone.  My thoughts were that was not the case, and the darker area, is where people, not being able to fully see where they were leaning back, have sconed themselves on the battlement, before being able to accurately kiss the stone. 
Please find attached pictures of our short, yet memorable date with the dear Blarney stone (I’m not sure whether I feel any more eloquent though).

 getting up close and personal with the stone

(I hope it still respects me)

 The stone (thats it right on the bottom).

Not much else to really say about this day.  We did try to check out one or two other places on our way back,  including the Rock of Cashel, which was in fact a castle on a rock (closed due to banquet in session), and the Dunmore Cave (closed at 4:30pm, and it was about 7:30pm).  We still had a good three hours drive ahead of us, so the only time we really stopped was to reluctantly have dinner at a dodgy fast-food cafe, since everywhere else seemed to be closed.
We ended up getting back to the guesthouse at about midnight, and quickly went to bed.

Check back soon for our next installment of Irish tales about escaping monks, alien landscapes, and GUINNESS.

Til next time, Aussies, Love you all, and hope to talk to you all soon.

 Kathleen and Keith

Apologies again for the late update.  Its been a very busy number of weeks, and because of this, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to get this entry together.  But now, the deadlines have been met, the work is done for the moment, and we can tell you all about our week in the emerald isle, or better known as Ireland.  Well, perhaps you wouldn’t really call it a week, we flew in on the Wednesday, and came back on the following Monday, so about 5 nights.

I’ve broken this trip up over a few posts, so you guys can finally see something of our trip, and to give me time to write about it.  By the look of things, its the way to go, because there is a lot of stuff to write (and read) about, and a lot of pictures.

It didn’t start off real well.  At the airport check-in, we discovered the cost of flying with the cheap airline, didn’t include baggage.  I guess they have it for businessmen with laptops as hand-luggage.  So we had to fork over a bit of money for our bags.  Oh well, not a huge deal, I wouldn’t let that bother me.  We jumped on the plane, only to be told just when we thought we were about to take-off, that they had missed their departure window, and we had to wait a full hour for the next opportunity.

So, our arrive in Ireland was delayed by an hour, but we didn’t let that bother us.  We got shuttled to the rental company for our car, which was located in Swords (just north of Dublin), and we began our trek (Kathleen thought the guy that gave us the car was cute, and couldn’t get enough of his accent.  She was lucky she didn’t get left behind).

We drove through Dublin to get out towards the centre of the country, namely Westmeath, where the Guesthouse we stayed at is situated.

Not much to say about Dublin, we only got to see what was next to the roads following the river.  We didn’t even mean to go into Dublin as we knew it would be heavy with traffic, but the Tom Tom’s Data on Ireland seemed a bit out-of-date, and we accidentally took a tunnel that went under the port and straight into the city.  We found what we expected, traffic, and it took us almost 2 hours to get through.

It took us about 3 hours to drive to the town where the guesthouse was, but we arrived about an hour early, so we drove around the local area, checked out the local tourist shop, (we weren’t able to buy any tourists, though) and partook in the wares of a local cafe. By then it was check-in time, so we wandered over to the guesthouse, and checked in.

The guesthouse was owned by a lovely elderly couple with the most delightfully rich Irish accents who were quite happy to help us when-ever we needed, as well as leave us alone when we preferred.  Half the fun was fully understanding them when they spoke. 

We didn’t get up to much more that day, more just drove around the local area, and then discovered by the time we came back, most places where you could have had dinner was closed, and we had to settle for sandwiches at a local tavern.  Once we had the sandwiches, we headed back to the guesthouse, and hit the hay.

Before I go much further, may I just add, anybody that knows me knows a don’t mind a cup of coffee every now and again.  Regularly when we stop at a cafe or restaurant, I would have a cappuccino with whatever else.  Unfortunately, I must say, most places seem to prefer making coffees using a rather bitter blend, which I don’t really like.  Some I would have guessed, used the burnt remains out of their toaster.  The Irish make a FANTASTIC cup of coffee.  Be it the instant or a cappuccino, whatever blend is the majority over there, gets my vote.  I loved the coffee over there.

Thursday morning, we got up at about 8:30am for a 9:00am English breakfast, cooked by our wonderful hosts.  By 10:00am, we were off, heading north.  Basically, the plan of attack for exploring these grand lands was have a destination, but pick out a whole bunch of the historical, touristy places along the way.
This day, we both were really interesting in seeing the natural formation called ‘The Giants Causeway’.  This is located at one of the most north-ish locations in Ireland, so we had a lot of distance to explore.  On the way there, the first touristy sites we visited was the Fore Monastic Site.

The Monastic site was ruins of abbey, a well, and a Mill.  In itself, it basically would just be another set of historical ruins.  interesting in itself, considering there’s a legend with the mill.  Saint Feichin built the mill, with no water near it.  He, by miracle, induced the water to flow underground from a lake (or Lough, as its called in these parts) a mile away, and to flow next to the mill. The water still flows up there.  Another interesting thing we discovered was two trees located at the site.  Both were covered in various pieces of material.  Ribbon, hair-ties, paper, socks, if you could tie it to the branches, it was there.  From what we understood, its some sort of offering to the saint.  An additional offering was the embedding of coins into the bark of the trees.  A notice at the site said that this probably was injurious to the trees, as they were now dead.   It also said that the wood of the tree could never burn and the water of the well never boil.  It seems someone at some point tried to test the burning theory, for one of the trees looked quite charred.  To do as the Romans (or Irish) do, we stuck a coin in a gap, and tied a hairband to the tree.  After looking around the ruins of the abbey, we pressed on.
Please find attached our piccies of the site. (oh, new feature of the website, click for larger image.  FINALLY, I hear you say).

 Small Ash tree (with wrappings)

 Mill

 Large Ash tree

 Coins embedded in tree

 Abbey

 Arches in the Abbey

The next site we stopped at was the Loughcrew Megalithic Cemetery.  At first glance, it basically looked like a big hill, with a big pile of rocks on top of it, and if you don’t take in account of what it was used for, it was.  The pile of rocks is whats known as a  Cairn, or tomb.  All around the Cairn was various circles of stones with many different designs carved on them.  At the time, there was two groups of people there, a bunch of Archaeologists, and some local historians.  Thankfully they had the key to the gate of the tomb, and was very gracious to allow us a look inside.  Most of it was quite dark, and the photos we took were basically blind point and shoot, and hope the photo comes out alright.  We think they did, as you can see below. 

Outside there was this massive stone, which we were told was a Throne, to which one could sit on, and be granted three wishes.  Being a Irish belief, it had rules, you couldn’t wish for money, and you couldn’t tell anyone of the wishes.  Since all seemed to be having a go, we jumped on and made our wishes as well.   

Once we had a good look around, we trekked back down the hill, and moved on again.

 Celtic carving in the stone

 More carvings

 Blind shot one

 two

 three

 The surrounding stone circles

 covered in people measuring and tracing

 Not entirely sure what they were doing, maybe a ‘Timeteam’ sort of thing

 The Stone Throne

 Some of the scenery

From there, the Tom Tom seemed to think the fastest way to the Giants Causeway was Through Belfast, unfortunately, we didn’t realise it was directing us that way until it was too late.  Looking at the map, we would have gone a different direction.  It won’t be the only time the little SAT NAV would get a bit confused during its time here.  Despite its little detour, we made it to the Causeway, at about 5:00pm.  Let me add that its now Spring/summer over here, and while five in the afternoon may seem rather late, it doesn’t get dark until 11pm.  So we still had almost 6 hours of light to play with.

