UK and Japan 2010

3 days, 18 hours to go...

By Kazza the Blank One on August 23, 2010 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As per usual I feel like I have far too many things to do than can possibly be fitted into the next few days.. panicking just slightly...

Day 1 - 27/28 August - Canberra to Osaka

By Kazza the Blank One on August 28, 2010 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Attempting typing up a blog entry on my phone. If it drives me too nuts I'll switch to the laptop.

So day 1 started at 4pm Friday when we needed to leave home. We actually managed to organise a lift this time which was so much nicer than a cab! Uneventful trip to the airport. Checked in but all the planes were running half an hour late due to single track, er, runway working at Sydney airport. So our 17:35 flight was rescheduled for 18:10 and left the gate at 18:24.

In the meantime we went into the Qantas club and had some champagne so that made the time pass quickly :)

It was dark so got to see the lights of Canberra which were very pretty. And a Federal Highway that was bejewelled with the lights of dozens of cars leaving Canberra :) Had an interesting approach to Sydney airport - flew up from the south-west, across the top of the north-south runways (parallel to the east-west one) then did a 270 degree turn to the right to come in from the south. Felt like a game of Flight Control or something ;)

Our baggage had been checked through so we just had to hop on the Qantas shuttle (aka free Tarmac tour) bus over to the international terminal. Very squee getting up close to lots of planes :):)

So had a couple of hours to kill in Sydney. Think I spent them mostly just reading news feeds.

Sydney from Sydney Airport Qantas Lounge

So then piled onto our 747. Pretty much the whole back section of the plane was filled with (older) school kids returning home to Japan.

Back of our plane

Took off to the north and sitting on the right side of the plane so nice view of Sydney.

Had our dinner then attempted to sleep. Was moderately successful. It was a mostly full moon which made the whole wing glow. It was actually quite beautiful but impossible to document. At one point we had some decent turbulence while passing through clouds. At another point I looked out and saw Orion on his side. There were some very pretty clouds around sunset.

Breakfast came a bit after 5am for Stu - he wasn't awake yet tho heh. Ours arrived a little later. Food on the plane was ok - the more processed stuff (chicken at dinner and eggs/sausage for breakfast) were nice but the fresh vegetables sides were very overcooked :(

Sausage and eggs on the plane

Sunrise clouds

Flying into Narita

Flying into Narita - golf courses rule!

Flying into Narita - can you see my shadow? :)

Our plane

Arrival at Narita at 7:10am (Sydney time - 6:10am local time). Heat!!! Waited quite a while for bags to come through but then immigration and customs were a breeze.

Went and got our JR passes validated then caught the 7:33am NEX into Tokyo. Realised at this point that we were hungry but didn't actually have any cash! Oops. Did I mention the heat? So at Tokyo we got some money out before getting some drinks and snacks and jumping on the Shinkansen to Osaka.

Tokyo Sky Tree under construction
Photo by Stu

Info boards at Tokyo station

Hikari 507 to Osaka

Shiny would have been behind those clouds on the left

Japan countryside

Statue of Liberty on top of a hotel north of Kyoto - couldn't actually
geo-locate this!

Tō-ji temple at Kyoto - next time I go to Kyoto I'm going to visit this
one up close!

Shall I remind you about the heat? It was pretty much unbearable in Osaka. Regretting my decision not to bring shorts (but then would have needed other shoes too).

Wandered down to the hotel but it was still too early to check in, so dumped our bags and went out to find some lunch. Decided to go into a ramen bar near the hotel. The menu was only in Japanese and while I would have been able to pick something off the pictures, Stu could actually understand enough of the menu and the waitress to figure out some more detail. I was very impressed :) And as an added bonus the place was air-conditioned and they had a big jug of ice water. Afterwards we got some ice creams and went for a bit of a wander. Did I mention the heat?

Super tasty ramen in Osaka

The ramen bar in Osaka that we got some super tasty ramen in

Ice cream!

The sign says no bicycle parking - so there's a bicycle parked!

Got back to the hotel and checked in where the first order of business was a cold shower. Unpacked a bit and got online then did this much of this blog post.

Stu collapsed for several hours while I did things like sort out my photos and read news feeds. Twitpicced some of my photos but got a bit stuck with photos from my big camera. They're around five mb each, which is painfully slow to upload over the hotel link as well Twitpic has a five mb limit. The Eee PC doesn't have anything capable of resizing them (paint will open them but it complains it doesn't have the memory when I try to resize them :( ). Might have to do em on Stu's lappy or something.

Eventually Stu got up and we decided to wander into Osaka. Last time we were here we took the JR lines around to the Namba area, but getting back late at night took an hour and a half because it was three trains. So thought, screw that this time, we'll take the local subway. One train and 270 yen each each way and there in about fifteen minutes.

Subway to Nanba

Got out of the station and of course we had no idea where we were :)
Decided (like last time) to pick a direction and walk in it. And by total fluke happened across the Glico man that we were hoping to find (Stu didn't come with us last time).

Covered walkway in Nanba

Asahi Super Dry

The Glico Man!

Stu in Osaka

Canal in Nanba, Osaka

Okonomikayi! Actually I didn't even know what this was until some
time later thanks to Lisa!

Stu looking at lights in Nanba

Old Ferris Wheel in Nanba

Then we went for a wander down by the canal with the thought of going to find dinner. As we were walking by some dude stopped us and asked us where we from. This group of people had been on a drinks and food stand for some charity event, so talked us into getting some beers. They deep fried some chicken for us as well and asked us to sit and join them. The dude had been to Australia before - he kept going on and on about smoking in Nimbin ;) One of the girls had lived for a year in Australia working at Nando's at Bondi. And there was another really cute girl who was 32 but looked about 22 :) So Stu got to practise his Japanese, and they understood enough English for it to be a very fun evening. Stu might have drank quite a bit :):) But a good release for him :)

Girls in Nanba. The one on the left is now a Facebook friend of Stu's.
The one on the right worked in Sydney for a year.

Us looking very hot and a little drunk

So eventually wandered back to the hotel for another cold shower and bed.

Geotagging - Day 1

Photos on the Canon: 140

Videos on the Canon: 2

Photos on the Sony: 183

Videos on the Sony: 5

Photos on the iPhone: 21

Photos on the Blackberry: 2

Photos on the Video: 10

Videos on the Video: 18

Steps walked: ? Friday + 8582 Saturday

Yen Spent: 7049

Day 2 - Sunday 29 August - Osaka/Kyoto

By Kazza the Blank One on August 29, 2010 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Woke a bit before 8am. Only remember waking up once in the middle of the night so think I slept fairly well.

Got ready and went down for breakfast. This hotel does awesome breakfasts. They even had takoyaki!! Win!! (that's octopus balls for the uninitiated - an Osaka specialty. Stu first introduced them to me the day I stayed home sick in this hotel last time. And burnt my mouth on them last night when the locals brought us some to share with them heh).

Takoyaki for breakfast!

Small carparks, Japan style, near Shin-Osaka station

Came back upstairs to have a look at the Kyoto map I had done last time. Decided we'd head for the monkeys first and Kiyomizu-dera temple near Gion. And the tower.

So we caught the 10:13 hikari to Kyoto. Just about melted into a puddle waiting though. Have I mentioned how bad the heat is here? The train trip is so short (~15min) that I hadn't finished cooling off before we arrived.

Interior of Kyoto Station

Astroboy!

Kimba!

Decided we'd go up the tower first. It was actually pretty cool, and it was a lovely clear day for it. Could see all the way to Osaka in the distance. There were too many bits of the tower in the way to do a decent panorama - at least on the top level - the lower level was better - and no people in the way there either heh. Nowhere really to sit though (I've mentioned before the lack of seatage is one major gripe I have with this country).

Kyoto Tower

View north-west from Kyoto Tower

View west from Kyoto Tower

View towards Osaka from Kyoto Tower - you can see Osaka in the distance!

Taxis outside Kyoto Station

Kyoto Station

So headed back down and back across to the station to find a map (I like having them on paper, and I'd stoopidly left the one I got last year at home. Went to the tourist information office (which had moved) and got some maps and the exact location of the Iwatayama monkey park.

Waited about fifteen minutes for a train, which thankfully was air conditioned.

Old steam train near Arashiyama station

Wandered slowly down from the station to Togetsukyo Bridge. Then across it and wandered east along the Oi River. That was actually relatively pleasant as it was shady and there was a bit of a breeze.

Ōi River at Arashiyama

Togetsukyō Bridge

Walk along the river at the base of Iwatayama

Canoeing on the river

Ōi River

Canoes by the river

Spent a little while there and had to decide whether or not to climb up to see the monkeys. Because, you know, EPIC HEAT!! In the end we decided we would make the climb. And it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was all in the shade in the forest, and definitely cooler than outside the forest. And when you get to the top they direct you to a "rest room" where they hand out refresher towels! Very cool :)

Walking up Iwatayama

So anyway, inside the building you can buy nuts to feed the monkeys and they sit around the outside with their arms stretched in through the fencing expecting a handout. Some of them took the nuts very gently, others a bit rougher heh.

Monkeys at Iwatayama Monkey Park

After we cooled down a bit we went outside to look at the view. They also did a feeding and all the monkeys came from all over to feed.

Cooling off in the pool

Looking across to Kyoto

Baby monkey

Feeding time!

Was a very cool place, glad we decided to go. Nat would definitely have gone nuts with photos there hehe :)

So headed back down. It was nearly 3pm by this point and we'd pretty much had enough. So found an airconditioned restaurant on the main road and had some nice food and a couple of very big Sapporo beers (633mL- yipe!).

We decided we didn't have the energy to go to Kiyomizu-dera so just did a bit of a wander up to the bamboo grove. It was very still air though which was a bit unpleasant. I was feeling utterly miserable by this point. I really don't like heat :(

Sagano bamboo forest

Train at a level crossing in the middle of the bamboo grove

So we hopped in a train back into Kyoto and a hikari back to Osaka and into a cold shower.

It amused us that there were not one, not two, but three JR staff in the Kyoto trains

Had some snacks for dinner. Then was quite distressed to find that Stu's laptop has an iec cable which we don't have a dongle for. So only a couple of hours of battery left on it, which is most annoying since I wanted to do some photo stuff on it.

Early night tonight!

Oh, I also fixed the comments on this blog.. so please leave a comment if you're reading :)

Geotagging - Day 2

Photos on the Canon: 323

Photos on the Sony: 115

Videos on the Sony: 2

Photos on the Olympus: 5

Photos on the Video: 1

Videos on the Video: 44

Steps walked: 16610

Yen Spent: 7400

Day 3 - Monday 30 August - Kii Peninsula

By Kazza the Blank One on August 31, 2010 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I decided it was just going to be too hot and miserable to go to Universal Studios. So I guess I'll never get to go on the Back to the Future ride :( Unless by some miracle it's still there next time we come to Osaka.

Stu did some research last night and thought a nice long air-conditioned train trip would be in order. There are JR lines that go all the way around the Kii Peninsula, a lot of it on the coast so we decided to do that.

Little did we know the whole trip would take thirteen hours and nine trains :)

But since the journey was the destination and the whole point of the day was to sit in relative comfort, the day was a win :)

Warning: the rest of this entry is going to be really boring.. just sayin'

10:00 Our first, shortest, trip was from Shin-Osaka to Osaka. Getting the hang of the Osaka train system and reading the boards so was pretty easy.

~10:10 Our second train was the Osaka loop line. Also easy to find - platforms 1 and 2, and which one you go to determines whether you clockwise around the loop or anti clockwise. There was a train on the platform so we got on that and went clockwise. Never actually been that way around the loop before.

10:42 Our third train was a local train from Tennoji headed for Wakayama. This was going quite slowly so we decided to ditch that one at Otori and swap to a Rapid train (we passed the slow one a little way down the line).

Train #3: Tennoji (Osaka) to Otori

On the train to Otori

11:26 Our fourth train was a Rapid from where we got on at Otori. We were a little concerned that train was headed for both Kansai Airport and Wakayama, when these are on different branches, but the train actually got split at Hineno! And as an added bonus we were in the correct half of the train so didn't need to move.

Train #4: Rapid from Otori to Wakayama

Canal near Higashisano

12:21 Our fifth train was from Wakayama. We were out of the city now but still a lot of built up areas between rice paddies and mountains. Not much in the way of coastline. This train terminated unexpectedly (for us) at Gobo, so we had to sit on a platform in the middle of nowhere until the next train came along.

Train #5: Wakayama to Gobo

Looking across Wakaura Bay. There's actually an amusement park over there!

Shiotsu

Refinery and gas storage at Hatsushima

Mystery building in Oshima

Cute little seaside town of Nishihiro

13:47 Our sixth train was a limited express. We were originally going to get off at Tanabe but the place didn't look very inspiring so we decided to stay on till it terminated at Shirahama.

Train #6: Limited Express from Gobo to Shirahama

Coastline near Iwashiro

14:30 Arrival at Shirahama. On the way out of the station we had a look at what time the next train was. It was either 15:17 or 16:52(!) So we decided to just have a quick lunch and then keep going. Which is a bit of a shame cause it looks like it might have been a nice place to spend some time in. Although everything is a fair hike from the station so would have had to take an infrequent bus or a taxi. Oh well, maybe next time.

Where we had lunch in Shirahama

Shirahama train station

15:17 Our seventh train was another limited express "Ocean Arrow". The was probably the best leg of the day. Quite a lot if it was along the coast, although photography opportunities were limited by trees and power lines obstructing the view. This train terminated at Shingu so sat on the platform there (in a little air-conditioned room) for twenty minutes.

