Inverness-Glasgow - Day 13

We set the alarm to get up early this morning because we want to get moving as soon as possible. We head downstairs and have brekky at the hotel restaurant, we then check out from our apartment and we are on the road around 8:30. Cheryl points us in the right direction and we follow Loch Ness to our first stop, Urquhart Castle. This is the first castle we have managed to see so far on our drive so we wander around the castle ruins for about an hour. The views from the castle overlooking Loch Ness are incredible. We continue on and the views on this road are amazing as we follow the edge of Loch Ness to Invermoriston. At this point we ask Cheryl to take us to Dornie where Eilean Donan Castle is. We get about 10 mile down the road and we realize this is about an hour’s journey. When you add getting out and looking around then the hour’s drive back there is no way we can get to Glasgow by 5pm to hand the car back. We umm and ahh and decide not to go. I'm guttered. This was one of the castles I really wanted to see and photograph but the fact is this drive is a lot longer and we are travelling a lot slower, due to the small winding roads, than I had anticipated. We turn off and take a road that leads us back to the road that followed Loch Ness. We reassess our drive and there is really only time to see one more castle, Kilchurn Castle. Kilchurn Castle is on the way to Glasgow but we do have to go backwards a bit, but I am determined to see this one. We look at the map and there are 2 ways to go, the A828 which will take us along the edge of a bunch of Lochs or the A82 which will take us through.....well, not much that I can see. Anyway, the A82 looks the quickest but the A828 looks the most specky. What do we do? We let Cheryl decide and she chose the A82. Bugger, I thought the other way would have been awesome but Cheryl obviously knows that's the long way. So we take Cheryl's advice and god damn did she come through with the goods. This was one of the best drives I have ever been on. The views were beyond anything that we had expected and we were blown away. Kris and I just kept saying "we gotta come back here again one day, this is incredible". Kris and I really didn't know that Scotland could have such amazing scenery. On our last holiday we took the bus from Thusis to Bellinzona and this was the best scenery I had ever seen. This drive from Fort William through the Ben Nevis and Glen Coe National Scenic Area came pretty close. After that we take the road backwards to see Kilchurn Castle. Just before we get there is starts raining, just as we get there it starts raining harder. This is a castle ruin so there is no shelter and it's about a 500m walk to get there. I get out of the car, take my photos, which will be crap because it was raining, the fog was thick and I get back in the car and Kris says "you weren't meant to see these castles Paul". I said "I know" and we drive off. This whole road trip was to see historic castle ruins and I'd take all these amazing photos......didn't work out that way. Nevertheless, we saw some of the most amazing scenery we will ever see and I was pretty satisfied. We eventually make it to Glasgow and we hand the vehicle back to Thrifty and ask them to call us a cab so we can get to our hotel. We wait about 30 minutes, in the rain, and finally one rocks up. He gets us to our hotel and we check in and head straight out to have a look around. It's a fairly unimpressive looking joint and we see a pub that welcomes families. Great, we think, let's go back and shower get dressed and come to the pub. We rock up there about half an hour later and walk inside only to be told the kids are not allowed in after 7. So we are back to this archaic law are we. There is absolutely bugger all around but we manage to find one place and we decide to eat there. While we are there we get chatting to the staff and they told us that restaurants we not allowed to serve alcohol after 10pm!!! Scotland is a strange joint. We take the dodgy route back to the hotel, past the nightclubs and strip joints (or at least we think it was the dodgy route, could have been the better route, Glasgow looks pretty rough) and hit the sack. We will be up early again tomorrow because we are catching the early train back to London.

Part of the Urquhart Castle ruins.

The kids doing their quiz at Urquhart Castle.

Urquhart Castle with Loch Ness in the background.

A happy snap from the car window as we drive alongside Loch Ness.

The kids building their own castle.

The view as we drove through the Ben Nevis and Glen Coe National Scenic Area.

One of the reasons the drive took so long. These two trucks were inching there way past each other.

Edinburgh-Inverness - Day 12

We got up early this morning to finish packing as we need to be out of our apartment to make our way to Thrifty to pick up the car by 9am. We were lucky to hail down a cab pretty much straight outside our apartment. The driver is an older Scottish guy and he is fantastic, asking us loads of questions and giving us some good advice about our road trip. We get to Thrifty and there is no BMW available. Instead, we are advised we are get an upgrade to a Land-rover Discovery, the Deluxe model with all the fruit, you little beauty! We pile our gear in the back and hit the road. We decide we will do the full route, that is, head to Stirling (to see our first road trip castle) before heading back through Perth rather than go the short way straight to Perth. This proved to be a big early mistake. When we got to Stirling it was pouring with rain so we decided not to get out of the car, a big wasted effort. When we get to Perth we grab some lunch and we realise time is already starting to get away from us and we need to get a move on if we want to fit everything in. We get back on the road and we take the route where the big green sign says "Inverness". Ummm, second big mistake, we are meant to be going to Inverness via Aberdeen. We open up our map book (that we purchased of £1.99) and we try and work out which way we should be going. We come to the conclusion we need to do a u-turn and head back to Perth. It gets worse, we don't know where the hell we are going by now and we find ourselves do circles around the perimeter of Perth for about 45 mins. It's at this point we decide to employ the services of Cheryl, the onboard navigation system. Our initial dealings with Cheryl were very frustrating and a lot of yelling ensued, mostly by me, actually all by me. This is how Cheryl got her name. I found it difficult to communicate with a machine so I needed to give it a name that aided my yelling of the words SHUT UP. So it became SHUT UP CHERYL. It was at this point as we were doing bog laps around Perth that we decided to alter our route and take the road to Blairgowrie. That was our next mistake because this road was a small winding road that took us ages to get there. Now it is nudging 2:30 and we've hardly gone anywhere. We stop in at the Blairgowrie tourist shop and a woman advises us that our best bet would be to take the M9 motorway straight to Inverness because we can't possibly fit in what we want to do. So We get back in the car and I give Cheryl instructions to take us to Inverness. I'm a bit dejected at this point as my whole first day's planning has gone out the window. The drive from this point on did prove to be very nice and the scenery was spectacular so not all was lost. We arrive at Inverness and check in to our hotel. The hotel is about a 10-15 minute walk to the city centre so that's the first thing we do. Inverness is only small but bigger than we had expected and it is a very pretty place. We spend about an hour walking around before heading back to the hotel for dinner. After dinner we head back to our room (which is a 1 room apartment) and we hit the sack. Tomorrow I want to be up early.

