Desperate smokers in Abu Dhabi airport

Leaving Joburg on our last pre-babies trip

This is our luggage, ready and waiting to go to the airport.

I am finally that person I've always wanted to be.

Dion's is the bigger suitcase and mine is the smaller blue hand luggage piece, a whole 9.8kg. Yesssss!

Aside from this, I carried my jacket (under no illusions about Dublin's weather) and my handbag - that's it!

Day 9 - The Lake District 3

Pics taken once the rain stopped

So I'm starving and we decide to get out the car and find some food. Shouldn't be too difficult, right?

WRONG.

We go to cafe after cafe and they all only have sandwiches that have been made hours earlier (I don't eat sandwiches that haven't been freshly made because I hate soggy anything; Dion's not fussy, of course). Their kitchens are all closed at 4:30 in the afternoon - what on earth?! In a tourist destination!!!

And here's another difference between South Africa and England.

If you walk into a restaurant here and the kitchen's closed, they'll usually say "try so-and-so, they only close at ______" which is normal South African helpfulness. You might even get the person walking you to the place.

Over there, it was just "sorry, the kitchen's closed" with a "you can like it or lump it" expression on the people's faces. Okay then!

Eventually I remembered "that lovely smart place we saw driving in" and we went to see if their kitchen was open. Indeed it was - happiness is... I mean, look how happy I am just to be warm and about to be fed :)

And then while they were making the food, I took pictures of some of my favourite things - trees!

This is what the hotel looked like from the outside

To date, the most expensive sandwich ever. We paid about 13 pounds for this (R200 - in South Africa, you'll pay about R25 - R30 for the same ham and cheese, and you'll get chips with it)

The tea was delicious and more importantly, hot! And those 6 chips were the entire portion - I think it cost about 3 pounds (R50)

And then we set off for Edinburgh!

Day 9 - The Lake District 2

More pics driving through the rain...

Look at the car's display. 4 o'clock in the afternoon and 18 degrees.

the rain's finally stopped and it's time to get some food!

Day 9 - The Lake District 1

It was pouring with rain when we got to Lake Windermere so the Dry Macs came out to play.

I was amazed at how rude the drivers were (compared to the courteousness of drivers on the "motorways" in the rest of England), hooting at us if we even dared to roll down the window to take a pic or two (which is why the angles on some of these are so weird) in the rain.

And I thought Joburg drivers were aggressive!

Day 9 - leaving Birkinhead on the way to the Lake District

Only South Africans will really "get" why I took this picture. We are so lawless that we dump our trolleys anywhere we feel like so to see people actually putting their trolleys back where they belong deserved a pic :)


This one too! hello - we don't have these in SA and I don't think they'd work either because remember, we see people parking in disabled spots all the time without being disabled, in case I didn't make that clear!

look at those cute, fat sheep

on the English highways (or as they say, motorways), it all looks like this - green, lush vegetation

driving into the Lake District - don't these look so charming and oh so English?

Day 8 - Hanging around Birkenhead (near Liverpool)

I love this set of pics - they are some of my favourites from the entire trip!

Dion was still not better the next day; in fact, he was worse and then I started to get a glimpse of why it had not been happening accommodation-wise in the Lake District.

Meanwhile, we were getting the MOST wonderful “text” messages from our friends. Maybe they were concerned that we’d get lost in England (impossible)??? I don’t know. I loved David and Victoria’s messages which usually started like this - “Poor D” and of course, Poor D loved being poor D because men do love being taken care of, don’t they?

Anyway, so after showers and breakfast, Shereen and I left Dion sleeping. I told him that we were going to Tesco and that when I returned from buying up the whole pharmacy, he needed to make a decision – stay for another night (S & S kept offering but we didn’t want to intrude) or suck it up and drive to the Lake District. The weather was warm at around 22 degrees Celsius.

Now, Tesco. My word – it was one of those mega-stores. And the accents of the people I was hearing???? You’d swear I was in a foreign country. I had to ask the cashier to repeat herself so I could REALLY focus on her words.

They have this weird system where they won’t sell you more than 2 boxes of tablets. We’re from South Africa where we can buy 4 bottles of Panado if we want, and I do when these things are on special. But not in England.