Train #7: Limited Express (Ocean Arrow) from Shirahama to Shingu

Coastline near Mirozu

Mirozu

Beach at Wabuka
Photo by Stu

Coast near Tsuga

Coast near Tawara

Coast near Shimosato

River in Shimosato

Coast near Yukawa

Beach near Shingu

17:28 Our eighth train was another limited express "Nanki 8". What we didn't realise was that this wasn't a JR train! When the ticket inspector came along he said it was a company train not a JR one.. Major doh!! The fare was 800 yen each, which really isn't too bad for what was to be a three hour trip! Imagine trying to that in Australia you'd be up for $50 or something silly!? There were some pretty towns along this trip, but the light was fading so didn't get to document them.

Train #8: Nanki 8 from Shingu to Nagoya

Factory at Udono

Train going through Udono Station

20:42 Arrival at Nagoya. So at this point we were both very tired and hungry, and then we went outside to find food and the heat and hurty zapped any remaining strength. So spent nearly half an hour wandering around trying to find food. In the end we ended up back at the station where there was a little alcove of restaurants under the station. Shared a ramen dish (a really tasty tsuke ramen) then headed upstairs to catch what a paper timetable said would be a 21:53 hikari. However the electronic boards said the next one would be a 22:11 .. grunt

View west of Nagoya from the station

22:11 Our ninth and final train of the day was a Hikari Shinkansen from Nagoya to Shin-Osaka. After having eaten and cooled down in the train and painkillers kicked in I was feeling human again by the time we arrived at 23:10.

Train #9: Hikari Shinkansen from Nagoya to Shin-Osaka

So yeah. Super long day.

Geotagging - Day 3

Photos on the Canon: 169

Photos on the Sony: 95

Videos on the Sony: 2

Photos on the Olympus: 1

Photos on the Video: 29

Videos on the Video: 48

Steps walked: 5535

Yen Spent: 6200

Day 4 - Tuesday 31 August - Osaka to Tokyo

By Kazza the Blank One on September 1, 2010 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Third day of our Chisun breakfasts but alas no bacon-wrapped asparagus this time. Oh well, three days in a row of takoyaki is nothing to complain about :):)

Breakfast bar at Chi-Sun Shin-Osaka

Checked out and wandered up to the station and got some reservations for the next Hikari at 10:13.

So sat on the train for the next three hours. Didn't get to see Shiny - it was covered in clouds again :(

Crossing the Fuji River

Shiny is hiding behind those clouds over there

Freeway bridge on the side of Mount Ashitaka

Office buildings in Shinagawa, Tokyo

Arrived in Tokyo and switched to the Yamonote line to Akihabara. Was exceedingly excited to be back. Felt a bit like we'd never left, especially since the station is still under construction heh :)

Yamonote Line train arriving at Tokyo station

Akihabara!

Colourful buildings in Akihabara

Big Apple building in Akihabara

Denny's! We had a couple of breakfasts here

"Harbour Bridge" in Akihabara

Canal in Akihabara

Wandered down to our hotel and suddenly realised why we couldn't book the last one we stayed in - it doesn't friggen exist anymore - it's just a vacant block with some cranes and workers in it - freaky as!!!!

Site of former Green Hotel

View from our hotel room window

So after cooling off for a little bit we went down to put some washing on (Japan hotels rock by often having coin laundries, other countries should take note). These washing machines were simple as, not requiring you to understand Japanese to understand the intracacies of operating them! Win!

Washing machine! Europe/UK should take note of this!!

When everything was dried we got ready and headed out for a wander around Akihabara. Looked at a few places selling cables that might work with Stu's laptop. And Stu took fliers for various places :)

Dad would love all the old electronics in Akihabara

Having your photo taken with the Colonel is the done thing ;)

Streetscape

Buildings on Chuo Dori

Chuo Line Train passing overhead

Lights in Akihabara

We decided to have dinner and drinks at Cafe Moco which Gaelian had recommended. We had a cheesy hotdog thing which was huge and we ate it Lady and the Tramp style :) Was a good little place and we had a really nice long talk about *stuff* :)

Cafe Moco

Interior of Cafe Moco

Hot dog in Cafe Moco

So kept wandering til we found one of the Maid Cafes that we had a flier for. There were three guys that were also looking to go there so when we were trying to figure out where to go I said let's just follow them :) I think they understood me cause they talked to us which was cool :) So went up the lift but the non-smoking floor was closed so the other guys said they were going to find somewhere different. I think we both were sad we didn't decide to follow them heh. Anyway we went in and it was bright and colourful, with the waitresses dressed up in cute sort of maid/cats ears costumes. There were several groups of people there, and a single guy as well. Stu said a lot of "otaku" guys go to those sorts of places to pay to have attention payed to them. We had a couple of drinks and I got a bit stressed that people on the next table were laughing at us but one of them came to talk to us. I think generally people were very impressed that the sweetie understood and was able to speak some Japanese (I certainly was :) ) They made a bit of a fuss of him because it was his birthday and he had his photo taken with Meru-nya :) So a very very bizarre night but still quite fun :)

Stu and Meru-Nya

Then came back here to blog and do computery things and have a couple of different Asahi beers. The aircon totally works in here, so will get to sleep with the doona tonight hurrah!!

Assortment of local beers :)

Geotagging - Day 4

Photos on the Canon: 52

Videos on the Canon: 3

Photos on the Sony: 71

Videos on the Sony: 9

Photos on the iPhone: 5

Steps walked: 6936

Yen Spent: 11159

Day 5 - Wednesday 1 September - Tokyo

By Kazza the Blank One on September 2, 2010 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had a bit if a sleep-in this morning. Or at least we attempted to, not very successfully :/ Had trouble with temperature - too hot with the doona, too cold without it.

Wandered out the door a bit after 10am, and went up to Denny's for breakfast. As is a 27-year tradition, I had bacon, sausage and eggs :)

I took a photo of this stand of electronics last time we came to Japan.
At least one thing on there is still the same!

Bacon, sausage and eggs at Denny's!

So then we went into Akihabara electronics town to do an audio walking tour of the place. It would have been really good except for the heat (have I mentioned the epic heatwave they're having?). Got to see lots of things that are hidden away in alcoves and up lifts that we never would have thought to look at otherwise. Highlights were the shops that had model kits of ships and planes, Super Potato (if we'd found that place last time with Nat we never would have gotten her out of there!!) and some of the retro toy collections.

Octopus Game & Watch picture

Game & Watches!!!

Soups in a can

Jawa Sandcrawler RC model

We were hot and thirsty at the end of the tour so went back to Cafe Moco for a light lunch and drinks.

These electronics mosaics were all over the place and had all different pictures

Then Stu went back to the hotel while I went across to Yodobashi Camera to have a wander and ask about my camera. But they didn't understand my problem so abandoned hope and also headed back to the hotel.

Yodobashi Camera

Sega Gigo

Spent a decent chunk of time organising my photos on Stu's laptop (we got the cable we needed to make it work). Twitpicced some, still have a few more to do.

Around 6pm we headed out again, this time to Ikebukuro. Had a little bit if a wander around the place and had sushi train for dinner. It was getting a bit late, so there wasn't a lot of choice unfortunately.

Canal in Akihabara

Akihabara buildings by night

Big Apple building by night

Akihabara buildings by night

Cosplay store

Akihabara buildings by night

Ikebukuro

Then hopped on another train to Shinjuku. We were hoping to find the eye. Took a couple of headings in the wrong directions and a pit stop for coffee/cake, but we finally found it.

The Eye! at Shinjuku station

The Eye!

There's a lot of train lines at Shinjuku station

Finally we went to Sibuya to have a look at the scramble intersection and the lights and Hachiko.

Dogs at Shibuya

Buildings in Shibuya

Hachiko at Shibuya station

Scramble crossing in Shibuya

Starbucks

Bubbles in a roving advert truck

Scramble crossing in Shibuya

Geotagging - Day 5

Photos on the Canon: 185

Photos on the Sony: 80

Videos on the Sony: 3

Photos on the Olympus: 2

Photos on the Video: 6

Videos on the Video: 35

Steps walked: 13626

Yen Spent: 8891

Day 6 - Thursday 2 September - Tokyo

By Kazza the Blank One on September 2, 2010 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had another slow start this morning. Didn't get out the door til 10:30 am.

The first stop was to climb a building in Akihabara. Just before the trip I'd seen a video that showed shots from a building in this location, so I went looking to find where it was. Turns out it was an apartment building with an external staircase. There was nothing saying no entry, so up I climbed!

Looking towards Ochanomizu from a building in Akihabara

Looking towards Suidobashi from a building in Akihabara

The building I climbed up was an apartment building

Train on the "Harbour Bridge"

Chuo Line Train

Went to Denny's again cause it's local and convenient.

Stu eating natto in Denny's

After breakfast we went to Ueno to go to the Tokyo National Museum. There were lots if cool bits and pieces there, and with lots of stops we didn't end up leaving til about 4:30pm.

National Museum of Nature and Science (didn't go in here today)

Fountain in Ueno Park

Vending machines to buy tickets for the Tokyo National Museum

Honkan Building, Tokyo National Museum

Hyokeikan Building, Tokyo National Museum

Flowers in the grounds of the museum

Keiseikan Building, Tokyo National Museum - we went in here first

Mummy of Pasherienptah, excavated at Thebes, Egypt

I really liked the colours of these agate and glass Kodama Beads

I think the backs of these were mirrors

Really cool looking pottery

Main staircase in the Honkan Building, which we went into next

Funky glass ball light

Tierd Box With Cover, with camellia, pine, bamboo and plum design in
overglaze enamel with openwork. Kyoto ware, Edo period, 18th century

More really nice pottery

Up close

Writing boxes in maki-e lacquer - these things were amazing!

Writing boxes in maki-e lacquer. The resized photos really don't do them justice!

Bamboo comb

Cormorant painting

Arashiyama! We were there a couple of days ago! :)

Gallery of Horyuji Treasures (we didn't go in here)

Had a bit of a walk through Ueno Park and it was a little freaky to see all the cherry trees in full leaf after last seeing them a year and a half ago in the beginnings of their blossomming. And the park on a Thursday is so desolate compared to a Sunday - and no cool food stalls setup anywhere :(

Fountain in Ueno Park

Ueno Park

Tokyo Sky Tree under construction

So headed back to Ueno station to make our seat reservations on the NEX tomorrow then back to Akihabara.

Had a quiet night in - got our lunch/dinner from the Family Mart downstairs and apart from some washing did a whole lot of nothing :)

Assortment of beers

Geotagging - Day 6

Photos on the Canon: 211

Photos on the Sony: 28

Videos on the Sony: 2

Videos on the Video: 10

Steps walked: 7276

Yen Spent: 8980

Day 7 - Friday 3 September - Tokyo to London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 4, 2010 4:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So my day began twenty three hours ago when I woke up at 4am Tokyo time to go to the toilet and couldn't get back to sleep :( Got up a bit after five to get ready and we were out the door by 6am. Took a Yamonote Line train to Tokyo and caught the 6:30 NEX (after not being sure where it actually left from and getting a bit stressed that we'd miss it before we could find it).

Tintin says have a nice day!

NEX arriving at Tokyo station

Had to go to T1 this time at Narita Airport which we'd never been to. Were very impressed with the electronic info boards on the trains that told you which terminal to go to depending which airline you're taking *and* they even have flight details - very cool!

Airport info boards on the NEX

So getting through security/immigration was no problem, then a long walk out to the end of the terminal to see our A380!!! (and about an hour to kill in the terminal but no Yahoo cafe :( There was a Google free wifi desk, but I couldn't get it to work :( ). Was filled with lots of squee going on an A380 - right up until we got to our seats and found it's really really hard to look out the windows :( The walls are really thick (probably 25-30cm) and the windows are positioned a lot higher. So it's practically impossible to get a good view out the windows :( I ended up using random camera exclusively cause the canon is just to unwieldy for that sort of thing :/

My first A380!

Rows 50-59 go left, rows 60-94 go right

Engines of the A380 from the skybridge

Boarding the A380 - economy class section

Leg room on the A380. Pretty standard (ie, non-existent for Stu)

The fuselage is very thick at this point, so the windows are a *long* way away :(

So settled in for the flight. I started to watch Robin Hood but the screens just weren't bright enough to see what was going on in the nighttime scenes in the movie. So abandoned that and put on "You've Got Mail" which I'd actually been thinking about only recently.

We flew out to sea then turned 180 degrees when leaving Narita

GPS track of the flight leaving Narita

Engine of the A380

Tail cam!

Ground cam

Snackages on the plane

About 11:25 we hit the coast of Russia and they brought out lunch. Shortly after that we went through some pretty impressive turbulence - the worst I've ever been in. The engines and wings were flexing considerably, but I couldn't document as I needed both hands to hold onto my lunch to stop it sliding or bouncing off the table! Gah!

Landfall in Russia

Real knives!

Google Earth cam?

At 1pm they told us to lower the blinds, which is somewhat annoying for a daytime flight as I want to take photos. But it did make watching movies easier.

I watched Fantastic Mr Fox next which was pretty lame and only very loosely based on the book. Recognised Dumbledore as one of the baddies heh.

Next was The Princess and the Frog which wasn't too bad.

5pm Tokyo time now and I'm getting *hungry*

Next watched Alice in Wonderland which was pretty good.

*Finally* at 19:40 got dinner.

Dinner on the plane

Rhine River near Frankfurt

Runway 18, Frankfurt Airport (we took off on this later)

Pulling up at the terminal in Frankfurt

Arrival at 21:25 Tokyo time, seven hours before that Frankfurt time.