The rental car

The photo before "the pit stop"



The photo after "the pit stop"
(I promised Kris I would not show the photos I took of her with her pants around her ankles during "the pit stop")

 

 

Edinburgh – Day 11

Today we are going back to an old favourite, the open top bus tour. The open top bus tour starts from Waverley Bridge and consists of 5 different bus tours. We take the 10 minute walk to the bridge and buy our tickets and once on top and on our way it instantly gives you that “I’m on holiday feel”. Even though the open top bus tour is a little bit nerdy, it is a fantastic way to take in all the sites while sitting on your arse. The first bus we took was the Majestic Tour which took us down to the port area of Edinburgh and through Leith which was where golf was first played. This tour was one of those that had headphones you plugged in and i gave you some running commentary. The second bus was the Edinburgh Tour. This tour took us around the New Town, around Edinburgh Castle and past the Queens Palace and back through the Old Town. This tour had an old dude, Mike, who sat and commentated the whole way around. It is amazing what you learn on these tours and we don’t care how nerdy they are because we think they are the best value for money tour in every place we have visited and you get to go to places you wouldn’t normally know about and you get a real appreciation for the history of a place on these buses. Edinburgh is an amazing place with some amazing history. A lot of the history surrounds doom and gloom, wars with the poms, living in slum conditions and lots of royalty. The architecture is incredible and it’s just a fascinating place. It’s a shame we are leaving tomorrow because we have really enjoyed it here and feel we could have easily spent a few more days checking out some of the sights we didn’t get around to. Although, one of my learned friends did ask why I was staying in Edinburgh for 4 days, “you can do Edinburgh in a day mate” he said, not naming names (Steve Bowen). After that tour we ducked off for lunch. We thought we’d give the pubs another chance and saw one close so we approached the door. The first thing we saw was a sign “...children are only allowed in the restaurant area or outside and must leave by 3pm...”. What sort of draconian law was this? It is ridiculous because we can walk next door to the café where they sell wine, beer on tap and other alcoholic drinks exactly the same as the pub and stay until midnight! Yesterday during lunch Kris and I drank wine and beer while having lunch in a park. So a big thumbs down for Scottish pubs from me. So, I’m going to leave Edinburgh with not even having a drink in the pub, ridiculous! After lunch we took a tour through this old house, the only one of its type left in Edinburgh and it dated back to the 1500’s. It was another very interesting tour. We headed back to Waverley Bridge and jumped on the City Sightseeing bus and this bus pretty much just did the Old Town. That killed another hour or so before we made our way back to the apartment to get ready for our last dinner in Edinburgh which was fantastic. Tomorrow we are leaving Edinburgh and spending the next 2 days travelling to Inverness to the North before coming back down to Glasgow in our rented BMW 320. This is one part of the trip I have really been looking forward to.

Edinburgh – Day 10

Today we have decided to go and have a look at Edinburgh Castle. It is only about 400m away at the top of the street we are staying on, the Royal Mile. So we get moving around 9:30 at make our way up the road. The castle is enormous and it sits on top of a high point of Edinburgh so has incredible views all around. The castle proved very interesting and we spent a couple of hours wandering around within the walls. After we had seen enough we decided it was time for lunch. The weather was now starting to fine up as it had been quite overcast during the morning so we headed back to the cafe in the park we went to yesterday in the New Town. After lunch we continued wandering around Edinburgh before heading back to the apartment. One of the advantages of our apartment’s location is that it is as central as you can get in Edinburgh. So central that just outside our window and just outside the entrance is The Mercat Cross. This is where everyone in the city would come to here very important announcements and also to watch people get punished, beheaded etc. This is also the spot where a lot of tours start from, ghost tours and underground tours. We have decided to do the “Historic Vaults” tour which will take us underground. One of the disadvantages of being this central though is the noise. There seems to be a lot of these ghost type tours starting or finishing here very late and there is a lot of yelling and screaming all drummed up by tour guides. There is also noise right throughout the night. Last night there were people walking down the Royal Mile screaming and carrying on and I reckon it had to be 3am. Anyway, we pay our £25 and wait for the tour to start at 4pm. At 4:01 it starts to rain. Great. We are standing out in the rain for 10 minutes while the tour guide talks and Tyler whispers to me “Dad, doesn’t she know it’s raining?’ Haha, “Obviously not mate”. We eventually make our way underground and we are all pretty wet by now. It was a pretty good tour but I wouldn’t rave about it but the kids really enjoyed it. After the tour we get ready for dinner and being the adventurers we are we head back to the Italian place we went to yesterday. One of the difficulties when holidaying for an extended period of time with two kids is that you need to keep everyone happy when it comes to food. Sometimes it’s easier when you find somewhere good to just keep going back.

