St Anton, Austria

So I'm going to back track a little bit to before Christmas. St Anton was our Christmas destination of choice because after a direct flight from London to Innsbruck it's an easy one hour drive for Thomas and Hannah (Brendan and Jodie's kids). However, after 3 hour delays (on the ground at Gatwick and circling over Austria) we finally landed at Innsbruck for an easy hour's drive. The kids were great and we finally made it to our chalet where our chalet girls (see Christmas day entry for details) had dinner and drinks ready for us. This is Chris and I relaxing while dinner is prepared.


We had great weather while we were there. There was heaps of snow with a light sprinkling of fresh snow most nights. This is a picture looking back over St Anton village.


Nick on a chair over at Rendl.


After doing too much of this....


I decided I would try skiing again. My skiing days pre-date parabolic skis and thought it would be fun to try them again. It was like riding a bike - you don't forget how to ski and I didn't break any bones. Whew. However, after a couple of runs I was very sure I made the right decision to snowboard over the last 14 years.

The other thing we did was to go sledding in the empty fields near by the chalet. The first couple of days were a bit icy but some fresh snow on Christmas eve made it more viable.

This is Thomas with Chris and Brendan:


This is me on my first toboggan experience... it was great fun.


We left Austria this morning and came back to London to be faced with protests outside the Israeli embassy (I might've mentioned before that we live right near it). A blockade of police refused us entry from one end of our street so with police helicopters hovering and riot police arriving we walked around the corner to the other end of our street where Nick successfully negotiated our way into our apartment block. Fortunately, it's all dissapated now and from TV reports it was not a violent protest.

Anyway, I've got next week off and Mark and Wendy are arriving tomorrow for a last minute holiday. More updates soon!

Christmas day 2008

Nick and I are spending this Christmas in St Anton, Austria with our friends Chris, Brendan and Jodie, Thomas and Hannah. Having done a couple of days snowboarding we had the day off today and hung out in the chalet. When you rent chalets in Austria they come with 'chalet girls' who cook breakfast and dinner for you as well as clean up... we could really get used to this ;-) So, our Christmas day started with a breakfast of salmon, scrambled eggs and champagne. Followed by present opening and afternoon naps (for the adults as well as the kids). The most energetic thing we have done all day was the toboggan challenge in the field near the chalet (I'll post more photos when I'm back in London). Now we're just waiting for our turkey for Christmas dinner. It's a hard life.

Merry Christmas!

Northern road trip

The first stop on our road trip up north was at Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. This is my mum and dad outside the front door of the cottage where Shakespeare lived.


In the backyard:


Next stop was a small town called Widnes, between Liverpool and Chester, where my mum was born. It was great to visit and see the actual house where my mum was born (she hadn't been back for around 40 years).


We'd planned to stay overnight in Liverpool but as Liverpool FC were playing a home game it was impossible to get any accommodation. So instead we stayed over the Mersey in Wirrell in a castle called Leasowe parts of which were buil around 1592. We didn't spend much time in Liverpool but we went to the Slave Museum (recording slave trade over the seventeen and eighteen hundreds - very interesting) and did a lap on the cheesy tourist bus circle so we could see all the main sights in one go. This is outside the Cavern Club where The Beatles played 275 times:


Then, a short skip up the motorway and we were in the Lake District. We based ourselves in Windermere and spent around three days in this beautiful area where there is so much to do. This is my mum and dad a walk we did around the Aira Force waterfall:


My mum at Dove Cottage in Grasmere where William Wordsworth lived:


Then heading over the Penines we made our way east to see Hadrian's Wall. It's hard to imagine that this wall, which was built by the Roman Empire, and other ruins from the Empire remain from as long ago as AD122. The wall was built

This is the wall:

and these are some of the ruins of the buildings where the Roman army lived as they protected the empire from the 'northern barbarians' ie. the ancient Scottish tribes:


Even further east, we stopped at Alnwick to see the castle and Alnwick Gardens. The formal gardens were created in the last 15 years around an amazing fountain. They were pretty expensive to get into so if you are not that into gardens (a bit like me!) it's not really worth it. I did, however, really like the castle. It's the second largest inhabited castle in England, open during the summer and occupied by the Duke or Northumberland. The castle itself is very grand and the collection of art and antiques is quite amazing.