Me and the plane

Had a nice long meandering stroll to our next plane. Then had a slight panic because they'd moved the gate of our plane and there was a different one there! Fortunately they'd only moved our plane three gates away. And the climate was so much better! So nice to be out of the oppressive heat of Japan.

Smoking zone - sealed room for smokers

German toilets and their viewing platforms never fail to amuse me

Our A320 from Frankfurt to Heathrow

Flight was otherwise uneventful. Missed out on seeing London because we came in from the west, however I did go squeee a lot when I saw Legoland :):):)

Our plane, reflected

Rhine River near Oppenheim

Cool clouds, over Belgium or possibly the Netherlands

Legoland!!

The "Long Walk" of trees leading south of Windsor Castle.
We drove down that road in the foreground to get to Runnymede.

Looking out over Old Windsor (Runnymede is in the distance)

Traffic on the M25 west of the airport

Had another very long walk through Heathrow. Immigration took all of a minute, and no customs people even there in the nothing to declare section. I still can't get used to the fact that the rest of the world is not as paranoid as Australia.

Then used our Oyster cards to hop on a Piccadilly Line to Earl's Court where our hotel is. On the train I was a little freaked out at how closely the verges looked like Sydney verges. Everything from the way they string wires along beside the tracks, the types of trees and foliage, and even the brown paint used to cover the graffiti. It made me feel like I was home! Which was kind of good because I'd been feeling a little apprehensive about coming to England - just because I've never been here before. I was quite relaxed about Japan and Frankfurt, but London is uncharted territory..

So the train was pretty easy, altho finding our way out of Earl's Court station was more challenging heh. Came out of the station and saw my first red double decker bus and black taxi :)

Checked into our hotel (decent enough place, although very small, but with free internet), dumped our bags, then went out to get some food so we wouldn't end up starving at 3am. Tragically the food that best met this requirement was Burger King. In our defense I'll say that we didn't have MacDonalds once in Japan! Heh

Dinner at Burger King

My Twitter apps are both broken hence the lack of tweets. I suspect I'll be waking up extremelly early so should have some to look at it then.

Meanwhile, my eyes are swimming so need to get ready for bed.

Geotagging - Day 7

Photos on the Canon: 31

Photos on the Sony: 329

Videos on the Sony: 4

Photos on the iPhone: 3

Steps walked: 7893

Yen Spent: 1090

Pounds Spent: 7.39

Day 8 - Saturday 4 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 5, 2010 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We went to bed quite early last night (like 8pm or something). Slept quite well until 2:39am when the hotel fire alarm went off #grunt. Had almost finished getting dressed when it stopped. Then it started again. And stopped/started/stopped again :/ Went out and some people had gone down to find out what was up. Yup false alarm. Was worried that I wouldn't get back to sleep but think I must have eventually. Woke up a little while later maybe around 4am but couldn't get back to sleep so got up early and did computery stuff.

Around 8 we went down for breakfast. It was actually pretty good with a decent selection of cooked and other food.

The Tardis!! At Earl's Court

Then we headed out for the day. I thought that it might be good to do a bit of a walk around the place to get a feel for the place, and we could plan the rest of the days at night. So started by getting off at St James Park (Victoria station was closed due to a security alert). This was around 9:30-10am.

So the day turned out to be a nine-hour long walk with pitstops :) We didn't go into anything, this was just a walk by with photos.

Started with New Scotland Yard, then Westminster Abbey (huge), Houses of Parliament (I was squeeing lots at being in London at this point), across the Lambeth Bridge, then meandered slowly north then east along the southbank walkway seeing lots of bridges and buildings and stuff. Ended up crossing Tower Bridge around 4pm. Was a super awesome day of seeing stuff and finally getting to see stuff I'd only ever seen in pictures/tv/movies.

Westminster Abbey

Clock face of Big Ben

Back of Westminster Abbey

I think this lion on the Houses of Parliament is poking its tongue out at me!

Houses of Parliament

Buxton Memorial

Lambeth Bridge

Looking down the Thames

Bus on the Lambeth Bridge. This is where the Knight Bus passed between two regular buses in Prisoner of Azkaban

Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

Houses of Parliament
Photo by Stu

South Bank of the Thames

Houses of Parliament

Me in London!!

The Southbank Lion, and the London Eye

Westminster Bridge and Houses of Parliament

London Eye

Queues for the London Eye

Hungerford Bridge

Blue Morris Dancers

Underground Skate Park

St Paul's

London CBD across the Thames

St Paul's

Millennium Bridge and St Paul's

Tate Modern

Shakespeare's Globe (it's only a model! shh!)

Southwark Bridge

Borough Markets

Location of the Leaky Cauldron in Prisoner of Azkaban. It's now a florist.

Winchester Palace - the remains of

The Golden Hinde

London Bridge (boring!)

HMS Belfast

City Hall

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

HMS Belfast

Tower of London

Decided to get some food at this point, so stopped at a fancy(ish) Italian place at St Katherine Dock.

Didn't think we had much energy left so decided to see Fenchurch St station and then Liverpool St station. Found those so decided to head for home. But home had the option of going via Kings Cross so that's what we did. First I found Euston Road but went the wrong direction to find Pentonville Road so had to go back, after photographing the outside of St Pancras station (trees have grown a bit since Chamber of Secrets was filmed). Then of course was the mission to find platform 9 3/4. They're making a real mess of the station at the moment, and sadly the little bridge where Hagrid gives Harry his ticket has been pulled down (at the end of 2008). I didn't even try to find the waiting room from Order of the Phoenix. But back to 9 3/4. Well it seems they filmed this between platforms 6 and 7. Or maybe it was between 2 and 3. Not quite sure now, will need to go back to check. Anyways. The trolley they have set into the wall is actually just past the bike racks 2/3 the way along platform 8.

Old London red bus

St Pancras Station - recognise this from Chamber of Secrets?

King's Cross station

All that's left of the bridge across the platforms where Hagrid gave Harry his ticket for the Hogwarts Express

Platform 9 3/4!! This has been moved as of 2012 apparently

The brickwork between platforms 4 and 5 where they filmed the entrance to Platform 9 3/4

Finally got out of there, and went via the supermarket to get a snack so we won't need dinner.

Geotagging - Day 8

Photos on the Canon: 578

Photos on the Sony: 30

Photos on the Olympus: 65

Photos on the Blackberry: 11

Photos on the Video: 11

Videos on the Video: 22

Steps walked: 21557

Pounds Spent: 55.65

Day 9 - Sunday 5 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 6, 2010 6:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had a pretty good sleep last night. Woke up at 7am :)

Breakfast much the same as yesterday. Got out the door closer to 9:30, slightly later than I wanted.

Headed to Victoria (the station was open today). Had a quick look at Westminster Cathedral (not the abbey).

Victoria Station

Westminster Cathedral

Then headed to Buckingham Palace. There was the mayor's bike ride so The Mall and the roads in front of the palace were closed to traffic. This meant we were able to wander around the whole area that would normally be teeming with cars. Was very cool.

Buckingham Palace

Beefeater

Buckingham Palace

Palace gates

Victoria Memorial

Looking down The Mall

Buckingham Palace

Canada Gate

Victoria Memorial through the Australia Gate

Next we had a bit of a wander through St James's Park and saw lots of birds and SQUIRRELs.

Flowers in St James's Park

St James's Park

Geese in St James's Park

Heron in St James's Park

Seagull in St James's Park

Swan in St James's Park

Seagull in St James's Park

St James's Park

Squirrel!

Got to the end of The Mall to Trafalgar Square.

Looking up The Mall

Duke of York Column

Admiralty Arch

Looking up The Mall

Mounted police coming through Admiralty Arch

Nelson's Column

Lord Nelson

Then down Whitehall and across to the Ministry of Magic's visitor's entrance (they've repaved the bit of footpath they used in the movie and the rest of the street is a bit of a mess too). Up past Northumberland to Strand then around the back of the National Gallery to Leicester Square.

Visitor's entrance to the Ministry of Magic

Me standing where the visitors entrance was located

Trafalgar Square

Odeon Theatre, Leicester Square

At this point we decided to stop for a pint and a rest.

Decided to go to Notting Hill and the Portobello Markets, thinking it might be better on a weekend.

It took five trains to get there due to line closures :/

The poms are mental. You have to keep left basically everywhere *except* on escalators

Same station, but keep left on the paths. Make up your mind England!

When we got to Notting Hill I saw an O2 store so went in to see if I could get a sim (and see if my phone was unlocked). Well surprise surprise it's not unlocked. Whether it's Optus or iTunes I don't know but it made me pretty depressed :/

Wandered up Portobello Road and had some lunch (nice lunch but $60aud :/ ). Then basically just came back to the hotel to try and do some planning for the rest of the week.

Coronet Cinema, Notting Hill

I thought this might have been some dealer in antique sewing machines, but no actually it's a clothing store!

Earl's Court Station

Geotagging - Day 9

Photos on the Canon: 329

Photos on the Sony: 60

Videos on the Sony: 1

Photos on the Blackberry: 1

Videos on the Video: 23

Steps walked: 12594

Pounds Spent: 66.39

Day 10 - Monday 6 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 6, 2010 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Woke up very early this morning. Like maybe 4am or something. That'll learn us to go to bed at 9pm. Lay there for ages and finally got up at 6am to use the puta.

Breakfast the same as last two days. Out the door a bit after 9am.

Checked out a local laundromat on the way to the station which should work for us later in the week.

Bicycles for hire in Earl's Court. They had these all over the place. We might have
used them except the process seemed overly complicated so thought it was all too hard.

So headed into town.

Our first stop (after passing Piccadilly, Mayfair and Vine St) was the Apple Store on Regent St. Unfortunately they don't do iPhone unlocking. So I am royally screwed :( $20000/gb because Optus and/or Apple couldn't get their act together. Bastards. Epic hate. So switched off data and will only use data in emergencies.

Toilet at Mayfair. Yes even the toilets are fancy in this part of town!

Ritz Hotel

Burlington House

Old building on Great Marlborough St

Apple Store on Regent St

Continued up Regent St and along Oxford St, past Park Lane to Hyde Park. Had a bit of a meander through the park and took lots of photos of gooses and stuff.

Clock on Selfridges

Marble Arch, Hyde Park

Speaker's Corner, Hyde Park

Hyde Park deckchairs

Hyde Park deckchairs can be hired - £1.50 an hour!

Reformer's Tree mosaic

Geese on the march!

Heron

Flowers

Monkey Puzzle Tree

Flowers

Gum tree outside a toilet block

Queen Elizabeth Gate, aka The Queen Mother Gates

Grand Entrance gates

Wellington Arch

Then hopped on a train to Temple.

Got out and wandered up to the Temple Church, but unfortunately it was closed for maintenance. Was very cool walking amongst the buildings around the church - little passageways between and through the buildings - very cool!

Entrance to Pump Court

Cloisters

Temple Church

Column dedicated to the Knights Templar

Walking up Inner Temple Lane

Came out onto Fleet St and saw the Royal Courts of Justice, which I'd never seen before. It was a pretty spectacular building too. Walked down and back past that.

My attempt to get a red double decker bus, a black taxi, a pillar box and a
phone box all in one shot. Sorta worked.

Royal Courts of Justice

Continued up Fleet St. Stopped for lunch and a pint at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which is a funky little pub rebuilt 1667 (after the great fire of London). It had a whole series of little rooms and bars, which would make it a bit of a fun place to explore. We found a room with a free table and I had bangers and mash (which had to be done being in England and all :) ). Also had a couple of Samuel Smith beers - I had an alpine lager and Stu had a brewers bitter.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

Continued on. Had a quick detour up past the Old Bailey (which has been restored nicely after being blown up in V for Vendetta ;) ) and continued on to St Paul's Cathedral. It was raining at this point which made photography somewhat tricky. Went into the entrance of the cathedral. It's £12.50 to go in but of course there is no photography permitted. Stu has been in this one before, so if we're going to shell out that much money with no photos to show for it, we might do Westminster Abbey.

The Old Bailey

St Paul's Cathedral

Queen Anne statue outside St Paul's

St Paul's Cathedral

Then we walked across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern, to see an exhibition - "Exposed - Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera". Some of it was pretty interesting. Some of it was a bit meh. My favourite thing was a serious of webcam grabs of Linz in Austria. A dude had gone down the plaza in front of the webcam at the same time each day and taken a grab of the webcam at the time. There were a series of short comments as well. For some reason I really liked this display :) By the time we'd finished looking at this it was nearly 6pm, so we walked back across the bridge, up to Mansion House station and back to the hotel (via Burger King for a snack dinner).

Heading down to the Millennium Bridge

Seagull on the Millennium Bridge

Looking down the Thames

Crossing the Millennium Bridge

Jurgita & Peter Forever. Says so on the label.

St Paul's from the Millennium Bridge

South end of the Millennium Bridge

St Paul's and the Millennium Bridge

Interior of Tate Modern

Millennium Bridge

Looking up the brick tower of Tate Modern

Geotagging - Day 10

Photos on the Canon: 297

Photos on the Sony: 163

Videos on the Sony: 1

Photos on the iPhone: 1

Photos on the Blackberry: 3

Photos on the Video: 13

Videos on the Video: 22

Steps walked: 16133

Pounds Spent: 58.31

Day 11 - Tuesday 7 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 7, 2010 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sleep - same

Breakfast - same

So there was a tube strike planned for today. While there were some services still running, we decided we'd have a day of "local" to the hotel things. ie, things we could walk to from the hotel.