Pano view of Edinburgh from the Castle

Mia's mask at Dinner

Tyler's mask at dinner
The kids were given masks to colour in.
I made a bet with them that they had to wear them out of the restaurant and all the way home for the reward, a Mars Bar.
They did it!

Tyler watching the Ghost Tour which started below

 

Tyler's World #1

Tyler is an 11 year old boy who sometimes lives in a world of his own but always in a world of misunderstanding, miscommunication and misconception.

Walking up the mountain in Edinburgh today Tyler is complaining it’s too hard and Kris says "It shouldn't be a problem for you because you are fitter than we are".

Tyler responds with a confused look on his face "Wia.......who's Wia??"

 

 

Edinburgh – Day 9

We get up this morning without a plan. It’s a stunning day so we have brekky and decide to go for a wander and see what’s around. It is very nippy as we start walking toward the bottom of the Royal Mile. This is the end of the Royal Mile where the Royal residence is, where the Queen stays while she is in Edinburgh. We continue on and come to the base of what looks like Edinburgh’s highest hill in Holyrood Park and it looks awesome. At the top is Arthur’s Seat, 251m up, so we decide to do the walk. This ends up being a tough walk and it takes us about an hour to climb the hill. The hill has pathways and steps made from stones and once at the top there are amazing views over Edinburgh. We take an easier route down and walk back up the Royal Mile back towards our apartment. We already love Edinburgh, it has a real medieval feel about it with some amazing buildings especially in the Old Town. After a small break in the apartment we head back out looking for somewhere to eat for lunch. We head over to New Town on the other side of the rail line and we find this amazing cafe in the middle of a St. Andrew Square. The food was cheap and it was nice sitting outside overlooking the park. Amazingly, even though it was in the middle of a park in the centre of the city we were still able to have a beer and a wine! Yay for Edinburgh. We continue walking in the direction of our apartment and when we get back most of the Royal Mile has been closed off for a parade and it is chockablock with people. They have Scottish marching bands and a re-enactment of a battle with the poms that happened 500 years ago today. Apparently the Scots had their arses kicked and they celebrate it every year, so a Scottish guy on a horse was telling us and all these festivities were happening just below our apartment. Later on that night we went to a pretty good Italian restaurant before calling it a night.

Tyler doing it tough on the easy bit of the climb

Close to the top and Tyler is done

Our lunch spot

The festivities on the Royal Mile. Our apartment windows are the three at the top of the building on the left.

 

London-Edinburgh – Day 8

Today we are leaving London so we get up around 7 and finish packing before heading out for brekky. The streets of London are the quietest we've seen them since we have been here. Not much appears to happen early on a Saturday morning around here. A lot of cafes and restaurants are still closed and a only a few are just opening. After Brekkie we head back to our apartment grab our bags and leave for Convent Garden tube stop. We only need to take the tube for 3 stops to Kings Cross station. Kings Cross is right next door to St. Pancras international train station and they share the same underground network and it is huge. It takes a fair walk to eventually get to the area where we need to board our train to Edinburgh. The train to Edinburgh is about 4 ½ hours long and the closer we get to Edinburgh the better the views become. I’ve rung the person who is meeting us at our accommodation and we have agreed on a meeting time so we need to be organised. But that’s not a problem; I’ve got it all under control. Once the train stops we jump off and head to the “rear” of the train to pick up our bags from the dedicated luggage carriage. We get there and there is no luggage carriage!!! What the....did it drop off the end of the train? Kris asks one of the train employers and he informs her it’s “at the other end of the train”. Oh, we seem to be a bit disorientated. The train is about 150m long so we do a runner to the other end of the train and collect our luggage. Once that’s done we need to find our way out of the station. Which way do we go? Now, I have Google earthed Edinburgh a thousand times in preparation for this moment. I have street viewed Edinburgh and I have even street viewed inside the train station so you’d think I’d have a handle on it. Nope, we end up taking the exit furthest from our apartment. Great, and to add to the problem it has now started to rain. I’m cursing at this point as we start the walk with our 2 big bags, 1 medium bag, 2 back packs and a computer bag, to go around the train station and over the main traffic bridge to the other side of Edinburgh. This proves tough as we are getting soaked, our bags are getting soaked, its freezing cold and Mia’s cheap arse umbrella we bought the other day keeps flipping inside out. Then, just to add insult to injury, while I’m battling the crowds leading us across the bridge Mia yells out from behind with a frustrated voice “Dad, do you know where we are going are you just wandering aimlessly?”. Needless to say that didn’t go down too well! As we turn into the street we are staying on, which is the Royal Mile, the most touristy of all streets in Edinburgh, a busker spots me cutting a path with Mia and Tyler about 30m behind and Kris about 30m behind them and yells out, “Don’t leave your kids behind” I yell back “You can have ‘em mate” and I keep walking. We finally get to our apartment entrance where the guy from the accommodation is waiting. He shows us around and the apartment is amazing. We dump our stuff and head straight out with our first port of call, the pub. We soon realise they are not short of pubs around here but we also realise that kids are not permitted in most pubs unless we are having a sit down meal. Even then we have to be gone by 6pm. This is a huge let down for us and we end up going back to the apartment to shower and get ready to go out for dinner. Kris sees this restaurant straight over the road from where we are staying so we go in there. In turns out to be an American restaurant, everything is American, food, music, decor, and beer. Great, our first night in Scotland and I’m drinking American beer. Never mind, it ended up being ok. After dinner we take the 15 minute walk to Sainsbury’s to stock up on groceries and then home to bed.