Dion gave me a whole list of cold and flu medication which I dutifully threw into the basket but the cashier then told me (a couple of times because I couldn’t understand her accent!) that I could only have 2. So Shereen had to buy 2 for me too. Crazy!

I also took the opportunity to buy a couple of notebooks and plastic envelopes. They had the most gorgeous 5-section project notebooks 

Once we got back, D decided that he really was not well enough to drive anywhere that day so we just took it easy. Dion did a lot of sleeping while Steve and Shereen and I chatted while pottering around, reading, computing, doing laundry (do you know how happy I was to do laundry?!!!), eating, etc.

We also phoned our friend, Wendy, in California and it was just LOVELY to talk to her after nearly 7 years.

We then had a delicious supper of chicken, mashed potato and creamed veggies. Took lots of photos, went to pack and then went to bed.

And that was Saturday 10th May.

Day 7 (ctd) - Wirral, Birkenhead

So we left Ps Dave and set off for Steve and Shereen’s place in Wirral, just outside Liverpool, about a 45-minute drive away. Ps Dave insisted that we phone Steve when we got nearer because “you’ll never find their place otherwise”.

Okay then.

Driving in England is SOOOOO easy and so different to driving in South Africa.

For one, the roads are clearly marked and there are plenty of signboards.

The weird thing is …not that they call their highways “motorways” or that the exits are called “junctions” but that EVERYONE knows the number of the exit. They’ll say “take junction 5” or whatever, and sure enough, junction 5 is the correct exit. Here in South Africa we say “take the Edenvale offramp” and I’d have to search long and hard to find a person who knew if it was the 3rd, 4th or 10th exit off the highway. All we look out for is that “Edenvale” sign.

Nevertheless, I digress… but this kind of weirdness is what I LOVE about travelling and this is my blog, so I’ll ramble on.

The second thing that’s so different about the driving is that everyone is so courteous, again, VERY different from the aggressive driving style native to most Johannesburg drivers. People obey the rules of the road and it’s actually a pleasure to drive and as a result, not very stressful at all. Even for us foreigners.

We’ll get talking about driving in Ireland later in this blog because that, dear friends, is another thing totally.

Of course, I had no idea of distances because I’m used to kilometers, and not miles.

Anywayyyy, when we started seeing signboards close to our “junction” ;) I sent Shereen a “text message” to let her know we were close. She, in turn, alerted Steven who “rang” me to give us directions to some gigantic hardware outlet (something like BBQ, maybe BRQ?) just off the “motorway”. Okay, I’ll stop with the “ “– I can’t resist.

Clearly Steven moonlights as Speedy Gonzales because he was there waiting for us when we arrived. To my question, how will we find you, he said, don’t you worry, I’ll find you. And he did ;)

After all the kissing and hugging (Marcia) and shaking of hands (Dion), we followed him to their flat which did not look like it was that difficult to find. But our friends obviously don’t think much of our navigational abilities.

We spent a lovely hour drinking tea and chatting while we waited for Shereen to get home from work. Their home is lovely and comfortable and feels very “Shereen” to me LOL

As an aside, I must say it is so easy to get into the whole English tradition of drinking tea. That suits me down to the ground and was a habit I adopted very quickly and happily.

Both Shereen and Steven sounded EXACTLY the same after 8 years in the UK. Steven is English so that’s understandable but I was surprised by Shereen. Although I did catch her saying “yeah?” a couple of times. I love hearing that and even now, it still makes me smile ;)

It was like we’d seen them just last week the way all of us just slipped right back into our friendship and chatted and chatted, and then chatted some more about serious and silly things. Lovely!

We went out to supper to Queen’s Hotel (Dion’s notes in my journal say “overlooking the River Mersey”) where we had a delicious carvery. Yummy!

When we got back we did a very un-Dion&Marcia thing and phoned some B&B’s on the spur of the moment to find accommodation in the Lake District for the following evening. Everybody was very English (no problem with being rude) and said “no, we don’t have place for just one night; we only rent rooms for two nights or more, and no, I’m not prepared to change that. Alright then, bye!”

You’ve got to have a grudging respect for them setting such good boundaries though.

We then decided to really just BREAK LOOSE, drive up there and just look for accommodation willy-nilly. I don’t do willy-nilly but both Dion and Steve & Shereen were quite comfortable with this devil-may-care attitude so FINE!