So we headed in the general direction of what we thought was the Natural History Museum, but the road curled around to the north instead of staying going north east, so we decided to have a look at Kensington Palace first up. Just the exterior, didn't go in. Went down to the pond where The Birds were gathered. Got some way cool photos of some starlings on a dude's hand.

Doggy poop bins in Kensington Gardens

Kensington Palace

Kensington Palace gardens

Geese in Kensington Gardens

Swan in Kensington Gardens

Starlings in Kensington Gardens

Swan in Kensington Gardens

Feeding the geese

Kensington Palace gates

Then we meandered through Kensington Gardens, and had a look at the Albert Memorial, and the Royal Albert Hall.

South Flower Walk

Albert Memorial

Royal Albert Hall

Albert Memorial

And then down to the Natural History Museum. It wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Maybe it was trying to cover too much. I was expecting it to be choc-full of stuff, but it was a little bit spartan, representing whole swathes of things (eg all of mammals or all of fish) with just a few cabinets. Actually one of the best displays in terms of sheer volume was the mineral displays. It took up a whole big room! Stu also liked the contents of the cocoon (some detail on the scientific and museum process), but by that time we were exhausted on our feet and didn't really have the energy to look at it on more depth.

Natural History Museum

Amazing stone carvings were all over the building - inside and out!

Central Hall

Moose I think

Whales

Whale

Sensory and Motor models of the body

Dinosaur

Charles Darwin

Central Hall

Giant Sequoia cross section

Mineral hall

Iridescent Stalactites

Mocha Stone

Fluorescent diamonds

Agate

This looks like a cityscape or something

Side of the cacoon

Genes V! I had this book in uni!

Petrified wood

So at this point Stu headed back to the hotel and I decided to go to Harrods (just to say I'd been). Oh. Fricken. Dear. First of all you need a map to find your way around (and even then you still got turned around and upside down). I was constantly trying to figure out how to get out of where I was. The whole bottom floor of course is the super exclusive perfumes and handbags. With an Egyptian theme (!). Went up to the fourth floor to look at toys. Had to walk through the childrenswear section. £300 for an outfit?? hrmm. They did have RC which I'd not seen in stores (only online) for £79. Lego was comparable to our pricing (perhaps more with the dollar the way it is). Went downstairs to have a look at electronics stuff, but if they had memory sticks I didn't find them. TinTin books were £7. The coolest part of the whole store (that I saw) was the fossil and mineral gallery. Having literally just seen some of this stuff at the museum, to see it for sale was super cool. Horrendously expensive, but super cool :) I didn't find the statue my parents found last year, or the Dodi and Diana one (I didn't even know it existed til just then), but did find a gold Egyptian thing. At this point I figured any exit was a good exit, so bolted for the door before I got lost again!

Harrods

Rhodocrosite

Petrified wood

Shells

Gold Egyptian thing

Harrods

Twenty five minute walk back to the hotel, then went out again to get dinner (KFC - I know, lame) and back to *sit*. Another ten kilometre walking day today, not including walking around the museum or Harrods or the walk to KFC and back. Feet. Very. Sore.

Photos on the Canon: 320

Videos on the Canon: 5

Photos on the Sony: 88

Photos on the Blackberry: 2

Videos on the Video: 13

Steps walked: 18836

Pounds Spent: 28.53

Day 12 - Wednesday 8 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 8, 2010 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So our morning began at 12:45am when the roadworkers outside decided to start jack-hammering.

Seriously.. WTF???

That would never happen in Australia - there are laws about such things!!

Anyways. It stopped after about ten minutes, but it took me ages to get back to sleep cause I was anxious about it starting up again.

Breakfast much the same.

First stop of the day was the British Museum. I knew in advance that you could easily spend a week in that place. And I wasn't wrong. We had a couple of "must sees" - the Rosetta Stone, the Mildenhall Treasure, the Lewis Chessmen, the Elgin Parthenon marble, the Sutton Hoos burial stuff. And in two hours we easily saw those. But there was the hints at so much more. You could easily spend a hour in each small room. If we lived in London it'd be cool to pop in for an hour or two on weekends and just explore the place. We barely scratched the surface of what was there.

So at 12:15 we headed back to the station to meet Shazzy for lunch. Went to Pu's Brasserie - Thai - and had some very nice curries. Lunch was over all too quickly.

Then we headed into town to have a wander past Downing St and onto the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum. Fascinating stuff! A couple of odd highlights for me - that Churchill was a pretty talented artist! And that Neville Chamberlain looks exactly like Barty Crouch in Goblet of Fire. Freaky! (actually a website I read suggested Barty Crouch looks like Hitler - which is also true! Gah! :) )

When we were going through Westminster station on the way back I was thinking hey this could be the station from Order of the Phoenix - and sure enough it was! But I don't have any photos dammit!! Will have to go back ;)

Then we headed back to the hotel to pick up our washing to take to the laundromat. It was a pretty sad place - half the equipment was "out of order" - including the detergent machine which was somewhat annoying. Fortunately Earl's Court has enough mini-mart type places that we could buy some. We even donated some to some kiwis in the same predicament as us.

While we were waiting for washing and drying we went next door to the "New Asia" Indian restaurant for dinner. Because Indian has to be done when you're in London :) It was pretty good. Also had a couple of pints.

When I was transferring our washing to the dryer I noticed a couple of things that weren't ours. I thought they must have gotten stuck in the corner of the washer and missed. But as we pulled the stuff out of the dryer we found more things. Another couple that had come in at the same time as us said those things were theirs. They also had had to switch between the small and the big washers. I'm guessing she threw a handful of stuff into our washer by mistake. So we gave them back most of their stuff, but we missed a couple of socks. So they will have to be thrown out as they don't even match - doh!!

So now it's 10pm and I haven't downloaded my photos yet... maybe tomorrow..!

Photos on the Canon: 389

Photos on the Sony: 14

Photos on the Blackberry: 2

Videos on the Video: 3

Steps walked: 11707

Pounds Spent: 104.48

Day 13 - Thursday 9 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 9, 2010 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Woke up by Stu's phone buzzing at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep :/

Breakfast - same.

Today we decided to go our own separate ways for the day. The sun was out so I wanted to do some touristy things while Stu had a relaxing day off.

So my first stop was Buckingham Palace. I considered going in, but the sun was out! So decided to go down past Westminster station to photograph the barriers (a la Order of the Phoenix), across the Westminster bridge, and up the London Eye.

Had about a fifteen minute wait in the queue to get tickets, then a fifteen minute wait to get on. There were some pretty annoying people (a couple of girls and also a bunch of guys that just wanted to pose for each other non stop through the whole ride). The view was decent enough and the clouds parted enough for me to get some ok photos.

Hopped on a train (when I eventually found the right line at Waterloo station) to London Bridge. And from there went across and up Tower Bridge. You go up in a lift in the north tower, then you walk across to the south tower across the top. There are all these info boards setup to read. Then you can go across the top on the other half as well - this part was only opened a few months ago. Then you take steps most of the way down the south tower (there is a toilet near the top of the south tower you can use - this would be one of the cooler places I've gone to the toilet :) ). After the bridge tour you can also go see the old steam engine rooms that were in use until 1976. They were pretty cool to look at with lots of useful info.

It was pouring with rain at this point. !? So walked across the bridge and it was already clearing up again.

At this point I didn't know what to do next. Stu would have been interested in the Tower of London. But it was just there. Or I could have gone into Buckingham Palace. Either way I was going to miss out on the Monument because it was getting too late in the day. Even considered doing the Monument and the Belfast. So sat there for about ten minutes trying to decide what to do. In the end I went to Tower of London.

Went in around 3pm and stayed til closing at 5:30. And probably only saw half of it - and a lot of that was rushed :/ The place generally works pretty well in terms of crowd control - everything has an entrance and an exit so you're not battling through people going the other way. However some of the rooms are quite small so it's still a people

battle that I find quite stressful. And that was late in the afternoon when the numbers were dwindling - I'd hate to see the place in the morning!! Anyway the main thing I wanted to see were the crown jewels. Which are spec-fricking-tacular :) The Cullinan I diamond in the sceptre is truly a sight to behold. Would loved to have been able to take photos, but alas not. Did a bit more wandering until closing time.

Last stop of the day was The Leaky Cauldron!!! This was the first one in Leadenhall Markets. Extremelly squee :):):)

And then back to the hotel to collapse.

Last night of guaranteed internet for who knows how long. So I've been trying to do things that require internet. And not succeeding very well and doing any of it :/

Photos on the Canon: 443

Photos on the Sony: 40

Videos on the Sony: 1

Photos on the iPhone: 2

Steps walked: 16056

Pounds Spent: 148.57

Day 14 - Friday 10 September - London to Aylesbury

By Kazza the Blank One on September 12, 2010 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Got to have a slightly slow start today as we didn't need to pick the car up til middayish and checkout was 11. So caught up on as much internetty stuff as we could before we left.

Hopped on a train to the car rental place and found it quite easily and got all the paperwork sorted. Unfortunately the automatic had a big crack in the windscreen so we got stuck with a manual. We can drive manuals (we both own manuals) but when you're dealing with driving in a foreign country, not having to worry about gears makes a huge difference. The big difference between this trip and our honeymoon of course is that at least here they drive on the *correct* side of the road. The suckiest thing about the car is that the blinkers and windscreen wipers are backwards to most Australian cars. This sux *a lot* as when you want to indicate in a hurry the reflex action will turn on the windscreen wipers :( (indicating when you plenty of time is not such an issue because you have time to remember to hit the opposite lever).

So anyway, after getting honked at by impatient drivers two minutes into the trip, we managed to escape London and headed for Windsor. Didn't get to see the castle except for glimpses of it, and drove past Legoland (coming soon!) with a final destination of Runnymede and the Magna Carta memorial. £1 pay and display parking even in the middle of nowhere.

From there headed back into Windsor to find some lunch. Found a pay and display parking station and a Subway nearby. Then fought with the Tomtom which didn't have a couple of the places in it I wanted to go to. Well it did, but under different location names.

So the next place I wanted to see was Picket Post Close in Martins Heron (actually Bracknell). Because it also happens to be 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging. (!!!) I squeed lots and lots. Didn't get out of the car though cause it's a tiny culdesac and I didn't want to look toooo much like a stalker ;) There was a van and a skip out the front which didn't help either. So basically did a drive by shoot and headed off again.

Next we headed for Henly on Thames. Just to have a quick look really. We found a shopping centre carpark and walked down to the river and had a half pint of a couple of Brakspeare ales.

Next up was Privet Drive number 2, used in the Prisoner of Azkaban. This was Dowding Way, Leavesden, altho the Tomtom couldn't find that so we had to put in Watford. Approaching this I could see the purple Knight Buses across the road in the Leavesden Studios backlot. As you can imagine there was much squeeing on my part :) Got out this time and walked up the same bit of road that Harry did. There's not any swings in the little park where he first sees Padfoot but the grass is there. Also went to the end of the road and could see across into Leavesden studios and the top of the row of houses they used as Privet Drive for movies two and onwards. And one of the hangers (the great hall was built in one if the hangers and was used for all the movies).

So then we headed north-west thinking we might stop at Aylesbury or keep going depending how we felt. Just outside of Aylesbury we saw a Holiday Inn so decided to stop. After the London hotel we were very impressed at how much *space* this one has! I completely repacked my suitcase which made me feel a bit better. The big downer is that the Internet is £15/day.. WTF?? They can take that and shove it :(

Had a beer and a snack dinner at the onsite pub, sharing the area with a wedding reception's pre dinner drinks. And spent the evening repacking suitcases and selecting images to resize for twitpics.

Photos on the Canon: 139

Photos on the Sony: 2

Photos on the Blackberry: 1

Photos on the Video: 2

Videos on the Video: 8

Steps walked: 6999

Pounds Spent: 29.58

Day 15 - Saturday 11 September - Aylesbury to Nottingham

By Kazza the Blank One on September 12, 2010 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well the blinds in the hotel at Aylesbury were super awesome. The sweetie got up to go to the loo and I asked him what the time was and he said 8:00 and I'm *gah* we have to go! heh

So got up and ready fairly quickly and had breakfast (very similar to last hotel but with actual real bacon instead of some weird pressed ham thing).

Headed out, our first stop being Stratford-upon-Avon. Cute, if very touristy, little town. Wandered up to see Shakespeare's birthplace building, but at £12.50 each ($50aud for the two of us to go in) we decided to give it a miss, as we weren't all *that* interested anyway. Instead we went for a little walk down to the Avon river and saw a boat going through a lock and lots of birds and that was actually really quite nice.

Our next stop was Warwick, as we wanted to see the castle. Found parking in the castle grounds by accident (although £5 which was a little steep we thought). Castle itself was also pretty pricey (we got the cheapest option of £17.95 - as the dungeon looked pretty kitschy - and probably a good thing we didn't get it anyway as we were pressed for time enough as it was). Had a bit of a wander around the outside of the main castle, down to the mill house and around the back to see the trebuchet (didn't get to see it in action though). Watched the falconry show which was very cool, although I might have taken way too many photos ;) Then went into the castle and around the towers and battlements, which I really enjoyed but Stu nearly died on all the steps. Then through the chapel, great hall and state rooms, making this one of the rare castles/palaces I've been into that let you take photos!! So quite enjoyed that.