The Giants Causeway was an absolute sight to behold, almost unbelievable.  The ‘formation’, for want of a better word, is the result of basalt from a volcanic flow, which has cooled slowly, cracking and forming what look like tightly packed, roughly hexagonal in top profile, pillars.  Its rather similar to mud cracking when its dried slowly, only if you can imagine solid rock, and the columns from the cracking being tens of metres in height.  Over the thousands of years, with the sea bashing away at it day after day, sections of the pillars have been knocked away, leaving what almost resembles  large paving stones and steps.  The Causeway looks so much like paving stones that there’s a legend that goes with it.
Its said that the causeway was created by a giant, Fin MacCool, to meet up with/do battle with another giant over in England.  On a less fictional side, the causeway looks so much like paving stones, that we noticed some of the locals have helped themselves with some of the stones for their pathways.
We also found it interesting to find that people have wedged coins within the cracks of the pillars.  Personally I would have thought giving the money to the Organisation that looks after the area. I guess its another superstition or offering to the powers that be.  While I thought otherwise, Kathleen insisted we do what the locals do again, and I wedged a coin in with the rest.
Overall, we both found the causeway quite enjoyable to see.  Absolutely mind blowing.
Please find below images of the causeway, in all its splendour (we don’t think they do it justice).

 The coast along the causeway

 the columns of the causeway

 MacCools steps

 Stretching out into the ocean

 Its hard to believe this is natural

 Theres always one that gets in the way, ruining the photo

 The hills of the Causeway

Not too far from the causeway, we discovered there is an ancient rope bridge, used by fishermen for hundreds of years to catch salmon off a tall cliff island just off the coast.  We drove over to the entry only to discover they had closed about 3 hours ago, and there wasn’t any legal way of getting over to it (we could have jumped the gates and wandered over, but the law-abiding part of us thought it would be better to not).
Unfortunately, we couldn’t see it from where we were, so we cut our losses and just left.

 Sheep Island, off the coast near the bridge

On our way back from the Causeway’s area, we were absolutely famished, and thought it would be good to stop at a nice small town restaurant.  Going on the faith of good signage would suggest a reasonable establishment, we stopped at a restaurant called Rafters in a town we think was Garvagh.  It turned out to be a great choice, as the food was excellent.

Now, it was slowly getting dark (meaning it was heading towards 11pm), but we spotted the Beaghmore Stone Circles just a little off our way back.  Figuring we had a bit of time before it was totally dark, we made a detour.
These particular circles, while fascinating as they were originally placed thousands of years ago, didn’t have any real special qualities worth talking about (unless your an archaeologist).  A lot of stones, organised in circles and pathways, used for various rituals.  We were absolutely taken back by the number of black slugs that were all over the area.  Hundreds of large, jet black slugs.  We had to watch our step just to avoid stepping on them.  We surmised that they were so dark because of the peat in the ground.  Kathleen, showing most of her time is spent with children, had some fun poking them and watching them contract (it looked like such fun, I joined in.)
Please find attached our pictures of the circles (we did take some pictures of the slugs, but because of the light, they didn’t turn out too well).  I am hoping to get a digital SLR camera someday to avoid such problems.
After admiring and appreciating the cultural significance of the site, with diminishing light (11:30pm) and brass monkeys wandering about, we jumped in the car and headed back to the guesthouse.  We ended up hitting the pillows at about 1:30am.

 One of the circles, in diminishing light

  A burial centre of a circle

 Another circle (note the dropping light conditions)

 Some of the hedgeways and markings around the circles

Well, that it for the first part of our Ireland trip.  Tune in next time for smooching stones.

Until then, Love you all, miss you TONS, and hope to hear from everyone soon.

Kathleen and Keith

I apologize for the lateness of this entry, AGAIN. Its been a very busy number of weeks, many late nights. Thank you very much to all that have pushed for the update. This time I’m writing about our Easter Weekend trip up to the beautiful tracts of land known as Bonnie Scotland.

For all those that have read through our previous entries, you would know we have travelled up to Scotland before for a day trip, but only stopping at Edinburgh to check out its castle and that within. Realising how we’ve only seen a mere tiny section of Scotland, we decided we had to come back for longer. So with the long weekend ahead of us, we booked a couple nights at a hotel, rented a car, and headed north.

Friday:

We decided to stay in the Scottish lands for three days, staying in a hotel for two nights, and using that as a base for our travel around. We stayed in a lovely hotel in the beautiful town of Bridge of Allan, just above the city of Stirling.

  Our hotel room (quite swish)

We got up a bit late, so for the Friday we were mainly on the road. We checked into the hotel at around 3 pm in the afternoon, after about 5 hours driving (with rest stops, of course). We decided since daylight was lasting a lot longer now (up until almost 7 pm), we decided to take a quick drive over East-south-east, to the small town of Broxburn. Broxburn was a special destination for myself as it was the hometown of my Mum and my grandparents, before they made the trip over to Australia. Mum admits she was rather young when she left, so she has little memory of the town, but hopefully Grandma will see some things that have lasted over the years. Broxburn is very much, from what I could see, a working class town, which has grown so that it joined up with its near neighbour, Uphall. Most of the residential town looked reasonably recent, thought the main street definitely looked like it has been around a while. We chose the towns churches to photograph, hoping they were as old as they looked. 

  Proof we were here

   The Broxburn Church of Scotland

   We were definitely there

     Downtown Broxburn 

Also, after a little driving around, we discovered the Castle Niddry. It turned out not to look quite like the other ones we’ve been to, more like a very big house. Quite impressive, never the less.   Niddry Castle (or bloody big house)

First of all, I wish to say a big Happy Birthday to my dear younger Sister, Michelle.  We wish we were there for the cake cutting.

Sorry about the delay in updating.  Busy, busy. 

This weekend we finally got to go on our long awaited trip.  After almost two weeks of poor Kathleen being ill, and another weekend off due to myself coming back from a Business trip, we were quite eager to get out on the road.  So Saturday saw us taking off in a brand new Vauxhall Astra (Ford Fiesta, for you guys back home), and driving down to the tourist attraction known as Stonehenge.  Kathleen has been wishing to see Stonehenge since she was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper, and I was eager to see it as well.

Saturday:

The drive down took us about 3 and a half hours, most of which I used to get use to all the fancy options the car had, auto-lights, auto-windscreen wipers, fully electronic indicators, you name it, it practically did it for you.  Only a matter of time before the cars will do it all for you, including drive (perhaps then there will be less loss of life on the road).   Back to the trip…

We stopped to take some pictures of sights along the way, one in particular was a stile.  For all you out there who don’t know what one is(I didn’t really know what it was at first), a stile is a fancy name for a wooden set of steps to climb over a fence, perfect if you have a bunch of farm animals at your legs who are more that interested in exploring the great, wide yonder, given the chance, like an open gate.  More importantly, the reason of taking pictures of said stiles and putting them on the site, is for Kathleen’s Mum.  Ask no questions, people, and you will be told no lies.

  A two step stile

 a single step stile

In addition, we took some photos of some of the thatched roof houses along the way.  Thatched roofing seemed to be a common means of covering your house back in ye olde days, and some places keep the look for touristy reasons (though I don’t think they had chicken wire back then to hold the roof down).

 A thatched roof with ye olde chicken wire

 side view

As usual we had the use of Andy’s TomTom, which proved its value again, as there would have been no way we would have gotten there with the help of the usual lack of English signage.  To go over that final hill, and see those stones was quite a sight.  Despite most of it being gone or collapsed, its still amazing.