And that was Friday.

Day 7 - Llangollen (Wales) and Chester (England)

Ok, before I forget, here's Ps Dave and his daughter, Jade (all of 18 and making plans to get married!)


By morning, things had changed for the travellers. We had agreed on an early start for us - 9am. We'd left the warm sun behind and it was now raining. Also my sore throat from the previous day had developed into a head cold. Yuk.

Anyhoo, we left with Ps Dave and a church buddy of his, Brian, to go into Chester, which is just inside the border of England. We were treated to a tour of the cathedral there - but Marcia was kinda bored so forbade me from publishing all the pix of the arched ceilings and decorated columns. Still, the outside is not bad:


Then we walked through the streets of Chester, looking for signs of the old Roman city. It's full of cute streets like this:
You can see all the Tudor style buildings on the main street (note how each storey up leans out further):
The place was actually packed so I'm not sure why they weren't working! We also saw several people dressed to the nines. Turns out a day at the races had just ended and they had come into town. So the 5-star hotel wasn't exactly enthusiastic about hosting us for 'morning' coffee, as it's called, but Ps Dave has never suffered from shyness so we pushed our way in:
Our Chester visit ended with a walk down to the river, where you can always count on prettiness:
(The bridge is not too bad, either, what say you?)


From there we drove into the Northern Welsh countryside to see Llangollen (a gutteral sound that just has to be heard!)

But first we made a quick stop to see Ps Denise as she zipped in from one job to another.


We drove up into the mountains up to Horseshoe Pass, where we stopped at a restaurant-pub for some lunch (time for me to get some long-overdue fish 'n' chips!)

Sheep are everywhere - these playing around nearby. Mother let me get this close before she got her lamb out of there.

Check it out, here's some Welsh for you:We drove past the village of Llangollen, which is so cute:

I mean, how cute can you get:

Then we went over to the aquaduct, where they hire out barges large enough for family holidays. Here's what I assumed to be a typical Welsh villager (but for all I know, he could be some German tourist waiting for his barge to be repaired):

Each barge has several rooms, including separate kitchens:

Apparently you can travel all over Wales and England by barge along a network of canals. Here's what the barges look like:

Now the barges can go across the narrow aquaduct - and there's even a walkway:

We went halfway along the aquaduct's walkway to see the views. To the right:

And to the left:

Here's what the aquaduct looks like from the side. You can see a barge crossing and some people walking:

We certainly packed in the sights today! After a cuppa tea at 4pm, we had to pack up and head out.

From there it was only a 45-minute journey north to Birkenhead, just south of Liverpool, where we were to stay with Shereen and Stephen Arbon (friends from S.A.) We filled up on a traditional roast buffet at the Queen Hotel, on the seafront overlooking the River Mersey. And chatted. And laughed. And chatted...

But lurking in the background, a malignant force was digging its dirty claws into our wonderful time, ready to pounce and spread its contagion...

Day 6, Thursday, London to Stonehenge, Bath & Wales

Feeling a bit sad to be leaving David and Victoria's place, we packed up and left at our usual lunch-time(!) Our train ride to Fulham on the other side of London was actually the easiest of the lot. Once there, I was surprised to see Stamford Bridge, the (stadium) home of Chelsea Football Club right there. Two streets away we found our car hire place. Dismissing an over-attendant helper, we jumped into a shiny, silver, 3-week-old Peugeot 206 - mmmm - and started driving out of London, something I was a bit apprehensive about.

In no time at all, we had hit the motorway and began our car trip in the beautiful English countryside. Aside from the greenery, every so often you see fields of yellow: rape seeds. After about 90 minutes, suddenly by the side of the road we saw the infamous circle of stones we had targeted:

Truth be told, we just leaned over the fence to get our few snapshots, rather than pay the 7 pounds. Besides we were running late. So it was hit the road, Jack. Getting closer to our destination, we were delayed by a road diversion. The plus was that it took us through Bradford-on-Avon and other quaint little towns like this:

