As it says... welcome. We will be updating this web log as we go.

We left Auckland around 5.30pm following my obligatory beer in the "Kiwi Bar" at the departure lounge. First stop 3 hours later was Brisbane where we had half an hour for a leg stretching in the transit lounge before getting back on the plane and onward to Singapore. 7 hours and then another half hour leg stretch in Singapore and then another 7 hour flight to Dubai. Half an hour in Dubai (enough time to walk from the arrival bit to the departure bit) and we were on another plane bound for another 7 hours to Birmingham. If there was ever a long haul airline to use it would have to be Emirates.Instead of the little weenie screen in the back of the seat that Qantas and Air Pacific provide there were nice big touch screens... plenty of movies and games to choose from. Even more thrilling (for me) was the multiplayer trivia game. Anyone on the plane can play in rounds of 20 questions at a time with your rank displayed with your seat number. Dubai to Birmingham it got even better. On demand movies... yes... on demand! Dozens to choose from... pick one and it starts immediately and you can even pause it when you get up for a walk. The food was brilliant and frequent. Because of being on so many flights we ended up with back-to-back dinners and breakfasts... I think I may weight a little more now :-). Birmingham airport isn't the most impressive structure as far as airports go, and it was grey and drizzly when we arrived... but we were pretty glad to see it. We had prepared ourselves with vast amounts of documentary evidence about our incomes etc in preparation for getting through immigration and we were all psyched up for a long queue. We were mistaken. The British and European passport queue had a few people in it, but there were no more than ten people in the "other" queue. The immigration officer asked if we knew about the conditions of a working holiday and after we said "yes" stamped our passports and waved us through. "That can't be it" I thought... but it was. Next was customs. Being good bio-threat-aware Kiwis we had a bag of all the food we had with us (some peanuts in bags and things - nothing too dangerous) at the ready for declaration and were looking around for the x-ray machines and MAF-equivalent officers. Instead we found an unattended desk in a completely empty corridor. The desk had a sign on it saying that if we had anything to declare we needed to ring the bell on the desk and a customs officer would come and see us! No sniffer dogs... no x-rays... no one. We wandered through the doors at the end of the corridor where a lone security officer was reading a paper behind her desk... she didn't even look up when we went past... and there we were... officially in England."

Lichfield is a very lovely place. This morning we walked to Gareth's work on a winding route leading past Erasmus Darwin's House and the famous Cathedral (massive and beautiful). We then walked through a holly-lined lane and around Stowe Pool, passing plenty of attractive water fowl and some foul-mouthed Grange Hill kids along the way. During the day town gets really busy with lots of lunchers in the pubs, including our hotel, the George. It is right in the middle of town and is an historic 18th century coaching inn. We've been enjoying the endearingly creaky floor lumps and little cooing pigeon friends out the window. I've joined the library here, which was nice and easy, and gives me one hour of free computer and internet access a day. All the better to blog with. Off to meet Gareth for lunch at the Pig and Truffle. "

People here drive fast... very fast. If we had roads this narrow in Auckland, everyone would be creeping around at 20 km/h. Instead, crossing the road in the town centre is a terrifying prospect: people fly through roundabouts at 60 or 70 km/h (yes through - they're those little flat "roundabouts" with no island). I went for a drive with a workmate yesterday and I was astonished to see that they don't have merge lanes onto the big highways where people cheerfully fly along at 125 km/h. You just pull up to a regular little give-way at the end of a country lane and wait for a gap before accelerating as fast as possible to avoid being mowed down by a gigantic truck driven by a determined Frenchman. I haven't tried driving around in our little blue Renault yet, as work is so close to the hotel, but tomorrow is the weekend so it should be interesting. I've finally found something cheaper here than in NZ. My favourite English ale Boddingtons is 2.45 for a 4 pack at the local Kwiksave- around NZ$6.30... bargain! The Kwiksave is like a mysterious time warp though. Think a 3 Guys in 1980s NZ: narrow aisles, vinyl packing benches and understocked shelves... oh and of course as with every shop here, you need to wait for the shop assistants to finish their conversation about who was doing what at the weekend before they'll pay any attention to you :-)."

We went for our first drive out of Lichfield on Saturday in the little blue Renault. I have to say I'm pretty glad about having a small car around these crazy little lanes. The transition (or lack thereof) from town to countryside is pretty bizarre. One minute you're travelling along a cobbled street in between rows of houses and the next minute you're in amongst open fields of rape-seed (canola), onions and asparagus. We stopped off at an old farm to buy a punnet of strawberries. We visited the Roman ruins at Wall - a village where the Romans built a big hotel and bath house complex. We were entertained by hand-sets giving a dramatised narrative (Bodica: "we will be freeeeeeeeeee!!!!") of the events that took place there. Following Wall, it was off to the Lichfield Saturday market for a bit of lunch: fresh sourdough and chillis stuffed with feta from the deli stall... mmmm. Ab had some tasty Indian savouries. At 1pm we went around to a workmate's place to watch the anti-climactic FA Cup final. Good BBQ and plenty of beer though."

On Sunday morning we had a little walkabout Lichfield, drawn toward the Cathedral by the wonderful bells. We had further water-fowl experiences, running into cute families of ducks, geese and coots - although, we were wary of the coots, having been psychologically scarred by the bit in BBC 'Life of Birds' where the mother coot pecked her excess babies to death (all part of nature eh). I'll be popping out to Minster Pool regularly to feed the coot family, to ensure that none of the babies become too much for the mother to care for this season. For Titanic fans, we found a statue of the captain. Then we headed out to explore the surrounding towns (possible living places). In Burton-on-trent we discovered the world origin of Marmite - yes it was invented here as a saleable use for a yeast by-product of their other specialty, beer. Apparently around once a month when the wind blows just right, the whole place smells all marmitey and lovely. So contrary to various people's worries before we left, Marmite is readily available here (although it is a strange consistency - Americans would be more inclined to have an unfortunate experience mistaking it for caramel sauce, rather then chocolate spread like usual). We visited the Beer brewing museum here and had a pleasant taster in the bar as well. In the afternoon we went to Tutbury Castle (ruins). This was rather pleasant and offered a great view of the surrounding area and historic town below. We also saw a troop of re-enactors dressed in medieval costume, sword-fighting and practicing archery. By the looks of the tourism leaflets, these intriguing re-enactment sessions are a rather common occurrence around this place (England). We joined English Heritage on the weekend, so between that and our reciprocal Historic Places Trust agreement with the NZ Historic Place Society, we should be visiting a lot more castles, roman sites and the like in the future. Now Gareth is back at work, and I'm preparing for our trip to Prague, Czech Republic ...."

After a bad start (a brutish dwarven woman pushed in front of us in the customs queue), we arrived in central Prague and immediately went exploring in the Jewish Quarter and Old Town centre. Our hotel was very close to the Old-New Synagogue and the Old Jewish Graveyard. We had a peep into the graveyard (everything has an associated charge) and saw that it is an amazing place enclosed by muli-storey buildings and roofed by tall trees. The groundspace off the paths is completely filled with gravestones, stacked up against each other, as the local community weren't allowed to bury dead outside the small space for hundreds of years. Later I went to the Museum of Decorative Arts (also amazing) while Gareth was working, and got a great view and photos of the cemetery out of the handily placed toilet window. When we got to the Old Town Square we found that it was as magnificent as all friends, family and guide books had said. We had a similar experience to Suzie and Doug - seeing a massive crowd mysteriously gathering and staring up towards the sky. They were waiting for the elaborate astronomical clock to strike 5 o'clock. Luckily we were also prepared for the slightly underwhelming experience of seeing some little doors open and various indistinguishable apostles quickly shuffle past in the dark clock interior. Kiwiplan's user group meeting began that night with drinks on the roof of the hotel, and dinner at a local restaurant. I knew that strict vegetarianism was going to be difficult in Europe, and the set menu of traditional czech food (meat, meat dumplings, saurkraut and meat) made it near impossible. It was all pretty tasty, but rather stodgy and the mystery meat had disconcerting white cubes in it, that I later found out were lard. They deliberately lard the food. I was pleased to see that one of the favourite street foods there is a slab of cheese crumbed and deep fried and them put between two buns like a burger - mmmmm - that and/or sausages of all descriptions. For the next two days I entertained myself during the day (easy in Prague), while Gareth worked at the user group meeting - a sort of conference about the software made by Kiwiplan, his employer. Gareth did several presentations at the meeting, which sound like they went well. At night, all the user group atendees and partners would go out to dinner together, so we also had the great Czech cultural experience of going with a group to a 500 year old beer hall - U Fleků. At the weekend we got down to some serious Prague tourism, walking over the Charles Bridge and up to Prague Castle. The castle has beautiful gardens, and encompasses a stunning cathedral, where we got to look down in the crypt, as well as going up the bell tower. This had 279 steps going up a dark cramped spiral staircase, with crowds of sweaty people traveling slowly in both directions. This was made extra nasty by the 34 degrees celsius temperatures that Prague was giving us that weekend. The view at the top was well worth the preceeding claustrophobia though, looking out over the red roofs and along the river. Walking through the town was all rather incredible to us as New Zealanders - everywhere we turned there was some architectural work of art being used as a shed or a toilet or something. The buildings were all beautiful and historical, every one tagged on some wall or another. All in all it was a great trip - fantastic destination and first look at continental Europe."

We arrived back late on Sunday at night to find that the carprk behind the hotel had, disconcertingly, been transformed into a carnival fairground. As it turns out, Monday Bank Holiday (today, as I write) is Bower time in Lichfield. I still don't really know what 'Bower' means, except that Morris dancers waving tree branches turn up for a parade, and pack of filthy carnies move into town. The street population of Lichfield has swollen to levels greater than a new year's eve in Whangamata. It's not all bad though - only 50% are yobs, the other half being made up of friendly families with Nemo balloons, and police controlling the yobs. There was also some kind of party in the park with a dog competition, an Elvis impersonator and horses doing tricks. "

We made our first trip into the Birmingham city centre on Saturday. The residents of Birmingham (Brummies) are infamous for their accent, here's a dictionary. To get there we also had our first train ride... very nice... quiet (except for the young guy on his cellphone who was calling all his friends one-by-one to talk about what they did last night and to let them know it was Rick's birthday) and smooth - out through the country side and then into the outer suburbs. We also saw a couple of blocks of community gardens - veges and flowers - all being tended by the locals. The city centre has recently been redeveloped and is dominated by "The Bullring" - a monstrous mall. The mall is on a number of levels and features big versions of pretty much the same shops as you'd find at St Lukes in Auckland... except they have two of some of them. We tried to find a "balti" for lunch (Birmingham is famous for them - curries in flat-bottomed works) only to find that you can only get baltis if you walk 2 miles out of the centre to the "Balti Triangle". Maybe next time. We spent an hour or so at the museum/art gallery - it's very big, so we only saw part of it - good stuff though, we'll also have to head back there. "

On Sunday my NZ ex-pat workmate Ian Redfearn and his NZ ex-pat wife Michelle (from Opotiki, no less) took us for a drive out to Shugborough Estate - the ancestral home of Lord Lichfield. Lord Lichfield still lives at the house - in the bit that isn't open to the public and in the grand old tradition of primogeniture it will pass to his oldest son on his death. The house is set amongst huge gardens (formal and informal), which we spent a while wandering around. A canal runs down one side of the gardens and although we've seen narrow-boats from the road before, we hadn't had a good look at them. The narrow-boats are a mixture of boats that people live in, hired boats (no licence required) and tours. They travel the canal system, passing through locks whenever the water level changes. The house itself has roped-off rooms for viewing, with a spectacular drawing room, dining room etc. Lots of crazily valuable antiques, stag's heads and dark paintings. The estate also contains a "working" farm. People run the animals and the dairy in "the old way". They make cheese and butter by hand and the farm hosts rare heritage breeds of farm animals. They also have a completely restored water-wheel driven flour mill. After four hours of walking and standing we were getting hungry, so we headed off to "The Horse and Jockey" - an old-school pub - for a Sunday roast and a couple of pints. Mmmm roast."