Nowadays, the general paying pubic cannot get up close and personal with the henge, being guided around them at a safe distance by a perimeter. The closest you get is around 20 metres, unless, like two days earlier, you are protesters dressed like the Flintstones, who was eventually dragged off the stones after a 6 hour ordeal. That distance suited us fine, Myself being able to get some great pictures, and Kathleen listened to the free audio guide describing the history of the ring of rocks, though we do have plans to come back, and get the special tour, when a small number of people are able to fork over more money and actually get up close and personal with the Stones.  Looking forward to that.

After that, we found out that there was the remains of a wood-henge nearby (they come in wood as well as stone? WOW).  So we drove over there.  Not quite as impressive, as there isn’t any wood anymore, just short, concrete filled, metal tubes showing where it was, but it was nice to check out anyway.

I won’t go into HISTORY MODE, saving yourselves to look up the info about the henges.  I recommend it, as its quite interesting (and funny, considering the types of henges people have made).  Lets just say that no Druids were harmed during the making of these Menhirs.

Please find below selected photos for your viewing pleasure…

 Stonehenge.  The big, vertical stones are called Sarsens, made of Sandstone, with the really big ones with the cross beam stones (or Lintels), called Trilithons.  The small ones are Bluestone.

 zoomed in

 locals

 from a different angle

 between the henge and the heel stone

The stone laying in between is called the Slaughter stone (misnamed because it originally was upright like the rest, and wasn’t used for sacrifice.

 The heel stone, originally at the entrance to the whole Stonehenge setup (since demolished for a road).

  The central part of the henge in its glory days.

 A nice diagram showing it in its glory.

Just had the thought that it probably would have been great to play brandy-ball, or even paintball in a area like this (Thought I would never, historical significance considered).

 Doesn’t she look cute with the hat?

 A long haired scruff

 The markers of Wood-henge (they do go in circles)

As a final note, I found that the stones of Stonehenge won’t glow or move if we were allowed to put blood on them, re. Doctor Who: Stones of Blood.  Everyday my faith in the factual details of the show is diminished that little bit more.

Sunday:

Now, some of you may have looked at the two maps and said ‘Hey, you practically travelled the same way’. You are correct.  Why didn’t we try to do the two in one go or stay nearby for the night?  Well, not a bad idea, but we are trying to minimise the costs of our trips, and after much debate, we did find it was cheaper to rent the car and drive from home (it also ensured we slept in a bed we knew).  While the fuel price is about twice that at home, it still was cheaper this way.  Plus it gives me more experience on the English roads (I’m no longer a nervous wreak by the end of the day now).

On Sunday, we travelled down to the township of Warwick, and the focus of our day trip, Warwick castle.  Back when we visited William Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, we also looked into various castles in the area.  Warwick castle looked quite impressive, in the fact it was still in use, and in reasonably good condition (and not being used to hold in someones sheep).  So we bought tickets in the hope we were going to be able to visit it.  Unfortunately, it going into winter, the days proved rather short, and it got dark too quickly.  So we postponed it for a later date, since the tickets were good until the end of March.  With that time now approaching, we decided that we had to come down and use the tickets.

 As I mentioned before, Warwick castle, unlike most castles dotted throughout England, is still in use and in relatively good shape, and making good of the tourist market.  There are regular talks by guides (in full period dress) throughout the castle, though we tried to avoid these as the groups tended to form, and block any views one might have had about talked subjects (also, if there wasn’t a crowd, it seemed the guides got a bit clingy, and would talk our ear off if given the chance.  I watched one poor father try to politely shoo a Lady guide off while she fawned over his young girls.)

Throughout the tourist parts, the castle has been set up to display various periods of its history, with wax models of people created by Madame Tussauds (they are eerily life-like).

From our wandering, we were able to find out that the castle was home to quite a number of Earls, one of which is glorified due to his call to arms to aid one guy against another guy in their fight for the crown.  If you when went solely on the dramatisation of the wax figures, the guy called his people to arms, helped the guy get to be King (hence the term Kingmaker), and then got killed by his enemies in some field.  I’ve seriously understated the whole history of this earl, but if you really want to know about it, there’s always the Internet.  Please find attached piccies of wax people of said peoples:

 A bow maker

 the Kingmaker

One of the interesting parts of the castle for us was the trebuchet, and the dungeon.  A Trebuchet is a fancy design of a catapult (for all you who haven’t been in a siege for a while), which, by design, can hurl large rocks over extremely long distances.  In regards to the dungeon, we were so looking forward to all sorts of torture chamber equipment, but it turned out to have just one or two implements of unpleasantness.  Still worthwhile though.

 Trebuchet, with me for scale

 A suit for hanging around, literally, for the rest of your life

  A place to dangle your prisoners

Later in the castles history, the place was home to a rich Countess named Daisy, who was quite extravagant (much to the tolerance of her husband).  Many really important people wondered through there (as was the thing to do, apparently), including a very young looking Winston Churchill, future PM of England.  The main section of the castle was converted to the ’in’ look at the time (which I thought looked fantastic, I just love the era).  Actually, it probably was converted long before the Countess, but still, very nice.  

Daisy also was one big on change, including the introduction to electricity.  She was quite taken by the whole idea, and had the whole place decked out with light bulbs, which were first switched on during her birthday at a big party where everyone dressed in 17th century wears.  The lighting was described as wondrous, though if you were to compare to today, they would have been a bit dim, but compared to their average candlelight, it would have been grand.  Along with the bulbs, they converted the mill into a water wheel powered generator, since the castle is right next to a river/creek/flowing body of water.  At the time, I think this generator was able to power the whole house, and a good portion of the town.

In the grounds, we found some nice gardens, which was opened by the dear departed Princess Diana, and was home to some pretty Peacocks and some very uninterested Peahens.  Also the Countess had a lovely conservatory housing lots of exotic plants, and the Warwick cup, a mavelous marble construction.

 garden

 the Warwick cup, in the conservatory 

 an interested peacock

 nope, he didn’t get any.

Please find below more piccies of the our time at Warwick castle.

 Warwick castle (like the sign says, in case we mistake it for Disneyland)

  Some of the updated section of the castle.

 The Mound

 The river powering the generator

  The inner entrance (the sundial, I thought, was quite amusing, considering how much sun they actually get over here)

 The bridge, which has long since collapsed in sections, but still pretty.

 The Countess’ boatshed.  The creek was swollen, so the shed was about a metre underwater.

 Yes, very amusing

 I don’t think these have moved in quite some time.

 a local

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading of our latest adventure.  Feel free to comment, leave messages, contact us by email, as we would love to hear from everyone.

As a final note, please do whatever you can for cancer research. So many friends have been effected, even ourselves. Our love goes out to you all. 

Until next time,

 Kathleen and Keith

Well, the whole weather predictions of heavy snow turned out to be a whole lot of nothing.  It snowed gently, on and off for about a day, then just got really cold and wet.  On the Sunday, it turned out to be sunny!  BUT, being the naive foreigners in a strange land, we thought it would be a good idea to trust the weatherman and we decided to postpone the trip.  An extra factor to the decision was that Kathleen (and myself to a certain degree) wasn’t feeling 100%.  So no news of Stonehenge at the moment.  We have decided to do it all in two weeks time, not this coming weekend, because I’ve got a business trip for the Thursday and Friday, and don’t think I’ll be up for a big driving trip the next day.

A plus side, Kathleen has never seen snow, and with this small amount of snow fall, Kathleen was beaming from ear to ear.  She has still to build a snowman and a snow Angel.  All in good time.

So two weeks from now, we should be writing about a lovely trip to see a bunch of bloody big, artfully placed and crafted  stones, and hopefully details about Warrick Castle.