Just behind me, when I took this photo of my mum and dad, is where Harry Potter and his classmates learned to ride their broomsticks - Harry Potter and many other movies and series have been filmed here (Blackadder, Elizabeth etc)


Our last stop in England before Edinburgh was Bamburgh Castle, another castle built by the Normans. While we were too late in the day to go inside and have a look, I really wanted to see the castle from the beach. It's quite spectacular:


We spent three days in Edinburgh and for October it was really cold and so, so windy. I couldn't believe how windy it was. Anyway, I was pretty slack at taking photos by this stage but we did see some great stuff - the Edinburgh castle, Holyrood Palace (which I really liked), the Royal Mile and we also did one of the underground tours to see the now covered places that people used to live at the turn of the last century.

This is a picture of the ruins of the abbey at the back of the royal palace.


After three days we flew back to London which was also starting to get colder but not quite like windy Edinburgh!

Bordeaux

With my mum and dad visiting us in London, we decided to go to Bordeaux together for a long weekend. The first day was freezing but after that we had glorious autumn weather. The first day we had lunch in St Emillion and went on a winery tour and tasting (Franc Mayne).

Views over Saint-Emilion:


On Saturday we drove to Arcachon and went to Dune de Pylas which is the largest sand dune in Europe. It's beach on one side and forest on the other... I had never seen a sand dune this big before:


The next day we visited Sauternes which is a small and very picturesque town. We had a great lunch at a little restaurant and after having a lovely bottle of the local produce went to the tasting 'co-op' for more samples and purchases. This is a typical building in the town:


Back in Bordeaux we spent some time walking around the town and looking at the sights. This is a photo of the buildings by the river - the whole street is full of this beautiful architecture.

Sunny Stockholm (mostly!)

My friend Kate holidaying in Europe at the moment and earlier in the year we planned a city break to Stockholm for the weekend. We left on Thursday night through Heathrow's new terminal 5, which gets the thumbs up from me (even if I only took hand luggage!), stopping at Gordon Ramsay's 'Plane Food' restaurant for a pre-flight cocktail.

Friday morning, after an organic brekky in our hotel (which claims to be the smallest in Stockholm) we made our way to Gamla Stan. It's the oldest part of the city, built around 1252, and has gorgeous architecture and small laneways full of shops and cafes. The royal palace is in this part of town so of course we stopped in to see the royal apartments, portraits of the royal family and the crown jewels.

Kate and a palace guard:


A cobbled laneway in Gamla Stan:


After a fantastic lunch in 'new Stockholm' we boarded a boat for the 'Under the bridges' tour of Stockholm. The tour was a great way to see a lot of the city which is spread out over 14 islands and connected by about 40 bridges. I didn't realise that Stockholm was like this and while it adds to the charm of the city, I'm sure winter would be absolutely freezing.

Ostermalm from the boat:


Overlooking Ostermalm from the palace driveway:


Saturday saw us fitting in a hard day of shopping so we decided we should continue our sight-seeing with a visit to the original Absolut Ice Bar. Two key things we didn't realise, 1- you really need to book, 2- when you do go in, it's only for 45 minutes so they can keep the crowds moving through. Patrons are given heavy weight ponchos with gloves attached and taken into the Ice Bar where you drink vodka coctails out of glasses made of ice.... brrrr.... it's -5 degrees.


And while they kicked us out of the Ice Bar just as we were getting into our vodka cocktails, overall, we found Stockholm to be an easy place to visit and get around with really friendly people, great food and things to do.

Reykjavik, Iceland

For the second Bank Holiday in August we decided to visit Iceland. It's somewhere that we wouldn't normally visit from Australia but as we are so close in the UK it seemed like a good place to go. Iceland has a population of around 330,000 people, and even though 80% live in Reykjavik, it's very uncrowded and also feels really clean and safe.