The shire to the west of where we are (Staffordshire) that meets the border of Wales is called Shropshire. We decided to spend the day exploring the big highlights around Shropshire. Having been to the Czech Republic and had my scale of what is fast/reckless driving completely altered, I'm pretty comfy around the UK drivers now. They do go fast, but as long as you stay in the left lane they're polite (although they never indicate). Anyway... I even find driving here fun now :-). The first place we visited in Shropshire is known as Iron Bridge Gorge. It is a beautiful gorge that the river Severn flows through.. it's also the birthplace of the industrial revolution. It's most famous resident invented a cheap way (using coke - the fossil fuel kind) to smelt iron, opening the way for mass production of iron. There was also a lot of coal and clay in the area (and water) and with the river for transport it became a big manufacturing centre: iron, pottery etc. The first iron bridge in the world was built to aid with crossing the river. The village around the gorge is really quaint - a nice place to live if you didn't mind a bit of a commute to the nearest town. The pic below shows the bridge and then the view from it. There's a bunch of museums and industrial remnants scattered around the gorge. We popped into one little museum and had a look at some old smelting furnaces. At the other end of the gorge to the bridge is what's known as the "Tar Tunnel". The tunnel was supposed to be an underground transport canal, but as they were digging it they found a seam of natural bitumen. The tunnel goes 300 metres into the hill and is lined with brick arches. They took up to 1000 gallons of bitumen a week when it was first opened, but the bitumen is a trickle now. You can don a hard hat and wander down the (cold) tunnel and see tar pools and seeping bitumen. I also had my first run-in with stinging nettles. I'd always assumed they were like thistles or Onehunga weed - a bit sharp and scratchy - but they sting! It took a couple of hours for the swelling on my arm to go down :-|. After a few house in the gorge, we drove on towards Wales. Our next stop was Wroxeter Roman City. The site is the remnants of a major Roman centre and has one of the largest wall remnants in Britain (the remains of a bathhouse - a bit bigger than the ruins we visited in Wall near Lichfield). We took the obligatory audio tour (we like to make the most of our 62 pounds English Heritage membership) and had a good look around. Pretty cold and windy place for those poor old Romans. The funny thing about these sites is that they're stuck smack bang in the middle of the country side - there's nothing but paddocks and sheep and cows around. The next stop was impromptu - we happened to drive past Attingham Park so in we went. It's a stately home on a huge estate (complete with deer park). Amazing interiors: chandeliers, Georgian furniture, Italian-style ornamental ceilings at huge heights etc... just the usual English thing :-). There were a lot of cars there, but the place is so huge we didn't really see that many people inside. Below is my first crack at making a panorama - nice isn't it? :-). It was getting towards 5 p.m. so we headed for our last stop before turning back - Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury is famous for its Tudor architecture. It also has a pretty impressive Benedictine abbey. We wandered into the abbey and found ourselves surrounded by a bunch of intermediate school aged girls and their parents - we picked up a program from a seat and discovered that we'd stumbled upon the preparations for a concert that evening. This meant there was no one at the door to take our "donation" - excellent! It's possible to get through a fair bit of money popping into these places. Real tudor architecture lots nothing like the fake tudor stuff we get in NZ - it tends to be a lot saggier/leaning for a start. It's quite amazing that these places are actually still standing! ...and so we finished in Shropshire... a big day for Ab, Gareth and the little blue Renault."

Renting in the UK is rather different to renting in New Zealand. As anyone who has rented a flat in Auckland in the last few years knows, in New Zealand you ring up on a Saturday morning having seen a Herald ad, pop in for a viewing that afternoon along with any other interested people, put your name down if you like it and then wait and see if you get offered it. It's basically possible to move into a vacant flat 24 hours after seeing it. Ah... but not so here. First you ring up and make an appointment... these are rather special affairs that generally aren't available until a couple of days after you call. You meet the letting agent at the property and view it alone. If you are interested you can offer to take it on the spot. However - first you need to cough up 60 quid for a reference check, or if you are a couple 72 quid for a double-reference-check. The check takes at least 3 working days (if there are no problems). If you check out OK then you make another appointment - again these are at least 2 days along from when your reference check finished - to go and sign the paperwork. So basically, it takes at least 10 days from seeing an ad for a property to the point where you can move into it! Crazy!! So the end result of this is that we lived in the George Hotel for an entire month, the last 10 days of which we spent waiting for appointments and reference checks so that we could move into a vacant flat. So now we live in Branston, home of the famous Branston Pickle and basically a suburb of Burton-on-Trent - the birthplace of Marmite and home of Bass beer. It's a nice quick 15 minute drive to work. We've got a nice little 1st floor one-bedroom flat in a block of four. It's fully furnished, so we only needed to buy a couple of pillows, a jug and an iron (plus a pot and pan, glasses, plates etc). "

This weekend we experienced all the highs and lows that life has to offer. On one hand we saw some beautiful places and caught up with old friends, and on the other all of our appliances simultaneously stopped working. It began on Friday, when I was at home waiting happily for the arrival of Suzie and Doug. I embarked on some simple housework and before I knew it, the kitchen was full of water. I didn't need to worry about dying though, as everything electrical in the house had stopped working. I resisted the urge to call the Staffordshire emergency services and rang Gareth instead. Between us we figured out the the clothes washing machine was spewing water that was running around the back of the dish washing machine, which now can't be turned on without shorting the house's electricity. So much for our great new furnished flat - I'm back at the launderette this week. Further torment hit the next day in the form of our new (old) £20 tv that doesn't work. Oh the horrors. However, I guess none of that really compares to Suzie and Doug's day. Leaving Bath in the morning, they had just hit Cadbury World in south Birmingham, when they realised that Suzie's cell phone was still back at the B & B in Bath. So they spent the beginning of the weekend heat wave driving up and down the heart of England. At about 8 in the evening, they arrived at our place, equipped with a pair of lovely deck chairs to sleep on. We had a nice catchup and meal of Thai takeaways together that I hope kind-of made up for all our days' trials and tribulations. It certainly did for me."

This weekend we went on a few trips around the countryside. Up in Derbyshire we visited Kedleston Hall a lovely neo-classical mansion. This place had beautiful gardens as well. Later we went to the Denby factory, only of interest to people who love their wedding dinner set too much. We bought a couple of coffee mug seconds here and may have to go back for more delightful Denby, depending on how much it'll cost to ship things back to NZ. On Sunday we went to Witley Court an interesting comparison to Keddleston Hall, 'cause it was the same sort of style, but all in ruins as it burnt down in the 1930s when a fire started in the servants' quarters. The garden was also lovely and had a great big fountain. The fountain has regular "firings" where the pressure steadily builds up until the middle spout shoots 120 feet into the air. All very haunting. We went to the market town of Ludlow for lunch and got to paddle down in the river, which was really nice in the heat (30+). Ludlow is an interesting place - the town is completely walled and still has a lot of its original medieval narrow streets and "magpie" tudor buildings (the ones that look like they're falling down). To finish the day we went to the RAF museum. Gareth was finally in aeroplane heaven. "

Day 1 We booked a nice early flight, so we were awake at 4.30 a.m. on Thursday and heading for Birmingham airport at 5. We took a Lufthansa flight (bad sandwiches... you wouldn't want to be too hungry) via Munich with a short stopover. The weather was beautiful and flight from Munich to Barcelona was spectacular - passing along the Swiss Alps, over Lake Geneva and across the Mediterranean. Lots of little towns and lakes tucked into valleys in the huge snowy mountains. We arrived at Barcelona airport and were faced with the first (of many) challenge - which terminal to collect our baggage from. I vaguely remembered seeing a "B" on a screen as we came of the plane, so we headed for "B". We found our bags and - passports at the ready - we went through some doors and uh-oh... we're standing in the main terminal building... where was passport control? As nice as it was to just be able to bowl on in, I was a bit concerned about how we were going to leave the country without entry stamps so I asked an information desk person ("hola - hello - help?"). She shrugged her shoulders and said "don't worry about it". I rang a workmate and he said he'd see if he could find a non UK person to ask. In the meantime we found another information desk person and they were able to clarify that because we'd come via an EU country, we only needed stamping in the first country (Germany). Phew... except that they didn't stamp my passport in Germany, just Abby's. I suppressed my visions of being detained and searched on our exit on Sunday and following some walking from one end of the terminal to the other end a number of times (trying to understand the bizarre map in order to find the ATM and the train) we finally got ourselves a wad of Euros and found the train station. We took the metro from the train station, popped up into the street and checked into our hotel (not bad for the money... thanks Expedia). The metro in Barcelona is great... 6 euros for 10 trips (with any transfers as necessary), mighty fast, open from 5 a.m. 7 days a week and really frequent. Ab had a plan for the afternoon, so we jumped back on the metro and headed for one of the biggies - the Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's mighty cathedral. The cathedral is astonishing... we've seen a few big old cathedrals now, but this is just something else - still under construction and very modernist. We climbed (well ok there was a lift most of the way) one of the giant spires and got amazing views out across the city, and we visited the museum filled with Gaudi artefacts. After a few hours of photo taking and wandering, we got back on the metro and headed for town. Las Ramblas is the huge boulevard that runs right through the middle of town. It has sections of stalls (animals, then flowers, then other stuff), lots of buskers and al fresco bars. We wandered down and stopped off so that I could drink a giant (and overpriced... but that's what you get in the middle of town) beer. We'd worked up a bit of an appetite so we meandered throught the narrow streets until we got to one of the many squares and sat down at a tapas restaurant. To our great surprise mid-way through dinner, some local looking people starting letting off fire crackers in the square. I use the term fire crackers loosely... it implies some sort of harmless little fizzers - these were more like bombs. I hate to think what the amputation-by-firework statistics are like in Spain, but these things are just insane! We were wondering how on earth the restaurant staff put up with it night-after-night and so I asked the waitress: apparently this was not a nightly occurence, but was all in aid of a "fiesta" tomorrow. There was no mention of a fiesta in our guide book, but we assumed she was right. After dinner we headed back to the hotel and were entertained by enormous explosions all through the night and wee hours. Day 2 Next morning, when we woke up and wandered down to the metro we were surprised to find that the entrance was closed - even though it was 9.30 in the morning. Fortunately a friendly passerby saw our confusion and motioned to a second entrance to the station over the road and around the corner... this was open. We headed into town and found that pretty much half of everything was closed. It turns out we'd managed to arrive on a Catalonian holiday - the feast of St John and St Joan - celebrated with fireworks and parades (more on that later). We found a little coffee and croissant place and had breakfast. Next stop was the main cathedral in Barcelona. It resembled St Vitus in Prague in lots of ways - a big Gothic building with a mixture of artwork inside from renaissance fresco to crazily elaborate gilt baroque altars. It had very nice cloisters. The cloisters are built around a pond with fountains in an airy courtyard filled with palm trees and a flock of white geese. It's quite a strange sight to see palm trees and a gothic spire at the same time. Back at Las Ramblas we saw some large saints who nearly bowled Abby over. They and their accompanying parade or torch carriers were all part of the Saint John/Joan fire festival. Next it was on to see the Palau de la Musica Catalana - the Palace of Catalan Music. It is choral hall built in modernist style. We want on a guided tour of it. It is absolutely incredible. It doesn't look much from the outside - pretty but not breathtaking - but inside it is just amazing. The main concert hall is really elaborately decorated. There's a huge leadlight skylight, mosaics on everything, intricate wooden carvings, cement sculptures, wood sculptures... you name it. Not a surface is left without decoration. The decoration is all nature-themed: flower and leaf pattern etc. Definitely a highlight of our time in the city. Back to the metro, and we went for a ride up to some famous modernist buildings in the Eixample precinct - a bit more Gaudi included. We popped into the information centre and found out which bus we needed to get to Parc Guell - an attempt by Gaudi to build a whole village in the mordernist style. They only built part of it before the money ran out... but it's quite a sight. The entire park is built in terraces, with rock sculptures and elaborate mosaics and yet more views across the city. The day was getting really hot... right up into the 30s... and our feet were getting pretty sore... but there's always more to do. So, a walk down the hill to the metro, and then the fenicular train up to Monjuic - the site of the olympic stadium and the "magic" fountain. Montjuic offers the best views of the city... huge panoramas, and we wandered through gardens looking at these until we found Poble Espanol. Poble Espanol is a village made up of replica buildings that demonstrate the evolution of Spanish architecture ("see all of Spain without leaving Barcelona!"). We dutifully did the rounds and looked at all of them - being festival day a lot of the shops and restaurants were closed, but it was an impressive place. Once we'd seen everything in the Poble, we walked down the hill and around to the Magic Fountain. The fountain plays music and shoots water really high in all sorts of patterns. The "performances" take place at dusk and into the night and the water is lit from below in different colours. The colours and the patterns are all coordinated with the music, so the whole thing is a bit like a dance performed by water. The fountain is huge and there was a huge crowd gathered around to watch. We were treated to dances accompanied by music from Titanic, ET and Star Wars. Great stuff. After a *very* long day we headed back to the hotel. Day 3 We headed into town for breakfast at Mercat de La Boqueria - the indoor market. The market is huge and all food. We bought some bread and some pastries, and then sat down at a little espresso bar where I had a coffee (naturally) and Ab had a chocolata (basically warm chocolate sauce and cream). Now festival day was over, the Museum of the City of Barcelona was open, so in we went. The museum (and the rest of the old town) is built over the ruins of the Roman city of Barci that was there before Barcelona. The whole site has been excavated, so down some stairs we went and found ourselves wandering through the old town centre. You basically walk along a metal board walk through the ruins and signs point out what each of the building used to be for.. there's the ruins of a laundry, a winery and some shops. A lot of the walls, sewers and drains are intact, so it was great to see - crazy stuff. They also had cases filled with some of the artefacts found during the excavation... pottery, jewellery etc. The museum also had a Don Quixote exhibition on - great multimedia displays, old printings of the book etc... and an exhibition on the demolition of the old city walls and subsequent growth of the city - this was only in Spanish and Catalan, so we didn't learn much :-). We headed back to the hotel for a break and then stopped in for lunch at sandwich place nearby. It is quite striking how many less English speaking staff there are at shops, restaurants etc in Barcelona than there were in Prague. I had an interesting "conversation" with the waitress at the sandwich place during which all she was trying to tell me was that the sandwiches would be arriving soon. I've now worked out the bare essentials of a travel vocabulary that should be worked out before arriving anywhere: hello, thank you, menu, bill, beer, sandwich. The ancient art of pointing and menus and gesturing seems to work pretty well too though. Just to complicate things in Barcelona, the first language is Catalan, rather than Spanish. I decided we couldn't really leave without seeing a Mediterranean beach, so we metroed along to the former Olympic Village where the big beaches are. Wow. A bit different to Ohope or Whananaki. Absolutely packed and the guide book was right: topless sunbathing (or topless walking around) is the rule rather than the exception. Ab and I looked a little over-dressed in our shorts, shirts and hats. And Home We flew back through Munich... this time getting great views of the towns along the Mediterranean coast. My worries about my unstamped passport proved to be unfounded - the passport guy at Munich was much more interested in freaking out the young Americans in front of us than reading all my stamps. We had 5 hours at Munich airport, so I felt obliged to eat a large schnitzel accompanied by potato salad and a big helping of wheat beer. Barcelona... highly recommended :-)."

