The Wedding!

Our second last and the most important day of our trip to the UK finally rolled around. This day had been planned for quite some time now. We'd been talking about it on Skype with Roy's sister for months, trying to work out the logistics of it all.

We all dressed in our fancy clothes and drove to the lovely estate where the ceremony for Roy's sisters wedding was being held. We arrived a bit earlier to help out with any last minute things and pretty soon the rest of the guests started arriving. With the unpredictability of UK weather, the venue was set up so they could hold the ceremony indoors if it rained or outside if the weather was working in our favour. It drizzled on and off before the ceremony was scheduled to start and Clare and Sadie were unsure of whether to tell everyone to be seated inside or out. At the very last minute, the guests were told to go outside and sit ready for the ceremony outside. A little bit of rain had everyone prepared with umbrellas but the rain stopped and the music started. Ahhh... what luck! The beautiful ceremony was able to finish without everyone getting wet. The rain held off through the whole thing! It was great! Clare and Sadie looked beautiful! It was a lovely garden setting with vibrant, green grass and grand, shady trees.

A couple of times in the ceremony, Sadie's cute-as-a-button nephew walked up and handed over his beloved teddy bear to Sadie. After all, no wedding would be complete without a teddy bear, right?

Afterwards, we all headed in for a few light snacks and drinks. Sadie's Mum had prepared a huge spread of tasty treats!

We then headed to The Plough Inn for the reception where we were treated to probably the best meal I've had in a long time! Since Sadie is a vegetarian, the meal was all vego which was AWESOME for me because I didn't have to worry about what I was going to eat. The wait staff brought out a big plate for everyone which had a mushroom wellington (an extremely tasty pastry parcel filled with different kinds of mushrooms). I was in heaven! To accompany it, they brought out bowls of cheesy mashed potato.. mmmmmm.....! There was ample food for everyone! After filling up on this great dish, they brought out dessert! Oh no! I hadn't left much room in my stomach for dessert! It was sticky date pudding so I pushed my gut to the limit and had a good feed of pud!

After everyone had gorged themselves, we all headed downstairs to the bar for drinks and a good chat. There was even a game of giant connect four and Jenga to be had!

Now it was time for cake cutting. The cake was made by a Sadie's, friend's mother. It was awesome! It had four different types of cake (chocolate, coffee, carrot and I think fruit). I was SUPER excited about trying the cake since the sculptures of Clare, Sadie and their little dog Lily were made out of marzipan! My favourite! Don't worry! We didn't eat them! There were other little marzipan treats on top.

After a great night of laughter and chatting with their friends and family we headed back to Clare and Sadie's flat to watch them unwrap their presents and say goodbye to them. Since we had to leave fairly early the next day, that night was our last opportunity to say goodbye. Lots of hugs and goodbyes later, we headed back to our hotel for some much needed rest before we all parted ways the next day. It was a fantastic end to a really great holiday!

On the quest to find Roald Dahl!

My favourite author of all time would have to be Roald Dahl. I remember borrowing his books from the library at primary school and reading my brothers books and I even saw some his books as plays at the Twelfth Night Theatre in Brisbane. Just the thought of George's Marvellous Medicine or The Twits brought back great childhood memories. Roy reignited my love for Roald Dahl a couple of years ago when he bought me Collected Stories which was published by Everyman's Library. I quickly devoured the book in a matter of weeks (it's a very thick book) and wanted more! On the bus from Stansted when we first arrived in England, we passed by a place that I knew I MUST go and see.

Roy and I set off in the hire car to Buckinghamshire which is East of Oxfordshire. It was quite a nice drive to the little old town of Great Missenden where Roald Dahl lived and wrote his great stories. We parked the car in the local public car park and walked into the little village, following the signs to the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre. Noticing that it was oddly quiet in the museum, we checked the sign for opening times and saw that the centre was closed on Monday's. A sense of dread filled me since we had just driven an hour and a half to get here. A tad down in the dumps, Roy cheered me up by telling me that we could drive back again the next day. Since we were in Great Missenden, we thought we might have a look around and check out the local boutique stores. On our way back through the town, we passed the museum again and I read the sign on the door which said that Roald Dahl was burried in the Churchyard up on the hill behind the village. Excited by the prospect of actually visiting his grave, we walked quickly back to the car and set off on the quest to find the churchyard.

We found a road that had a sign pointing to a church and drove on up the hill, parked the car and searched the gravestones for my beloved author's name. A quick google search on my mobile told me that we were in the right churchyard and not too long afterward, Roy stumbled across a grave near a big, beautiful tree. The grave said "Roald Dahl, 13 September 1916 - 23 November 1990". The grave was covered in coins and notes from children who feel the same joy in reading his wonderful stories. I went up to the nearby tree and sat on the chair that surrounded it. Leading up to the tree were giant footprints... "The BFG" and around the tree was a quote from "The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me."