On the train at King's Cross Station

Video: London to Edinburgh passing through Berwick Upon Tweed

The kids on the train 

London – Day 7

We get up this morning and the weather has done a complete 180, it’s cold and rainy.  I decide to try and search the net for a pub that is showing the Hawks v Sydney game and after a long search I only come across two pubs, one is miles away and the other is 2 tube stops away in pretty much the next suburb of Fitzrovia.....you little beautyyyyy! We get dressed and head down there to check out the game not knowing what to expect and we think if the pub turns out to be crap we’ll just head off and do something else. We get out of the underground station at Regent’s Park and from here we need to walk about 400m to the pub but it is raining to the point that we need umbrellas so we stop at a shop selling cheap crappy ones that will probably only last us about a day and we fork over the £10 for 2 of them. We continue walking looking for the pub which is called Jetlag Sports bar. It’s a pretty easy walk and we are the first to arrive just before 10:30am. The bar maid invites us in and puts the telly on and within 5 minutes the footy is on and we are about 20 minutes from bounce down. Over the course of the next 20 minutes a few other guys rock up to watch the footy and the NRL which is also being shown on another telly in the same spot over our shoulder. This is a great little pub and considering it’s getting colder outside and the rain is not letting up we feel justified in sitting here all morning having a few drinks and watching the footy rather than being out touristing. It was made even better when the Hawks gave the Swans and old fashion belting. Once the game is over we get back on the tube and head to Piccadilly Circus so the kids can stock up on all the trinkets (shit) they want to buy. There are a million of these little trinket shops around and given the chance the kids would visit every one of them. We made a deal with them after the second day, do not enter another one of these shops and on the last day of each place you can go crazy. So after they have wasted their dough purchased their trinkets, we head back to Covent Garden for some late lunch. The weather is still dodgy so we find somewhere warm and undercover. After lunch we head back to the apartment to pack up our gear so we don’t have to do it tomorrow morning. All we have to do tomorrow now is give the apartment a quick clean before making our way to the train station for the next leg of the holiday, Edinburgh. The weather has fined up by the time we head out for dinner which is good for our last night. We don’t wander far though, there is too many good restaurants close by to our apartment. The wood fired pizza at Rossopomodoro’s is fantastic and afterwards we stop for our standard late night coffee on the way home. We’ll miss London but the time has come to move on.

Watching the game at Jetlag Sports Bar - Go Hawks!!

Pano of the Regent's Park tube station

London – Day 6

We wake up again to a stunning day weather wise. Blue skies and by the end of the day it has become quite hot and our pasty white Scroop skin is now lathered in sunscreen. It sucks when as an Aussie you still have to put on sunscreen during the English Autumn! Earlier, Kris and I had set the alarm for 2am so we could get up and ring the vet back in Perth to check on Harvey. The vet lets us know that Harvey has improved slightly but is still very dehydrated and is still not eating but he has not deteriorated which is good news. We head back to bed and sleep in until around 7 when Mia and I do the Sainsbury run. After brekkie we get moving as we are off to see Windsor Castle (Her Majesty’s Royal Residence...or something like that). This involves a tube ride to Paddington Station and then a train ride to Windsor. Once we get to Paddington we have to head above ground to the main station to buy some tickets for the Paddington-Windsor leg. I am absolutely amazed at the size of this train station and this station is only one of many this size dedicated to domestic train travel from London. Purchasing tickets looks like a mission but it ends up being pain free with the automatic ticket machine. Finding out which platform to go to however proves a lot harder so we ask advice from a woman at the info desk. Lucky we did because she informs us that we need to make a change at Slough. We jump on the train that is sitting on the station and within 5 minutes we are on our way. I was expecting this journey to be about 40-45 minutes but I’m sure it only took about 15-20. We jump off and move to another platform and jump on the train to Windsor once it arrives. Now, we hadn’t researched Windsor Castle a great deal, it was kind of a last minute replacement for a visit to Warwick Castle which we had planned to do before leaving Australia but since being here we have realised that Warwick Castle was frickin miles away and we don’t think the kids were up for it. So anyway, as we round a bend on the train close to Windsor we see through the window this incredibly massive castle that seems to take up the entire view. We were blown away with its size. We pull into Windsor train station and I must say, prior to our arrival our expectation of visiting Windsor Castle was that there would be this big castle pretty much in the middle of nowhere, we would check it out, get back on the train and go home. Well bugger me we walk out of the train station smack bang into this amazing village-suburb. I later realise that Windsor shares its border with the town of Eton, famous for Eton College. The main shopping streets are like malls and would be at least the size of both Hay Street and Murray Street malls in Perth. There were shops and restaurants and people everywhere. And here I was worried before we left that if I needed to take a leak while we were visiting Windsor I’d have to do it behind a tree!! Dumb arse Aussie award goes to me it seems. We instantly love this place though; it has real character and is what we sort of expected from an English town. We grab some lunch before heading up to do the Windsor Castle tour. The tour ends up being a cracker, the history and the excessive lavishness and to the realisation that we walked in places and on carpet that the queen and many of the royal families before her had was pretty overwhelming. It’s something that is hard to explain unless you’ve done it. It ends up being a real highlight of the week. We finish the tour and decide we’d take a walk over to Eton (which is not very far, about 500m) to get a coffee. We stumble on this pretty swanky looking cafe. We walk in and realise within about a millisecond that we are not the rich clientele that usually frequents this joint. We hold firm though in our sweaty t-shirts, back pack, baseball caps and with the kids only half way through their Mr Whippy ice-creams to request a table outside on the terrace. We ditch the coffee and decide on a bottle of wine instead and it ends up being a pretty good arvo. We eventually make it back to the train station for our journey home which gets us there around 6ish. We shower up as quickly as we can to head out for dinner which happens to be back at Jamie’s Italian. Everyone agrees it has ended up being a pretty awesome day.