Out for dinner at a streetside cafe on our last night in Barcelona, an egg came flying at us out of the sky - some of it hit my handbag. I can only assume that it was thrown by an agressive local resident, and was meant for the accordion playing busker/beggar that was 'performing' for us. NB the first egging was at whangamata, new years eve 2004."

Gareth had to go on an overnight work trip to Scunthorpe (South Yorkshire), so I took advantage of the fact that my friend Miranda was visiting her sister Vanssa in London for the week, and went there to see them both. I took a lovely Virgin train that that was there in less than 2 hours. Miranda met me at the station, and we immediately dropped off my luggage at Vanessa's work and went sight-seeing around the Thames. This is a great area for seeing famous and familiar sights like Big Ben and the London eye. We also did a whirwind tour with Buckingham palace, Trafalgar Square and Oxford street, with a bit of the Harrods sale in between times. I was feeling a bit cheap, so we didn't go in many places, but we did see a great Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Tate modern, and had some nice dinners with Vanessa and friends at the local pub and a Japanese noodle place called Wagamama (also has a branch in Auckland, worth going to). All in all, it was a brief and enjoyable trip. I was out of there about a week before the recent bombings. Gareth returned from Scunthorpe on Thursday night, and we were reunited."

On the Saturday before we left for Swizterland we went on a local expedition, looking for some of Gareth's ancestors who came from Milton and Repton, two close by small towns. We wandered into the church graveyard at Repton, hoping to see a few relatives and were greeted by gravestone upon gravestone with names from Gareth's family history. There was even a WW1 memorial stone with people who must've been distant cousins on there. In the after noon we went to a place called Calke Abbey. This stately home was interesting, as the National Trust had left it pretty much in the same state of disrepair that they'd found it in. There was room after room crowded with items like broken chairs and stags' heads. The previous owner was one of those 19th century people who liked to collect a dead example of everything in the tree of life, so there were incredible galleries of dioramas on different themes: birds of prey, their prey (bunnies), waterfowl, goats, weasels, stoats and ferrets, as well as drawers of thousands of sorted shells, fossils, minerals, rocks, crystals etc. The house was set in lovely grounds with walled gardens where they grew flowers and veges. Pretty interesting place for a picnic. We came home and watch Live 8, which was pretty cool (still horribley disappointed that Britney Spears' pregnancy prevented her from performing, oh well I can eat those eggs for dinner)."

Manchester Airport Our tour of European boxing plants began in earnest last week, as we headed off to Switzerland, Germany and Austria. We left via Manchester airport on Sunday night. I won't say much about this airport, except to reveal that the only passable food outlet beyond customs is a Burger King, and when you get to the front of their long winding line, you find a hand printed sign telling you that, despite the large illuminated menus, and the obvious franchise rules: We are only salling WHOPPERS and dabble Whoppers No spicy bean burgers. Disappointing to be sure. Switzerland We flew into Basel, Switzerland - this is quite an odd airport as it borders Germany, France and Switzerland and has customs and exits for both France and Switzerland. This place's main claim to fame is that it is where LSD was first synthesised and discovered (as possibly evidenced by the decorations in Swiss hotels as shown in the pictures below). Because we left early the next morning, all we really saw of Basel was our hotel room, and the large Spalentor Gate (just outside the hotel). The next three days (Mon, Tue and Wed), Gareth was hard at work at the plant, so I spent the time looking around various local towns. Olten was a nice town on the blue river, where I was able to wander through the old town market, with its covered wooden bridge. When the rain started pouring down, I familiarised myself with the local mall and it's benches. When Gareth finished work, we had dinner with his German work mate Murat, at a Swiss pub restaurant, wall-papered with guns. The outside of this pub was much more attractive (see picture below): I had decided, rather foolishly, to try to have a good time without changing any currency to Swiss francs, surviving on less than a dollar a day, (except for all the restaurant dinners and hotels). Oensingen offered plenty of opportunities for good clean cheap Swiss fun with its mountain castle backdrop. There were lots of forest paths and lookouts for me to explore, with only my trusty book of sudoku puzzles for company. That evening we had dinner out with the customers, who took us up the same mountains I'd been wandering during the day, for fondue. This was good Swiss to as the restaurant had a beautiful view, and was surrounded by cows with clonging bells. The huge bubbling pot of cheese was served by Heidi (now grown up). On Wednesday, I went to Solothurn, another town on the river. This had a beautiful old town, with another market. I wanted to go on a boat ride along the river, but unfortunately the weather was too dodgy. I saw a lot of interesting wrought iron signs and coloured window shutters and visited the art gallery. Gareth and Murat picked me up for the drive north to Walldorf, to visit the office of Kiwiplan Germany. We had our first experience of the German autobahns ... more in the next post ..."

Thursday and Friday 200 km/h up the Autobahn through the Black Forest for a few hours and Murat dropped us at our hotel - the Holiday Inn in Walldorf. Driving through Germany (or Switzerland for that matter), it's very green. There's a surprising amount of horticulture - not many sheep or cattle but a whole lot of wheat, corn and asparagus (they must really love asparagus in Germany - I've never seen so much). The fir trees and pines make the forests a silvery green colour - very different to NZ or England. Walldorf is a small town a few miles from Heidelberg. Heidelberg is a major tourist destination in Germany - but Walldorf is not :-). The hotel was in a very odd setting. I don't know whether the motorway or the hotel came first, but basically the hotel is on an island in a motorway sea. I don't know how the zoning laws work in Germany, but they think nothing of putting factories in the middle of wheat fields - and likewise hotels. It was surrounded by wheat and asparagus fields and then completely ringed by motorways. Interesting. The only access to the town from the hotel was via a walk through a couple of wheat and asparagus fields and then over a foot/cycle bridge spanning the Autobahn. Thursday and Friday I worked at Kiwiplan's German office - a rented office in a sort of office-hotel (like an office but with a mini-bar and reception) in one of the buildings in the SAP complex. SAP is one of the largest software companies in the world and the complex occupies a dozen blocks and houses around 20 thousand workers - and naturally it is in the middle of a wheat field. Ab went out exploring a bit during the day, but the weather wasn't too good. My workmate Jens took Murat and Ab and I to a restaurant in Wiesloch (literal translation: "paddock hole") for lunch on the Thursday. The restaurant was below the street level in a windowless basement. As we walked in we were somewhat surprised to see a perspex window in the floor - clearly visible through the window was an open coffin containing a shackled skeleton. We asked my workmates what the story behind it was - but they didn't seem to know. Just German restaurant decor I guess. On Thursday night Murat took us to dinner in Speyer - another popular tourist town not far from Walldorf. We had a look around the enormous cathedral. Speyer's cathedral is very different to the other cathedrals we've seen so far - no intricate gilt baroque carving, just massive sandstone vaulting and huge empty spaces. We had dinner at a traditional German Brauhaus (brewery) - big pints of bock all round and I had the house special: sausage, sauerkraut, liver dumpling and brown bread. I was a bit dubious about having to eat dumplings all the time in Central Europe - but I didn't need to worry... they are delicious. Everyone should eat dumplings! On Friday Ab visited Heidelberg for the first time in the afternoon. She went to see the Prinzhorn collection - an exhibition of art by psychiatric patients. We had a few drinks in the hotel bar and then dinner in the hotel restaurant - pasta buffet... mmmmmmmm. Saturday Saturday... and after what seemed like a *really* long week of work I was finally free for a bit of tourist fun. We took the bus into Heidelberg and disembarked in the Bismarckplatz - one of the main squares. After a rainy week the weather had cleared and it was a really beautiful, warm sunny day. We wandered down the Hauptstrasse (main street) along with big (and growing) crowds and stopped off at "Cafe Moro" for a very tasty espresso. Heidelberg's old town is sizeable as far as old towns go and there are plenty of impressive buildings to look at. Heidelberg is most famous for its schloss (castle) and the castle's red sandstone buildings form an imposing backdrop on the town. We watched a bride arrive for a wedding at the Jesuit church and popped in for a look at the Church of the Holy Spirit where an avant garde percussion ensemble were rehearsing. Before we headed up to the castle we had a feuerwurst and bratwurst from a stand at the market - yum. We took the fenicular train up to the castle and toured around the features. The castle is an interesting collection of different periods of architecture surrounded by huge and beautiful gardens. It's right up on the mountain behind the town and gives spectacular views back down to the old town and the river that runs through Heidelberg - the Neckar. We had a look around the Museum of Pharmacy housed in one of the buildings and had a leisurely wander through the castle gardens - lots of lawns, trees and fountains. The steep hills around the castle have lots of fairytale-like mansions nestled into the forest. We walked down from the castle and across the weir and locks across the river. We watched a few big boats go through the locks and went for a stroll along the river bank. The mansions along the river are huge and impressive - Steffi Graff lives in one of them. We crossed back into the town over the old stone bridge and found a group of men setting up big PVC tubes and fireworks (while drinking beer all the while). We didn't know anything about upcoming fireworks so we scoured the guidebooks for any mention of special occasions. We discovered that we had happened upon a thrice-yearly festival known as the "Illumination of the Castle". People flock in from all over Germany and beyond to see the 10.15 pm on-the-dot event. We decided we'd occupy ourselves until then so we could join in the fun. We went to the restaurant at the central museum and whiled away a few hours with pilse, schnitzel etc. At 10 we joined the big crowd on a second bridge to watch the show. At 10.15 the casle was lit up with bright red lights and then 20 minutes of fireworks were let off on the old bridge - good stuff. We headed back to the bus station and discovered that everyone who had been watching the fireworks also wanted to take the bus back to Walldorf. Following a sardine-can like bus ride and a walk back across the motorways and though the wheat fields we finally arrived home after midnight pretty tired after a big day. Sunday We got on the bus again on Sunday and headed back to Heidelberg. After another espresso at Cafe Moro we went down to the Neckar for a ride on the solar powered boat. The boat is basically a big raft with a roof covered completely in solar-electric panels. We got some nice views and were treated to incredibly loud synthesiser versions of popular classics just to create that extra-special romantic Heidelberg atmosphere :-|. We had lunch at a market restaurant where I was given a radler when I ordered a pilse. Euck. I don't know if anyone reading has had the misfortune of drinking raspberry flavoured beer before (Monteiths make one) but the waitress wouldn't believe me when I wanted to swap it. So I was brave and drank it anyway. We spent an hour or so at the Museum of the Palatanine - lots of art, a good Roman relics collection - but it's always a quick museum tour when nothing is in English. I'd built up my basic restaurant (eine bier bitte) and corrugated cardboard (breite, gewicht, wellpappe) vocabulary at this point - but it's not much good when you're trying to understand a long rant on the Roman history of Heidelberg :-). We had a bit of a souvenir shop at the amazing Kathe Wolfharte shop. It's one of four Kathe Wolfharte shops in Germany and it's Christmas all year around. The whole place is laiden with incredible hand made and hand made and hand painted Christmas decorations - a bit pricier than the ones at The Warehouse (anywhere from 7 euros for a little wooden santa to many thousands of euros for a whopping nutcracker solider) but really beautiful. 10 minutes in there and you're wondering if you should start a collection. Christmas tours are big business in Germany - we see ads all the time for "Getaway Breaks" to the Christmas markets (nothing but Christmas ornaments and food for sale) in December. After a very busy weekend we packed our bags ready for the taxi/train/drive to Austria the next morning. "

On Monday we drove to Austria for a very brief visit. Gareth dropped me off at the guest house where I stayed all day, trapped by the rain. The view from the guest house was rather lovely, as it was quite high in the moutains and they were all misted up by the clouds. In the evening we went out for a dinner with the clients. They wanted to take us further up into the mountains on a lift/gondolier but unfortunately the lift was closed. We ended up in a nice restaurant in town that served us traditional food. I had cheese soup (very nice) followed by German/Austrian pasta (unexpectedly, with more cheese). Of course we had apple strudel for dessert. On our way home from dinner, we got a call from the cardboard corrugating plant, to say the the software had stopped interfacing with the corrugater. This was a bit of an emergency, as the corrugater is a massive machine, about 250 metres long, and the centre of the plant. When we got there a red alarm light was flashing away above in the control booth as the corrugater was about to shut down. These usually run 24 hours a day, so every minute lost is client money down the drain. Needless to say it was a stressful moment for Gareth, who doesn't usually work in on-site support, or on that particular part of the software. In the end however, common sense won out, as he deternined that the corrugater wasn't plugged in properly, and saved the day. As an additional bonus, I now know how cardboard boxes are made. :-) The next morning I got to do some mountain forest walking in the lanes and paths around the guest house. I found out later that I could easily have walked over the border to have a quick look at Liechtenstein, but at the time I had no idea what was around, or where I was going really. In the afternoon we drove across the length of Switzerland back to Basel airport and flew home."

