kate and graeme

Friday 27 March

Up early and once again we were at Heathrow way before a humanly acceptable time. As usual, we ended up with time to kill, so we got some breakfast and waited at gate and then got to be the very first ones on the plane - turns out, if you’re travelling with a baby, take a stroller and sit near the desk in the departure lounge and they will actually ask you to come on before the general boarding call, even if they don’t make the ‘can people who need assistance or are travelling with small children please board now’ announcement.

Lily, the plane-catching expert that she is, was asleep before we got in the air and slept almost the whole way to Zurich… although that may have had more to do with the fact that she didn’t go back to sleep when we got her out of bed 3 hours before her usual waking time. Anyway, we got to Zurich, collected a map from the tourist information and promptly got lost by getting on the wrong train from the airport. It definitely said it was going to the station we wanted and definitely did not go there. Graeme tried to get help from a lady who knew no English, we ummed and aahed about what to do and where we were but eventually we worked out where we’d gone wrong and got on a train to the city centre.

Once in the city centre we followed a walking path set out on the map we’d collected earlier. The route took us to the top of a hill to get the best view of the old town, down the hill by the river to the view of the nice bridge and two cathedrals on either side of the river.

Following this the route then took us around to see the two churches, the Grossmunster and St Peters. St Peters had brilliant, modern stained glass windows (but we couldn’t take photos, so had to buy a postcard). We then went back to the Barnhofstrasse and walked towards the lake, past lots of fancy shops. After checking out the water, we headed back up to have lunch and encountered our now ever-current problem - where to eat with a baby in tow… Finally settled on some fast food, then headed back to the station where we balked at paying 2 francs to use a baby change and did it on a nearby bench instead.

We then caught the train (the right one this time) to Bern.

Once in Bern, we walked from the station to the hotel, which was quite a walk, but saved us the tram fare (which we later found out we could actually get cheaper) and also allowed us to see the city in the late afternoon sun, which proved very important when it rained on us all the next day.  We crashed out at the hotel for awhile and then went back out to get some dinner which proved more effort than it should’ve been (see issue from lunchtime).

All three of us were absolutely exhausted by the time we got back and we crashed for the night.

 

Saturday 28 March

Had an easy-going morning and didn’t leave the hotel until almost 11. Caught the tram to the station, left our big bag in a locker, got breakfast from a supermarket and then walked to the Market we’d seen from the tram. Were just about to leave the market when Lily decided she needed a nap but wasn’t going to sleep until she’d had some milk. Of course, it was raining and miserable, so we couldn’t just sit anywhere, we had to find somewhere inside that we could sit and feed her. So we got a drink and sat in starbucks until she was asleep then followed some of the suggested city walk from the tourist map we got. Took in the parliament, the view of the valley below and other parts of the old town until we couldn’t take the driving rain anymore and headed to find some lunch. We’d seen a good looking likely candidate but it was full when we turned up and we were ushered away with a direct ‘nein’. This forced us to rethink and so we continued our tour of the fountains on the main street before having a cafeteria lunch at the top of a department store. It was very good and not too pricey for Switzerland, which we were quickly discovering is an expensive place.

After lunch we walked to the end of the old town and crossed the bridge to the other side of the valley where the bear pits are. Here we saw one of the mascot bears called Pedro, a big brown guy who is only a year younger than us. Lily was especially excited to see a bear, a bit different to her teddies though. We then walked back to the station, collected our bags from the locker and waited for our train to Lausanne.

The trip to Lausanne was just over an hour and the most spectacular bit is just near the end when the train exits a tunnel under a mountain and all of Lake Geneva is revealed before you. The countryside in general was very pretty throughout Switzerland.

We arrived in lausanne and headed to our hotel, which was a short walk from the main station. The hotel check-in was interesting as there was no reception, you ring them and they talk you through some stuff, finding out it’s you and then when they are happy a box pops open with your keys! We had a suite room with 3 beds, tables and a kitchenette. So for dinner we got some stuff from the supermarket and cooked it ourselves, spending the night inside out of the rain and enjoying having hot baths in a decent sized bath.