In the meantime, please check out our piccies of the snow, taken from my office window.

 Light snow at 8am

 more light snow at 8:30am

Easing off at 9:30am

Much love,

Kathleen and Keith

Just a quick one to up-date everyone on weather conditions over here, and how thats effecting our plans.

Temperatures are skimming the neutral zone like a cheeky Romulan (for all you non-Trekkies, I mean zero degrees), and there is predictions of snow hitting the entire of the United Kingdom.  While Kathleen greets this news with great jubilation, I on the other hand say “oh, goodie, NO TRACTION!”. 

So if it looks like it will definitely snow, then I would say our planned driving trip to Stonehenge and Warrick Castle for this weekend may be delayed once again.

To show I’m not fibbing here, please find below a picture taken from outside my office window.  That is fog, mist, frost, and ice.  For all you camera buffs, I shot this towards the sun, so it gives you an idea of how much cover there is.  Trust me, you cannot see past that Pine tree across the road.

Frosty love to all,

 Kathleen and Keith

First of all, lets start with a positive, so to show I’m not all twisted up with bloody boiling RAGE.  All of you know, I’m usually a very mellow guy, so it is quite uncommon for me to be quite irate about things.  And to show I’m grasping for any calming subject I can find, here’s the positive news I’ve been told.

It seems to be the time for blissful arrivals.  I am happy to say that two dear friends of mine, Nic and Jo Bos, have been blessed with a beautiful, bouncing, baby boy.  Welcome to the world, David Nicolaas Bos.  Congratulations, Nic and Jo, proud Dad and Mum.  We wish you all the best with your growing family. 

Also, earlier to Nic and Jo’s blessing, I am happy to say that another good set of friends of ours, Jason and Chrissy Bell, welcomed the arrival of a darling baby girl, Katelyn Lee Bell.  Congratulations, guys.  We wish you all the best, and not too many sleepless nights.

Now, lets get onto the rant, shall we?

Kathleen’s mobile phone has been slowly dying for the last 5 months, and with the recent addition of an extra income, we thought it would be good to get a new one.  After much looking around, checking different phones, weighing up pros and cons, Kathleen picked one out. 

Next, to buy it.  Wouldn’t think that would be too hard, would you?  People are always out there to exchange goods for currency, right? WRONG. 

They don’t sell phones outright here at any of the stores.  They don’t get the same amount of profit as getting you on a plan.  Well, we don’t want to be on a plan.  We are doing quite well just paying for top-ups when we need it. I don’t think I’ve spent so little on my mobile since I first bought one at the Brisbane Car sound.  We know we will save heaps by just buying the phone outright, and just paying for the calls we make. 

So I had to find out where I could get a phone that’s not automatically linked to a network here.  It turns out that the only places where you can buy any particular phone, SIM card free (as they call it), is online.  Now, buying online is something I’m still rather reluctant to do, considering the possibilities of fraud, and with such phone sites as MOBILEFUN, MOBILERAINBOW, etc, I wasn’t about to start changing my practice.  I know a lot of people out there swear by shopping online, but it will take some more convincing before I readily fork over my credit card details.  BUT, after a lot of searching, I discovered that the particular phone Kathleen wanted could be bought straight from the Manufacturer, with no links to any mobile network.  Thinking there couldn’t be a more secure way of purchasing than doing it from a well known, International company, I decided to change my ways this one time, and proceeded to fill out an online order, and pay for it by credit card, online.  I’m sure Lucifer was getting his thermal underwear on at the time.

One thing that really bugged me was that a condition of the delivery of said phone was that the address of delivery had to be the same as that for the credit card.  Being our home address, and the delivery to happen on a weekday, during work hours, we knew there might be a problem with the fact we are never home during weekdays during work hours, due to the fact we are at work.  I would have liked it to be delivered to my work, unfortunately, nope.  But thinking that if they do deliver and we are not home, they have my number, and there should be a quick and easy way to track down where our parcel is, ensuring an easy pickup or redelivery.  I’ll tell you how that went a bit later.

At the end of the order, I had a choice of postage.  I could get it sent by regular post (the cheapest) and it will arrive around a week give or take, pay about twice the post cost and get it to arrive in about 3 days and be tracked by courier service, or pay three times the post cost and have it arrive in under 2 days with tracking.  Now, there wasn’t a dire need for it to be here ultra fast, but we’ve had bad experience with the post before, taking their time getting things to us, so I opted for paying a bit extra, and have it arrive around 3 days.

Well, the three days came, and this Friday, we came home to discover the little “Sorry, We missed you” notice from the courier company in charge of the delivery.  No phone call from anyone to say it was about to arrive, Only a slip of paper saying when they arrived, a phone number to call, and a reference number.  So we thought, oh well, we can just call this number, and find out where our package is and whether we can pick it up or at least, when it will be redelivered. 

So we called.  30 minutes on hold later, we get told that they have no reference to the reference number that was written down on their “Sorry, We missed you” slip, and advised us to talk to this department that deals solely with Nokia deliveries.  So we spend another 20 minutes on hold, only to be told that we should call Nokia themselves, and ask about our delivery, as they don’t have any way to find it, as the reference number is of no use to them either.

So, after going online to the Nokia website, I find a number to call to talk to Nokia.  I call them, and the guy at Nokia was more than happy to let us know exactly what we already know, its been shipped, and the courier attempted to deliver the parcel, and we weren’t home.  He said that he could give us a reference number to which we could talk to the courier company to track down our parcel.  I had a rather sinking thought, and cut him off, saying we have a number here, and would he mind if I recited it off to see if its the same as he has there.  I do, and it was.  I explained to him the Courier company had no reference to that number, and couldn’t use it to find our parcel.  The best he could be was to contact the delivery company and reschedule the delivery.  Unfortunately he cannot change the location of delivery, as with the policy of only delivering to the address of the credit card, but he can get the courier to deliver in the evening, after 6pm, which we would be home to sign and collect.  Being the only thing we could do, I thanked him for what he could do, and left it at that.

Who would think such a saga would come from ordering a mobile phone.  When it comes time for myself to get a new phone, I hope we don’t have as many problems.  Perhaps I should have just sent the thing by regular post.  At least we know when they can’t deliver, its at the local post office, a short walk away, easy to pick up the next day.  We live and learn.

Well, that’s the big, latest rant for the moment.

Thank you for your Internet ear, to which I think I just chewed off.

Once again, congratulations to Nic and Jo on the arrival of little David, and earlier, to Jason and Chrissy for little Katelyn.  They are so adorable.  We hope you all the best.

 Love and much good karma,

Kathleen and Keith

We were hoping to write up about a small weekend trip down to see StoneHenge and Warrick Castle, but unfortunately, we had to delay that on accounts of illness.  Kathleen has contacted a mild bug, which has seen her bed ridding for a day or so.  She is on antibiotics and should be back to her right self in no time (I’m just hoping I don’t get it as well).

The last couple weeks have been quiet.  Fe is settling in well, getting back into her usual routine of being adorable while annoying the stuffing out of me (ah, old times).  We’ve had to set our boiler (hot water system for the taps and radiators) so it turns on during the day and night, instead of just switching it on when we are at home.  Two reasons for this, one, so to warm the house up a bit for Fe, and more importantly, two, we were told by our landlord as during these really cold days, the pipes can freeze and break, making things extremely unpleasant.