It was getting a bit late by then (4pm) so left and headed for Nottingham. Did ok until we got into town where we kept getting stuck in the wrong lane and not able to follow the GPS, or having the GPS try and send us the wrong way down one way streets. Went round in circles just trying to get to the hotel :(

So got in eventually. The hotel (the Britannia) is a bit of a dump - we got a smoking room so it smells, everything is a little old and sad, no aircon to speak of, security on the door doesn't work at all, parking and access a pain in the posterior. But it was cheap (£49 including breakfast) so can't complain too much. It's only saving grace is free wifi, which sort of works if you look the right way at it.

So dumped our stuff and headed out again to go to Di's. Again we had issues with the GPS and getting stuck in the wrong lane for where it wanted us to go. Again we went around in circles :( Was very frustrating. But escaped eventually and got away without any further dramas, even getting a FREE parking spot right outside their door (first free parking we've had in this country! Unless you count the half hour we got near the hotel when dumping our stuff). So went out to the local for a couple of pints, then back to their place for nibblies while Nick cooked up a storm. Dinner was a high-class bangers and mash - absolutely delicious sausages, a herby mash potato that was lovely, and heaps of delicious gravy .. nom nom nom :) Chatted the whole evening, about all sorts of stuff .. a lot about travel, Paul had to get a mention, their recent dramas, cameras etc etc. Was a really lovely evening and I have a slight hangover headache to prove it :)

Made it back to the hotel in one go and collapsed into bed without blogging.

Photos on the Canon: 549

Photos on the Sony: 6

Photos on the Video: 69

Videos on the Video: 81

Steps walked: 12838

Pounds Spent: 69.29

Day 16 - Sunday 12 September - Nottingham to York

By Kazza the Blank One on September 14, 2010 7:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Woke up relatively early (with slight hangover headache) so got up and did computery stuff.

First stop was the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest. The GPS took us around the long way to the road we needed to be on (lame), so actually went past it on the first loop because it brought us in from the north instead of the south that we were expecting. #grunt. Anyways so went in (£3 parking) and of course there's a whole visitors centre setup with bows and arrows etc for sale. Went for a walk to find the tree, which would have been quite pleasant, except for all the screaming kids. The tree itself is huge - well at least in girth anyway. :)

Next we went a little out of the way to Chesterfield to see the church with the crooked spire. Cute and all, but it did take at least half an hour out of our day.

And then onto York. I was hoping to get there around lunch time, but everything else took so long we didn't arrive til around 2:30pm and didn't get into the town to start exploring til after 3pm :( So I was a bit stressed that I wouldn't be able to do the couple of things I wanted to. In the end Cliftons Tower got dropped off. So wandered in through the west gate and through the old town up to the minster. It was enormous! Obviously not as an enormous as Cologne's (we've been totally spoilt by that cathedral!!) but still pretty huge. Paid the £8 each to go in, and I paid £5 to go up the tower. Wandered around inside (you can take photos in this one hurrah!) then went up the tower at 3:45pm. The tower was pretty cool, I enjoyed that. After that I went back down and found the sweetie and we wandered off again.

The next stop was the National Railway Museum. I wasn't counting on the Hogwarts Express still being there, but I asked when we went in and she said it was! So did a wander through the Great Hall, and up there back was the Hogwarts Express!!!!! There was much squeeing on my part :)

Finally, around 5:30, we went looking for food. Wandered back into York and found an all-you-can eat Chinese buffet, so went in there for a decent variety of food.

Then back to the hotel to collapse.

Photos on the Canon: 391

Photos on the Sony: 27

Photos on the iPhone: 1

Photos on the Video: 4

Videos on the Video: 13

Steps walked: 15008

Pounds Spent: 64.23

Day 17 - Monday 13 September - York to Durham

By Kazza the Blank One on September 14, 2010 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Breakfast was a little different in York - we actually had to order off a menu. I had a chefs special which was a croissant with bacon, tomato, cheese and mushrooms, with scrambled egg on the side - but it was huge! Had trouble finishing it (I didn't).

The internet also died overnight which was a big pain as I hadn't blogged, or booked Edinburgh accommodation, or sorted out our day's itinerary. Poo.

Anyways.

We decided to skip a drive through the Yorkshire Dales as it wasn't going to fit in timewise. So first stop was Thirsk. (Thirsk was the town that vet/author James Herriot was from). Found the Darrowby Inn on a drive by and then found parking nearby. There was a tourist information office next door to the Darrowby Inn so went in and asked where the museum was. So had a wander through that. It was the building that Herriot used to live/work in, so some of the things in there (like the phone in the hall) were very squee to see. It was quite well done, and was a good snapshot of a vet's working life in the 1940s etc. Even Stu enjoyed it :)

Next we headed for Goathland (Hogsmeade Station). Yes, much squeeing was had on my part :) But what was also nice was driving through the North Yorkshire Moors to get there and out. Unfortunately the wind was blowing hard and it was raining a bit, so photographing it proved tricky. The drive was pretty awesome though.

Found lunch at a road-side Subway, that was actually drive through! Freaky!

At this point we'd had planned to go to Durham to see the cathedral (Hogwarts) but changed our plans earlier in the day and decided to go see Hadrian's Wall and do Durham in the morning. So trekked out (past the Angel of the North) to Housesteads Roman Fort. By this stage the wind was blowing a gale, and it was raining fairly heavily. So we got out our jackets and went up anyway! It fell into the category of "you don't have to be mad but it helps" :) So paid the £3 parking, and the £4.80 entry each, and went and had a look at the fort. And it was super awesome!! Even in the pouring rain. I had to use random camera as it was much easier to shield from the rain. But walking around this two thousand year old fort was very squee :)

So we were completely drenched from the waist down, and headed back into Durham. Found the hotel, got changed and went to have some dinner in the hotel bar. Then stayed up entirely too late trying to find accommodation in Edinburgh (internet/parking/laundry were all factors that had to be considered).

Photos on the Canon: 298

Photos on the Sony: 137

Photos on the iPhone: 1

Photos on the Blackberry: 1

Photos on the Video: 7

Videos on the Video: 14

Steps walked: 6835

Pounds Spent: 101.51

Day 18 - Tuesday 14 September - Durham to Edinburgh

By Kazza the Blank One on September 14, 2010 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Didn't sleep all that well last night. Not helped by the pillows that were about a foot thick :/ And breakfast was pretty stingy too (had to order again, but this time they just had the choices, and they brought them out in a set quantity - so if you only ordered three things out of six, you'd get half a plate of food).

Well after seeing both Leaky Cauldron's last week, the Hogwarts Express two days ago and Hogsmeade station yesterday, today I finally got to Hogwarts!!

First stop was Durham Cathedral. We found the Howlands Park and Ride thingie and caught the bus into town. Apparently Durham has a congestion charge, but we didn't see signs anywhere, so we're a bit worried that our drive to and from the hotel was charged and we don't know about it. Definitely not a user-friendly town this one. When we got off the park and ride, we really had no idea where we were or the best way to get to the cathedral. Ended up picking a direction and walking in it, and eventually found a tiny sign pointing to the cathedral and castle.

So the cathedral is quite impressive (especially since the thing is nine hundred years old!!). It's free to get in (they ask for a donation) but they don't let you take photos inside the cathedral itself. I wanted to go up the tower (£5) so did that. Then we paid £5 each to see the stuff around the cloisters. You don't need to pay to see the cloisters themselves, just the other special exhibitions. Of course I was there to see the cloisters and courtyard. These of course being where they filmed the corridors and courtyard from Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. I was epic excited to walk down the same way the kids did and round to the little gate (couldn't actually go out into the courtyard). Probably took a few too many photos ;) Had a look at the "AV" presentation - a 17 minute doco about the history of the cathedral and St Cuthbert which was really interesting. Also had a look at the "treasures" which included one of Cuthbert's coffins and a gold and garnet cross that was with his body.

So then we headed north. Made the decision not to go to Lindesfarne as it just wasn't going to fit in timewise. Had lunch at a Little Chef on the motorway.

So went straight to Alnwick (pronounced Annick). It was supposed to be £2 parking, but we walked up and down and couldn't find a ticket machine, so eventually asked someone and they said a dude at the entrance was selling the tickets. Well the dude was nowhere to be seen so we scored free parking! Win! :) £12.50 each entrance to the castle. More squeeing on my part as we came up to the gate that they filmed in Philosopher's Stone. We arrived just before a 2:30 "Broadswords to Broomsticks" tour, so went along on that. Most of it was telling me stuff I already knew, but there was some interesting history thrown in as well, some behind the scenes stuff, and stuff from other movies (Robin Hood Prince of Thieves) as well. Some stuff I didn't know - they used twelve identical Ford Anglias, and wrote off seven of them; they filmed the train scene from Philosopher's Stone in a building in the courtyard, as well as the restricted section of the library scenes. So after the tour had a good wander around the area where they had their first flying lesson, as well as the little courtyard where Ron pays out Hermione about "leviOHsa, not levioSAH". Had a wander through the staterooms (no photography there unfortunately). People actually live in this castle in the winter, so there were a couple of completely incongruous things, like a fusball table!, in one of the rooms. Found the sweetie, went up one of the little towers, then another quick walk around the grounds before heading off.

Headed down to the coast to find Bamburgh Castle, which looked quite impressive in the afternoon sun. Went down to the beach north of it to get some photos.

Then onto Edinburgh. We arrived too late to do our washing (it closes at 8pm). So just had a pint (not a quiet pint - the pub was filled with noisy people watching football) and then got some takeaway dinner and came back to the hotel to eat and do internetty stuff.

Prepare for some disappointment regarding Edinburgh in tomorrow's post...

Photos on the Canon: 343

Photos on the Sony: 7

Photos on the Blackberry: 2

Photos on the Video: 34

Videos on the Video: 8

Steps walked: 13164

Pounds Spent: 74.93

Day 19 - Wednesday 15 September - Edinburgh to Fort William

By Kazza the Blank One on September 15, 2010 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Was a little bit warm in the hotel room last night (even with aircon on) so didn't sleep as well as could be expected.

No hotel breakfast, and the Laundrette opened at 8am, so we just got up and lugged our washing down the road to the Laundrette. Set it running then went across the road for breakfast. I had a "Scottish Breakfast" which included an awful lot of food, including haggis, which I've never had before. After having tried a little black pudding the other day (which I didn't much fancy), haggis was actually quite nice .. :) Went and had Starbucks while the washing was in the dryer, then wandered back to the hotel to checkout. We didn't end up getting charged for the under the hotel parking - win!!

So we'd decided last night that we weren't going to try and see anything in Edinburgh. To do this place justice you'd really need to spend a few days here. Plus there were so many other things to see out of town. So we decided just to leave, and come back and spend a few days here on another trip, perhaps when we go to Ireland or other parts of Northern Europe.

So first stop was Firth of Forth, and the bridges thereover. Had to wait for little patches of sunlight to shine through between all the clouds.

Then headed north west. Our next stop being Doune Castle. Read: Swamp Castle and a couple of other castles from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (but not Camelot - it's only a model - shhh!!). Had a wander around the castle exterior and squeed quite a bit :) Also had a look at the river Teith behind the castle which was flowing very high - there must have been heaps of rain around here recently!

Continued heading north west and did a little detour out to Duke's Pass to see if we could find the quarry of Tim the Enchanter. Well we found it, but it was a twenty minute hike up the hill to where the filmed it - grunt! So got my photos and ran back down the hill again.

Stopped for lunch at a little cafe on Loch Venacher. It was pretty awesome. The cheeses Stu got were epic awesome!

Continued on. Getting up to Glencoe was exceedingly cool. The mountains were sooo pretty. But really hard to document in the failing light and dirty windows. And then the petrol light came on in the car so didn't want to risk stopping in case we didn't make the town of Glencoe. We'll just have to go back! ;)

So got to Fort William around 6pm-ish and checked in. Got quite amused by the crazy path we had to take to get to our room. Had some time to catch up on news feeds, and do some photo stuff. Went out around 8:30pm to get some snacks and ended up with a bottle of pinot grigio, cheese balls, toffee popcorn and ice cream. Yeah real healthy .. hrmm.. Not all consumed, some will carry on to other days...

Photos on the Canon: 310

Photos on the Sony: 16

Photos on the Olympus: 5

Photos on the Blackberry: 1

Photos on the Video: 23

Videos on the Video: 21

Steps walked: 11060

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 20 - Thursday 16 September - Scottish Highlands

By Kazza the Blank One on September 16, 2010 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Got up relatively early today. We had to be out the door by 9am cause that's when our street parking ran out.

Was a pretty *meh* night. My mattress had big lumps in it from springs poking through, and was lopsided. This morning I flipped the mattress and told them they might want to replace it. Also the internet was pretty much dead on our floor, not giving out ip addresses. We rebooted the router we found in the hallway on the way to breakfast but it didn't help much (at least with the laptop - the phones were ok).

Breakfast was ok, nothing to write home about. The waitress staff needed to be told to friggen *smile* as they didn't seem that happy to be there. We actually got a much nicer good morning from one of the cleaning staff.

So the plan for the day was to head out in about four different directions from Fort William. We ended up in three.

So the first stop was Loch Ness. Which turned out to be an epic waste of time. There's a small visitors centre at Fort Augustus (complete with pay and display car park). Skipped that cause there was no Nessie. Then drove and drove along the northwest side of the lake looking for one of the Nessies my parents found, or at the very least a parking area with a decent view of the lake. No such luck. The was absolutely nothing. And it was a pretty boring loch anyway. And you couldn't even see it for the entire drive because it was all behind trees. We went way past our turnoff trying to find a Nessie but never found one. We stopped to take a photo at Urqhart Castle (a ruin, but they still wanted £7 entry). And continued to the visitors centre. But still no Nessie. Have no idea where the parents found all the Nessies they did. So declared that mission a failure and headed back.