On Friday night we trekked up to Manchester for an Aimee Mann concert with Ian and Michelle (our fellow Kiwis in Lichfield). They have been living in Lichfield for the past 3 or 4 years, Ian working for Kiwiplan, but they are planning to leave before the end of the year for Ian to transfer to the Kiwiplan U.S. office in Cincinatti - guaranteed a white Christmas. Aimee Mann is probably best known for the Magnolia sound track - she's an American singer/songwriter. The concert was really good, at a comfortable university venue with nice cheap drinks. We got stuck in heavy traffic on the way up the M6 to Manchester and had no time to get dinner before the gig, so after a number of beers and Smirnoffs on empty stomachs it was emergency Subways as soon as the concert finished. Our hotel was at the Trafford Centre - an incredible mall complex just outside Manchester. This has quite striking architecture with big domes on the top that glow blue at night (think sort of tropical, indian colonial palace type look). Inside, the food court is designed to seem like the deck of a cruise ship (?!) with side streets on various themes, like Bourbon St, New Orleans and pan-East-Asia. The lifts were set in a wall made to look like the inside of an Egyptian tomb. Throughout the mall there were fantastic foutains that would occasionally spit water up into the domes. As you can tell I was quite stunned at this palatial shopping heaven. I managed to pick up a good cheap copy of the latest Harry Potter Book, which I've now read - very good return to form. We ate our breakfast at the mega mall and set off on a bus tour of Manchester. This was much as you'd expect: quite industrial and grey, but there were some nice buildings and monuments around the place. Unfortunately the Granada Studios Coronation Street tour has closed, but we did manage to catch a glimpse of the set from on top of the double-decker bus. We stopped off at the Museum of Science and Technology and learnt all about cotton and Manchester's sewerage system (it features a "fully reconstructed Victorian sewer complete with sights and smells"). That night we had to get home in time for a very important event in Lichfield's Beacon Park: the cooking of the biggest chicken Tikka Masala curry ever made - the 10 tonne tikka. This curry was just one part of the celebrations in the park for the end of the Lichfield festival. When we got there the crowds had not made much of a dent in the 10 tonnes. It was probably a bit scary for them, as it was lacking the primary ingredients of chicken and cream. I enjoyed most of a big bowlful, being partial to curry vege soup myself. Having had our appetites whetted, we popped in to a curry house for a big dinner, before popping back out to the park to see a massive fireworks display. These were rather amazing as we were able to get quite close to the source, so that they filled the sky above us. It was a fitting end to a good day - Ian's birthday and Ian & Michelle's 3rd wedding anniversary."

On Sunday, after a slow morning at home, we went on a visit to Warwick Castle - one of the big attractions around here. This was far more commercial that the other English Castles we have visited - it is owned by Madame Tussard's rather than the National Trust or English Heritage. There were lots of associated entertainments with varying degrees of cheesiness and educational value: jousting, ghost tours, a trebuchet, birds of prey, historic waxworks, archery and an exhibition about dungeons and torture. The ghosts and torture chambers were the most popular attractions and we didn't see either due to the crowds and costs involved. I am told by Mum that some one was killed there with a red hot poker up the bottom, but I wasn't deperate to see the actual room where this took place :-). The trebuchet was pretty cool: this is a huge medieval catapult seige weapon that will be particularly familiar to "Age of Empires" fans. We got to see one of the twice daily "firings" - it takes half an hour and six guys to load it up - pretty effective at throwing massive shots. The castle itself was one of the largest and most complete that we've been to, and it was fun exploring around the ramparts and portcullis gate house. "

Last week we went on a road trip up north to see Yorkshire and Scotland. We discovered that you would probably need more than several weeks each to see these places properly, but we did our best. As York is only about 2 1/2 hours drive from Branston we got there in time to spend the afternoon sightseeing. We started the day with a tour on one of the open-top double-decker buses that any good tourist town has. After a good glance at everything from the bus it was walking time. York has wonderful city walls that you can climb up onto at the bars (Northern words: a bar is a gate and a gate is a street). You can then walk around the city with a great view. At one of the bars we found a great little Richard III museum, where I bought a souvenir pack of cards with pictures of British kings and queens on them. We descended the wall at the Black Swan pub where we stopped in for a couple of pints. Next it was a walk up the Shambles. This is York's most extreme cobbled street with overhanging tudor houses. The shops were all touristy things and Gareth's favourite: sweeties. Refreshed with peanut brittle and liquorice flavoured fudge (as horrible as it sounds, but Gareth liked it :o)) we headed off to York Minster. This was a rather large and beautiful cathedral with amazing stained glass. Under the current (built 1200-1400s) Minster there are visible remains of earlier buildings including a Norman church and Roman barracks. We had been recommended this by Suzie and Doug and the Lonely Planet and were glad we went down for a look. We finished off the day with local fare (steak and kidney pie for Gareth) at "Mertons Too" - the downmarket version of a local upmarket restaurant."

We wanted to see the North Sea, so the next morning we headed out to the North Yorkshire Coast - first stop Scarborough - the icy winds and dramatic waves crashing on the rocks had us huddling in our fleecey coats and marvelling at the British summer. Scarborough was an astounding combination of attractive architecture, streets and fishing boats contrasted with huge gambling parlours (including bingo) and donkey rides on the beach. Above it all on the headland was the Scarborough Castle ruins. We stopped into the Richard III tea house for breakfast. Richard III is a big royal celeb around here, as he usually lived in Yorkshire and was apparently quite a good king despite the infanticide. After breakfast we flashed our English Heritage cards, got our audio tour handsets and spent an hour wandering around the wind-swept castle, which offered great views over the town and beach. After that we stopped by at Anne Bronte's grave in a church yard just down from the castle. We left Scarborough entertained and intrigued by our first English sea-side resort experience, though, as we were to discover later, this was not at all the most extreme example. Up the coast, there was Robin Hood's Bay - a cute little town around a main street, twisting and turning its way down to the rocky seashore. Further around we came to Whitby - an amazing town famous for many things including Dracula, the ruined 199 steps above it, jet, Captain Cook, and fine fish and chips. We started at the ruined Whitby Abbey which like the castle at Scarborough was in a clifftop setting, looking down on the town and out to sea. After a quick exploration through Whitby's crowded medieval streets, we discovered that the jet jewellery was very nice, but way too expensive for us, and settled for some tasty fish & chips. After lunch we headed inland. Despite my dislike of "Wuthering Heights" I've always wanted to try running around on the Moors. Before long we found a suitable location and jumped out for a frolic among the blooming heather ...to the entertainment of the local gnarly old sheep. Nearby was Goathland: one of the stops on the North Yorkshire Moors steam train route, also known as the Hogsmeade Station from the first Harry Potter movie. We hung about eating icecream and watched the Hogwarts express pull in and drop off a bunch of fellow tourists. On our way back to York we looked at Rievlaux - another beautiful Abbey ruin set down in a secluded valley. "

On the Friday of our northern trip we went to Middleham Castle - a fantastic ruin in the middle of a village. This castle was owned by Warwick the Kingmaker (of Warwick Castle jousting horses re-enactment fame) and later by Yorkshire's favourite Richard III. It was a rather atmospheric place shaped sort of like a cube, but cut away like the castles in those great kids' books about medieval life. There was a set of stairs going up to a viewing platform at the top, so we popped up there for a great view of the surrounding coutryside and workers on the farm just below. On our way out I bought a set of National Gallery portrait fridge magnets with every British Monarch since 1066, as I can not get enough of those royals (particularly the dead ones). We drove on into the Yorkshire Dales and stopped at some nice falls in Wesleydale. At the associated tea rooms (there's always tea rooms) I got to try some of the delicious local cheese with my tomato soup. On our way south through the Dales we saw all the lovely typical Yorkshire scnery: grey stone buildings and walls running over rolling green hills with craggy cliffs in the background. This is James Herriot of "All Creature Graeat and Small" country. Next we went to Brimham Rocks: a set of 320 million year old rock formations that were great for scrambling around on. They would have been a great place to stop for a picnic if we weren't already late for our next appointment on our mega Yorkshire sight-seeing expedition... Fountains Abbey was another abbey ruin that was different again to the last couple we'd visited, in that it was absolutely massive and set in the grand surroundings of the Studley Royal landscaped gardens. Many of the stately homes had fake ruins built to look romantic in the formal gardens, but the owner of Studley Royal just went on better and bought the Abbey remains. After looking at some of these absoluately beatuiful abbey settings, Gareth has decided that he would defininitely have been a monk in the middle ages - I have to keep reminding him about the wife (or lack there of) problem :-). That night was a Friday and our last evening in York, so we decicded to check out the night life. After a bistro dinner we went into a crowded cocktail bar called "The Evil Eye", but immediately had to leave as Gareth was feeling aged alongside all the fresh backpackers around. We headed next door to the Starre Inn - one of the oldest pubs in York and had a relaxed beer surrounded by gnarly locals."

We started Saturday with another bad Burger King experience and then moved promptly on to Durham. Durham Castle and Cathedral are set in the loop of a river so there is a natural moat on 3 sides. The Cathedral itself was rather beautiful, but we only got to see one small part of the inside because someone was getting married (the cheek of it - and on a Saturday - ruining our tourist fun :-)). We took a walk down by the river and then carried on to Newcastle to see the Angel of the North/Gateshead Flasher. The sculpture was very impressive, but it turned out to be a long side trip, as you have to view it from the same motorway that everyone was using to get into Newcastle for Tall Ships Race. We had heard about a wall that the Roman emperor Hadrian had built all the way across the top of England to separate the barbarians from the civilised folk, so we went looking for it. As things turned out, the wall remnants accessible by car were dwarfed by the remains of the forts and ubiquitous Roman bath houses, so we had a good look at some of those (and a little bit of wall). We had fun zooming north through Northumberland National Park, as it was full of clear straight roads over rolling hills. As we flew over the blind summits in little blue the whole effect was a bit like a big rollercoaster. When we arrived in Edinburgh I still hadn't been able to make contact with Suzie (due to an extra 0 I had inserted into her number on my phone) so we headed directly into the centre of the old town and up to the castle. The best sunny clear weather of the whole trip was turned on and we had a great time looking around and checking out the view."

After we figured out the phone problem we contacted Suzie and Doug who lived very close to town. Doug was having a goodbye night with his football team so Suzie, Gareth and I went out on the town for drinks and dinner and a bit of a walking tour. The local pub was holding a bizarre gambling event where people watched video taped horse races and bet money on the outcome. We had a great night out seeing the town and observing British fashion - pink rara skirts, skunk hairdos and of couse hen parties full of matching women. The next day we had brunch with Suzie and Doug and spent the day doing more general touring about Edinburgh. As often seems the case when you retun to places you visited long ago, the city seemed a lot smaller to me than it was in 1995. However, this time I did spend less time wandering, awed in the malls of womens' clothing stores. We jumped on one of our favourite open-topped buses for the tour with commentary. We went to the Museum of Childhood where they had great exhibitions of toys, some of which you were allowed to play with. They also had some old style fair attraction things, where you put in 10p and a little diorama is lit up and comes to life showing some naff scene. One of the dioramas showed that old ledgnd where a barber slits his customer's throat and then the body drops through a shoot for use in Mrs Miggin's mince pie shop downstairs. We visited St Giles Cathedral and an excavation of a "lost wynd" - a tiny lane between shops than had been built over a hundred years or so earlier. We also bought some Scottish fudge - better than York's liquorish flavour, but not nearly as nice as Gareth's home made - my love has a great talent for fudge production as well as consumption. :-) Suzie and Doug sold their car in a dodgy car park auction, which was combined with a car boot sale that helped me refine my understanding of a new British word for me: "tat". The car sold for an acceptable amount, which was convenient for Suzie and Doug who were trying to liquidate their possessions before leaving Edinburgh for a Europe expedition. Gareth and I were the lucky recipients of a selection of Scottish maps and guide books - most helpful in the next few days. In the evening we had a Scottish cultural experience with haggis, neeps and taties plus a few vege sausages, all in front of some fine telly. It was rather lovely of Suzie and Doug to host us in their last days in Edinburgh especially as they both had lingering coughs. I think they need to move south to warmer climes to improve their weakened constitutions. Quarter of a year in Continental Europe followed by an Antipodean summer should do nicely :-). "