The downside was that by the time we got to Bath, it was after 7pm and the Roman baths had closed for viewing (something that was becoming a theme on the trip!) Still, we wandered around the place a bit and soaked up its beauty:
"Oh, gorgeous! Beautiful! Wish you were here!" I mean, we could be someplace in Rome or something:
This must be nice to stay for a night or two and take a romantic walk by the river:
But enough of all this gorgeousness: it was getting late and we still had a few hours to drive to make our stop for the night in northern Wales! Good for us, it's really easy to find your way on England's roads as everything is marked very well. And our map book was accurate. Still, we had tried as usual to do too much in one day, esp. leaving late, so we arrived at Dave and Denise Kelly's (pastor friends from South Africa who had moved) at... 10.30pm! Think twice before you invite us to stay! Bless the man, he had a huge helping of Chinese takeaways ready for us and a nice cup of tea before we hit the sack...

Day 5 London sightseeing

Wednesday 7 May

We woke to find more welcoming notes and breakfast laid out by our kind hosts. And another gorgeous sunny day. We were being blessed everywhere we turned. We made our usual way into London - to do our city tour by bus - now looking like pros: Marcia with her magazines to occupy her and me with my MP3 player, pretending to shut out all those pesky tourists. We got out at Tower Hill, to be greeted with the sight of all the London workers taking lunch on some lawns:

Making our way across the street to The Tower of London, we started snapping away - especially by Tower Bridge (*not* London Bridge! My mom says when the Americans wanted to buy it, they asked for London Bridge and were then surprised to find the less spectacular bridge shipped out to Arizona!) Apparently it's an ordinary steel bridge, which they dressed up with a bit of stonework to look pretty:



Across the Thames River, you can see this strange-shaped building (although this particular angle I shot from the side during the bus tour). Believe it or not, this is where the mayor works from! Not quite the civil servant buildings we're used to.

Across from The Tower of London (around which they were hosting some running race) we found a scrumptious and healthy sandwich bar called EAT. We grabbed baguettes - roast ham, brie and cranberry for M. - and went to catch our bus. It's a hop-on, hop-off affair with buses every 15 minutes or so. Then we were off! Madly snapping away at anything that looked cultural. Here's a shot from one of the circuses (traffic roundabouts) - Oxford, I think - showing some of London's famous red buses and Big Ben. That cream and red bus is like the one we were on:

Westminister Abbey (careful not to pronounce that second "i") follows with other famous sights amazingly lined up by the photographer: London Eye, Big Ben, some dude on a column - he didn't command the navy or lose valuable limbs so he remains nameless at this time.

St. Paul's Cathedral (no time to visit the awesome whispering gallery inside the base of the dome) follows. Christopher Wren designed it and its distinctive dome - you can see smaller trial runs of the dome scattered around the city.

This is how many London city girls dress in Spring ('scuse the window reflections):

We passed a street where a well-known law enforcement agency used to be housed. Although the agency has moved on, you can see it got its name from the street name, which is still called: Great Scotland Yard:

Here's Lord Admiral Nelson on top of a column in the middle of Trafalgar Square (I guess I always have a connection to him as my primary school, Admiral Tait, had a whole navy theme):

Of course, on the tour you pass abour 347 other interesting sights, each with its own story, the original Twinings Tea shop, which has been around forever. The ride took almost exactly 2 hours - well worth it, ending at the Tower of London.

Cruisin'

From the Tower, we walked down to the River Thames and hopped on a boat that would take us on a cruise down to Greenwich. This was free when we bought the bus ticket. We love our cruises (although we haven't been brave enough to try one on the ocean. More about Titanic in later blogs.) We enjoyed a leisurely pace on the river, passing under Tower Bridge. The banks are lined with four-storey apartment blocks, the ones on ground level going for 5 million pounds!

Out of time at Greenwich

Arriving at Greenwich, we were told the next boat back leaves in 30 minutes at 5:25. So we made hasty tracks up the hill to see where East meets West. But we didn't count on it being more than 15 minutes away and the hill to be so steep. We found ourselves trying to run up at a 45-degree angle. Pain! Then at the top we were told that the building housing the clock and the East-West line had closed half an hour before! Emotional pain! Imagine Jack & Jill running up the hill only to find no pail of water anywhere in sight. What next? Cinderella's step-sister finds that she can actually fit into Cinderella's shoe?