 

Sunday 29th march

Woke up very early for our London-based bodies - 8am feels very early when you are an hour ahead of your timezone and daylight savings started overnight. At least we’d gone to bed nice and early. Got ourselves dressed and sorted and up (literally, it was a massive steep climb) to Place St Francois to meet Rachel, a friend from back in Australia who now lives in Lausanne. Had a drink in starbucks (it’s where we met and where she works) and did the initial catch-up thing. Then Rachel got a call from someone at her church wondering why she wasn’t there yet - she was supposed to be on the welcome team. We considered going along to church with her, but instead decided to explore Lausanne and then meet her to go to Vevey together.

We climbed another steep hill up to the cathedral which had a great view over the city from the front. Wandered through the old town a bit then down the cool covered staircase and around via the road to another square (they like those in Europe). Lily was being a grump so we stopped in the square and got her out of the stroller and she had a great time watching the little birds that were flitting around, although she was uninterested in food or anything. We decided to head down to the water’s edge, but first caught the metro back to our hotel to grab some extra layers for Lily and change her nappy. Then down to Ouchy and walked along the edge of the lake for a bit. We noticed some cool large pedalos that had slippery dips on the back for sliding into the lake, and figured the place must be teaming with people come summer. From the lakes edge at Ouchy we headed back up to St Francois again to meet Rachel for the second time. Once we’d met up, we went back down the hill to the station where we caught a train that took 15 minutes or so to get to Vevey.

Vevey is very picturesque, on the lake with tall mountains all around. First stop in Vevey was to get lunch and we had a great lunch in a hotel restuarant near to the lake. After lunch we had a walk along the lakeside boulevarde, seeing a 2 metre tall fork stood in the lake, and generally just enjoying the nice surrounds. Lily wasn’t much enjoying being in her pram by this stage and as it was pretty cold with the wind blowing off the lake, Graeme carried her inside her foot muff from the stroller so she’d be warm enough. Now we’d looped around and were heading back to the center of town and we stopped off at a cafe for a break to get out of the cold for a while and catch up some more with Rachel. Lily had fun trying to get the attention of some slightly older boys and walking (with hand held) over to an old lady, whom she even let hold her for a bit, before getting shy and wanting Mummy.

After the tea break we headed back to the station and back to Lausanne where we headed back to our hotel room with Rachel and had a bit of a chat, with Lily roaming all over the room before Rachel headed home.

Graeme went out and brought back dinner as it was pretty cold by this point and with the daylight savings change and busy day we were all tired.

 

Monday 30th March

Got up and sorted our stuff, Kate wasn’t feeling well, so in no particular hurry. Went to the train station and got a train to Geneva about 40 minutes away. Lily fell asleep on the train.

Put the big bag in a locker at the station before heading off for a walk around the town. Went down to the lake’s edge, pretty but very cold and windy. Headed from there up the hill to the old town, wandered around for a bit before heading back down to the shopping boulevarde to try and find some lunch - too fancy to have somewhere suitable for us. Ended up at a department store again, near to the station, which had a cafeteria restaurant up the top, good food, not too expensive and with a view over Geneva.

After a nice long lunch, we went back to the station and collected bag, then caught the train to the airport.

Quick flight home, got home before sunset due to daylight savings change.

OK, here’s the photos…

For the August long weekend, we decided we should go away for the first time in forever. Since Lily doesn’t have a visa yet, we couldn’t leave the country, for fear that they wouldn’t let her back in, so we spent 4 days driving around Wales.

I wrote my notes of what we did in point form and if I spend too long lengthening it out and such, this post may never get finished, so notes and photos…

Saturday morning, August 23, we woke up, finished packing, and were soon out the door and on the M4 headed west.
Crossed into Wales.
Tintern Abbey - fed Lily in amongst the ruins, very cool thanks to Sharon for the suggestion.
Headed to Cardiff which wasn’t all that exciting but we grabbed a few things in the shops and wandered through the park near the castle, deciding that the castle itself wasn’t worth the entry.
Bus back to the Park n Ride.
Drove to “Llanelli” for the Travelodge which isn’t actually in Llanelli at all. Considered going into an actual town or something for dinner, but too exhausted so just went to the Little Chef at the motel.
Lily slept great - about 7 1/2 hours, so no issues with the change of environment.