The next morning we had a quick breakfast with Suzie and then headed North over the Forth Road Bridge. On our way to St Andrew's Gareth kept spotting an interesting (even more than usual) aeroplane ahead of us. To me it looked like a normal small passenger jet, but with a particularly bulbous bit on the top. This bulb contained a radar, so the plane was a military one. Thus, Gareth had to track it to its base nearby and hunt for more. Despite my trepidation about potential airport boredom (I've spent a lot of time in airports this year) I was glad when we arrived at the RAF Leuchers Air Base as things rapidly got more exciting than a plane with a lump on it. A kindly Australian photographer told us that some Typhoon fighter jets would soon be coming in. When they did, there were five of them flying in formation, which was pretty cool to see, especially when they pulled up in quick succession to change direction. Then the formation looped around five times, each time losing one plane that would come in to land. From our vantage point just behind the fence in line with the runway, a couple of hundred metres from the threshhold we had a fantastic view of the action as the planes came in low above us. After that excitement, golfing at St Andrews seemed rather sedate: especially as we don't play golf. We passed through St Andrews and a seaside village called Crail and stopped at "Scotland's Secret Bunker". Above ground this is a small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, but 30 metres below ground it is a series of dormitories and operations rooms. It was going to be used as a bomb shelter and command centre for Scottish leaders in the event of a nuclear war, but with the end of the cold war has now been turned into a museum (original equipment and creepy mannequins everywhere). They have theaterettes showing various videos including "The War Game" - a sort of mockumentary/news report about nuclear bombs falling in Britain. It was made in the 60s but it wasn't actually played on TV until well later because it is so disturbing. If any of you Aucklanders share our obsession with the Cold War you can now borrow it from Videon :-). "

Stirling and Perth In the afternoon we drove back East and headed to Stirling. Stirling sits on the River Forth with Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument on Abbey Craig towering over it. We went straight to the castle and joined a guided tour. The castle is an interesting collection of buildings from different periods and in different states of restoration and great views over the town out to the monument. Historic Scotland are building replicas of the original tapesteries by hand and they have a tapestry studio at the castle - we watched one of the weavers working on a tapestry. Once we'd finished at the castle we drove over to the Wallace Monument and since it was getting late drove straight on to Perth. Being super-organised people, when we arrived in Perth we realised that we didn't have the address for the B&B that we'd booked into. The guide book said that most of the accomodation was in the main approaches to the city, so we tried our luck on one of them but didn't see it, so we went on to the information centre. It was closed. Then we had the brainwave to see if the actual B&B was listed in another of our guide books... fortunately it was and we managed to find it. It was getting late and we were a bit peckish so we walked into the city centre to find a restaurant. Perth is a really nice looking place... a glassy river with yet another big old impressive bridge over it. We found an Italian restaurant and I had a huge pizza and Ab a huge pasta. The Lochs Next morning we had a great breakfast at the B&B cooked up by the cheerful B&B proprietors, making sure of course to pack ourselves stupid so that we wouldn't need lunch. We drove East across Central Scotland passing Loch Tay. We stopped on the edge of Loch Tay at the "Crannog Centre". The Loch is stunning... forest down to the clear water with little jetties dotted around. While we were gazing upon the peaceful scene, a fighter (no doubt one of our friends from Leuchers) suddenly came screaming through the valley and over the lake at low altitude. Interesting contrast :-). The Crannog Centre is a re-creation museum. It's a replica of what a real crannog would have been like. A crannog is an iron age dwelling built on an artificial island over a lake. There were apparently hundreds of them all over the lochs in Scotland during the iron age. We were taken for a walk out to the crannog for an explanation and then given a demonstration of some iron age tools. We were very impressed when our guide managed to start a fire using a string bow, a couple of pieces of wood and some tinder. We continued our drive around the loch and stopped of at the Falls of Dochart in Killin - some pretty falls in a tiny village. Our next stop was by the side of another loch - Loch Lubhair - pronounced believe it or not: Yewer. I spent some time skimming stones (stones + water = skimming). We drove down past Loch Lomond - lots of nice views all the way down the road and sped on to Glengoyne Distillery to the south of the loch. I was determined to visit at least one distillery while we were in Scotland and Glengoyne had a good write-up in the guide book. We arrived just in time for a tour and were taken around all the machinery and had the processes explained. We rounded of the tour with a wee tasting. Given the obscene number of roads in the UK, I think we've done pretty well so far with only the occasional bad turn off sending us wandering into the unknown (I still have nightmares about Wolverhampton)... but this was one of those times. We drove away from the distillery intending to go East, but I missed the turn and we ended up going North. I turned around, we drove for about 15 minutes and found ourselves right back at the road leading to the distillery. Argh! A careful drive back... again... and we decided we were all toured out and it was time to head for our hotel near Glasgow. I'd booked us into a Travel Lodge on the motorway through Glasgow, but we didn't really know what surrounded it. We checked in, and I was remarking to Ab how happy I was that we were on the south side of the hotel facing away from the motorway when a high speed inter city train tore through the back yard past our window... never mind. We needed to eat, so we looked in the guide book to see what we could find out about the nearest town - Dumbarton. The guide simply said that it was best to avoid Dumbarton - that it was a perfect example of the horrors of post-war architecture. We ignored the advice and went to see for ourselves - the guide was right, so it was fast food for dinner."

On Wednesday we had to make the long drive home from just north of Glasgow, to Branston ~300 miles (or 480km in metric). We had decided to deviate from the motorway and drive down through the Lake district for a lunch stop. On the way in I spotted a stone circle on the map, and we detoured along a little lane to take a look. Castlerigg circle was not made from particulary large or impressive stones but the location was just incredible. The surrounding mountains were a sort of purpley grey, getting lighter as they receeded into the distance, and the sky was very moody. It all made for a great atmosphere, even with the collection of about 20 other people there with us. I can understand how the Lake District inspired all those painters, poets. There was even a cute family who all had their matching sketchbooks out to record the moment. Those prehistoric folk sure knew how to choose a nice spot for their stone arrangements of mysterious utility. Further on on our way through the park we saw some beautiful and idyllic spots by the lake. However, we didn't stop, as all the carparks were chocablock full, and everywhere else was labelled 'No Parking'. Oh well, the guidebook did warn us against visiting and battling the hordes during July and August. Also little did I know it, but the candy was calling Gareth onwards ... Back on the M6 south, I began reading to Gareth from the Lonely Planet about the places we were passing. Having already visited one of England's traditional holiday spots, we became intrigued by the description of another and decided to take a detour, to Blackpool. Blackpool has it's own motorway, that then becomes a sort of causeway, carrying the punters over the suburbs, and directly to the seaside attractions. We saw the glorious rollercoasters and 'woodies' of Blackpool Pleasure Beach and decided that we definitely had to do the Alton Towers, a themepark that is quite close to us. On the 'Golden Mile' we saw Casinos, waxworks and other amusments abounding on a scale around 200 times that of Scarborough. The castle was replaced by the Blackpool Tower Centre, and the fascinating docks with boats and lobster traps were replaced by piers that you had to pay 50p to walk on. We popped down to the beach to get our first good look at the Irish Sea, where Gareth had a brief paddle among the donkey poos bobbing merrily in the shallows. Then we bought 10 sticks of rock candy for a pound to make us feel more at home. All in all, it was a very interesting spot, an enlightening cultural experience and fantastic way to finish our great northern road trip. "

On Saturday we visited Leicester to see the nation's "second biggest Carribean carnival" parade. Leicester itself is a nice looking town with the world's hardest to find information centre. The carnival ground was in a big park... it looked like every other carnival in the UK with the rides and carnies... but with the added extra of many, many "jerk" BBQ chicken stalls. We watched most of the parade which had a lot of people in very few clothes but with very elaborate head dresses dancing between trucks pounding out extra loud pseudo-Caribbean music. It also had some live bands including an 18 piece steel band on a truck... very cool. We would have stacks of photos, but just as I took the first one the camera beeped and shut down... no battery power left. We hadn't brought spares with us and I couldn't find any suitable at the shop. Never mind... just close your eyes and imagine :-). On Sunday we headed to Kenilworth Castle in the morning.. famous for a specatular festival held when Elizabeth I visited (as featured in the movie "Elizabeth"). It used to be surrounded by a huge artificial lake with an island on it to enable the royalty to "get away from it all". In the afternoon we popped into Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace and home of Shakespeare. The town was unbelievably busy with tourists. It's very pretty, with lots of parking for the narrow boats off the canal. We had a look at the outside of Shakespeare's birthplace, one of his homes and did a bit of souvenir shopping. Ab also did some posing with statues of Shakespeare characters at the monument. After the Stratford soujourn it was getting a bit late for any serious adventure (things in the UK tend to close somewhere between 4 and 6 pm and open no earlier than 9 or 10 am so it's hard to do more than one thing in a day, let alone 3) so we followed the first info sign bearing a National Trust emblem to a stately home called Charlecote. Unique features of Charlecote included spotted sheep - yes spotted - in the deer park. I'm going to miss all these handy stately homes when we go back to NZ :-)."

Abby: Last weekend we headed West for a Wales mini-break. On Friday evening on the way across to Aberystwyth we stopped to look at the Devil's Bridge and the Falls of Rheidol. Devil's Bridge goes across the river and is actually three bridges, built one on top of the other. The earliest and lowest is from the 1100s and the latest was built last century. On the other side of the bridges there is a walk down through the forest to view the falls down the valley. The scene was golden and all rather beautiful in the evening sun, and we were easily able to imagine ourselves as moustached Welshfolk frolicking in the woody mountains. We stayed the night in a B&B on a farm just outside the city (complete with pony and foal) and after a big cooked breakfast headed straight out and northward toward Gwynedd. It was at this point that driving rain set in, but we just considered it a natural enrichment of our Welsh experience and carried on, fairly unaffected. Our first destination was the Centre for Alternate Technology, which came highly recommended by Lonely Planet (in fact, in the Lonely Planet "Europe on a Shoestring" it is the only thing in the Mid-Wales section). The Centre was created on the site of an old slate mine - with slag heap - and to get up there we took a water powered funicular train (a diverted stream fills the carriage at the top with water and its weight pulls the carriage at the bottom up to the top as it descends - then the water is emptied and it happens again). At the top there were all sorts of exhibitions about and examples of a sustainable lifestlye, with nary a smelly hippy in sight. We had a great time looking at the exhibition about using renewable resources for housing - like wood (in Britain, wooden house = shack) and playing wih the wave power machine. In the composting technology section we found that one of the bins was named after New Zealand - the.. "New Zealand Bin". Afterwards we headed to the coast to Barmouth (or Abermaw). We had a walk amonst the stone houses set into the rugged cliffs, and across the estuary on a rail bridge. Next destination was Harlech - one of three of the "Iron Ring" castles built by Edward I that we visited on the trip. Harlech is impressively imposing, as it is set on a cliff towering over the town and looking out over the Irish Sea. After a bit of castle fun we drove through Snowdonia to our B&B in Llandudno. Gareth: I left booking our accomodation for this trip a bit late and I had a lot of trouble trying to find anywhere near Anglesey or Portmeirion, which we wanted to visit on the Sunday. I made my way across the map a bit and managed to book a B&B in the "seaside resort" of Llandudno. "Llandudno" is pronounced sort of "lllgggghhhdidno" - Wales is great: all the road and info signs are in Welsh and then in English and you hear people speaking Welsh to each other in shops. Anyway... little did I know that we would be the youngest people in Llandudno - by at least 20 years. The B&B was run by a nice old couple and all the guests were nice old couples. The beaches and the hotels were positively *filled* with nice old couples. The whole town is street after street of big English hotels and side-by-side B&Bs. On the Saturday night we went for a British cultural exploration and walked the pier at sunset, stopping in for a bit of 2p gambling in one of the giant, illuminated "amusements" parlours. On the Sunday night we went for a stroll along the promenade and stopped to listen to the local brass band playing on a stage on the beach. I was a little confused because I thought I could hear singing although there were no singers on stage... and then I realised... we were standing in amongst dozens of elderly tourists clutching song sheets and singing the hymns that the brass band was playing - something I'm sure we won't see/hear many other places in the world! Abby: First thing Saturday morning we drove into Snowdonia, admiring the incredible mountains and stopping in the village of Beddgelert - this name means Grave of Gelert. Gelert was Prince Llywellyn the great's favourite dog, that Llywellyn killed after thinking it had savaged his baby son. However, then they found the baby hidden away and a dead wolf - the actual victim of Gelert's savaging, so the dog was burried with great honour, and a town was named after him. The riverside grave seems to now be a pilgrimage spot for dogs and their owners. We then headed down to Portmerion, the creepiest Italianate village in Wales. The town is all the work of one visionary architect who wanted to demonstrate that areas of natural beauty may be developed without ruining it. The village was quite attractive, but was painted up in varying pastel shades, with an excessive amount of cyan, which I'm sure can't be typical in Italian decor. The disconcerting atmosphere here was used to good effect in the Prisoner TV series, and at George Harrison's 50th birthday party. Ah well, all good Welsh practice for our upcoming Italian holiday. After Portmerion we retreated to Caenarfon, the dabble whopper of castles. It was brilliant with so many towers, stairwells, tunnels and ramparts to explore, that we only saw part of it. We found that the Welsh Castles were far more obviously military structures then many of the other ones we've visited, that are more like well protected palaces for nobles. We went over the Menai Strait to Anglesey and visited a prehistoric burial mound complete with its own Captain Mound. He was sitting cross-legged on top of the mound, having an extended mystical experience, and ruining our photo opportunities. We lingered for 20 minutes taking a few pictures and looking at him pointedly, but he didn't move so we were thwarted and continued on our way back to Llandudno. Gareth: Conwy is not far from Llandudno and we drove there on Monday morning. The town is completely surrounded by giant stone walls that join at a castle. The castle looks over a river estuary and we reached new levels of experimental castle photography by each climbing a different tower and taking Ab taking photos of me... very creative. We had a wander through the town to view the official "smallest house in Britain" (complete with Guiness Book of Records certificate). Our time in Wales was at and end - we drove along the coast road out of Wales and into Chester. Chester is also surrounded by walls - although unlike York or Conwy they were renovated in Victorian times to create a "fashionable promenade". We circumnavigated the town walking on the walls, popped into Chester Cathedral, and Ab located a Cheshire Cat souvenir (Chester is in Cheshire). Chester's town centre also boasts "The Rows" - a sort of extra set of streets extending away from the old town centre that run parallel to the actual streets. The rows are wooden verandhas up above the street and have more shops along them. Monday afternoon and our holiday was at and end, so we pointed Little Blue back towards Branston."