We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three.
So do please now and then
Come and see us again,
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me.

I sat and was amazed at the fact that I was actually sitting near his grave. I never thought that I would ever get so close to my favourite author. I don't usually get emotional about these types of things but it was quite an emotional experience for me sitting there. The thought of coming so far and finding out that the museum was closed was quickly out of my mind, since I got to see his actual grave.

The very next day Roy and I drove down to Great Missenden again, parked the car and walked to the story centre - this time, it was open! I could barely contain my excitement while we were buying our tickets. The museum was aimed at children so the exhibits were quite simple but it was interesting to read about his life. They had original copies of letters he religiously wrote to his mother while he was away at boarding school. They were all signed with - "Love from Boy." Having read his book "Boy and Going Solo" (stories about his life), it was quite exciting to see all the stuff for real.

The ACTUAL jacket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (on loan from Johnny Depp!!)

The ACTUAL chair that Roald Dahl had in his writing hut, where he wrote his stories!! He made a few modifications to suit him just right. Underneath the green mat was a large piece of rolled-up corrugated cardboard to prop the surface up to at the right angle.

After we had finished looking at all of the exhibits we went to The Twits cafe for a bit of refreshment. They had a few items on the menu that were from Roald's books. Roy and I chose to have the coolest drinks in the cafe: a Whizzpopper for Roy and a Fizzy-lifting-drink for me!

Whizzpopper from The BFG

Fizzy lifting drink from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Hrrmmm.. We're big kids huh! I think I was more excited than most of the kids there.

After soaking in as much Roald Dahl atmosphere as we could, we walked back to the car and tried our luck at finding The Gypsy House where Roald lived for many years before his death in 1990. We found the driveway with a sign to it but it was a private road, so we couldn't go any further to see the house. On our way home, driving through Great Missenden we passed The Nag's Head which was a pub that inspired a setting in the book Fantastic Mr Fox.

I'd say that I got a thorough dose of Roald Dahl in those two days! It made me want to read his books again (which I left in Aus). I think I might have to do some online ordering....

a fiery dinner!

After two weeks of travelling through England, Ireland and Scotland it was nice to have a catch up with Clare and Sadie. We organised to have dinner at a restaurant near their place so we can tell them stories of our crazy adventures. We went to a Italian/New York style restaurant called Frankie and Benny's. We arrived a little earlier than they did so we sat near the bar and had some cocktails. I can't go past an Amaretto sour!

A few drinks later we sat down at our table ready to order our meals. Enjoying our great pizza and pasta, we sat and talked about what we had been up to when all of a sudden the restaurant started to become filled with smoke from the kitchen. Very shortly after, the fire alarm started howling and diners were looking around wondering what to do. The alarm soon stopped and the wait staff calmed everyone down and we all carried on with eating our meals. Not too long after that, the alarm started again and this time there were flames coming out of the pizza oven. The restaurant staff came around and told us that we had to evacuate the building. Not wanting to waste his food, Roy picked up his plate and we all filed out of the exits. We were told to assemble at a nearby signpost where Roy carried on eating his pizza.

We stood and waited for them to put out the fire and clear away the smoke and were constantly being reassured by the staff that they were truly sorry for the inconvenience and that we would soon be able to go back inside and carry on with our dinner. The minutes ticked by and we were still waiting.. being the good people we are :-P we stuck around so we could pay our bill but were expecting a hefty discount after spending so long outside. A few frustrated people walked off and the restaurant staff kept coming and apologising to us and telling us that we would have to wait until the fire brigade came to give them the 'all clear'. Frustrated and sick of apologising to patrons, the manager then came and told us that because it's taking so long we wouldn't have to wait around or pay our bill but we were welcome to stay and have some dessert and drinks once they were ready for business again. Since the fire brigade hadn't arrived yet, we decided to go to a nearby cafe for a coffee and some dessert. I'd say it was a pretty well timed fire since we all got to finish our meals and we didn't have to pay our bill.

London!

Before I get to London... I'll tell you something funny about trying to get to the airport in Scotland. We organised our friendly host at the hotel in Edinburgh to call us a taxi to take all five of us to the airport. Roy, Kate and I were off to London and Roy's parents were going to Paris for two nights.

We were all waiting patiently for our taxi to arrive in the morning and up drives a typical British black taxi and we all grab our bags and begin to pile into the poor car. Once we were all in - luggage included, the taxi driver has a stern look on his face and says "I think I need to call you a larger taxi". He was worried about his poor taxi being overloaded with all of us fatty's. We all sighed and began the tedious task of unloading ourselves back onto the footpath. It was rather annoying because when we asked the lady in the hotel to book us a taxi, we specifically asked her to order us a large one. Oh well, it wasn't too long before our new taxi arrived and we were on our merry way to the airport to depart the land of "tatties".