We’ve seen frost, which to the untrained, is sort of like a thin layer of ice crystals over everything, basically the regular moisture being frozen by the cold.  Kathleen almost went base over apex because of it, resulting in a shopping run for shoes with better grip.  It actually snowed in some areas, but nowhere where we were.  This cold temperature was also accompanied by extreme gale force winds, which caused all sorts of chaos,  Roads closed, trams stopped, trees down, building sites blown about, people killed.  Overall, not overly pleasant to say the least.

We were happy to receive the news that my long time friend, Jason, and his Darling wife, Christine, were blessed with the arrival of a beautiful Baby girl, Katelyn.  All are doing extremely well, and we would like to wish them all the best.

We’ve almost forgotten about the rant section lately.  Not that we didn’t have anything to rant about, more a case of we tended to not keep such negative thoughts in mind when it came round to writing the blog.  If we did, I think we both wouldn’t be overly pleasant to be around.  Anyway, here’s some of the stuff I can remember (which is a feat in itself).

For a country that suffers from cold, wet, and windy forms of weather quite regularly, one would thing they would have a better system for handling occurrences caused by said forms of weather.  But it is quite common to have trams stopped because of ice on the tracks (or during Autumn, because of leaves falling on the track and being mushed into a slippery paste).  There was a major bridge (think Brisbane Gateway bridge, and scale down to half size) which got closed down due to the gale winds, causing all sorts of traffic problems throughout Altrincham, all because they were worried about lorries being blown over.  The tram station I regularly get off at was closed off for almost a week because its so old and decrepit that one of its glass roof panels got sucked off during the winds.  I know because I was standing under it at the time!  Thankfully only little bits of debris fell down, so no worries.

I feel for the people here.  Almost everywhere you look, there is a tax on something, or a system to try and get money out of you.  Recently, the Powers-that-Be thought it would be a good idea to tax all vehicles that travel along the major roads in Manchester, thus reducing the congestion.  With how crap the public system is, both in time keeping and condition of the vehicles, its no wonder the people opt for using their own cars to get around.  Why take a train, two buses, and walk, for 2 hours, when you can jump in your own car and be at your destination in half an hour.  Sometimes there is no public system to places, so you don’t really have a choice but to drive.  Moving back to the tax issue, it seems to be a politic mantra here, “There’s a problem”, “TAX IT”.  Oh, I’m sure they think long and hard about fixing some issues, but I don’t think taxing everything quite fits the bill, other than ensuring money is always coming into the coffers.  Admittedly, they do have a lower tax rate on income.  I guess they just get the money through other means.  So instead of one huge gouge, you financially bleed to death by a thousand cuts.  Would you believe that in a lot of small shopping centres, say like our Coles or Woolworths (There is a Woolworths here, but it looks sort of like a Crazy Clarks), you have to pay to park in their car parks.  They get you any way they can, that’s for sure.

Positives…. hmmm…. 

Kathleen has gotten her first pay from her new job, so we celebrated by doing a bit of shopping, getting some stuff we really wanted for a while (A new pillow for me, a larger doona, fluffy towels, a DVD recorder, shoes, clothes, books, etc).

We also celebrated Australia Day over here.  Kathleen and her work did an Australia day theme for the kids, and I hung my Australian Flag umbrella up at work (Andy’s very young PA, came in and asked “Why have you got the American Flag up?”. What do they teach these youngsters?  I proceeded to inform her of the differences, to the point she regretted saying anything.)  Please feel free to leave any cricket jokes in the comments, I would love to read them.

Also, we went out for dinner with Andy and Isabelle to a lovely little AUTHENTIC Italian restaurant.  We debated on going to some Australian themed establishment, but opted to not due to it probably being filled with rowdy Poms anyway, plus there wasn’t any nearby.

That will do for the moment,  Hope to hear from you all,

Kathleen and Keith

 This weekend saw us driving down to London to pick up a long missed, and eagerly awaiting loved one, our little Putty Tat, Fe.

Back in June, 2005, we were in regular discussions with Andy in regards to job prospects, in fact Andy offered early that month.  So Kathleen and I had to make some decisions about what came with us, including our little Fe.  I guess it was more a case of myself asking, and Kathleen confirming. Actually it was a case of us not being able to find anyone, who Fe is extremely familiar with, to look after her for whatever time we were in the UK (We would have asked others, but we all know, Fe can be… Finicky).  The other option was to give her away, and Kathleen and I was not up for that.  Fe was coming to the UK!

So we started the inquiries into what was involved with bringing Fe over with us.  Initially, we thought we would have to cope with poor Fe having to stay in London’s Quarantine for 6 months before she would be able to join us at our UK home.  We were quite please to discover that if Fe has the all the tests done 6 months before she goes over, it is treated like she has been in quarantine, and she will be able to go straight home from the Airport’s animal reception.  We thought this was a wonderful plan, compared to the other possibility, and started her on the tests straight away.

Now, it was sorted that we would be heading to the UK in September, so Keith could start straight away (It turns out that Andy was going to be very shorthanded, two of his senior staff having to leave, one to go back home due to family illness, another to do Uni fulltime).  This meant we either take Fe with us in September, and her spend the rest of her 6 months in quarantine (as we said before, not our favourite choice), or she stay in Australia and come over in January. 

 Thankfully, our previous nieghbour in Darnley St (who Fe adores), was kind enough spoil Fe for the period, up till Christmas, then she would go stay with the Kind people at the Wilston Vet.  They would give her a nice little place of her own, and so she doesn’t go totally nuts being locked up, be put out in a lovely outdoors enclosure so she can observe the world (and not catch any of it, as I’m sure she would love to do).  Once January came round, she would be checked, prepared, and then put on a 24 hour flight to the UK.

So here we are in January, and after many phone calls to the vet and and the company organising her flight over, we drove down to Heathrow airport to the Animal reception center, where within 15 minutes, we had our dear little (rather tired) Fe.  No problems what-so-ever, thankfully.  We were worried she would be quite stressed by the whole flight, but she is fantastic, and was so happy to see us.  So much so she didn’t leave us alone all night, purr-ing and snuggling up to us.  She is settling in so well.  Heres hoping all continues to go well.  Heres Kathleens little baby below:

Apart from that, not much to report, Kathleens job is going well, as is mine.  Days are starting to warm up again (we are starting to see double digits again, thank goodness), and get longer. 

 We are looking forward to Australia Day (no holiday for it over here, for some reason) and I am hoping to do my bit and show off all the presents Kathleen’s Mum gave me.  Lets just say all of them had a theme, to which will easy help me show my nationality.  Lets hope I don’t get lynched due to the recient cricket results.

In the meantime, hope everyone is well.  We wish all the best, with extra best wishes to those expecting, we are so looking forward to the big days.

Til next time,  email, comment, love to hear from you all.

 Keith and Kathleen

We saw the New Year having dinner, drinks, and party games with Andy and Isabelle, and counted down watching the London Fireworks display (No dump and burn, so it doesn’t really compare).

Thank you everyone for your support and messages.  Keep them coming, as we love hearing from everyone from home.  We will reciprocate at every opportunity.

Keep safe and well.

Keith and Kathleen

Due to the large number of pictures in some of the posts, and to give all of the dialup users out there a lifeline (I feel for you all, I understand your pain, being there once myself, not so long ago), I’ve made some changes to the setting on the blogsite.

I’ve set it up so only the latest blog entry is displayed upon opening the site.  To read the later entries, just go down to the bottom of the page, and click the ‘-next>>’.

As for making a comment, I understand some have still been having some difficulty.  It seems to be happening to mostly the dialup users, so it could be your modem drowning in the pictures the blog is expecting it to download.  Hopefully the changes will make a difference.  If not, I will scratch my head, and may have to ask for help from my good mate, Jas.

