Bits and Pieces from here there and everywhere!

May & June 2009

Right, yes, I know I'm slack and haven't written anything in over 6 weeks, but now that I have fulfilled my lifelong ambition of becoming a lady of leisure, I have the time to spend writing to you, my devoted fans!

Anyway this will just be a big mash up of all the bits and pieces that we've done over the past few weeks. It's nothing overly exciting, its just really a catch up for all those people who aren't living in the 21st century and signed themselves up to facebook yet.

So here's a very brief rundown:
Jo and Jordan arrived into London on the Monday of our May half term break, so Dan and I booked us into a hostel for 4 nights. It was great catching up on all the goss back home over a few brews. We set off and did some London things together; The Eye, The London Dungeons, A Thames river cruise etc etc. But the highlight of the week goes to when we went to visit the infamous Abbey Road crossing. We sort of just stumbled across it, and probably would've walked straight past it, if it wasn't for some guys racing into the middle of the road taking photos of each other amongst the traffic. We had our fun and took some snaps. We were only within 2 blocks of Lords Cricket ground, so we took a stroll around the block and checked out the famous game, couldn't get in, but Dan was happy peering through the fence. It was time for me to navigate us back to the tube station. Of course I stuffed up and ended up back at Abbey Rd. However this time, we found 6 people carrying a car above their heads across the famous pedestrian crossing. We stayed and laughed and took photos and discovered that they were filming a commercial for BP. Was a very random thing to see, but it easily made our day!

During the week, my laptop decided to be a b**** and die. After some googling on Jordan's computer we found Mac specialists in London and trekked over there to see what the problem was. Turns out it needed a new harddrive, and I ended up spending twice as much as I initially paid for the laptop in the first place to replace it. Not to mention that we sat in the office of this dodgy place for about 3 hours while they fixed it. We did have to return the next day to see what they could salvage from the old harddrive. It was a very stressful time because, unreliable Possum had not put in any effort to backup any photos from our trip this far!!! Arghh! Luckily the nerdy guys were able to salvage all 3000+ photos, with the exception of one photo from Dover! Nice work. We immediately went out and bought a 16GB usb stick, and now keep 2 backups; 1 on the iPod, and 1 on the USB.

Dan and I had a weekend in London and visited the Natural History Museum. It was great to see Mum again, and her friends Stegosaurus, T-Rex, and Triceratops!!! We also went and caught up with Jess Craggs from Shepparton and her boyfriend Gareth who have been living in London. We went and walked through the Camden markets, another lovely weekend!

Jo came and visited us for a few days whilst Jordan headed to Belgium to another music festival the weekend before ours. It was then that the tragedy struck… My beloved MJ died. I have to admit I was concerned that the tickets we had for his show wasn't until January, and that by then he would've had enough and packed up. I was very sad that morning, so we decided to have a Michael party that night, and play his music, drink cider, and play cards. Was well fun. I have organised a full refund on the tickets, although we did have the option of not getting refund and actually receiving the tickets; I chose to get the £180 back.

We thought we'd better show Joey the sights of Essex. A day trip up to Colchester was Saturdays plan, England's oldest recorded Roman settlement. We saw the castle, and the main street and then spent an hour and a half relaxing under the English sun in the lovely Castle gardens. There was a food and drink festival also in the gardens but none of us could be bothered walking down to check it out! We were going to visit the zoo, but didn't think we'd have enough time to catch our buses/trains home again.

The following day we headed off down to Southend for the day. Hannah and Belinda came along because it was one of their ambitions to brave Essex's unofficial 'capital' before leaving in a few weeks time. And boy, Southend did not let us down. The weather was warm, which meant girls wore basically nothing, and all the blokes took their shirts off. We wandered through the shops then eventually down the 'beach'. We had a great 'view' of an older lady who thought it was appropriate to sunbake with a short skirt with nothing on underneath. I wanted to look away, but for some reason I just couldn't. I still have nightmares about it now. I haven't seen such a crowded beach before. The weather would have been lucky to reaching the high 20's, and it was glum and overcast, but the Essex population was crammed on the beach. And it's not even a beach, it's the Thames, before it reaches the ocean. Its murky brown water, you wouldn't catch me getting in it, it would be like swimming in the Yarra. Yuk.

We said goodbye to Jo and headed back to work for part of the week. I was finishing up on the Tuesday and boy was I looking forward to it. I had a lovely final day, the headteacher said a farewell to me in the staff briefing and she wished me luck for my travels and heading back to …. - She had no idea where I came from! The staff also gave me some candles?!?! At lunch, the Maths department gave me a MASSIVE box of chocolates and said a nice farewell to me. So at 3pm I packed up my belongings (A dice, 90p, a keyring, a pencil and some paysheets) and headed out the door!! The end of the Appleton Chapter of my life!

From here it was off to Belgium for a week to meet up with Jo, Jordan, Matt, Jodie for a some fun at Rock Werchter (This deserves its own blog entry: it will be written later in the week).

At the moment I'm frantically planning the rest of our 10 week trip which we set out for next week. England, Scotland, Ireland is booked, but our 4 weeks in Italy is not. Did I mention that I booked all our Ireland accommodation and flights to Italy for the wrong month? That was fun, but glad I realised before we were in Ireland without a bed to sleep in!

Best be off, another night reading travel guides and researching on the internet awaits me.

Arrivederci

xoxo

I thought Id just add our itinery for the next 2 months so you can all become envious of us!

JULY
20 - 21 Nottingham, England
22 - 24 Manchester, England
25 - 27 Liverpool, England
28 - 29 Blackpool, England
30 - 1 York, England

AUGUST
2 Edinburgh, Scotland
3 - 7 Scottish Highlands tour
7 - 9 Edinburgh, Scotland
10 - 13 Dublin, Ireland
14 - 16 Galway, Ireland
17 - 19 Killarney, Ireland
20 - 22 Cork, Ireland
23 - 24 Kilkenny, Ireland
25 Late flight Dublin - London Stansted. Overnight in London
26 - 28 Venice, Italy
29 - 31 Verona, Italy

SEPTEMBER
1 - 2 Bologna, Italy
3 - 5 Florence, Italy
6 Pisa, Italy
7 - 8 Siena, Italy
9 - 10 Assisi, Italy
11 - 16 Rome, Italy
17 - 20 Sorrento, Italy
21 Overnight Ferry to Sicily
22 - 23 Taormina (Sicily), Italy
24 - 26 Palermo (Sicily), Italy
27 Return to London