Last weekend we finally manged to get ourselves in the direction of Oxford, to visit our buddy Annika, only to find that she was in New Zealand, so we had to find our way around without her. Ah well, it was not so hard as Oxford is geared to catering to clueless tourists. On our way down, we stopped off for some rambling in the Cotswolds (lovely villages with abounding golden stone cottages and names like Moreton-in-the-Marsh and the Slaughters). We walked from Bourton-on-Water to Lower Slaughter, where we stopped at the mill for organic ice-cream, and overheard the poshest accents encountered so far in Britain. Thus we arrived in Oxford late on Saturday afternoon. After discovering that the Colleges are all closed on Sunday morning we immediately popped up the oldest building in town to check out the view, and then set off on a college bagging expedition to New College, Christ Church and Magdalen (pronouced 'Maudlin' - stranger than Wales :o). New college had a beautiful garden and cloisters and ws probably the most atmospheric - due to its having the smallest number of tourists about. On the way there, we passed under the whispering bridge, a replica of one in Venice, and more good British practice for our Italian trip. At Christ Church we saw (among other things) our third Harry Potter location - the entrance to the great hall. Magdalen had another great cloister containing statues that were the inspiration for the stone animals and other folk in C S Lewis' 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' - kind of funny as our friend Laura worked on the prop versions of these for the upcoming movie. The next day we looked at Blackwell's a massive bookshop that first opened in 1879. We then headed out to lunch to meet friends Steve and Laura at The Snooty Fox. This was a rather nice meal, sitting out in the garden and catching up. Steve and Laura showed us around the White Horse of Uffington a big horsey picture cut into the chalk hillside during the bronze age. As we weren't flying, it was difficult to get a good picture of the whole thing, but if you follow the link above you'll see one. The horse is up on White Horse Hill a beautiful place for flying kites and gliders, and just admiring the fantastic view, so we had a nice time hanging out before heading back home. Next weekend we're heading to Norwich and Cambridge so we may get in a bit of the University town punting that I know you all want to see. :o)"

A Friday Night Cultural Experience On Friday night we headed out with 3 of my workmates and their partners to the greyhound racing in Birmingham. The atmosphere is pretty much like Alexandra Park in Auckland, although the racing beasts are a lot smaller, the jugs of beer are a lot bigger, and just to remind you that you're in England, a line of bookies with their blackboards are positioned at the track side. We had a flutter on all races but one and ended up well down - but it was fun. I'd been told that we were off for a curry after the races, so we hadn't eaten - but we also hadn't expected curry time to be so late. After... er... a few lagers we stopped off for a curry just before midnight. Greyhounds, lager and curry... what more could you want? Norwich Having made our northern and western explorations - and plenty of the middle - it was time to head east for the Bank Holiday weekend. We piled our stuff into Little Blue on Saturday morning and drove out to our first stop: Norwich. The east is not as crazy busy with tourists as other parts of the UK - the roads out to it are motorway-free and lots of single carriage ways mean it's not as accessible as other parts. Part of the reason for Norwich being a destination was as a sort of pilgrimage for Ab - her parents (John & Sarah) with a very young Andrew lived there in the early 70s. We weren't too sure what to expect of the city, but we were pleasantly surprised. Norwich is a really nice city - it's not that big, but it is friendly and has plenty of quaint cobbled streets and architecture from different eras. We visited the cathedral just in time for Evensong - so had our first wander around a cathedral backed by a proper boys' choir singing. After the cathedral we visited "The Forum" - a town square and public building complex built on the site of the public library that was destroyed by fire a few years ago. Along with the new library, it also houses an "interactive" museum telling the story of the development of the area. This included a pretty cool (if seasick inducing) 180 degree panoramic movie. Before tea we drove to John and Sarah's old house for a souvenir photo or two. The Broads & the Coast Sunday morning after breakfast we drove out into the Norfolk Broads and out to the east coast. The Broads are on land that was previously salt marsh and peat, until determined engineers built complicated systems of wind driven water pumps to drain them. The land is slowly sinking and much of it is below sea level, but they are now prime agricultural land, so there's a bit of a debate going on as to what to do about the rising sea levels. The Broads are very flat and are threaded with waterways created where people have cut peat out over hundreds of years. We had a peak at Great Yarmouth, which turned out to be yet another amusement/casino/donkey-ride type place, so we drove up the coast a bit to a little village. At last - a proper beach : wide and sandy, with dunes rather than concrete paths (and an offshore wind farm). The beach had a lot of flint lying around on it, which makes sense, since every old building in Norwich seemed to be clad in flint - it gives them an odd, shiny, rough look. Cambridge After our beach wanderings we headed back inland to Cambridge. Cambridge - like Oxford - is best known for its university. In fact the only reason it got to be officially recognised as a city is because of the university - it doesn't have a cathedral. Also like Oxford, it has a whole bunch of colleges that make up the university: no actual campus as such. We started by visiting King's College: the most famous of the colleges. The "chapel" (more like a whopping great church) was pretty impressive - huge fan-vaulted ceilings and an original Reubens painting. After the college and chapel we jumped on our favourite tour company's open-top double-decker bus and did the full hour drive around the city with commentary. After the tour the day was getting on, so we popped into the enormous Fitzherbert museum for a whirlwind ancient artefact and art appreciation session before closing. Monday morning we decided it just had to be time for a punt. Having watched the punters on the self-hire punts the day before we also decided it would be a good idea to let a pro do the punting. We were at the quay nice and early and got ourselves a nice seat at the front of an 8 seat punt. People in England don't start turning up to things until 10 a.m. so the river was nice and quiet: the views were great, it's really quiet and peaceful and I could quite happily punt (or at least be punted) around all day. We picked up a spot of picnic lunch and drove back home, stopping off at the castle in local village Ashby de la Zouch for our lunch and a climb up the tower."

The Pixies Last weekend I got to fulfill my childhood dream: to see the Pixies live in concert. We went to London with Ian and Michelle and saw the Pixies at the Alexandra Palace, a huge glass structure a bit like the Crystal Palace, with Racks of loud speakers hanging from the ceiling, heaps of sweaty punters and a pipe organ behind the stage. The concert was rather good - a close screeching renditition of most of my favourite albums. It was so loud that we had ringing in our ears for days afterward. Frank Black's sight deteriorated and he had to get out his reading glasses toward the end. Ian and Michelle kindly dropped us at our hotel in town, and we proceeded to spend the next few days carrying out some hardcore London tourism. Friday Our technique for exploring new places is to initially survey them from the highest point possible so we had a go on the London Eye - the world's largest observation wheel. It was a beautiful clear morning and, being pre-ten a.m. there were very few of our fellow tourists around. A radio station was broadcasting from one of the eye pods so the wheel kept on stopping to give us a nice long time at each viewpoint. Just over the river from the eye is Big Ben and the Parliament buildings and Westminster Abbey so we checked them out at ground level too. In Westminster Abbey we got to see tombs of all sorts of people we'd heard about in other parts of our travels, but not Richard the Third's as he was chopped up and sent to the four corners of the kingdom. The guy who did that got a big tomb though. Buckingham Palace was impressive - although we didn't see the changing of the guard, we got to have fun recognising landmarks that the Queen and co have waved from. At Trafalgar Square we went to the National Gallery, where Gareth got to see art from his National Gallery great works card game in the flesh (or paint?). In the evening we went on a boat trip along the Thames for some sightseeing from a different viewpoint again. Saturday The next morning we went to St Paul's Cathedral. It had the grandest and most lovely sparkly golden ceiling mosaics I'd ever seen, causing me to trip over the altar bit in the middle as I was gazing about in awe. We climbed up to the spire on top of the dome, checking out the great views of London, and took some time in the round whispering gallery. There, I sat against the wall accidentally buffering other people's attempts to have a quiet conversation across the dome, and exclaiming (irritatingly for the man) that I could hear a man whispering. A quick walk across the Thames on the Millenium Bridge (no wobbling) and we were at the Tate Modern Gallery, where we saw some great works, including a Munch in the degenerate art section, a couple of Picassos, Monet's Waterlilies and the infamous urinal. The Thames Walk on the south bank took us along past Shakespeare's Globe, the Golden Hinde and Southwark Catherdral, to the Tower Bridge. We crossed back and spent the rest of the afternoon at the Tower of London. This where Richard the third probably killed two nephews and Henry the eighth definitely executed a couple of wives. At the crown jewels We saw the biggest diamond in the world, and finally got our fix of London guards in big furry hats, and beefeaters too. Sunday We trained home from London, and took a break in Reading to have a nice lunch and drinks with friends Pete and Ngaire. "

The infamous urinal mentioned below is the most influential modern art work of all time. See more info at the Tate website: Fountain"

Weekend before last we had a nice quiet rest weekend as I'd just spent the last couple of weeks at a customer's site in South Yorkshire and I was driving up and down a couple of times during the week and staying 3 nights a week in local hotels. The idea of more driving and hotels was feeling a bit unappealing. We decided to do pretty much nothing on Saturday, but on Sunday we headed to local tourist attraction Cadbury World. Cadbury World is a theme park on the premises of the big Cadbury factory in Bournville in the south of Birmingham. We weren't quite sure what to expect, but we'd had it recommended to us by various people and we knew that eating chocolate was involved. This map will give you an idea of the layout of the place, but basically you follow a trail through a big building, stopping of at various points. The first part was a jungle/aztec type exhibit complete with stuffed animals and creepy mannequins. Then came a series of multi-screen films explaining the history of the company (Quaker guy sells tea, decided to expand into chocolate etc). Next were some presentations on how different kinds of products are made, and then on to a wander through the packaging plant. This was pretty cool: lots of little chocolate bars whizzing along conveyor belts and being wrapped into the foil wraps and then put into boxes by robots. I've seen a bit of this kind of thing in the world of box factories - but there's just something special about it when it's chocolate :-). At various points we'd been handed chocolate bars to eat, so we were dutifully scoffing them as we waited in the queue for the "Cadabra" ride. If you are a Simpsons fan you will have seen many an episode featuring weird theme parks where animatronic animals sing and so on... this was just like that. Apparently the Cadbury mascot is "Chuckle Bean" (no we hadn't heard of him either) and Chuckle Bean and his friends were arranged in various scenes - Chuckle Beans skiing, Chuckle Beans playing ball, Chuckle Beans with their feet up watching TV. The were all swaying from side to side and singing. We got to see all this as we sat in our very own little plastic car and were pulled through a tunnel watching the scenes go by. Crazy man... crazy. We finished our visit with a stop at the Cadbury factory shop... I think we've got enough chocolate to keep us going until we leave now."

Last weekend we went to Alton Towers, the UK's most popular theme park, which is quite close to us. It certainly was popular - the lines began outside at the ticket booth, after which we had to line up again to get through the front door. Then we lined up at the cafe for a snack before lining up briefly at the pinball whizzer ride, discovering that you can't take bags on the pinball whizzer, lining up to hire a locker and returning to the pinball whizzer for a 50 minute wait in line. The ride was pretty good in the end ("have you ever wondered what it feels like to be a pinball?"), and we found out later from the electronic signs that that was about the longest line we would have to wait in all day. We went on one great haunted house type ride where we all sat in a sort of cylindrical room and our seating started revolving and then the room started revolving the other way, so our brains were tricked into thinking we were going all the way around - obviously we never actually got upside down, as we didn't end up falling on our heads. The ride was built inside the real castle ruins that Alton Towers is built around, so when we left the spinning room we wandered through the eerie abandoned gardens and crumbling walls. We also went on Duel - a special type of haunted house ghost train where they provide you a gun to shoot the spooks and you get scored at the end (I won). Another highlight for me was 'The Nemesis' a rollercoaster based on the premise that you're flying around through a massive carcass complete with dark holes and gushing red waterfalls (!?). Before we left I insisted that we go in the flume ride and ended up paying the price when we had to share our boat with another couple, and I was forced right to the front to bear the brunt of the water splashes - you can see the picture of the results below. All good fun. On Sunday we had a quiet look around Derbyshire and the Peak district. We went to Hardwick - a great stately home notable for the fact that it's builder Bess of Hardwick had it emblazoned with her own massive initials all along the roofline (ES, Elizabeth of Shrewsbury). In the Peak district we drove through the lovely, green, rolling, not very peaky hills and visited Bakewell to sample their delicious tarts - though they're known as Bakewell Puddings there. This weekend we're going to Paris - looking forward to good cheese, wine and art galleries."