In the meantime, to write a comment, at the bottom of the blog post there should be a ‘no comments’, ’1 comments’ or ’2 comments’, depending on how many people have already written a comment to the post (could be ’6 comments’ or more/less).  Click on that, and it should bring up a page where it will have that post, and at the bottom, a place for you to enter in your name, email, and your comment.  Should be as simple as that.  If not, email me or Kathleen, and I will initiate head scratching.

In the meantime, please feel free to look over the previous posts, as we have a Christmas post for all to read.

Keith and Kathleen

The first great news is Kathleen has accepted a job as a Senior Nursery Nurse/Room Manager.  I think last time we mentioned Kathleen’s job searching, she was waiting, with reducing patience, for a reply from a nursery. The other Wednesday, Kathleen went to an interview for another child care centre, and they were very impressed with her, so much so, they offered her a job the next day.  So happens, the other centre decided to offer Kathleen a job as well within an hour of the other offer.  When it rains, it pours.  After much thought, and getting to know her possible workmates at the new centre, Kathleen ended up accepting the job for the centre that was capable of quick decisions (they also increased her pay to make the job more appealing).

Keith’s work broke up on the Friday, with a nice company party at a restaurant-nightclub in Manchester called Tiger-Tiger.  The place is divided up into a bar, restaurant and two very loud nightclubs upstairs.  The Party constituted dinner in the restaurant, with going upstairs to to the top nightclub later.

Dinner was very nice, though probably would have been nicer, unfortunately some of the younger staff members were late, meaning we had to skip having our selection from the entree menu. This normally wouldn’t have been a problem, but the table was booked for a later group, and we would still have to pay for everything.   Lets just say Andy wasn’t too happy about that, especially since he and Isabelle had to have a ‘discussion’ with the manager over whether or not they still had to pay for the entre. They managed to get some discount in the end.   Apart from that, we enjoyed ourselves, and got to have some very interesting conversations with the company’s business advisor, Dan.  

 Dan is a very well cultured man who is very much at home advising companies with multi-billion dollar/euro/whatever budgets, like say BMW, and travels all over the world regularly.  Why would such a man bother with our small business?  He says its not that different, only the number of zeros on the finance sheets.   I have a lot of respect for the man, and think he’s going to be a huge help in guiding the companies development.

After dinner, we moved onto the nightclub.  I wasn’t sure it was possible to have so much bass, but I was proved wrong, as the place was pumping with heart stopping, organ liquifying noise which I’m sure the youngsters enjoyed, but most of us oldies got tired of quickly.  We left the younguns to their ‘disco music’ and retired for the night.

 Christmas day saw us calling Kathleen’s Mum when she was getting ready for Midnight mass (so technically it wasn’t Christmas day for us, more eve, but I won’t dwell on it).  Once it was Midnight here, we call Keith’s folks, pre-organised so we could talk to the family as they sat for morning tea/Christmas lunch.  It was so wonderful to talk to everyone.  They loved the gifts we sent.  Unfortunately due to fog, flights were delayed, meaning Kathleen’s Mum’s parcel to us hasn’t arrived yet.  We are really looking forward to it arriving in the next day or two (Its all good, Mum, all the more anticipation).

As we mentioned in the previous post, we were invited over to Andy’s and Isabelle’s place for Christmas Lunch/afternoon tea.  Also invited was friends of Andy’s, who have married and have a wonderful young son and daughter, and a friend of Isabelle, who is a fellow French teacher at Isabelle’s school.  Lunch was excellent, an extensive spread, including Turkey, pigs in a blanket, sausages, potatoes wedges, assorted vegies (including Brussel sprouts, which Kathleen did have a few of,  Yes, mark your calenders, folks), finishing off with a very Brandy soaked Christmas pudding (which Andy lit, I thought he was going to lose an eyebrow, but it all went well), and a Chocolate Roll.

Once well fed, we enjoyed a few drinks, exchanged Christmas Presents (Kathleen and Isa got some wonderful bath beauty products, Andy got a nice pair of (Wallace and) Grommit slippers from us, and Keith got a much apprieciated Jumper) and played party games. The kids got Junior Pictionary, so we had to play that first, and trust me, its not that much easier.  Afterwards, feeling rather tired from the meal, we bid our hosts a Merry Christmas, and headed home.

Boxing Day saw us enjoying a nice relaxing day indoors, watching our present to each other, Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest, only being interupted by a leaking heating radiator.  No biggie, minimised the indoor swimming pool, just have to keep an eye on it until the Plumber can have a look at it.

Well, we hope everyone has a great New Year, to which we hope to add another post about.

Till then, have a good one everybody.

Kathleen and Keith

To give everyone a idea of the travelling we did over the 3 days, Keith has kindly put together some maps showing the road route for each day.

   Friday’s road Route

The whole caper begins on the Friday, Keith being able to get the day off, picked up the rental car, and together, we cruised down to Stratford-Upon-Avon.  For all of you that require the mental jog, Stratford-Upon-Avon is the birthplace of a small known writer of plays, better known as William Shakespeare.  There was a great exhibit about his life, and you get to actually go into the house where he was born.  The place is quite fascinating, with people in each room dedicated to telling you about each section of the house.  Please find attached the photos of Billy’s birthplace.

   The back entry of Billy’s house

  The back of the house

   The back garden

   Saturday’s Road Route

On the Saturday, we embarked on the ambitious trip of driving up to Edinburgh.  The drive took about 4 hours, but took us through some very scenic areas.  Please find attached said scenic views.

   Green energy

  Hills of Cumbria

 More hills

  A wonderful old church (The Holy Trinity Chapel)

  With graves

  A birdie on Edinburgh beach (sand beach!)

   Saturday festivities in town

Once we got into Edinburgh, we got rather lost, not being able to find the closest car park for Edinburgh castle, and at times losing the castle altogether.  You would think some as HUGE as a castle shouldn’t be easy to lose, but we managed it multiple times.  We found it in the end, after bothering some locals.

The castle was quite magnificent, though we didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy it.  We did get to check out the Scottish Crown Jewels, which comprises of the latest version of the crown, sceptre, sword, various gold, jewel, and pearl encrusted jewelry, and a whopping big stone (which the Scottish royals were made royal upon, back in the day when there were still Scottish Royals).  Keith was quite surprise by how small the area is that the Edinburgh Tattoo is staged, mistaking it for a midsized car park.  From pictures we’ve seen of the Tattoo, the seating would have to be hung off cliff edges.  We also got to see a Piper, but I think he was there for a wedding being held inside the castle (not a royal wedding though, just regular peoples).  Cue more photos.

  The casle up on the hill (remains of a volcano, actually) 

  high up on the hill

  Remains of a guard house

  Some Important Scottish guy

   A memorial

   The entry

   The flags

  Scottish shield (I think)

   A Piper

  Tourist

   Another tourist

    Inner walls

Up on the wall

   Those tourists again

   Gee, they are everywhere

   now, thats a torch

   Nice evening shot

Unfortunately, due to the shortening of the days, we started running out of light, and chose to abandon our planned drive over to Broxburn, where Keith’s Mum was born.  We plan on making it a priority the next trip up this way, when we want to go to Loch Ness.