Sunday 24th
Woke up earlier than planned by a hungry baby. Fed her and decided to just start moving, so slowly got sorted while Lily played.
Drove to St David’s, the smallest city in Britain (a city because it has a cathedral).
Too late for church and felt weird walking in halfway through, so admired that and the Bishop’s Palace from the outside. Again fed Lily in a beautiful outdoor setting.
Back up the hill to the town - much busier now - then headed to car and on the road again.
Aberaeron for lunch - apparently the best fish and chips you’ve ever tasted… not convinced but probably the best I’ve had in Britain, a walk along the Cardigan Bay, some world famous icecream (according to our guide book) then back into the car.
Longest drive of the day saw us arrive in Holyhead at precisely the right time to feed Lily.
Room mix-up (as in, someone was IN the room we were given a key for) quickly sorted
Total vege - all very tired - Graeme went and got takeaway and we ate it in our room.
Watched some tv and sleep.

Monday 25
Out to South Stack, a reserve run by the RSPB. Main place to see puffins in Wales, but we were too late in the season for that. Very, very windy. We were able to use the binoculars in the viewing tower to see some birds sitting on the water below but determined that it would be good to come back in spring, if possible.
Drove on to Caernarfon, where we went into the Castle. Impressively situated on the water. Where Prince of Wales are invested. All in all, interesting - they had a medieval band and re-enactments but overpriced for what was there. Graeme climber to the top of one of the towers to take photos of the view but the weather turned for the worse, and we didn’t stay long after that. We left Caernarfon and headed up to do a drive around Conwy and Landudno (beautiful old sea side resort). We also took a scenic drive around the head, which was a nature reserve though the weather wasn’t super by this stage, so we didn’t get out of the car - the views were good though.
Went on to Bangor where we stayed the night.

Tuesday 26
Turned out to be a more eventful day than we anticipated, as the car overheated 15 minutes after leaving the hotel. By this stage we were in the middle of the Snowdonia National Park. AA guy turned up and said car was risky to get back to London, but should be OK if we stop every hour to refill the water and avoid motor ways. By this stage it was nearly lunch time, so we changed our plans of stopping in a few places to just stop at a place called Llanfair Caereinion. It was a small village but has a steam railway (that went to the nearby Welshpool) and more importantly for Kate a wool factory, where she purchased some bargains from their sale bin. From here we had a long, and slow trip home stopping regularly to keep the car cool, thankfully making it home in one piece in the late evening.

OK, here’s the photos…

Yeah, we’ve been slack and never got around to typing this up. So now, we’re just going to do a quick rundown and include a bunch of photos for you to look at.

The trip primarily consisted of a tour around Italy with Contiki. I was going to give a rough itinerary of what we did, but figured it’d be easier to link to the website, so click here if you want to see it. Thankfully, the tour was not full of 18-21 year olds intent on getting drunk every night. I mean, there was plenty of drinking and I saw Graeme under the influence of more alcohol than he probably should’ve consumed for the first time ever (he’s hilarious when he’s drunk too much), but people were still interested in seeing the sights and doing some of the more cultural stuff. There were quite a few other couples our age and plenty of Aussies. Basically, we had a great time.

On the final day, while others were getting up at stupidly early times to start making their way home, we slept in, spent a leisurely day seeing more of Rome and then headed to the airport to fly to Vienna, Austria. The highlight of Vienna was the traditional Christmas markets, where we sampled the warm cider (I had the non-alcoholic kids stuff) and enjoyed just soaking in the atmosphere.

OK, here’s the photos…

aka: We had to go all the way to Glasgow to see an Aussie score a hat-trick

October 26-28

From the same competition that we got tickets to the football in Plymouth, we were also able to get tickets to go to Celtic Park to watch the Scottish Premier League match between Celtic and Motherwell. Glasgow being a not insignificant distance from our place, we split the trip into two legs, the first on Friday night took us as far as Warrington and then on Saturday morning we went the rest of the way to Glasgow. We parked at our hotel, not far from the city centre, and then set about exploring this city that we’d not actually visited yet. The weather was pretty dreary and our time available was restricted by kick-off time, so we didn’t really get up to much other than looking at buildings from the outside and eating some lunch.