A rather short plane ride later, we arrived in the big city of London *queue the British national anthem*. We took a rather long and crowded tube ride to our hotel and chucked our bags into our rooms, freshened up and headed off into the big bright world to get some essential things done. One thing that Roy and I had to do was pick up our visa's for Switzerland whilst we were in London. It was brilliant timing with our Visa's being ready just a few days before we were to arrive in London. Before we could get our hands on our visa's, we had to do a series of rather annoying tasks. We had to find some internet access so we could to print out some application forms to fill in (the same forms we filled in when we first applied for it) Then we had to get some passport sized photographs to put on the front of the form. Then, the next day we caught the tube to the Swiss Embassy to lodge our application forms and surrendered our passports. It was a fairly quick and painless operation but we didn't get our visa's then, we had to go back there in two days to pick them up along with our passports. That's bureaucracy for you!

In the meantime, we did a bit of exploring around the big old city. I got a bit of advice from a friend living there on places to go and things to see. We did a LOT of walking... We caught a glimpse of Oxford Street and all of the fancy shopping complexes.

We saw Marble Arch.

 Walked on Park Lane.

Then we had a wander through Hyde Park which was dry and brown but still nice to walk through.

There was a cool temporary pavilion in Hyde Park near the Serpentine Gallery.

Albert Memorial.

That speck on the lawn is someone taking advantage of the sun. They love sun-baking in England!

We saw a few of the stereo-typical London sights, although I forgot to get a photo of a red telephone box...

After a nice wander through the park and the streets of London, we thought we might check out one of the many museums. We decided to check out the Science Museum which is a not as interactive as the Sciencecentre in Brisbane but it was HUGE! There were heaps of different levels with very comprehensive exhibits to look at.

There were some really cool miniatures in the medical exhibit. After staring at them for about an hour, I really wanted to learn how to make miniature models. Maybe one day, when I have lots of money to spend on the materials and a huge house to store it in.

So detailed and gruesome. They were awesome!

After wandering around the museum for a few hours, we continued walked along Brompton Rd, past Harrods then onto Knightsbridge Rd and walked down to Buckingham Palace to check out the Queens house. To our disappointment, the guards didn't invite us in for tea and scones with the old woman.

A GIANT fountain outside of Buckingham Palace.

After watching the tourists mill around for a photo of themselves standing in front on the giant black decorated gates, we walked down "The Mall" towards Trafalgar Square and the Strand.

This guy was pretending to be scary.

We stood with a crowd and watched two guards for a while to see if they would move. After a few minutes of silence and stillness, one of them stamped their foot (scaring the beejeebus out of a few nearby people) and marched back and forth a few times and then stopped and stood in silence some more.

Admiralty Arch at the end of The Mall.

Trafalgar Square.

A rather strange fountain with what looks like a vomiting merchild.

After checking out the famous square and dodging the huge crowd, we walked down Northumberland Avenue towards the Thames and walked over the footbridge to Southbank. This is where we caught our first close up view of the London Eye and iconic Big Ben and Parliament House. We stood on the bridge for a while taking in the views and watching the people walk past and the boats cruise underneath us.

Southbank was really crowded! There were HEAPS of street performers fighting for the attention of the crowds of tourists walking along the river towards the London Eye. We watched a few performers but there seemed like there was one particular group of performers that was a big crowd pleaser.. a dance group doing break dancing and Michael Jackson impersonations.

After watching for a while, we decided to see how long the line up to the London Eye was to see if it was worth lining up for. We quickly calculated an approximate waiting time and soon agreed that it probably wasn't worth the wait, so Roy and I opted for a cheaper thrill....

There was no line up for this one and it was about 10 times cheaper!

After a rather long and exhausting day, we headed back to the hotel for some pizza, beer and trashy TV.

The next morning we had our usual Tesco breakfast which consisted of some kind of croissant (my fav was almond), yoghurt, fruit and for Roy, a pint of milk. After our breaky we caught the bus to Piccidilly Circus to go to the cinemas to see Toy Story 3! Being a fan of the first two movies, I was seriously excited about going to see this movie and was not disappointed! They did it great justice, unlike most sequels. 

We walked to Leicester Square after the movie and bought our favourite lunch. A "posh cheddar and pickle artisan baguette". It seems that everyone else had the same idea of eating lunch in the park near Leicester Square because there wasn't much space for us to sit and eat so we sat on the side of the walkway next to a statue of Charlie Chaplin. While I was trying to eat my ever-so-tasty posh cheddar baguette, people stopped and admired the statue that I was leaning up against. I have a feeling that I made it into a fair few tourist holiday snaps, feeding my face.