   Sunday’s Road Route

Lastly, on the Sunday, we did a bit of a round trip, (looking at the map, the route goes anti-clockwise) with the first location of the day being Thirsk.  Not everyone would know this, but Thirsk is the village/town to which Alf Wright worked hard as a Veterinarian, looking after the peoples, and more importantly the animals, of the local Yorkshire Dales.  Alf Wright, while being quite good at his job, was convinced by his wife to write a book concerning the lives of vets and thier clients.  He wasn’t able to use his real name, because of legal issues (Vets weren’t allowed to advertise, and that might be seen as such), so he used the name of a Football player, James Herriot.  This book, and many afterwards, were such a success, a TV series was created based on it, using the first books title “All Creatures Great and Small”.  The council has converted and restored the original house and vet surgery into a museum, full of all things regarding Alf, the vet surgery, the TV series, and the books.  Kathleen, being a great fan of the TV series and the books, absolutely loved it.  Find pictures below:

   The church in Thirsk

  Which has a clock.

   love those babbling brooks

   A local

   The world of James Herriot Entry 

   A recreation of the Wrights dining room

   Alf reading the paper at christmas

   A recreation of the “All Creatures Great and Small” tv set

   Alf’s old car (still works, but I don’t think its moved for a while)

   The red door of the vet surgery

Next on the trip was Durham castle.  The weather turned rather windy and wet by then, so after the two hour drive there, and almost an hour of playing ‘lose the castle’, we both managed to trek up the road to the castle.  Since its used as a University nowadays, you can only really have a look around when you are in a tour group, to which we missed by about 10 minutes.  Since the next tour wasn’t until another hour, getting quite wet,cold, and light starting to fail, we decided to take some happy snaps and bugger off to our next destination.  Here are the happy snaps.

  Those turbines are everywhere

   Inner court of Durham castle/Uni

  Front entry

Hadrian’s wall was the most fun, and possibly the most frustrating of the entire trip.  The poor TomTom got rather confused with our request, since we discovered the wall is not just a single location, but stretches over several miles of farmland.  So just inputting ‘Hadrians Wall’, got us to a close location, yet not quite close enough that we were actually looking at some resemblance of a wall.  In the failing light, we did find during our going back and forth through the area the information centre (closed), a Roman Museum (closed), the housing estate (closed), along with many signs that all said ‘Hadrian’s wall’, some pointing in opposite directions.  After much ‘discussions’, we made a path to a section of the wall which had a ‘mile castle’ attached.  Upon arrival, the sun had long said its goodbyes, and we trekked through mud, gale winds, and slight rain to the remains of a section of the wall, and the foundations of the ‘mile castle’.  It wasn’t a castle as such, more a guard house.  Not much was left, after generations of the local farmers slowly picking away at the structure to create stone borders to hold in their sheep and cattle.  So, by moonlight, getting blown over, and feeling generally chilled to the bone, we took the photos (because of the light, we had to point the camera in the general direction, take the picture, and then check how good it was), ‘appreciated’ the historic aura of the place, then hightailed it back to the nice, warm car, and headed home.  Here are the blind pictures (by the way, these pictures were taken at four in the afternoon).

   Steps to somewhere in the mile castle

   Part of the castle

  THat tourist again, looking rather cold (this was for your benifit, Mum)

   was getting rather dark

It should be noted that Keith, not having driven a car since leaving Australia, was a little daunted and nervious about driving the roads of England.  The lanes are narrower, the road markers are different, there’s an extreme lack of large road signs, or signs altogether, and the driving habits of the English are rather different to that back in Australia.  Friday night saw Keith a complete nervious wreak.  By Saturday morning, Keith believes he had the hang of english driving, or at least was in the right state of mind to mentally abuse the drivers.

Considering the length of this particular post, we may disregard the rant section this time (Don’t worry, I’m sure there will plenty to rant about in the next post).

Until next time, friends,

Kathleen and Keith

Kathleen tells me the Autumn colours of the trees is very beautiful.  Unfortunately I’ve had to trust her with this one, being partly colourblind.

Thats the best I can do at the moment.  I’m sure we will have more positive things to talk about after our weekend drive around the country (and definitely more things to rant about).

Till then….

PS.   To comment, click the comment link at the bottom of each post.

A quick entry to let you know we haven’t fallen off the end of the world.  We’ve been spending most of this month working hard, many nights overtime, saving up to rent a car for a weekend’s driving trip around the area, including a daytrip to Edinburgh.  We’re hoping we are not being too ambitious, and Keith is hoping the drive won’t be too troublesome (4 hours drive up).  An early start, we predict.

Its gotten rather soggy around the area, rain being the main weather pattern, and the sun only skims the sky, resulting in darkness from about 4 in the afternoon through to 8 in the morning.  We are missing the nice warmth of Queensland at the moment.

We’re also looking forward to recieving our much missed putty Cat, Fe, who should be flying over in Early January.  We hope she doesn’t get too spooked by the whole trip.

With Christmas coming up, the fact we are so far away from all our good friends and family is really sinking home.  We miss everyone a lot.  One plus is we have been invited to join Andy and Isabelle for a christmas dinner they are throwing.

Now Everyone, please give a big warm welcome to the return of the rant section:

Going to see a doctor.  You wouldn’t think it would be too hard now, would you?  Just call up a GP, organise an appointment, and rock on down.  Over here, is it like that? Noooooooo.  You must register first at this particular organisation, get told which Doctors have been allocated to cover your area, and then you can only go to those doctors.  This process of them letting you know which Doctors to go to, so we were told, “would take about a day”. After asking if there was a way of seeing a Doctor sooner, like the same day, the extremely helpful suggestion of  ”you can always go to a hospital” was given.  Of course this organisation couldn’t give us a local hospital, noooo.  We found a local hospital, no thanks to them, and are in the process of registering to find out which doctors we need to see if we have any problems.  It turns out we are now registered with the local medical centre down the road, and have been assigned a doctor.

We’ve also been having a bugger of a time with our cable tv (the TV networks over here have succeeded in ensuring if you want to watch anything good, you have to pay for it).  There is free to air tv, but you still have to pay for a tv license, and the channels are pretty bad.  In regards to our cable, we are always having trouble with it, unable to view the online tv guide, losing channels, or the whole thing going down.  There was always some sort of fault occuring almost every week, sometime twice a week.     They do have a phone number to talk to someone about it, but on average, it takes about 30 minutes of sitting on hold, listening to mind-numbing music, being told constantly that our call is important to them (my a$$).  We’ve called that number so many times I’m sure we could quote it verbatum.  Last night, after the service went down again, we called them up, got the usual 30 minute hold, got the usual “did you turn it off, then turn it on again?”, to which we may have been a bit short to them about, but understandably, we are getting a bit tired of the trouble.   After a good bit of expaining, it turned out that the setup we were getting was meant to be a ‘appetite wettener’, and was supposed to downgrade to a basic setup after a month (something of which we were not told about, possibly in the fine, fine print).   Well, it never changed, and supposingly, that caused some sort of conflict, one part of the system saying we should have our setup, while another part was saying we weren’t.   So in the end, since we liked the channels were were getting, we upgraded, so what we were watching wouldn’t change.  We are hoping this will ensure we don’t get any more problems.  If so, we get someone out to replace the reciever, and if it continues, we axe the service, and join someone else who isn’t so pathetic.

 Ahhh, feeling much better now.  Well vented.

Anyway, would love to hear from all our friends back home is Aussieland, so please leave some comments, even if its just to say hi.  We were a little downheartened when we didn’t recieve anything from anyone, SO COMMENT PEOPLE! pretty please!

Keith’s workmates were talking up the ashes tour prior to the first test.  Funny how quiet they are now.

We will have lots of pictures and details of our road trip around the area, tune in next week (appoximately).

This is Kathleen and Keith, signing off for now.

Ps, I’ll try to avoid doing the history lesson from now on, re post “Remember, remember”, unless, of course, people found my twist on historical event worth the read.