Next headed out west to Eilean Donan Castle. The drive between Loch Cluanie and Loch Duich was really pretty, but of course it rained for most of it, so little documentation. Didn't go into Eilean Donan either, but I mainly wanted to see the exterior, which was used in Highlander and The World is Not Enough. So that was pretty cool.

Came back via Fort William and then west out to Glen Finnan. Found the viaduct (was a bit bummed that you can't drive up the road that goes underneath it, so had to walk). Found some people that said there was a train coming at 3pm (it was 2:40), so we walked up to the far side of the viaduct for some crappy back-lit photos then came back to wait. In the meantime it went from sunny to rainy to rainbows to sunny again. The train came along (twenty minutes late) and it was very squee, but the loco was going backwards ;) Then went back to the visitors centre to have some lunch. I climbed the little hill behind the visitors centre to see where they filmed a cut scene from Chamber of Secrets and also get a better view of the viaduct and the loch. Was pretty cool.

Kept heading west to find Loch Eilt. A little island of trees there was used in Prisoner of Azkaban. Found a little path of sorts next a pullout, so it's obvious other Potterphiles have been there before. Got my photos, and even some of a train going by right next to the loch.

We thought we might just head back to the hotel at that point, but Ben Nevis was all shiny in the setting sun, so we headed up the Glen Nevis road. Was a cool little road full of bumps and bends. And a nice view of the mountains too. Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in the British Isles, at 1344m. Of course, the base is at sea level, so the whole thing just goes straight up in front of you - very cool!

Got back to the hotel then headed out for dinner. Decided to eat at the "Grog and Gruel" for some very nice beer, an Angus burger for me and curly fries. The angus burger was a little odd - just meat and cheese on a fairly doughy bun. Added the supplied relish and a bit of the salad and it was a bit better.

Then hotel and crashing time :)

addition:

Heading north east first up, as we were driving by Loch Lochy, this jet flew down the valley at low altitude making a lot of noise. I actually had the camera out so got a couple of pictures of it. As we came back along the same loch, another jet flew by in the opposite direction. Unfortunately too many trees obscured it. Just now (9:42 pm) I heard another one fly by Fort William! I'd read in one of the Highlander film location pages (a jet does a flyby at the end of that movie) that there's an airbase or something near here, will have to try and figure out where it is.

Photos on the Canon: 378

Photos on the Sony: 25

Photos on the iPhone: 3

Photos on the Blackberry: 2

Photos on the Video: 16

Videos on the Video: 14

Steps walked: 8575

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 21 - Friday 17 September - Fort William to Lockerbie

By Kazza the Blank One on September 17, 2010 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well the mattress I flipped yesterday was marginally better for being flipped - at least it wasn't lumpy but it was still lopsided. But the real kicker was a cold shower. There's not enough water pressure in the hotel for everyone to be having showers at once. Not if they want hot water anyway. I waited and waited and waited but nothing. Attempted to have a cold shower but it was too cold so had a sponge bath in the sink instead.

And then complained to the hotel and Best Western customer support. Because that is just ridiculous. Got an answer from customer support, but not from the hotel yet. Lame.

So headed out to Glencoe first up. Found the hill behind Clachaig Inn where they built Hagrid's Hut for Prisoner of Azkaban. Even walked up it too. But not in the exact right location - I was a bit too far round the hill but it was too hard to get to the right bit. So I satisfied myself with a view of the valley that was in the movie. Although I did wait around for some sunlight that never came. In fact the clouds closed in and it started raining. Again.

So continued up Glencoe, stopping at every P and taking photos. Then got to the end and turned around and came back :)

Next up was the Castle Arrggghhhh! (aka Castle Stalker) near Appin. Stopped at the Castle Stalker View cafe and ended up having lunch there. Nice, but expensive. The cheeses weren't as awesome as the ones we had the other day but were still pretty nice. Then we went past Appin to find a view from the other face.

And then suddenly it's like 2pm. Like how did that happen?

So we just drove and drove and drove. And stopped in heavy traffic around Glasgow. And drove lots more.

Stopped in Lockerbie. I wanted to find the memorial for the Lockerbie Air Disaster of Pan Am 103. Didn't have much detail to go on, just that it was west of town. Found a sign to the Garden of Remembrance, which turned out to be it. It's in Dryfesdale Cemetary and was a really beautiful spot, especially in the light of the setting sun. Was a little strange looking up at the planes flying overhead and their contrails. Can't explain why I wanted to see this. I don't think I really even remember the event happening in 1988. I don't know, I have this thing about air disasters.

So then had to find a hotel. The Best Western was booked out with a wedding (who gets married on a Friday, sheesh ;) ). Drove out to another hotel that was a big old manor house, but the car park was completely deserted. No idea if it was open or not, there were no signs. But it looked a little scary so we didn't look any closer. Drove through town and saw a couple of B&Bs including one that looked like an ordinary suburban house but they looked too small (where the owners would want to *talk* to us! Can't have that! ;) ). So found another one that I'd see on the way out to the Garden of Remembrance. It's a small hotel but they had this massive dinner thing happening. And, it being our last night in Scotland, and the fact that I haven't had any yet (!!!) I had to try a couple of the single malts they had. The first was a Ledaig which was quite peaty but very easy to drink. So had another - a Laphroaig (10) which was even peatier. Rather enjoyed this one :) So the dinner was this massive buffet of food. For three couples. Very very weird. I had this enormous lamb shank with tonnes of veggies. Needed the sweetie to help me finish it ;)

The internet here is a little flaky but at least it's here. Very late night again .. doh!

Photos on the Canon: 417

Photos on the Sony: 15

Photos on the iPhone: 4

Photos on the Olympus: 53

Photos on the Blackberry: 6

Photos on the Video: 10

Videos on the Video: 9

Steps walked: 8051

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 22 - Saturday 18 September - Lockerbie to Bangor

By Kazza the Blank One on September 18, 2010 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was probably the worst day of the trip so far. Failure after failure after failure. Tempered by 3/4 bottle of Australian chardonnay tonight so maybe this won't sound as bad as it would have.

So this morning started off very slowly. The pace set by the hotel and the timing and delivery of breakfast. *Heaps* of food which is always dangerous heh. I'm sooo going to need to go on a diet or something when I get home heh. Had a chat to the owners as we were checking out about the bombing/crash 22 years ago. They actually knew people on the street that was hit (I'm sure I read about them in wikipedia last night) - the parents and daughter were killed but the two boys were out of the house and survived. They were given a heap of compensation money and had different lives because of it. And they're both dead now. One of them had a son who is destined to be worth £23 million when he comes of age. Went for a quick drive around Sherwood Crescent to see where it all happened. 11, 13 and 15 where the plane hit are just a garden now, they didn't rebuild the houses there. Perhaps because noone was left to rebuild them..

So then headed south. The idea being to stop at Gretna to see the first/last house in Scotland and stand on the bridge over the river that forms the border with England and get a photo. Except the exit we wanted wasn't marked and we missed it. And it was about eight miles further south to the next exit so I decided it wasn't worth it and missed out altogether.

Fail.

So continued south. Bought petrol. Oh yes, this country doesn't believe in windscreen squidgees at service stations, so you can't actually clean your windows here.

Fail.

Then headed out into the Lakes District. The idea being to drive a loop around Keswick to some of the lakes then past Windermere and out. Well first let me warn you. If you're just here for a drive around and some photos, forget it. The only way to get photos is if you're a hiker. This country doesn't believe in cars. And certainly not in parking. And views of lakes from the road? Forget it. Pretty much no such thing. Didn't get a single photo of Buttermere and a very crap one of Windermere simply because a) there's nowhere to stop and b) there are so many trees between the roads and the lakes that you can't even get photos from the car. It was pretty much epic..

Fail.

We were very excited after four and a half hours driving to finally find somewhere with toilets. Of course it was a pay and display carpark. So we found someone else's still valid ticket lying on the ground and used that.

Fail.

Decided to drive on. Thought we were up for a quick visit to Chester to see the walls and the Roman Amphitheatre. Even in the pouring rain. Because it was 3:30pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast. So thought we'd go into one of the city parking stations. Which was gridlock with people trying to get in and out. We went down one way (after trying to get past someone trying to get out) and found it was actually a dead end. With nowhere to turn around.

Epic. Fricken. Fail.

So decided "screw you Chester" and got the hell out of there as soon as we could.

Fail.

So the Welsh border was not far away. Was watching it coming on the GPS and had the camera ready. But it was raining so heavily that firstly my camera was focussed on the rain on the windscreen. And by the time the wipers went, we'd passed the sign. So missed it.

Fail.

Arrived at the hotel. Carpark was full. But someone moved their car so we took their spot. Checked in ok. Room is a bit stuffy so we have the window open. It's raining. It's actually kinda nice to listen to.

Dinner was in the bistro downstairs. I just had a starter which was probably a good thing as don't think would have gotten through a main. There was lots of saladdy stuff, so lots of lovely fibre to counter the meat I've been eating for breakfasts.

8:30pm. Time to wash hair and go to bed methinks.

Hoping for a better day tomorrow...

Photos on the Canon: 130

Photos on the Sony: 21

Steps walked: 679 (?)

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 23 - Sunday 19 September - Bangor to Salisbury

By Kazza the Blank One on September 20, 2010 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rain. Rain.

Have I mentioned the rain?

Got up and had breakfast and off we went into the rain.

Rain.

Went under the Menai Bridge to photograph it. Got a crappy one of the Britannia Bridge through the rain. Headed up to Llanfair cause it's just an epic cool place name so took some photos of the place name signs.

Then headed out of Wales the way we came in. Dipped into England then back into Wales to see the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Which is like the highest and longest aqueduct in Britain or something, and get this - canal boats

go across it!! It's epic cool!! Walked part way across then down to look at it side on.

On my quest for bridges, the next stop was Iron Bridge to see the iron bridge - the first ever iron arch bridge built.

Then we returned to Hogwarts - at Gloucester Cathedral. Pretty cool cathedral. Lots if beautiful stonework and lots of little alcoves and doorways to go through and explore. But of course I mainly wanted to see the cloisters where Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets were filmed. Was epic squee. Of course. :) Found a girls bathroom, altho it was downstairs so Moaning Myrtle couldn't have flooded the corridor, and I didn't see her in the toilet either ;)

Had KFC for lunch/dinner (it was six pm).

Headed for Swindon to go around the Magic Roundabout and nearly didn't get off it. And it's freaky cause you end up going around the wrong way! After several loops we dove for an exit, no idea if legally or not!

Then to Salisbury. GPS didn't quite have the location of the hotel right so had to go around a few blocks trying to get back :/ Pretty funky hotel (The Red Lion). Cloud Internet which is a pain. Wanted to book tomorrow night's accommodation which was stressful cause it took forever to find something :/

Blog. Bed.

Photos on the Canon: 309

Videos on the Canon: 1

Photos on the Sony: 19

Videos on the Sony: 3

Photos on the Olympus: 53

Photos on the Video: 22

Videos on the Video: 14

Steps walked: 7883

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 24 - Monday 20 September - Salisbury to Saltford

By Kazza the Blank One on September 20, 2010 9:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey it wasn't raining when we got up! Just a bit overcast.

Got up early and headed out without breakfast to make it to Stonehenge by 8am for the stone circle access tour. Which, after Dave and Di got up my expectations, they say that you can NOT in fact touch the stones. So that was a bit of a bummer. Not that it would have been that exciting, I mean they're just stones right? But it was pretty cool to walk around in the middle of the circle that you can't do normally. After the access finished (ours went from 8am to 9am), we waited for the ordinary access to open at 9:30 so we could go round on the audio tour (and actually take better photos of the outer ring without all the other stone circle access people in the way). It's true what I read somewhere - either pay to go on a stone circle access thingie, or just look in from the fence on the road. The audio tour isn't that great, (face it you can read about it on the internet) and the best view (with all the horizontal plinths) is from the road anyway.

So it was nearly 10:30 before we headed for our next stop - Longleat Maze, in the grounds of Longleat House. £3 for just the maze. I decided before I came away that I wanted to do a maze, and why not pick the biggest? :) Well it was fun for about 3/4 hour before I kept ending up in the same place no matter where I turned and walked around and around in circles (meeting up over and over again with another couple who were equally frustrated). After an hour and a half I went out and bought the postcard with a picture of the maze to see what I was doing wrong. Only took one turn from the picture to get me to the place I wanted to be an hour ago, and solved the thing (this was after standing on the bridge and directing at least two couples to the right place that I couldn't get to). The other couple went a different way, and we ended up solving the thing at the same time.

So after nearly two hours in the maze we headed off again. Drove by the Westbury white horse. Got very frustrated with UK signage that thought the best way to see the thing would be to take you to the top of the hill which it's on - ie, so you can't really see it at all. Bumheads. So drove all the way back down to find a better view of it.

Next stop was Locock - because they used Lacock Abbey and a house in Lacock for Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. As a location it was a bit disappointing (and £10 entry which is a bit pricey too). Especially since so many things I'd seen about the place were just plain wrong. Even the abbey itself put up the wrong information - they put up pictures of Durham cathedral cloisters, and said it was filmed at Lacock. Well ok yes it might have been filmed there, but not the shots you posted. Dumb. The Chapter room was the only thing that was recognisably correct. Took a bunch of photos anyway. What was actually more interesting was the rooms upstairs that had been converted to a private residence with the dissolution of the monastries by Henry VIII.