Friday On Friday afternoon we drove out to Birmingham Airport and boarded a British Airways flight to Paris. We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport just as the sun was setting and found our way to the train into town. On arrival in town we had our first Paris transport challenge when we found ourselves at the gates out of the train and barring our way to the Metro and I couldn't find my train ticket. I'd managed to cling to my tickets in Barcelona and London no problem - but somehow I managed to drop my ticket on the train. The turnstiles won't budge without a valid train ticket, so I picked a few up off the ground and tried them but couldn't get through. Fortunately there were plenty of train-savvy locals around and we watched some people managing to get two people through a turnstile at a time - so with a bit of a squeeze we popped through together and took the Metro to our hotel. The hotel was a self-catering apartment and it was about 9.30pm when we arrived and found the door locked. Taped to the window was a note saying "Mr Cronin, on arrival please call..." with a number that didn't really look like a phone number. We stood bewildered at the doors while I contemplated how to dial a Paris number on my cell phone when some fellow guests (a young French family) who had the PIN for the door turned up. They let us in and the guy asked us if he could help. I gave him my phone and he dialed the number and chatted away in French to the hotel manager who directed him to a safe in the corner of the lobby, gave him the pin and he extracted an envelope with my name on it. Inside was the room key... phew... and the British reckon the French are rude and unfriendly! Saturday In the morning we got up nice and early and headed out into a grey and drizzly morning. We stopped off at the first cafe we could find serving food under 10 euros (everyone is right: Paris is expensive!) and settled down with espressos and pain au chocolat. I was very pleased when the guy at the counter could understand my high school French :-). First stop for the morning was Ile de la Citˇ to visit Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle. Things in Paris open even later than things in the UK, so we meandered around Notre Dame admiring the gargoyles and great big flying buttresses. When the cathedral opened we took a wander through and were surprised at how dark it was. At the other end of the Ile is Saint Chapelle - two chapels squeezed inside the Palais de Justice. Louis IX built the chapel to house his holy relics (including Christ's crown of thorns) in the 13th century. The "lower chapel" was your average chapelly type building but entering the high chapel was literally breathtaking. The walls are almost entirely stained glass right around the oval-shaped building, starting from a few feet above the floor up going right up into the high vaulted ceiling. Each window tells a bibilical story (except for the two that tell royal stories) and they are all in glorious bright colours. One of the odd things about Paris is that noone stops you taking photos anywhere - this leads to crazed crowds of people snapping away at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre (as if there aren't enough reproductions already) - but it also means we could get a photo in the chapel, so you can see the spectacular windows at one end of the building below. There is no rest for Gareth and Ab when they are on one of their full-on tourist weekends, so around midday we were at the Louvre. The drizzle had stopped, the sky had cleared and it was getting quite warm. I didn't realise it was as huge as it is, but we still managed to see a fair bit of it. We had a quick over-priced baguette at the cafe and began with the two biggies: the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo (that's the Venus behind me below). We strolled about seeing great work after great work: Monet, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Giotto - you name it - all a bit much really. Below is a picture of me in the Rubens room - every wall is packed with his paintings. Paintings aside, we also spent a bit of time looking at Egyptian and Islamic relics and art objects and the myriad sculptures about the place. After a couple of hours at the Louvre we wandered along to the "little arch" and up to the Place de la Concorde - home to the 3300 year old Egyptian obelisk and at the foot of the mighty avenue Champs-Elysˇe. See avenue - must walk... so we strode our way all the way up to the Arc de Triomphe. Autumn had really kicked in in Paris (the leaves are only just turning now in the UK) so the avenue was line with brilliant flaming oranges and yellows - very pretty. 4 major attractions/landmarks in one day is just not enough for us, so we boarded the Metro and tootled on over to the Eiffel Tower - dragging our poor tired little feet with us. Being a bit tight and looking at the nice short queue, we headed to the "stairs only" pillar and queued with the other people crazy enough not to take the lift. We climbed the 350 stairs to the first level and had a good view and then climbed the next 240 stairs up to the next level to get an even better view! As we climbed down from the tower the sun was setting and we headed to a nearby restaurant. After dinner we walked over one of the many bridges crossing the Seine and admired the now illuminated Eiffel Tower... then as we were halfway across the bridge they switched on the big light show. In amongst the orange lights, bright white chrismas-tree-style lights flash all over the tower - very nice. A long day and a quick Metro ride and we were back at the hotel. Sunday We managed to drag our stiff legs and feet out of bed for another reasonably early start on another drizzly morning. First stop was a one minute walk around the corner from the hotel: the Cimeti¸re du P¸re Lachaise. This is the famous cemetery where all sorts of luminaries are buried including Jim Morrison, Chopin, and Oscar Wilde. The cemetery itself is a huge and beautiful tree-filled park. They actually have 2 full time guards on duty beside Jim Morrison's grave: even at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning! That's me in front of Chopin's grave and next to that Jim's grave below. Stomachs were rumbling, so it was time to find brunch. We took the Metro to the Saint Germain district to try our luck finding a cafe. We found a nice looking place called Les Deux Magots and took a seat. Ab had a look at the guide book and we discovered we were at a famous and recommended place: all the better. I had a very tasty ham omelette and Ab had a goat's cheese dish. Art Gallery #2 was the next stop: Musˇe d'Orsay. The d'Orsay is in a former railway station - the building itself is impressive. The gallery houses a massive collection of impressionist works and a great selection of Art Nouveau (a big favourite with Ab) - both art and art objects. We spent a couple hours seeing just about everything there. Next we walked across town - back to the right bank and up and down various streets. Feeling a bit peckish we stopped into a boulangerie/patisserie where I bought the best baguette I have ever tasted. Mmmm baguette. In danger of letting the pace slacken we strode on to the Centre George Pompidou - the crazy inside-out building packed with modern art. We rode up the escalators in the big transparent tubes and spent another couple of hours of art appreciation - this time modern style. The views from the top floors of the centre were also pretty good. So we didn't get to Montmartre but we got just about everywhere else. The food and coffee were fantastic and I suspect we shall be back."

This weekend we went on a flying trip to see Bath, and England's super-attraction: Stonehenge. Bath is a rather nice place filled with Georgian regency architecture that gives an skyline full of white horizontal lines (curved and straight). We went to the famous Roman baths, the best preserved Roman baths based around a natural hot spring. This had the Roman ruins as well as some nice later facilities built for all the holidaying Georgians. There was also a museum with remains of temples that used to be on the site, and all sorts of interesting artefacts that the Romans had thrown into the spring, like jewellery, and curses inscribed on metal (eg "May the person who stole my sandals lose his eyes and toes ..." etc). We then toured around the city enjoying all the fantastic high-class specialty shops: kitchenware, historic maps, designer hi-fi, gardening, cheeses, french food etc. I had a bittersweet time in the mosaic shop admiring all the beautiful materials available here (Europe in general), like glass in wonderful colours and textures that are unavailable in New Zealand - probably because it's all very heavy and difficult to transport to our small population of amateur mosaic enthusiasts. Oh well. We went to the famous residential areas like the Circus (buildings curved around a circular green area) and the Crescent (buildings curved around half a circular green area). Late in the afternoon we went to a park up the hill from town to take a walk and check out the view. The next morning we trekked out on a mega-tour of prehistoric monuments. Actually this was preceded by a quick visit to Salisbury Cathedral, very attractive, with the tallest spire in England (but has it got three like Lichfield? Not quite). We stopped in to Old Sarum, where Gareth was intrigued by the neighbouring airstrip, and then broke a bit off the ruins testing to see if they were as frail as they looked. We promptly moved onward to Stonehenge, which has a fantastic approach via the motorway, where you're driving along a boring road and then over a hill where suddenly there it is right in front of you. Luckily the road then veers off to the right, straight over the grand avenue to the mysterious monument, thwarting the spiritual re-enactors, but leaving the stone arrangement intact. We met Annika in the carpark and had a quick catch-up before heading straight under the road to check it out. It was pretty much as expected but with the added bizarreness of the path going around it so as you peered across you could see the punters across the circle peering back at you. Oh well, better than having them waving down at you from on top or something. What is it for? ... Forever will it remain ... a mystery ... Our nest stop was Avebury for a bit of lunch, and a look at their stone circle, which is large enough to encompass a small village including pub and antique store, as well as two mysterious sub-circles. Avebury is a bit of a centre for mysterious monuments as there is also a long barrow and Silbury Hill, a mound of mysterious utility - nothing is buried in there. It was all as mysterious and interesting as Stonehenge, but with the added bonus that here we got to commune with the stones directly. The sheep enjoyed that too. Lots of fun was had, and I'm glad we got to catch up with Annika in the presence of such mysterious stones. "

A few weeks ago Nick and Ange arrived on the Lichfield Trent Valley train. We spent the afternoon roaming around Lichfield, exploring the cathedral, and taking tea at the Lichfield Tudor teahouse (built 1533). Nick and Ange were both looking well, and their feet were just about recovered from the great London walk. The next day while Gareth worked we went driving to Buxton in the Peak district to sample the waters and view the achitecture (Georgian crescents and Victorian pavillions) and then visited a local stately home - Sudbury. All a bit of quiet sightseeing in preparation for our great Italian extravaganza ... "

Rome Day 1 Nick, Ange, Ab and I got up bright and early (4.30) on the morning of Saturday before last to fly from East Midlands airport (only half an hour's drive from Branston) to Rome on EasyJet. A couple of hours later we arrived, took the bus and then the metro into central Rome near the Vatican where we had rented a self-catering apartment for four nights. We were in a residential part of Rome, complete with a proper, cheap Italian espresso bar over the road and "pizza rustica" places all around (they sell pizza by weight). It was drizzling when we arrived and as the afternoon progressed the rain got steadily heavier. The rain has a mysterious effect on Rome: it brings the umbrella sellers out of their holes. Walking down the street in the rain is a constant battle to fend off the literally dozens of sellers lining every street attempting to push their wares into any non-umbrella-carrying passerby's hands. We bravely ignored the water falling from the sky and the umbrella vendors and managed to wander the old town, visit the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain and have a bit of a look around St Peters Square. I decided that I wanted to take full advantage of the self catering at the apartment so we popped into a local indoor market to purchase some things for tea. Armed with an Italian phrase book we gathered up pasta, Genoese pesto, veges and bread and ate a home-cooked feast with genuine Italian ingredients. Rome Day 2 The next day we were very happy to see a cloudless blue sky and the sun shining. We had decided to start the day with the Colosseum and beat the queues by arriving not long after opening time. We signed up for a guided tour and were suitably impressed by the size of the place. Not far from the Colosseum is the old Roman forum: a big rambling mix of ruins, formal gardens and ancient temples. We climbed the hill above the forum for a good view over the whole thing and the ever increasing crowds. We took a walk to the "Monument to the Unknown Warrior" and watched the especially employed guards who blow a whistle and yell at anyone who dares to sit on the steps of the monument. Our feet were getting pretty tired by this point and managed to figure out how to catch a bus around to the Piazza Navona - the major tourist square. Each nationality of hawkers in Rome has their own speciality: all the umbrella sellers are South Asian and in the Piazza Navona there are counterfeit Prada/Rolex/Gucci etc sellers who are all African (since the rain had stopped the umbrella sellers had vanished and been replaced by South Asian camera tripod sellers). The counterfeit hawkers set up their wares on pieces of cardboard sitting on a ready-to-collapse cardboard box. We watched with amusement as the weary looking police officers stopped off at the square on their patrol and the counterfeit goods hawkers had their tables collapsed in seconds and nonchalantly circled the square until the police left. We had a quick lunch and then set off on our merry way again to the Spanish Steps. The Steps were completely covered in hordes of fellow tourists, so the effect was a bit lost, and we headed on to the Capuchin Crypt. The crypt was... er... creepy. A couple of monks decided to employ some practical recycling by using bones that they had to move from another crypt to the Capuchin by using the bones to decorate the walls and ceilings of the crypt. There are lines of verterbrae, mosaics of jaw bones, femurs and tibias etc etc. Just to add interest to the display they also added some mummified corpses here and there posed in various ways. All just charming. We took the metro back to the apartment for a bit of a rest and then we left Nick and Ange to head out for a quiet dinner for two and we went and met Carl Schnackenberg (who has been living in Rome for the last 5 months) for drinks and dinner. We had chianti at a bar and pizza and pasta at a nice little trattoria. At dinner Carl introduced Ab to fritti - the selection of fried treats available as entrees and snacks. Ab instantly became a suppli addict (mozzarella and rice balls) leading to suppli quests later in the holiday - and was helped along on her mission to like anchovies by the delicious fried zucchini flowers containing them. After dinner we went for a walk through parts of Rome we had seen earlier to see what they looked like after dark (just as busy) and had a peek at the French Embassy and other huge and glorious buildings. Rome Day 3 Our apartment was only a few minutes walk away from the Vatican so we decided it was time to do the full Vatican experience on the Monday. We walked around the square and admired all the sculptures without rain falling on them and then went into the basilica to check out the rennaisance glory. The golden mosaics and marble sculptures everywhere are very impressive. It was time to get a big old panoramic view of the city, so we climbed the 500+ steps up to the dome of the basilica. The views were spectacular and Ab and Ange rounded off the visit with a bit of souvenir shopping. Our early start at St Peters meant we didn't have to queue, but the day had moved on and it was time to face the serious queue - the line of people waiting to get into the Vatican Museum which includes the Sistine Chapel. The queue was monstrous: 4 or 5 people wide and stretching right around a couple of blocks. It was moving though, so we patiently waited over an hour until we were finally in the gates. The crowds inside were incredible and it was a bit like being on a boat - everyone kept up a steady wander along a carefully designed route through the various halls of the museum until we reached a stop in the Sistine. Everyone already knows what that looks like, so below are some pictures of some other bits in the museum :-). We rounded off the day with another trip to the market and another home cooked meal."