At Slough waiting for the train to Windsor

 

The swanky café in Eton on the River Thames

Kris doing the nightly coffee run on the way home from dinner

 

Covent Garden "Seven Dials".
Our apartment is about 40m down the road behind the dial, the pub is on the left corner. On the right corner just out of picture is the Cambridge Theatre which is showing Matilda and the coffee shop that Kris is in is directly behind me.

 

London - Day 5

I am up a little later this morning; the kids were still in bed when I left to get some groceries around 7ish. It is another amazing morning, blue skies and the forecast is for a maximum of 28. By the time I get back from Sainsbury’s the kids are waiting for me. All I see is their heads hanging out of the window and their waving to me. The kitchen and lounge windows face the road and we are about 3 floors up. We have our usual fruit and yogurt brekkie and we head out for some morning tea about 10ish. We plan on doing very little today, Mia and I are still struggling with sore throats and colds. We decide that after morning tea we will just hang around the Covent Garden area. There is so much to see and do within Covent Garden that we are sure we can keep ourselves busy. We come home for a light lunch and while we are here we get some bad news about Harvey. Rebecca has been looking after Harvey for us and a couple of days ago he came down ill and it has become bad enough for the vet to decide he needs to stay over in at the clinic for a night or two so they can keep an eye on him and try and determine what may be the problem. We are all very concerned and being so far away makes it harder to know what to do. We plan on getting up at 2am (9am Perth time) to call the vet and try and get some news on how he is going. We also feel for Rebecca, she has been amazing running Harvey back and forth to the vets and giving him his medication. Everyone is a little upset so we decide to go out to keep our minds off Harvey and the Covent Garden market area seems a good spot to help with that. Kris and I have a drink in one of the cafe/bars there and the kids go over to watch the buskers in the main square. We kill an hour or so and keep walking in the direction of Trafalgar Square. When we get there it is packed. There is a heap of buskers here today so we watch a few before continuing on home. After a couple of hours relaxing at the apartment we head off for dinner. The streets are ridiculous, people everywhere. Not sure if it is always like this on a Wednesday night or if the magnificent weather has got everyone out for the night. It ends up being an early night and we are home by half 8. Hopefully the news on Harv’s will be better tomorrow.

Toilet Issues

Tyler and Mia have grown up in a house where they have had two toilets since they were born. Coming on holiday and having to share just the one toilet seems to be tough for the kids especially when they have to go in there after me. I suggested they harden up a bit but Mia is an innovative young girl and she came up with a fix of her own.....

London – Day 4

This morning we are up and out by 8:30 with our first stop being Lords “The home of cricket”. We need to ride the tube from Covent Garden to the Warwick Avenue stop. This requires 1 change at Piccadilly Circus and takes us about 25 minutes. Once out of the Warwick Avenue station we then need to walk about a kilometre to the main gates at Lords. The tour went for about an hour and a half and it was fantastic. It also made us realise how much we missed out on with the tour we did last time we were here. Due to a cricket game being played on the day we did the tour we didn’t get to see the Pavilion and long room, the changing rooms or the media centre. I was in my element and I think Tyler was getting visions of his name going up on the honour board for when he makes his first hundred playing for Australia. The only issue we had was when this pompous old fool at the entrance of the museum who thought I’d taken a photo started yelling at me not to take photos inside the museum. It wasn’t even me; it was some Indian dude next to me. Anyway, it was a great tour and I would highly recommend it and our guide was fantastic. When the tour finished we walked back about ½ km where the street was lined with cafe’s to have some lunch. This seemed to be a very rich area with lots of business men and plenty of very expensive cars. It kind of reminded me of Double Bay in Sydney. After lunch we decided to go and check out the Abbey Road crosswalk as it was only a kilometre or so away. The kids were starting to wane a bit by now but they soldered on. The whole crosswalk thing was rubbish but being so close we had to do it. We walk the 1½ km back to the tube and this time we were off to Wimbledon. This takes us about ½ an hour by train and when we get out of the Southfield tube station we are faced with another 1km walk to the front gates. We pay the £70 which seemed a bit steep and we set off with our guide at 3pm. The Wimbledon tour ended up being so much better than we were expecting and was well worth the money. Our guide, a very proper English lady, was fantastic. The highlight was definitely Centre Court. Once that was over we were then faced with the trek back to the train station and the half hour train ride home. The kids had been dragged all around London and were well and truly shagged. We got back to the apartment and had a quick shower and headed straight back out for dinner. Tyler has been begging for us to go back to the Jamie Oliver restaurant we went to the night we arrived so we promised him that tonight we will go. We walk down there and the place is empty, it’s shut. There is a sign on the wall saying Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Union Jacks is closed due to a fire. Bugger, had we missed something? I don’t remember a fire. So we end up having dinner at this trendy joint called Bill’s and it was good. After dinner we head to the ice cream shop for the kids and the coffee shop for me and Kris and into bed. It’s after 9 and we are all buggered. We think it will be a slow day tomorrow.