And then we headed for the hotel. Had to get past peak hour traffic in Bath. What a pain. I think noone lives in Bath, they all live in Bristol, and we had to share a road with them all the way to our hotel :/ Hotel is the closest to a real B&B we've had. I didn't really have to check in at all, the dude just gave me a key. Very odd. Went across the road for a couple of pints and some food, then back here to try and book hotels and figure itineraries...

Oh yes, and we finally had a clear night that I could go out and look for stars. After much peering through sodium (?) vapour lights I finally saw what I thought was the Big Dipper and North Star. The time on the EEE PC must have been wrong, cause it actually put the thing upside down so took longer to find it. Had a stone fence to mount the camera on, and it was low enough in the sky that I actually got some semi decent photos of it...!

Photos on the Canon: 469

Photos on the Sony: 8

Videos on the Sony: 1

Photos on the iPhone: 1

Photos on the Olympus: 75

Photos on the Blackberry: 1

Photos on the Video: 13

Videos on the Video: 14

Steps walked: 17139

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 25 - Tuesday 21 September - Saltford to Newquay

By Kazza the Blank One on September 21, 2010 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Being a B&B the place was tiny. There were four tables in the breakfast room and only two were set, so I assume there was only one other room taken last night. Breakfast was decent enough though.

So checked out and headed into Bath, parking at the big "Pay on foot" parking area off Charlotte St.

Headed into the main bit of town first. On the way passed lots of decorated lions, setup as a public art project, much like the Bears of Berlin some years ago. Some of them were pretty cool! I think my favourite was a gold-foil wrapped chocolate lion :) Or the QR code one or the scrabble letters one.

Got into the middle of town and Stu stopped for a coffee so I went to find an ATM. The first two I found were broken, so had to walk like a mile just to find a working one and then back to Stu.

Went into the roman baths first. I'd only ever seen pictures of the outdoor bit of the bath (which used to be indoors) so didn't realise the place was so extensive. Was actually really cool and spent nearly two hours wandering around the place. Took one look in the Pump House and thought it looked too fancy for the likes of us, so took a picture of the room and left.

Then went next door to have a look in the abbey. As Dave2 had shown, it was indeed quite beautiful.

It was getting late by this point, so we headed up to The Circus (and couldn't get "Who will buy?" from Oliver! out of my head - you can see where they got the inspiration for the scene (which was actually filmed on a set - they built the whole thing from scratch). And then onto the Royal Crescent, where we saw our first rays of sun for the day.

Left a couple of minutes before four hours for parking and saved a pound, hurrah .. only to find the boom gate was broken and we could have left without paying the 5.40 at all - doh!!

So we didn't have time for the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, or the Cheddar Gorge and town.

Just went straight onto Wells. I'd seen a documentary some months back about the Wells Cathedral - and how the unique "scissor" arches were actually to stop the whole thing collapsing after they put on a tower extension. So of course I had to see it :) It was pretty cool. Although seeing a cathedral and an abbey on the same day has not helped with remembering the details of each one.. hrmm.. :)

And finally south west. Stopping at a Burger King on the motorway for Linner. And onto Newquay, arriving around 7:15pm. We were just a little too late going up to the headland to see the sunset but had a nice walk anyway. Then into town to have a look around and find the laundromat opening times.

Came back to the B&B via a supermarket to pick up snacks and drinks.

Then watched some telly (including Australian Border Security!) and used the internet.

Hopefully will get a sleep in tomorrow.. unless I get hungry .. prolly a good thing too, it being 11:15pm and all.. :/

Photos on the Canon: 492

Photos on the Sony: 27

Photos on the iPhone: 9

Photos on the Blackberry: 6

Photos on the Video: 23

Videos on the Video: 43

Steps walked: 15432

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 26 - Wednesday 22 September - Cornwall

By Kazza the Blank One on September 22, 2010 9:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another small B&B last night so a lot more personal.

Had a bit of a slow start, then headed into town to do our washing. While the washing was on we went for a walk down to the beach, and while the drying was on we went for a coffee. Well the sweetie did, I had an OJ :)

Came back to the hotel and repacked our suitcases then headed out.

First stop was Padstow because Stu was interested in Rick Stein's restaurants. We had trouble with parking. The first car park was full, which mean a drive through pedestrian-infested streets trying to get out. Then the second car park was also full, with about ten cars in front of us trying to find parking. So tried for the top car park. Got a park there but the machine wouldn't take money (for me or the people in front of me). A city car park person came by and had a look and said yep, machine is broken (often happens in the rain) (did I mention it was raining?). So we got free parking! Do you have any idea how exciting that is in this country?? Anyways, so wandered down the hill in the rain. Had a bit of a wander around. Found Rick Stein's "The Seafood Restaurant" but they didn't have any tables. So went and found his cafe which is a bit more casual. Had some lovely seafood there. Our most expensive meal so far, but that was the point of going there.

So then headed south west and went out to the tourist trap known as Land's End. We got there at 5pm, but paid a pound too much for parking (£3 instead of £2 if we'd just waited two minutes for 5pm). Went down to the cliff edge and thought well that's lovely. Took photos of ourselves with the "overnight" Land's End sign that they put up after 5pm and don't charge £9.95 to stand in front of.

Then headed back past Penzance (and the pirates thereof?) to St Michael's Mount to attempt to photograph it in the horizontally blowing rain (horizontally blowing *into* the direction of my camera, not away from it :( ).

Then back to the B&B.

It's raining here. Severe weather warnings and everything.

Have I mentioned the rain?

Photos on the Canon: 168

Photos on the Sony: 27

Photos on the iPhone: 1

Photos on the Blackberry: 1

Photos on the Video: 3

Videos on the Video: 11

Steps walked: 8479

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 27 - Thursday 23 September - Newquay to Bognor Regis

By Kazza the Blank One on September 23, 2010 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let the sweetie sleep in til 8am this morning and were slow getting going (didn't leave the B&B til 10:20).

First stop was the Headland Hotel, which is is just south-west of Newquay, and was used in the 1990 movie of Roald Dahl's The Witches.

Then we headed east.

First stop on the south coast was Polperro. Because my parents went there last year and raved about it and said it was one of the nicest places they went to. Because obviously they had a good day for it. For us, it rained. Of course it rained. The rain was fairly short lasting and was mostly gone by the time we'd stopped for a drink. But the tide was all the way out, so the little harbour was just a bit pile of mud. So didn't leap out for us as a nice place. Got ourselves a Cornish pastie cause we still hadn't had one, then headed off again. Had intended to see if we could find somewhere to get some photos of Looe (the next town along), but it was bigger and more crowded and the parking lot looked full to overflowing. So even though it was now sunny, we ended up just driving through and I didn't get a single photo :( But the tide was out so I suppose it wouldn't have been that great anyway.

So then had a big long drive, and stopped again at Lyme Regis. Walked down to the beach, but couldn't get very far along because the tide had come in and was blocking access. Don't know if there were other access points. So really just took some photos of the cliffs then headed off before them impending thunderstorm dumped on us (just made it back to the car in time!)

Lots more driving. Ended up in Portsmouth around 7pm. We thought we'd be able to have a wander around the Historic Dockyard. Except it closes at like 6pm and there's no access at all, just a super high brick wall blocking the view of everything :( We should have known - the two nearby carparks were closed and we thought we scored by getting a free on-street park. I thought the place would be somewhat like Darling Harbour where you just wander around. Instead the place was almost completely dead. Just a couple of shops open, a couple of restaurants and a night club. We had expensive pizza and beer for dinner. Took some photos of the Spinnaker Tower then headed off again.

Arrived in Bognor Regis and found our hotel (Best Western Beachcroft). Probably one of the nicer hotels we've stayed in this trip. Or maybe it's just the view out to the English Channel with the moon rise over the water.. super awesome :) And lots of space too. Although the poor sweetie had to drag our bags up to the second floor.. sorry sweetie!

Photos on the Canon: 219

Photos on the Sony: 11

Photos on the Video: 3

Videos on the Video: 10

Steps walked: 10361

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 28 - Friday 24 September - Bognor Regis to Folkestone

By Kazza the Blank One on September 24, 2010 9:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fairly standard night and breakfast. Still think it's probably the best hotel we've had so far this trip.

I went for a walk down to the beach while Stu was getting ready. Not a terribly nice beach, and separated every twenty metres or so with walls to stop erosion. Walked west to get a better look at the circus tent looking thing. Didn't find out what it was until I looked it up just then - it's a Butlins Holiday Park.

So we headed off. First stop was Brighton to have a look at the pier and the Royal Pavilion. Was quite surprised that Brighton actually has no sand beach at all - it's all small rocks!! Bizarre. Found the place very noisy (from traffic) and not very pedestrian friendly. Was quite happy to get out of there before our first hour of parking was used up.

Next headed for a view of the Seven Sisters at Beachy Head. As we pulled up there was sun on the cliffs. So jumped out with just my camera and headed off down the path to get a better view. Well of course, that was my first problem. Five or ten minutes later, just before I got to the cliff, it decided to start raining. Rather a lot. So I ran for the cover of a tree (which was actually quite successful I have to admit - an Australian native would offer no such protection from rain). Waited waited waited. Finally it stopped so went down a bit closer to take some photos. As I was heading back, the sun started to come out on the cliffs. But this was of course after I'd left the best position to document them. It was just fail on so many levels.

Decided to skip another view of the cliffs and a drive through Eastbourne in favour of getting to Dover at a reasonable hour. Actually went past the Long Man of Wilmington which I'd not listed in the day's activities thinking we'd be going around the coast.

Drove drove drove. Stopped at a Scottish Restaurant for lunch.

Saw France on the way into Dover :)

And finally made it to Dover Castle just after 4pm. The place closes at 6pm. And it was raining. Have I mentioned how much it rains here? Decided to go in anyway. £13.90 each. We definitely should have gotten English Heritage membership :/ They asked us if we wanted to go on the 5pm secret war tunnels tour and we said yes. But that was way at the bottom of the castle, and the tower etc were way up the top. Which meant we had a grand total of half an hour to explore the castle :(:(:( Which was a shame because it was a very cool castle to explore. Rather than directing you in one way and out another, you can go in and just explore little nooks and crannies and rooms and stairways and corridors. It was a lot of fun, but we just didn't have the time to do it justice :( In fact I actually managed to lose the sweetie which was quite stressful because we had to get down to the tunnels.

After much stress, we both made it to the tunnels by 5pm. But of course you can't take photos :(:(:( So was really stressed out and then grumpy as well. Blah!! But it was pretty cool to see the tunnels anyway.

So left when the tour was done and headed for the hotel.

Stopped at the Battle of Britain Memorial. It was raining. A lot. And windy. Which was bad for my camera but in one way it was good because there was noone else there. Had the place to myself. Managed a couple of photos, with and without rain on the lens.

Got to the hotel. Internet access is a pain cause you really need a wifi username and password for each device. And the fire alarm has gone off for ten seconds tonight. Yay. But the nicest thing about this hotel is its location, with an outlook to the English Channel. Can see France! :) The moon over the water was amazing before.

Went out to get a pizza for dinner. At the local Pizza Hut. Most expensive pizza I've ever eaten. £11.99 - which is $25AUD for a standard size pizza!! Gah!!!! Just a plain old pepperoni pizza. Insane, totally insane :( Still, it was actually quite nice.

Hoping for five minutes of sunlight tomorrow morning to see the cliffs, that's all I'm asking. It can rain the rest of the day, but some sun on the cliffs would be nice... kthxbai!

Photos on the Canon: 242

Photos on the Sony: 7

Photos on the Video: 6

Videos on the Video: 10

Steps walked: 15414

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 29 - Saturday 25 September - Folkestone to London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 25, 2010 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Got up fairly early and the SUN was SHINING!! In our windows and bright blue sky and everything. So gently encouraged the sweetie to get up so we could go see white cliffs in the SUN!

Headed off around 8:20 and went up to St Margarets Bay. On the way the clouds started rolling in from the west. I did the only appropriate thing - burst into tears. Because I was so completely sick of cloudy and rainy weather. But the clouds passed a little way north of us, and when we got there it was still a bit sunny on the cliffs. The view wasn't hugely great - you really need to get out on a boat for the best views. But hopefully got some ok photos.

Second stop was at Samphire Hoe, which is an area of reclaimed land they created by using the diggings from the Channel Tunnel. The view wasn't great there either - all the cliffs were covered with plants around there.

So then we drove on to London, hoping we'd see a roadside Maccas where we could have breakfast. Except we didn't find any. We found a Burger King but bypassed that in hopes of a Maccas. So suddenly we were in London and we hadn't had breakfast :( Note to self: don't try to attack driving through crazy busy big city streets on no breakfast. It makes for unhappy campers :( Stoopid traffic jams too which added to the stress levels. We'd allowed heaps of time to return the car, but in the end only *just* made it back in time :/

So jumped on a train (15 min wait) to Earl's Court to stay at the *other* Earl's Court Best Western - on the north side this time. The room wasn't ready so left all the bags with the sweetie and headed into town to see Buckingham Palace.

It was about a half hour queue to get tickets, then the entry was 45 minutes after that, so wandered around Green Park for a while. They've also resurfaced the road in front of the palace in the past two weeks. This spot I've been to three times in three weeks, which is all a little odd. So went back at 2:45 and accidently ended up in the 2:30 queue .. oops.. didn't mean to.. oh well ..

The palace state rooms tour was actually pretty good. Of course you can't take photos :( But the audio guide was pretty decent. Lots of very beautiful rooms and only one thing that was too crowded (too much commentary for such a small space). Quite enjoyed it overall. Took around an hour and a half to do the whole thing. Then headed back to the hotel.