On our last day in Rome we took a day trip out to Tivoli, a nearby town that we'd heard about in our preparatory pre-Europe lectures about the achitectre of Italy. There we went to a Renaissance villa called Villa d'Este. This place has incredible gardens built around hundreds of fountains flowing down the hill. There was a water organ and the pathway of a hundred fountains, where you can walk along past 100 little stone faces, each different, all spitting at you. We had a nice time wandering around and Gareth found a new cat friend. Then we took the bus down to Hadrian's villa. Below is the view back towards Tivoli from Hadrian's. Having seen one of the more minimalist bits of Hadrian's wall, we didn't sure what to expect, but we weren't diappointed by the extensive roman ruins. I particularly liked the floor mosaics that were still intact in many of the buildings. "

We successfully used the self-service ticket machines at the train station and booked ourselves a journey on Trenitalia - the inter-city train service - to Florence. The carriages were of the compartment-type variety where six people get put into each sealed off compartment and a long corridor runs down past all of the compartments. We shared our compartment with a nice older Italian lady who took a shine to Ange. The train journey took us through a chunk of the Tuscan countryside, so we were able to peer out at the vineyards, olive groves and orchards as we sped through in the train. Our accomodation in Florence was right next to the River Arno - the big river that runs through the center of the city. We were in a proper old-school pensione and our windows and shutters opened out to get a spectacular view over the river and the grand old buildings topped with little bell towers, and down the banks of the river to the famous old pedestrian bridge now covered in jewellery shops. We arrived early afternoon, so we had enough time to do a bit of exploring in the market and to climb to the top of the "Duomo" - another St Peter's-like dome offering panoramic views of the city (and plenty of stairs to climb to the top). The most striking thing about Florence is its shops... it has everything from a super-value leather market to an astounding collection of high fashion European label shops. We spent a lot of our time walking around waiting for Ange to catch up after she was way-laid by displays of boots. On our way back to the hotel we decided to scout about for potential eating places (it was only about 6pm and nowhere in Italy opens for dinner until 7pm at the earliest). We spotted what looked like a nice friendly (and cheap) traditional "trattoria" - the Trattoria Marione. After a quick stop back at the pensione we wandered back to the trattoria and arrived just after opening to find that most of the tables had been taken. We managed to get a seat and were really impressed with our entrees and then our mains... and then we noticed that a rather large queue of people was building outside the restaurant: apparently we had stumbled upon a guide book favourite. We liked it so much that we also ate there the next night! The next morning we got up nice and early so that we could avoid another Vatican experience and we joined the queue for the Uffizi gallery. After a short wait we entered and had a great time browsing around (one of the big highlights of the Uffizi is Boticelli's "Birth of Venus"). We spent the afternoon poking around the shops and checking out the big pedestrian bridge - and I finally found bargain-basement priced Limoncello. "

The train into Venice is pretty cool - you go out over the water across a long causeway and arrive in no-car land. Venice is one of those places like Paris or LA that has been in so many movies ("Don't Look Now!" if you haven't seen it, you should - 70s thriller set it Venice) and TV programs that it looks pretty much just as you expect. Most of the locals live across the water on the mainland, so it's definitely a tourist town, but it still has a quaint feeling thanks to all the old buildings, little specialty shops (admittedly many of the the carnival mask and/or murano glass specialty), narrow alleys, bridges and of course canals. The directions we had to our accomodation were... er... wrong.... so it took some time to find the place, tucked away behind a famous fish market. Once we had dropped off our stuff we proceeded take a wander around the shops. Venice has spectacular confectionery shops - which tends to make me a bit hungry - so we bought a giant pistachio meringue, and a big chunk of the tastiest nougat I've ever eaten. The next morning (Saturday) Ab and I got up early and went out to have a look around the markets. The fish market was in full swing, as was the big produce market. We watched little boats being unloaded from the canals onto the shore to stock up the markets. Once Nick and Ange were up we had our breakfast and headed across the Rialto Bridge through the streets to the Piazza San Marco - the big tourist square flanked by a palace and a church. Rats-with-wings - otherwise known as pigeons - are treated with a mysterious reverence there. Instead of stalls selling people-food, there were stalls selling pigeon food. People buy a bag of it, scatter it around themselves and then hold some in their hands - thereby becoming covered in pigeons sitting on their shoulders and heads, giving an effect a bit like those people who allow bees to swarm on them: needless to say we didn't participate. It was time to actually get on the water, but we weren't sure whether to ride the super-expensive gondolas or to get on a water bus to have a look around. After some failed negotitations to get a good price on a gondola we opted for the water bus. We took a circular bus that goes down the Grand Canal and around the cruise ship port and had a good look at all the famous buildings along the way. Nick and Ange headed off for some more shopping and Ab and I joined the queue for St Mark's Church on the Square. The church is famous for its mosaics on floors, ceiling and walls and for its four gilt bronze horses. The horses on the balcony are now reproductions, but the originals are inside the church in a museum area. We went up on to the balcony and got great views out to the canal, sea and across the city. It just so happened that Suzie and Doug were in Venice as well as part of their giant 3-month pan-Europe expedition, so Ab and I met up with them on Saturday evening. We decided to splurge on the gondola expense and had a very nice punt around the smaller canals of the city, followed that with a few drinks at a taverna and finished off with a nice pasta and pizza meal at a ristorante. It was great to catch up again. The next morning we checked out and headed to the bus station to catch a bus to the airport. Sunday evening and we were back in good old Branston having had a brilliant holiday in Italy. Definitely going to have to go back there some time to see the south and east."

On our last Saturday in England we decided to go and take a look at Biddulph Grange Gardens - a property an hour north of Branston that we'd thought about going to on our way up and down but always had something else to do. The gardens were the land owner's pet project and he was a keen collector of trees, so there were plenty of interesting specimens around. We've been getting very excited as the holly berries have come out, so the streets all have big holly trees covered with red berries and ivy creeping up them - nice to actually see the real thing. Biddulph Grange has a "Weeping Holly" tree. The estate includes a couple of theme gardens - one is a Chinese garden, complete with a little bridge over a pond, a golden cow statue, and with three huge and spectacularly brightly coloured Japanese Maples. The Egypt garden has a mini-tomb to wander though and is topped by a topiary pyramid. The highlight at Biddulph is supposed to be the rainbow of rhododendrons, but being autumn we just had to make do with the rainbow of leaves. After the gardens we cruised back down to Lichfield and met up with all my UK workmates for a farewell party in honour of one of the guys who has been at the office for a few years but is transferring to the US office soon - also my chance to say goodbye to some of the people here who won't be in the office this week. We spent a few hours at the greyhound track (Ab and I did totally dismally - not a single win) and finished the evening with a midnight curry."

Well now we are back in Auckland and adapting to our 'life without castles' as it has been called. It's sad to say goodbye to (in no particular order) the abundance of history and prehistory all around in the stately homes, castles, towns and mysterious stones, the culture (music gigs, art galleries, museums, fantastic free digital tv, the bbc), the pubs, the motorways with their competent drivers, the Harry Potter movie sets and our local homely power plant cooling towers (that have since been blown up anyway). However, after our chance to compare the old homeland and the NZ homeland, we have to conclude that NZ is the better place to live, not least because of all the lovely people here :o) On our way home we stopped off to visit Gareth's sister Bridge in Cambodia and for one further chance to see some fine old-world monuments. Phnom Penh was a very cool city and a great introduction to south-east Asia. The royal palace complex had beautiful gold and silver temples and the streets were filled with motorbikes and skilled crouchers. There was a fascinating mix of architectures, including the remnants of French colonial mansions surrounded by high walls. The huge wealth divide means that these fences are often topped with razor wire, and the degree of road maintenance depends almost entirely on the importance of the residents or organisations on each street. The view from Bridge's 4th floor apartment gives some idea of the skyline, and I got the first of my sereptitious monk-shots looking down at the street below. On our first night we went to a great backpackers bar where all the 'tables' were cushion-strewn platforms set among lush foliage and fairy lights. The typical punter looked like they were searching in vain for the Beach. The next day Bridgette took us to some of the local markets to pick up a few bargains (top deals on silk, software, dvds and various designer clothing). Gareth and I also visited some disturbing sites related to the Khmer Rouge revolution, including an old high school that had been converted for use as a prison camp, and some 'killing fields' with a skull-filled memorial. Bridgette took some time off work, and together we travelled up to Siem Reap, to see some more of Cambodia including some incredible temples. Angkor Wat was the largest of the temples, and most impressive from afar. We managed to arrive quite early and and see it in that golden quiet period just between when the sunrise-watchers have gone, and the lazier tourists arrive. Exploring it involved climbing up several flights of steps that were so steep that they evoked images of the Rocknazium climbing wall (with some of the associated fear of falling off for me). However, the view from the top out over the treetops was well worth it (the whole top level was previously reserved for just the Angkor king and the high priest). The next temple on our priority list was Bayon, a fantastic sort of wedding cake, topped with huge benevolent faces on towers. For the rest of the day we continued exploring the temple mountains in Angkor Thom, a walled complex of temples that was one of the ancient Angkor capital cities. Of course at the end of all the hard exploration work each day, we had the hotel to return to for a drink and a swim. A fortuitous room allocation mistake meant that we had about the most gourmet abode in the place - on the top floor too. The next day we had a good look around some of the monastic complexes: Ta Prohm and Preah Khan. These are ususally all on one level and have a great 'lost in the forest' feel, especially as some parts have trees growing all over them. Ta Prohm was used as part of the Cambodia scene in the Tomb Raider movie - if anyone saw it. I had a great time posing as Lara Croft as we explored about but was hampered somewhat in my performance as I couldn't get hold of a large pair of pistols. All of the big temples had accompanying tourist markets with souvenirs and lunch for sale. Preah Khan was one of my favourites, as there was hardly anyone there. There were some great carvings hidden around the place, as well as some atmospheric ruin caused by the encroaching forest. All the dark passageways were great shelter from the heat of the midday sun. In the afternoon we took a break from the temples, and went on a boat trip out on Tonle Sap, a massive lake in the middle of the country. This was interesting as we were stopped on the way into the dock village by the local collective who relieved us of US$10 each for a boat ride. Although this was an incredible rip-off in Cambodian terms we wouldn't really have minded paying that, if the local armed policemen hadn't been lazing around waiting to take the lion's share of the fee so obviously. Still a bargain compared to the Venetian equivalent I guess. The boat took us through a floating village where we caught tatntalising glimpses of the houses' occupants (they seemed fairly acoustomed to gaping tourists gliding by). I spotted some of the largest, flattest tv screens I've ever seen on water (perhaps the local police lived there), and I felt rather sorry for the floating cats, though at least they had more tail length than the Cambodian average. At the end of the ride we encountered an ingenious begging method where a mother motor-boats around with her cutest and most petite offspring, whom she then throws overboard with only an eight litre bucket and a small paddling stick for company. The child alone then paddles in the cutest possible way towards the boat full of fat, rich tourists and pleads endearingly for money. That night we went to a French restaurant that had a show with traditional Khmer dancing and shadow puppets. On our last day in Siem Reap we took a long, bumpy tuk-tuk ride to Banteay Srei, a small pink sandstone temple with incredible carvings. On the way there and back we got to see some beautiful countryside filled with green rice-paddies and little villages. We took another temple-break in the afternoon to visit a silk farm, where the silk-making process took place, starting with silkworms eating locally farmed mulberry leaves and ending with very attractive cushion covers (we bought a few for my mum). All of the work was done by hand, including the cloth weaving, which could take a day to make 30cm, depending on the complexity of the pattern. In the evening we scaled our last temple mountain to see Angkor Wat in the sunset. So Cambodia was a pretty marvellous stopover on our way to the right side of the world. I had been promised parasites and fantastic weight-loss, but all seems normal on that front. We avoided bird-flu successfully as well. At the end we had one night in Bangkok, spent rather sedately after our super Cambodian tourism blow-out. No hard-men made humble then - we'll have to go back some time for that ... "

ee http://cronin.co.nz/blog2/