One of the annoying things about travel is keeping track of funds. We only had my mobile phone to access the internet through the many hotspots around London and it turns out that it's not so good with internet banking. After trying to make a purchase with our credit card, we were declined.. Roy and I shared a puzzled look and got some cash from our wallet and made the payment. Concerned with our predicament, we tried to access our account on my mobile. Instead of the mobile just informing us that we can't access banking, it told us that we were entering the wrong password. Roy began to fret, thinking that maybe some scoundrel had hacked our account, stolen all our life's savings and changed the password. Deciding that it might just be the phone being stupid, we hunted down an internet cafe. Since they have so many wifi hotspots in London, the net cafe's are few and far between. After successfully finding one, we breathed a sigh of relief as we were able to access our account and realised that our primary account was just running a little low on funds. We topped it up and then headed to the pub nearby to calm the stress with a pint. aahh.. what a relief!

We were all a little tired after our big day of touring and decided it was time to head to Waterloo to meet up with Roy's parents who had just arrived after two days in Paris. When we were entering the tube station, Kate and I scanned our Oyster Cards and walked through the gates and waited for Roy. He couldn't get through the gate because his card was being declined so he tried a different gate. No luck, still declined. He asked the attendant who pointed him to the customer service window. The lady in the window took his card, scanned it and gave Roy a stern look and told him that the card had been 'disabled'. Disabled seemed to mean that if the card is stolen or lost, the owner can disable it so the person who stole it, can no longer use it. Roy kept trying to tell the lady that he was given the card by his sister but she didn't want to listen. She just took his card (along with the £16 balance) and told him to ring the hotline. Frustrated and tired after our earlier ordeal he just obliged and handed over more money to buy a new card. Ahhh.. what an adventure!

We checked out Roy's Parent's swanky hotel and admired all of the mod cons and the view that they had of London (our hotel was a little less fancy and the certainly wasn't the nice views). They had a mountain of laundry to do after their adventure and since we'd already done our laundry, Roy's Dad thought it would be easier to just go to the same laundrette that we went to. We told him the directions and he was off on his merry-way to get their clothes washed. About fifteen minutes later, Marty stumbles back in the hotel door with his dirty laundry. He said "I couldn't find a taxi and now it's too late" we all looked at each other with puzzled looks and said "it's not too late". He looked at his watch and realised that he hadn't changed his time back to London time. He sighed and picked up his laundry and headed back out the door to find a taxi. 

The next day was the day for us to pick up our visa's for Switzerland. We caught the tube over to Marylebone Station and walked to the Embassy. We handed the lady our receipts and she went in a room and came back with our passports. We thought we should give them a once-over before we headed off and we discovered that they had put the wrong dates on them. aaahh! We handed them back to the lady and told her they were wrong and she took them back into the room and came back and told us they would fix them. We thought maybe they would take another two days since it took that long the first time but after about fifteen minutes she went back in and got our passports with shiny new visa's with the correct dates. Smiling and happy that we had everything sorted for our entry into our new country, we headed back out into London City for a bit more touring. 

We went to Regents Park to have a relax on the grass where we watched some squirrels bouncing around through the gardens. There's an open air theatre in the gardens which you can hear the performance going on while you laze about on the grass.

Some of the crazy plants in the Queen Mary Gardens in Regent's Park.

The main reason we saw most of the sites we saw in London was to do with Monopoly. Walking through the famous roads and squares reminded us of playing the good ol' board game when were kids.

Relaxed and recharged after a nice sit down in the park, we set off to Brompton Road to go to Harrods to see what all the "fuss" was about. The building was MASSIVE! Once we walked in, we were overwhelmed by the shear size or the place and the amount of people busying themselves with shopping. I'm not really one for huge crowds (I'm not a very patient person) so we had a quick browse around, bought a few things (at an inflated price) and tried to get back outside before we were overcome by tourists and customers in designer clothing. Harrods used to be owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed (Dodi's Father) so there are two memorials in the shop dedicated to Dodi and Diana which were a big draw-card for tourists crowding around to snap a photo. It was an extremely pretty shopping centre but it was a little disappointing that everything they sell in there had Harrods plastered all over it. We were in the market to buy two nice mugs for a gift but couldn't find any without branding all over it. Anything with Harrods on it was bound to be about three times more expensive than something nicer without the branding. After a walk along Brompton Road we discovered a nice little boutique store that had what we were looking for.

After four days of lots of walking, eating, shopping and sightseeing around London we went to Paddington Station where we met up with Roy's Parents so we could all catch the train back to Oxford to spend our last week in the UK in the great little town of Witney.