Anyway, we had to race back down... and saw our boat sailing away from the jetty. Frustration all around. We had to wait for the 6:10 (not to Yuma, but to Tower.) When the boat arrived, we could at least sit back and relax, me with a steaming styrofoam cup of coffee.

Canaries and Bengals

We arranged to meet Dave at the Tower Underground station. He decided to take us on a walking tour of a part of London, regularly consulting his map book. As we set off, Dave pointing out some interesting things like old Roman walls, a lady came up and asked if this was the Jack the Ripper tour! Dave must have sounded like he knew what he was talking about!

Then we took the Underground to Canary Wharf, the financial district, where we met up with Victoria at the Bengal Quay restaurant. Delicious Indian food, white tablecloths, fantastic company. Afterwards, we took a stroll up to the Millennium Dome, where they've got a bunch of restaurants and a whole lot of neon lights - and even a South African Spur Steak house!

After the late train back home for coffees and teas, we had to say our goodbyes for the next day. That didn't stop Dave & I talking until 2.30 - just like ole times!

Day 4 London

Day 4 - Tuesday 6 May (continued)

Hot in the city
Midday was practically sweltering as we boarded the train from Hornchurch into London. At 25 degrees Centigrade, we appeared to be the only ones at home in the heat: everyone else was fanning themselves and puffing out their cheeks. On the platforms we passed, it wasn't uncommon to spot a young guy in his jeans and shirtless.

This ain't no ride through the Andes
At one of the stops, an intriguing guy boarded and flopped down in front of us. He kind of looked part Greek and part Peruvian, well into his fifties and overweight. He wore dark grey cargo pants, a dirty red plaid lumberjack shirt over a dark t-shirt and ported a no-frills shoulder bag. His hand wrapped in a grimy bandage, he leaned on his walking cane. And sweated. Boy, could this guy sweat. Station after station, I had front row seats to him mopping his forehead with a rag that was once a light handkerchief. And he couldn't stop fidgeting. Removing the sweatband from his greasy taupe locks; replacing it; removing it. Parts of his body were always in motion. And the more he fidgeted, the more he sweated. I've never seen anyone so uncomfortable in his body. I hoped for his sake that it was just because of the heat. Somehow I don't think so.

Making plans
We rode the Underground until we could get off near Leicester Square. We had a plan. We checked out the prices at the "TKTS" booth, saw no discount was available, so found cheaper prices at another stall. We booked ourselves into the theatre show we wanted to see later that evening: Billy Elliot. Then we purchased tickets for the next day on a city tour by bus: the "Original City Tour". Plans set and mucho money spent, we grabbed a quick bite at Burger King overlooking the square - "filthy bathrooms", Marsh said; I don't notice these things. Especially since I don't go into the Ladies'. We priced souvenirs at a nearby shop...

Where the streets all have names
Then it was off into Chinatown, on foot:

Oh, ho, Soho
A left, a right, a left and we were into Soho, full of interesting little shops, restaurants and quirky people, to say the least. We passed two giant males, all buff and muscles bulging out of skin-tight t-shirts... and daintily holding hands. We stopped over briefly in an interesting shop of music and magazines going back a few decades:

Drama onstage - less drama offstage
After the debacle the previous day where we were late and rushing for our London Eye ride, we decided things would be different today with getting to the Billy Elliot show. So we made our way with plenty time to spare… except that our bus was halted by ‘rush hour’ traffic gridlock! It took us 45 minutes to traverse Piccadilly Circus. Stress again! Still we found the theatre opposite Victoria station in enough time (that's what they call "Little Ben" in the foreground):

Let the show go on!
In the hour or so before the show was due to start, we wandered around the W. H. Smith bookshop, Marcia adding to her giant collection of stationery (folders!!) Then it was off to the theatre, something I'd been dreaming about since I was about 13. As we made our way inside, they gave many of us a free upgrade to better seats. I like. And the show was magnificent, truly awesome. They really put on a show in such style, whether it's the actors, the innovative stage design, the costumes or the songs.

Remember it's about a boy in a mining town who wants to do ballet. (The entire audience was treated to Marcia's gasps upon hearing 5-year-olds on the stage swear!) It took about 3 hours, ending at about 11pm, so we had to race to catch the last train back to Dave and Victoria's – apologising for not being able to see them that evening. In bed after midnight. Smiling after the fulfillment of a dream.