Footnote: On our tour of Lords there was this dorky guy correctly answering all the obscure cricket questions put to him by the tour guide and Kris nudges me and says “That’s Frank Spencer”. I couldn’t stop laughing!
Check out the photo at the bottom.

Tyler and me at the Home of Cricket

Kris and Mia at Beatles crosswalk

Mia and Tyler at the desk where the tennis stars get interviewed at Wimbledon

Frank Spencer?

Do not buy a MAXROAM sim

Avoid overseas roaming charges they said, get a Maxroam sim and get “Low cost roaming in 200+ countries” they said. So I purchased 2 of these Maxroam sim cards, one for me and one for Kris. I stick the first sim in my phone and arrive in London and try to make a call to the owner of the accommodation where we are staying while I’m sitting on the train from Heathrow....sweet FA. Nothing. I buggerise around with this piece of crap and finally it decides to wake up. I get the call in, all good. The next day....ZIP. Nothing...again. I buggerise around....again. I finally get it to work. I spend about 10 minutes on the net over about an 8 hour period (I would have spent more but it only worked occasionally) and then sweet FA....again. So I email this mob and they say “sorry, you have no remaining credit and you won’t be able to access you sim until you add more credit”. WOW, way to beat those roaming charges, thanks MAZROAM....you bunch of thieving pricks!

By the way, the second sim worked exactly the same as the first sim. One minute she’s sweet. The next minute, ZIPPO!!

So, if you are planning a trip overseas my suggestion would be to maybe try another sim card provider because MAXROAM are crap.

1 star.

London – Day 3

This morning I was up early and I headed out at 6am to get some groceries. The grocery store we normally go to doesn’t open until 7am but there is another one on The Strand down towards the River Thames that opens at 6 so I wander down there. It is another beautiful morning with just a bit of crispness in the air. The store turns out to be a dinky little 7-Eleven style shop so I can only get half the stuff I need. I get home, we have some brekkie and Tyler and I head back out to the other store we normally go to and get the rest of the stuff we need. Funny thing I realised, AECOM’s London office is just over the road. We are off to the London Eye this morning so I convince the family it would be a nice walk rather than use the tube. Everyone’s on board so we start the trek. We walk through the Covent Garden markets, along the Thames and across the bridge to the London Eye. We buy our tickets and go straight into the “London Eye 4D experience” which is a 4D movie of the London Eye and is really cool. After that it is straight to the wheel and no queue means we can jump straight on. Visibility is excellent today, better than last time we were here. We decide to continue walking after we get off and we make our way over Westminster Bridge past Big Ben towards Westminster Abbey, then along St. James Park past the guards watching over 10 Downing St to the Horse Guards parade. We are getting peckish so we continue on into St. James Park to try and find some morning tea. There is this little kiosk selling waffles and cakes so we get some stuff there. One thing we have noticed about London is it’s bloody expensive to buy food. And that’s before the woeful $AUD kicks in. We are not getting anywhere near as much value as our last trip here. It doesn’t help either when the food you buy is crap and the coffee tastes like shit! So we eat the crappy food and tip the coffee out and get cranky that we were slugged the equivalent of 30 AUD for the privilege and continue on. We start heading toward home through Piccadilly Circus and Leister Square and make it home to have some lunch. All up it was a 6km round trip and the kids haven’t whinged or complained once. Good onya kids. After lunch we tube it to London Tower and pay our £60 entrance fee. This is where they guard the crown jewels. I was thinking this was going to be rubbish but Kris really wanted to see it. I said to Kris see could have checked out the family jewels for free! Anyway, it ends up being really interesting and well worth the dough. We feel it’s been a tough day so far and we have developed a thirst. So we get back on the tube and head to one of the pubs near our apartment down towards Leister Square. We have a few drinks overlooking all the people moving about. A couple of hours pass and it’s time for dinner. Tonight we are going to Jamie’s Italian which just happens to be about 50m closer to our apartment. The food at Jamie’s was fantastic and very well priced. The only hiccup was when Tyler and I went to the toilet. There was this little old lady walking in front of us and she opens the door to what we could only assume was the lady’s toilet so we continue on assume the gents must be the next door. When we get there we see a huge letter F on the door. We back up and yep, the little old lady has gone in the gents! The door had a huge M on it so her eyesight must have been really shit. Tyler is laughing his head off on realising the old duck is in the gents. We go in and we do the urinal thing while she must be behind the dunny door. Tyler and I are in stitches so I finish up and bail ASAP and leave Tyler in there with the old bird. He comes out and says “Dad, you should have seen her face when she saw me”. It was pretty funny. We finish dinner and go to the ice-cream shop and get the kids an ice-cream while Kris and I get a coffee and head back to the apartment. Tomorrow we are doing Lords and Wimbledon. Last time we did Lords there was a game on and it was hammering with rain so we weren’t allowed to do half the tour. Hopefully tomorrow’s tour will be better.