Went for a wander and had a pint at the Kings Head (one of about a billion Kings Head pubs in England - either that or Red Lions) and then across the road to a French restaurant for a very yummy three course meal for £9.95 each.

Photos on the Canon: 142

Photos on the Sony: 27

Photos on the iPhone: 1

Photos on the Video: 1

Videos on the Video: 7

Steps walked: 10086

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 30 - Sunday 26 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 26, 2010 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had another crappy nights sleep. Was too hot (even with aircon on full) and stressing over my dumb body and then the building started humming.. loud enough for at least one other person on the floor to complain about it. No idea what it was.

So got up fairly late.

Had breakfast at the local Scottish Restaurant (for £5 for the two of us instead of £30 the hotel would have charged).

Then hopped on a tube train then a regular train out to Charlton to walk up to the Thames Flood Barrier (past a half marathon in progress which closed off the road we walked up). The flood barrier stuff was pretty cool. Interesting to see how they built it and how it works. Had a toasted sandwich in the cafe there for lunch.

Instead of walking back to the station and training it two stops, we decided to walk for a while back along the Thames. You can actually walk all the way along it, but we cut across the Greenwich peninsula (and cut across the end of the half marathon, and even saw the exact same girl wearing an Elmo on her back that we saw the first time two hours ago!).

So headed into the park at Greenwich and up to the observatory. Joined the hordes trying to get their photo taken on the prime meridian. Also had a look at the old telescope buildings. And got filled with rage at people taking photos of the telescopes when it says all over the place that photography is forbidden :(:( Epic grunt. Should have taken some myself :/ The GPS doesn't actually line up with this, as the meridian for GPS is actually about 102m east of the prime meridian. Go figure. Headed back to the station and found another marked location of the prime meridian, with (hurrah) no tourists! Win! :)

Trained it back to the hotel. Got our washing together and went and put it on, and had Thai for dinner next door. Two mains, two desserts and a bottle of wine, and suddenly we have a $100AUD bill :( This country is so expensive it's more than just a little ridiculous. Put on the drying and had a McFlurry then back to the hotel to research tomorrow..

Oh I forgot to mention.. I got THE BEST value for money deal possible in this country tonight - sixteen 500mg paracetamol caplets for 16p!! Yes, that's 1 pence per tablet!! At that rate I considered buying a whole bunch to stock us up for the next few years .. altho customs might have had something to say about that!!

Photos on the Canon: 163

Photos on the Sony: 24

Photos on the iPhone: 6

Photos on the Olympus: 9

Photos on the Blackberry: 6

Photos on the Video: 21

Videos on the Video: 11

Steps walked: 18641

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 31 - Monday 27 September - Oxford

By Kazza the Blank One on September 27, 2010 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So was awake for two and a half hours in the middle of the night cause it hurt *sigh*

Got up around 7:20 and convinced the sweetie to get up too.

Had a repeat of Maccas breakfast and then headed for Paddington. Discovered the different ticket machines give different priced tickets - go figure. Found one that did a return for the same price as a single (again, go figure) and booked it. 9:21 to Oxford.

Had a pretty good day in Oxford.

It rained nearly all day.

First headed for the Bodleian Library to get on a tour of the Divinity School and the Duke Humfrey's Library. Had twenty minutes to spare so wandered around and got the sweetie a coffee.

The Bodleian Library tour went for an hour and was quite interesting. I would have enjoyed it even if it wasn't a Harry Potter location ;)

Next went to find some lunch. As we were both low on energy levels it took us a little while to find something suitable.

After lunch wandered back up to where we'd seen a walking tour advertised.

The walking tour turned out to be really good. The dude took us into four colleges (Jesus, Exeter, Lincoln and New), and we saw quadrangles and dining halls and chapels for most of them. It was just nice cause he took us behind doors and down paths we probably would not have thought to have gone down if we were doing things by ourselves. Even came across a couple of Australian Rhodes Scholars (a girl from Brisbane doing law, and a guy (who looked about 16) from Adelaide doing inorganic chemistry). They'd only been in the country a few days. The tour finished in the cloisters of New College, where Goblet of Fire was filmed :)

So next headed down to Christ Church to go in and see the hall and cathedral. The hall being the inspiration for the great hall in Harry Potter, and they used the entrance staircase in Philosopher's Stone. So that was pretty squee.

Feet were dead by this point and we were hungry so we headed back to London.

Stopped at a Chinese restaurant near the hotel for dinner - had some very nice szechuan twice fried pork and bok choi in oyster sauce.

Got back to the hotel and my world fell apart...

Photos on the Canon: 294

Photos on the Sony: 158

Photos on the Video: 1

Videos on the Video: 10

Steps walked: 15637

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 32 - Tuesday 28 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 28, 2010 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So yeah last night my world fell apart because I looked to find out what time Legoland opened, and found that it doesn't open at all on Tuesdays and Wednesdays :(

Actually a single sad face doesn't even begin to cover my devastation :(

So we slept in late.

Maccas for breakfast - but only just - got there at 10:40 and had the last of their hash browns and two of the last four sausage and egg McMuffins.

Then trained it into Leicester Square. Stu went and got a haircut and I went to get photos of a couple of Monopoly streets I somehow missed last time.

Then we went to a couple of book stores - Orbital and Forbidden Planet - the latter being more interesting (for me) and bigger, but Stu bought a couple of books from the former.

Carried on walking. Arrived at Temple Church just before 2pm, which is when it was opening for the day, then had a look around inside.

Up to St Pauls to get a few more photos of the exterior (because it was raining last time which made it quite difficult to get photos).

Then headed for St Mary-Le-Bow church, to find the vegetarian cafe (Cafe Below) which Stu had read about in his Secret London book. Had a bit of lunch there (it was about 3:30pm by now).

Then Stu found a Starbucks to have a coffee in while I went and climbed the 311 steps of the Monument. Kicking myself I didn't get the chance to go up it when it cost me £1, so I had to pay an additional £3 today - doh! Was a crap day for a view, but did get to see Tower Bridge open up for a cruise liner to go through it.

Finally headed up past Liverpool St station to meet Campbell for dinner in a restaurant called Ping Pong hehee. Was a pretty good yum cha sort of a meal, and it was super awesome to catch up with Campbell.

Then headed back to the hotel to try and sort out our finances (we seem to have gone over our travel card limit by £13 so not sure what's going to happen there) and sort out paperwork.

Photos on the Canon: 194

Photos on the Sony: 103

Photos on the iPhone: 27

Photos on the Olympus: 3

Photos on the Blackberry: 9

Photos on the Video: 9

Videos on the Video: 9

Steps walked: 16521

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 33 - Wednesday 29 September - London

By Kazza the Blank One on September 29, 2010 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Took a whole 68 photos today, 55 of them on Random Camera.

Maccas for breakfast, rinse and repeat.

Then tubed it out to Camden Town to have a look at the markets. Didn't actually make it as far as the stables markets, just as far as the lock.

Then wandered back to Leicester Square for lunch. Went to this Mexican place Stu thought looked interesting the last time (actually the first time, this was our third time to Leicester Square) we were there. So we sat down outside but noone came. Started at the windows hoping someone would pay attention to us. Finally the woman on the door came out and said oh we're not serving outside today. Fail. You could have told us that before instead of letting us sit there. Had some margaritas and some nice nachos, but my caesar salad was probably the worst caesar salad I've ever had - just a bunch of lettuce and a few croutons with a bit of sauce. There were a couple of token bits of parmesan cheese but no bacon. Fail fail fail.

So I was grumpy and a bit stressed, because my next destination I was going to by myself and didn't know exactly where it was.

The next destination being the Adelphi theatre for a production of "Love Never Dies" - a sequel to Phantom of the Opera. It had mixed reviews and I didn't know any of the songs, so I was trying to not to expect too much of it. In the end I really enjoyed it, even though when I recounted the story to Stu it actually sounded really lame (and I suppose it was). An encore performance with the whole ensemble at the end would have been nice, as the ending was quite sad and quiet.

Then back to the hotel at peak hour. In the rain. Have I ever mentioned how much it rains here?

After resting for a bit, we went back to No 10 Chinese again for dinner (spicy chicken this time, which wasn't too spicy unless you had the dried chilies.

And then repacked our suitcases and tried to mentally prepare for the next 48 hours...

Photos on the Canon: 13

Photos on the Sony: 55

Photos on the iPhone: 6

Photos on the Blackberry: 5

Steps walked: 8053

Pounds Spent: ?

Day 34-36 - Thursday to Saturday 30/9-2/10 - London to Canberra

By Kazza the Blank One on October 2, 2010 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

These last entries are always pretty epic, because of the times and distances involved. A little over 48 hours ago I was on the other side of the planet!

So woke up in the hotel in London at 6am and got ready. Tried to get a takeaway breakfast at Maccas but there were like six people in front of me and only one dude serving, so gave up on that idea and just hopped on a train to the airport. Still have like £10 left on our Oyster cards - doh!

It was pretty foggy, and when we arrived at the airport they had to try and fit us onto an earlier flight, as our scheduled flight was delayed, and we'd miss our connecting flight from Frankfurt to Narita. So they sorted that, but we both had middle seats :( Turns out the earlier flight they put us on was also delayed, so it left only just before our other one was meant to.

Got to see a little of London from the middle seat, and stuck random camera out to get a few photos. Didn't see much else after landfall in France, as the continent was clouded over.

Passing through Frankfurt was pretty painless. Had to do the long walk between the terminals in reverse to what we did on the way in the first time.

Same seat in the A380, so facing south this time instead of north. If I travel again on an A380 will see if can get an upper deck seat and see if they're any closer to the windows than the lower deck.

I watched a few movies. Firstly The Spy Next Door, which was a kids movie so a little silly, but had Jackie Chan in it so was kinda fun. Then Young Victoria which I really enjoyed. This was filmed around Blenheim Palace which we might have gone and seen on our Oxford day except that we didn't have the time. Then Prince of Persia, which was utterly ridiculuous (but it was a Bruckheimer film, so you go in with an expectation that it will be thus) but still quite fun. I also started to watch The Karate Kid, but it made me grunty because they'd cut heaps and heaps out of it - shortening scenes all over the place. So skipped through to the bit they filmed in the mountains and just watched the second half of it.

So arrived in Narita about 11:30pm London time. It was 7:30am in Narita (Friday 1st), and our next flight wasn't til 8:30. PM. So a stoopid thirteen hour layover. So caught the yellow inter terminal bus around to T2 to see about checking in but nothing was open for Qantas, so we dumped our bags in some lockers (conveniently located right there in the check in terminal) and hopped on a train into Narita. Took the Keisei line cause we found the machines for that line first. It having been nineteen hours since our last shower we both felt a little disgusting. Stopped in maccas first for some breakfast, then got the zombie that was the sweetie moving. Headed slowly up to the temples/shrines in Narita. Found a nice spot under a bit of wisteria to just sit for a while, but I couldn't sit still because of restless legs, so paced until my feet hurt from standing. Stu was having a lie down (there was actually *seating* all around this park, which is unusual for Japan!) but eventually we kept walking slowly. I was starting to fade at this point too. Got down to the lake and looked at the fishies and tortoises. Then kept wandering, even more slowly now. We were hot again too which didn't help. So hopped another train back to the airport and arrived around 2:15pm.

Except the Qantas terminal (we asked) didn't open til 5pm. Doh!

So went downstairs and used a shower room each. Best inventions ever those things, and only 500 yen for half an hour. Felt a lot more human after that. Then proceeded to find somewhere to have a beer. Was quite taken by a place called "Beer and Takoyaki" so headed for that. Nom! :) But pretty expensive of course. Wandered round some more and found somewhere to sit looking at the planes and dozed on the chairs (very uncomfortable tho!)

5pm came round and we went down to check in (and there was a massive queue! What the??) Presumably lots of other people like us in similar layover situations. So checked in and went through security and into the Qantas Club. Found some computers with interwebs and had some snacks and some Moet and Chandon while looking at the planes and using the internet. Was the best I'd felt all day heh. We were right next to our departure gate, so could see our plane being brought in and made ready for our flight.

Dozed on the plane before take off and could barely keep my eyes open to watch the take off. Forced myself to eat dinner even though I didn't really feel like it. Then brushed my teeth and attempted to sleep. Was only moderately successful. Probably got a couple of hours sleep. Got to see the moon around the equator, which looked like a big smiling mouth, and horizontal to the horizon too. And Orion was there too on his side. As the night progressed the moon returned to its correct orientation (the moon in the northern hemisphere is upside down - a little freaky!). Got a little bit more sleep but not much. Breakfast was around 4:30am Narita time, and landed around 6:30 (7:30 Sydney time, Saturday 2nd). Got the best view of my house I'd ever seen from a plane coming into Sydney airport (in from the north, then out over the National Park and round to the left to land from the south on 34L).

Immigration and customs were really painful. The ePassport system wasn't working at all and the other queues were going really slowly. I of course got the slowest lane in the room and ended up switching when the room was just about empty. Lame. Customs was also pretty painful - really long queues and seemingly not very organised (people wandering about all over the place trying to figure out where to be :/ ).

Finally escaped for a short break in the Qantas Club for a drink and an apple, then onto our Dash 8 (a teeny 300 series one - only 12 rows!). Surprisingly we took off on 34L as well, rather than the third runway.

Arrival in Canberra ten minutes late, and then a lift home.

Photos on the Canon: 237

Photos on the Sony: 343

Videos on the Sony: 2

Photos on the iPhone: 1

Steps walked: 4268 + 14373

Pounds Spent: ?

Returning to the Northern Hemisphere for a brief visit to Japan and a month in the UK

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