  Just in case you haven’t seen the movie (I wouldn’t be surprised if not), ” Guy Fawkes night” originates from when a group of guys were rather upset with the persecution of English Catholics under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I, and then her son, James the first.  They decided that the best way to show thier displeasure was by blowing up the British Parliament, along with the new King, and many members of the parliament they didn’t like.

  Guy Fawkes was the guy that was given the job of of lighting the fuse on the 36 barrels of gun powder in the parliament cellar.  There is debate on whether he would have succeeded, some saying the gunpowder was way too old, but it definitely didn’t, due to the fact some of the rebellious group got cold feet and blabbed, resulting in Guy’s capture, torture and execution.  Even today, the current Monarchy only goes to the parliament once a year to open it because of the plot, and the cellars are always searched.

Even though, the whole plan struck a cord with English society, and now, to remember the occasion, they all go out, buy lots of fireworks, and set them off on the 5th of November, when the parliament was meant to go sky high.

Now this idea of setting off the fireworks on the day seems to be followed very loosely, because people have been shooting fireworks off for the last 2 weeks.  Imagine the fireworks display for New Years day in Sydney, or the River fire fireworks display in Brisbane, let everyone participate, and I think you will get an idea of how its like.  To say the least, the Fire departments in the country do a little overtime during this time of year.

While watching the entire locality light up with amature fireworks displays is quite enjoyable, we decided to go to an official fireworks display with Andy and his wife, Isabelle, set up at Old Trafford, the Lancashire cricket grounds.  The whole place was setup like a sideshow, or for you Brisbanites, the EKKA.  Very cheesy.  We avoided the temptation of throwing hoops over the poorly constructed fluffy toys, and just stayed for the fireworks display.  It was quite spectacular, all done to various classical music.  No dump and burn though.  Maybe we Aussies still have something to teach these Poms.  Sparkler Bombs anyone?

For all those interested in the upcoming Melbourne cup, Kathleen is tipping TAWQEET to win.  Though Kathleen does feel being on the other side of the world is hampening her ability to give a really accurate prediction.  If anyone wants to tape the race and send it to us, they would have Kathleen’s undying graditude. 

Thats it for this post,  until the next time,

Love, Kathleen and Keith

To succeed in this dangerous, hour and a half quest (well, perhaps not dangerous, it was quite pleasant, actually), we were joined by a good friend, and my Boss, Andy.

To give the little bit of information I know about the place, Conwry was, and partially still is, a walled city, dated back to the days when you’re closest nieghbours were very interested in your demise.  Nowadays the town has outgrown the confines of the walls, but the locals have left most of the walls, and the Castle (for touristy purposes, I suspect). 

Considering they estimate building such castles nowadays would cost around 4 million pounds, the place is a little run down, but in much better shape than most castles you can visit (piles of rubble with perhaps an outline of the original foundations).  Some castles have been reduced to the walls used to border farmers lands, and to keep the sheep in.

Conwry Castle has some amazing view, and was still quite impressive.  Please find attached piccies of said views.

…Conwry castle

…A nice babbling brook

…Wait a sec, that looks a little new…

…a King’s tower view

…nice sunroof

…looking down on the peasants

…Indoor lawn

…Turrent

…part of the town wall

…Conwry town

 …Great hall roof arch

…the current residents

…the second sign, I took to heart, or should I say head.

…A small bit of info about the castles chapel, welsh then english. I found Welsh to be quite entertaining to observe.

…Bloody Tourists

After a nice walk around the turrets, and halls of the Castle, we enjoyed a nice lunch of fish and chips at a local resturant.  The whole trip took most of the day, and gave myself a good perspective of travelling around this fine country.

In regards to how we are doing:

Kathleen is doing well, working for a childcare agency, and has a good amount of work lined up for her, while they are inquiring about group leader positions.

My work is doing well, keeping me very busy.

I’ve decided to have a praise section instead of the usual Rants this time, as I wish to praise the Cabbies in the area.  They are absolutely wonderful.  We regularly have to take the taxi from the local shopping centre, and the Cabbies always insist on us getting into the cab and they put all our groceries in for us.  Helpful up to and beyond expectations, and more than happy to help you out with anything, be it advice on places to go, or just getting our things in and out of the cab.  Not knocking our local taxi service, but I felt I should let everyone know there is at least one form of public transportation that is very reliable here.

Well, thats it for this time.  Its getting colder, and the days are getting rapidly shorter.  I still find the whole concept of regular rain quite enjoyable.  I feel for you all back in Brisbane, and hope to hear from you soon,

Until next time,  Love you all.

Kathleen and Keith

  Near our place is a lovely canal, which actually supports wildlife like fish and various geese and swans. Also people actually live on the canal in these cute looking boats.

Just to let everyone know we are well, and starting to settle into the English lifestyle.

The flights were long. Kathleen detests transit lounges now. We had no troubles when we arrived in Manchester, dispite all the stuff going on with airport security. I guess it pays to have a british passport or at least residency. My boss, Andy, met us at the airport, and within the hour, we were in an english pub called ‘The Little b’. Hows that for getting into the english swing of things.

We stayed at a nice, little bed and breakfast for the first 7 days. Unfortunately we didn’t have a laundry facilities, so I had to walk 15 minutes down to road to the local laundrette. It really drove Kathleen mad.

During those 7 days we spent a lot of time looking at rental agents, and seeing what properties were available to rent. I had to start work on the monday after we arrived, so Kathleen spent a lot of days phoning around and checking out about 5 rental properties. One had bad carpet, and another required getting a locksmith out to inspect the place, which turned out to be a bachelor pad from hell (think junk everywhere, dirty kitchen, you name it). In the end we got the first place we looked at, which was absolutely wonderful, and its private landlords are a lovely couple. They actually gave us a bottle of wine as a welcoming gift. I almost feel guilty having to ring them with problems. The house is not far from my work (not far being a short walk to the tram, a short tram trip, then another short walk, totalling about 30 minutes). I’ve been told we did really well getting the house where we did, and in such a short period of time. And my Boss lives about 10 minutes down the road. Good or bad, you decide…

Kathleen has found a nice job with one of the Child day care centres here. They are letting her totally re-organise the room she works in, and Kathleen is really happy to be working again (back in her element).

Its taken about 2 weeks to get the services to put on our telephone, TV (you have to pay for a licence to watch tv), and internet. I can’t say they are really efficient either.

Well, thats all I can put in at the moment. To sign off here are some pictures of some of the pets you can get here in the UK. Kathleen has already named the tortoise Harriette. Those turtle freaks among you will know what that means. Oh, and thats a kitty litter tray those snakes are in.

Till next time, which will hopefully have photos of england,

Keith and Kathleen

We hope to post many insights, observations, and adventures while we are in the UK.

At the moment, we are just waiting for the UK services to get round to connecting our internet at home so I don’t have to write this in lunch breaks. I should have the next true post soon.

Until then, we miss everyone in Australia, and hope to chat to all of you soon.

Keith

This is a little “late engagement and bon voyage” gift for you both. You have both been very supportive of the “Bell Family” and it is nice to finally be able to give something back!

Now that you are in the UK, we thought it would be the ideal gift so that you can both blog about life, what has been going, any travel that you do and everything else. You can even post pictures for all us to look at.

Keith, never again do you have to worry about emailing pictures out to everyone, just post them on the BLOG and give everyone the URL – easy.

So yeah, we hope you enjoy it and use it a lot. We all want to know what has been going on and see cool pictures of your life over in the UK!

Take it easy,
Jason, Chrissy, Laura and little Wiglet on the way