Waiting in the Underground

The Sussex pub

 

Jamie's Italian



London – Day 2

This morning Mia has woken up with a sore throat and a bit of a temperature. I also have a bit of a scratchy throat so it looks like the lack of sleep and lack of fruit and veg is catching up with us. We have brekkie at the apartment and the kids watch a few cartoons before we get moving for Camden Market at about 10 o’clock. The underground route is simple, about 9 minutes straight up the Northern Line. We walk to Leister Square station, buy our 7 day Oyster cards for the train and say to the man “how do we get to the Northern Line”? He says “It’s closed; you’ll need to take the bus”.....great! We head back up the stairs to street level and manage to find a bus heading in that direction. It is actually a nice change as we can see a lot more from the second deck of a bus. We arrive at Camden Town and stroll along the street toward Camden lock checking out all the tacky souvenir shops and weirdo clothes shops. There was some awesome shoe shops but a lot of it was all a bit same same. When we get to Camden Lock it’s clear it’s a lot more alive with amazing food stalls selling all types of food from all over the world and the smell is amazing. We talk about just eating our way through to the other side and start with a crepe each. We keep moving through the stalls and all of a sudden Kris says “Paul, Paul, I think I’m gunna vomit”. It was pretty hilarious watching her holding it in while scoping the place for an appropriate spot to unleash. As she is frantically rushing around trying to find a spot she manages to get a lung full of fresh air which aborts the spew. I was worried about her but I must admit I was hanging out to see what her plan was because there were heaps of people around and no real place to chuck a spew. That sort of put a stop to the “eat our way around” thing we were thinking of. So we head back down to the start of Camden Town and decide to spend the arvo at Hyde Park. We bus it back to King’s Cross Station and train it to Hyde Park entrance.  We walk through the park to the lake where there is a restaurant that sells rolls and cakes. We buy some lunch and get charged a king’s ransom and continue walking along the lake until we find a good patch of lawn. After that we wander around the lake and check out the Princess Diana memorial before making our way back to the tube. Hyde Park was beautiful and it was something we didn’t get an opportunity to do last time because the weather was dodgy. Once back at the apartment Kris decides to have a read (that’s code for sleep) and me and the kids go out and wander the streets of Covent Garden checking out the shops. These streets around our apartment are packed on weekends and it has a great atmosphere.  Time for dinner and we are craving some meat and three veg so we decide to check out the many steak houses down the road. We decide on eating at “Steak & Co”. Crap name but awesome food. They serve your steak on a hot stone just shy of how you want it. I ordered medium rare so it arrives on the stone rare. We then have to take the steak off the stone, cut the steak into pieces, put some garlic butter on the hot stone, put the steak back on with some rock salt and wait for it to be cooked to your requirements. When it’s done, whack it back on your plate and dowse it in a red wine jus. I was trying to work out if I have ever in my life had a better steak and I can’t remember a time. If you’re ever in London, eat here, it’s good. Tomorrow we are going to do some genuine touristy stuff. The kids want to do the London Eye again and Kris and I would like to check out the Tower Bridge. Tomorrows forecast, 24 and not a cloud in the sky!

Ummm....don't think so!

What a great idea, you can take a dump
while trying some shoes on....

Camden Lock food

Mmmmm, crepes.

 

**Freak Watch**
And Dad takes out round 2.

London – Day 1

Today we were up and out before 8. It is a magnificent day; the sun is shining, blue skies and it’s not too cold. The weather forecast for the next week appears to be the same if not getting better, you little ripper!!  We headed down to a Patisserie near Leicester Square for breakfast. This is the same patisserie we stumbled across on our first morning of our last holiday. After breakfast we wonder around a bit and find ourselves down at Trafalgar Square. We don’t have any plans at this stage apart from stocking up on groceries, going out for lunch, going to the pub and then going out for dinner.  We head back to the apartment to grab a few things and I realise I have forgotten my battery charger and my battery is dead. There is a camera shop along Oxford Street so we go for a wander and check out the shops while we are there. One thing about Covent Garden, it is very close to most of the main areas of London and everything is either walking distance or a short tube ride. After that, it’s back down to Covent Garden Market area for lunch. Being a Saturday the place is jam packed but we manage to find a spot at a restaurant overlooking the buskers. We order some food, have a few drinks and just ease into what will be our life for the next six weeks. We finish lunch and decide to go find a pub. There are a couple of pubs within 50m of our apartment so we go to the one we didn’t go to last time. It’s only small so a lot of people drink outside on the little cobble stoned street amongst the huge crowds of people walking back and forth. It’s something that just wouldn’t be allowed in Perth but it happens everywhere here. We drink inside because the kids need to sit down but that’s ok because it’s a great spot. We have a few drinks and get told at 6:20, “Ahhh, can you guys drink up because the kids aren’t allowed in the pub after 6”. Fine, time for dinner anyway. We make our way to Rossopomodoro, an Italian joint also about 50m from our apartment but in the other direction. The one thing we are not short of around our apartment is restaurants, pubs and shops. We don’t stay long though; I think yesterday’s long flight and the tough day we have just had is catching up with us. We are home around 8 and call it a day. We have decided we are going to do Camden Markets tomorrow. With tomorrow being Sunday and with beautiful weather forecast I'm sure it is a bad idea, but the lure of seeing freaks, and lots of them, is clouding our judgement.