Our walk to Celtic Park took us past many pubs packed with football fans and a LOT of green. We queued to collect our tickets and then headed into the ground, past the many policemen and women (and horses) that must spend at least one shift every week supervising the crowd at football matches. It was quite weird to use a modern ticket barcode scanner and then still have to squeeze through the old-style entry turnstiles. We had great seats behind the goal - we were a long way up but hardly any distance from the actual field. There was a great atmosphere, due just as much to the way the stadium was built as to the crowd - the noise just reverberated around the thing. They had some really cool songs that they clearly sing at every match and all went crazy when the team went into a huddle before kick-off. The match itself wasn’t too close, as Celtic were always that much better than Motherwell, though it was exciting to see Scott McDonald (an Australian striker, who played for Motherwell last season) score a hat-trick. The official attendance was 57,500 but I suspect a few thousand season ticket holders never quite made it. Also while the crowd were obviously not as into it as they could have been there was still a great atmosphere and you could imagine the wall of noise once they really got into it (vs Rangers or in Europe). All in all it was a great experience to go to the biggest ground in Scotland.

After the match we followed the crowd back into the city, caught the underground back to where we were staying and got some dinner. We didn’t do much more than that as both of us (Kate especially) were very tired.

The next morning we decided not to just blast back down the motorway but enjoy a bit of a drive through the Scottish countryside to get to Dumfries before rejoining the motorway to head into England. It really is a beautiful and quiet part of the world.

At lunch time and with the prospect of 5 hours of motorway driving ahead of us to get home we decided it would be nicer to go the longer way through the Lakes District and rejoining the motorway lower down. The lakes district is very beautiful, it is not too dissimilar to the Lochs area in the North of Scotland but not quite as impressive. We had fun winding our way around and stopping to eat our lunch on the bank of one of the lakes while watching some locals attempt to fish. Considering it wasn’t ideal holiday weather it was surprising to see the big towns in the area (Windermere especially) so full of people and we could imagine how busy the area must be in summer when you could ‘possibly’ do things like swimming.

We left the Lakes district in the middle of the afternoon and swiftly joined a traffic jam near Preston on the M6, with it taking us another 6 hours or so to crawl our way back to home (our fault for coming home on the last day of school holidays).

Last weekend we travelled down to the south coast of England to Plymouth.  The main reason for going to Plymouth was that I had won some free tickets from Coca-Cola to a football match.  Coke sponsors everything in England and Scotland bar the Premier League, so when choosing tickets the best matches to see were either in the Scottish Premier League or the Championship.  We are doing the trip to Glasgow to watch Celtic, so thought picking a Championship match somewhere interesting where we hadn’t been before would be the best choice.  The result was Plymouth vs Coventry at Home Park in Plymouth.

The difference between going to Anfield and Home Park could not have been more different.  It felt like the difference between going to Homebush or Penrith Park.  The Plymouth match felt like attending a suburban NRL match.  We turned up, parked in the free car park, saw a few players in suits in the car park and got some cheap food from the food sellers outside the ground for lunch. There was a solid crowd (11,000ish), free car parking outside the ground and an easy going feel to the whole afternoon.  The match itself was fun, technically it wasn’t super but it was end to end and there was no lack of excitement.  It also helped that Plymouth won 1-0 and we had no one sit in front of us so we could stretch out a little (how did people ever fit in seats with so little leg room in front of them?!).  Overall it was a very enjoyable experience.

After the football finished (and we got out of the car park free for all) we checked in to our hotel and went looking for a place to have dinner.  We ended up in a inn style restaurant by the harbour side.  We had a bit of a drive around the City after dinner but anything that looked a small bit interesting was closed or wouldn’t have been worthwhile at night.  We were also tired and in need of a ‘crash’.  We ended up having an enjoyable time watching the 2nd half of England losing the World Cup final.

The next morning we started at a huge Sainsbury’s Supermarket to get some Croissants and juice for breakfast before driving a short way from Plymouth to a small town that had a Glass Works Factory with a Marble Museum.  The marble museum was terrific.  They showed you loads of different types of glass marbles, how they made them and a guy was there showing off how they did the glass-blowing on the factory floor.  The best bit was they had all of these machines which dropped marbles from the top and they followed a series of paths down to the bottom through all sorts of contraptions.  Anyway my description doesn’t do it justice, I’ll need to make sure some pictures of them are put up.

Following from the marble factory we made a stop off at Wells near Bath on the way home to see it’s well talked about Cathedral.  The amazing thing about Wells, is that it’s not a very big place, really only a small country town but it has a huge Cathedral that stands out over everything.  As we were there on a Sunday at the time they had a service we couldn’t see all the areas of the Cathedral because of an Evensong service but we saw enough and were very impressed.  After finishing at the church we had a bit of a walk around the area surrounding it with some ponds, gardens, Bishop’s castle and the oldest unchanged street in the Country.  This street, and all its identical houses was built in the 1400’s and is used by those in the Church still today. The impressive things is they are all in the same external state they were in when they originally built.  As it was getting dark, and we were tired when we finished up in Wells we made the trip down the M4 home from another good weekend away.