I was really keen to see the Puffin birds that nest on an island off the coast of Reykjavik but quickly found out that they leave on or around the 20th of August - about 2 days earlier - and, being the prompt birds that they apparently are, were gone when we were there. We did, however, go on a whale watching tour where we saw quite a few minke whales despite the lack of photographic evidence.

Yes, this is Iceland at the end of summer:


On Sunday, we did a fantastic day tour outside of Reykjavik which includes the popular trip around the 'golden circle' and a visit to a glacier for a spot of snow mobiling. We had an early pick up from our hotel in a massive 4WD and taken straight to a national park. What I didn't realise was that the Iceland is one of two places (the other, I think, is Kenya but don't quote me on that) where tectonic plates are visible from land. You can stand right next to the North American plate which rises jaggedly from the earth.

The monster truck:


North American tectonic plate:


Standing on the flat bit (that's the technical term) between the North American plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate, which is also where the first ever democratic parliament in the world (yes, take note America) met:


Eurasian plate - the black line in the side of the hill:


Next stop, a waterfall that is apparently 3m higher than the Niagra falls. Not having been to Niagra, I don't know how they compare, but these falls were spectacular, noisy and you can get very close to them.



One of the highlights was the trip to the glacier. This is where the monster truck comes into it's own as it basically makes its way over rocks which don't even vaguely resemble a road and onto the glacier itself. Then we all jumped onto snow mobiles and after being lectured over the dangers of not following the guide in front or you could slip into a crevass and never be seen again, we ventured several kilometers onto the ice. I imagine in winter it would be even more spectacular and probably a bit less bumpy but it was great fun.

Nick in the CHiPs-on-ice production:


This picture is of me on the skidoo at the halfway point and I'm in front of a wierd black cone which is actually a massive cone of ice. It formed after one of the volcanic erruptions years ago - a layer of volcanic ash covers it prevents the sun from melting the ice. It's rock hard and there are lots of them dotted all over the glacier, although this one is the biggest we saw.


The final stopping place was to see the geysers (and no, not the English sort) - the one in the photo below errupts every 15 minutes. It's around 100 degrees celsius and reaches about 30m high. It was quite mesmerising.


We finished off the day with Nick's favourite meal at Iceland Fish & Chips - an organic fish and chip restaurant. According to the expert, this rates as one of the best he's had!


On Monday, we stopped at the Blue Lagoon for a couple of hours on our way back to the airport. It's a geothermal lagoon, between the tectonic plates and surrounded by lava from 1226. The temperature of the water gets up to 40 degrees celsius and some parts of the water are exceptionally hot. After applying the silca face mask in the Lagoon and about half an hour mooching around I felt really relaxed.

Gay Paris #2

I had the opportunity to crash Tess and Oscar's big city tour 2008 by joining them for a weekend in Paris. We had some great meals, lots of laughs and of course, lots of shopping to be had.

Quiet drinks in Tess's Paris abode...


Tess and Oscar at Le Grand Colbert...


Just another day shopping...


A beautiful ceramics and homewares store on Rue Saint Honore...

Where have the last six weeks gone?

Well, the last six weeks have just flown by and have included Crowded House in Gloucestershire, a week in Tuscany, 02 wireless festival, a week Tour de France-ing and Brendan's birthday at the Kylie concert. Here are a few of the highlights!

Crowded House - summer concert in the forest. You can see we didn't come to the UK for the weather.

Tuscany (end of June). View from our villa.

The Palio - a crazy ancient horse race in the middle of Siena where over two race days 17 towns compete against each other. Cobblestones, bareback riding, medieval costumes and over 35 degrees. It doesn't matter if the rider falls off, it just matters that the horse finishes - it's quite mad.

02 wireless festival - on our return from Tuscany we were greeted by more summer rain but had a good time in Hyde Park watching Powderfinger, Ben Harper and Counting Crows.


Me & Ben

Street art

We finally got down to the tunnel at Waterloo station that was transformed in May by Banksy and about 25 other street artists from all over the world. The work is amazing. Here are a few highlights...