Kris and Mia at Lunch

 

Tyler and Me at lunch

 

**FREAK WATCH**
Tyler wins round 1 of freak watch, probably not a
great effort but better than any of us could manage.
We are all hoping to hit pay dirt tomorrow!

We're here!

Man that took a lot longer than we remembered but we arrived safely in London and the flight over was pretty uneventful, no vomiting from Mia, it seems Mia never spews when you go prepared. I'm sure she'll spew just at that moment when we've dropped our guard. The only real action came when Tyler decided to challenge me at PONG on the in-flight entertainment system. After wiping him off the court in straight sets (3 zip) and feeling quite content with my performance, I decided to watch a movie while Tyler took to the practice court. He threw down the challenge again a couple of hours later and he soon had me down 2 sets to love, clearly the practice had paid off. In good old Tyler fashion he was giving me a bit of a sledge, saying "Geez Dad, you need to get some practice into ya, it would be good if you could make a game of it". Cheeky little bugger. Needless to say he beat me 3-1. He then took me apart again 3-0 and I lost interest in PONG after that. We got through customs at Heathrow and followed the signs to the London Underground for the final 50 minute journey to the accommodation. We popped out at the Covent Garden tube stop and it is exactly as we remember, bustling with Friday night revellers. We take the short walk to our apartment and we are shagged at this point. In the past 46 hours I had only managed 3 hours sleep and Kris had managed not much more. We get to the apartment, drop our stuff and head out. We may be tired but we are also hungry. We find a little restaurant in the Covent Garden Market area and check out the menu that is displayed outside. It just so happens it’s a Jamie Oliver restaurant called Union Jacks. We order some food have a few drinks before heading back to the apartment. The 46 hours has now turned into 48 hours and it's fair to say we are buggered!

New Blog Features

We have added some new features to the blog for this holiday.

Interactive maps with clickable icons which will direct you to all our accommodations websites.

Photos page (that works this time) which will have updated photos and videos including those taken by Mia and Tyler.

Itinerary: An updated itinerary that also includes clickable web links to view our accommodation.

Contact Us page has been updated and emails can be sent via the funky new form.

Follow by email button so you can submit your email address and whenever we publish a new post the post will be delivered direct to your inbox. Located just to the left under the Griswolds photo.

Feel free to leave a comment at the end of a post and hopefully it should work better than last time.

4 Weeks 'till Take-off

Most of the hard work has been completed now and we are just waiting for August 30 to arrive. All our train journeys are booked and paid for. We managed to get our final train journey booked just around the same time we start hearing news reports of a series of serious train accidents occurring throughout Europe. It is a little unnerving but certainly not off putting. We are now just paying final accommodation payments as they arise (most of the accommodation needs to be paid in full before leaving Australia) and we only have a couple of payments left. We also managed to book the car that will get us around Scotland for the two days starting in Edinburgh and finishing in Glasgow. We went for a little luxury renting a BMW 320d. The photos of the car look good so I hope when we pick it up it's not a pile of shite.
There are few updates to the blog this time around which I will outline in my next post.
Other than that, not much else going on.

8 Weeks To Go

We are starting to feel the excitement build now. With only 8 weeks to go the past couple of months has seen a fair bit of activity happening with respect to the organising of this holiday and with the more activity going on, the more excited we seem to get. We have booked a fair chunk of the train travel with tickets purchased for the London to Edinburgh leg, the London to Paris leg on the Eurostar, the Paris to Brugge leg, the Brugge to Wurzburg leg and the Wurzburg to Salzburg leg. We still have the train rides to Switzerland and through Italy to go as well as the Glasgow to London leg. This leg is proving tougher than most. The London to Edinburgh leg cost us a total of £78 and that's for a 6 1/2 hour train ride. The Glasgow to London journey is virtually identical and the cheapest we can currently find this for is £229. So I'm holding off for the moment in the hope it will reduce in price but this means logging on to the dozen or so websites everyday and trudging through the various ticket booking systems. But for what effectively amounts to a AU$250 additional charge, I'm happy to do it. Again this trip, when booking the train travel I have relied heavily on the man in seat 61 and this is my start point before doing anything. I log on to www.seat61.com prior to planning my journey and use the information and links available to get me to the best sites to purchase tickets. Without the information this man has available on his website, it would be almost impossible to organise so many train journeys over so many destinations and countries. There is just too much research required to be able to organise the train travel we need to get the extremely cheap prices without this website. If you ever want to travel by train, anywhere, visiting the seat61 website is a must. In addition to purchasing train tickets, we also bought a new suitcase but this is no ordinary suitcase. On our last trip through Europe, we bought 2 of these "Osprey Sojourn" bags. These are quite large bags that have wheels but double as a backpack. They weren't cheap, about $400 a pop but these are quality bags. They are as rugged as buggery and we gave them a fair flogging during our last European holiday and they stood up to the rigours. So we decided to buy another one but a smaller slightly different version. This is the sister pack with the same features but it has more pockets and it has a smaller removable back pack. I know it doesn't sound exciting but when you you see this thing, it is!! This will be the bag that the kids get to pull around. The next few weeks will be spent sending emails to confirm our accommodation bookings and paying the balance on a few of them as well as completing the train ticket purchases. Hopefully we don't get any unexpected return emails like the one we received from our little friend Kathy a couple of months ago....

"Mia models the suitcase"

"Mia modelling again"