Tired, jet-lagged and totally sick of planes, we’re back in London after just over 2 weeks in Sydney.

Yeah, that’s all we have to say for now - just letting everyone know we got back safely, basically - will be back here when we have the brain function to write more than a couple of sentences.

OK, so most of the shopping took place in an outlet park, but I thought of the title and had to use it…
(this is part 3 of 3, scroll down to read them in order)

Monday 27 August:

While watching TV last night (after massive roast dinners that we couldn’t finish) we saw an ad for Dolton Park, ‘20 minutes south of Newcastle on the A19′ - we were heading south anyway and they were promising shopping at 50% off high street prices, so we (well, I) had to go. We arrived before most of the shops were open, so we had some breakfast and then went shopping. 2 hours later we left a now packed car park, marvelling at the massive queue to get into the place and headed for Durham.

The park and ride we had planned on using to get into Durham was closed and the backed up traffic to get anywhere near the town was ridiculous, so we turned around, meaning it effectively took us 45 minutes to travel about 10 minutes south on the A19, though obviously we used a bunch of other roads. Having skipped Durham, our possible/standby activity for the afternoon became our only activity and we headed for the North Yorkshire Moors National Park. We tried to stop in a little village for lunch, but nothing was open, so we ended up at the nearby service centre eating Subway. Then our adventure through the moors began. Through narrow winding lanes lined with hedges, taking in beautiful views over valleys of green and purple, seeing an old fashioned cricket game, a couple of wrong turns on the unmarked roads and eventually we arrived at our intended destination.

Goathland is a tiny little village in the middle of the national park that is surrounded by farm land and has sheep grazing literally everywhere.

It would probably barely register on the map except for 3 things:

• it is one of the stops on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, a short little train line that runs steam trains full of tourists through the area;
• the station is re-branded as Hogsmeade station whenever the Harry Potter crew is in town; and
• it has an alter-ego as Aidensfield, the village featured in TV series Heartbeat.

As we approached the village, we noticed a lot of cars were parked up on the grass next to the road. Figuring this was a good idea, we pulled in too. Turns out, it was the complete opposite end of the village to the station and that we could’ve parked more in the centre near the shops, but that didn’t matter to us. We had a lovely stroll through the village, past the sheep and Aidensfield shops and down to the station.

The Kate and Graeme tourist luck kicked in again and about 30 seconds after we’d crossed the tracks, a steam train turned up (completely off timetable, as far as we could tell). So we watched that come in, saw the conductors in their old fashioned uniforms, got a slight scare when the whistle blew and watched the train leave the station and go off along the valley.

Then we wandered back up the hill to the shops, where we got a drink and some souvenirs and then back through the village. Our guidebook recommended the Mallyan Spout, a waterfall reached by a footpath from the village, so down we went. It was beautiful and green by the stream and we had fun climbing over the rocks to get a good view of the waterfall, which while not massive was still impressive.

The climb back up the hill was a pretty hard slog, especially with all the walking we’d done over the 3 days, but we got there and by the time we reached the car found it much less surrounded than when we left it. By now it was after 5pm and time to start heading home. Out of the national park, we headed towards York, where we got some dinner on the outskirts and then onto the M1 back to London where I finished writing this during Graeme’s driving leg.

Sunday 26 August:

Driving over the Tyne bridge - the one based on the design of the Sydney Harbour Bridge

35 miles north of Newcastle lies Alnwick Castle, which would be considered a great day out even without the fact that it has been used as a location in many films, including being Hogwarts in the first 2 Harry Potter films. We took the ’scenic coastal route’ which really wasn’t all that scenic, offering only minor glimpses of the coast, but being that it wasn’t that much longer than the more direct route, it wasn’t a big deal. We arrived in Alnwick about 10.30am which allowed us our pick of parking spots and let us see most of the castle before it got too crowded. Throughout the day we:

• chased some pheasants in the grounds
• climbed the castle walls
• took a guided tour (always an interesting history lesson)
• explored the state rooms which are still lived in by the Duke of Northumberland and his family
• stared in awe at the amazing library
• had a yummy lunch in a castle courtyard
• watched adorable kids dressed up as knights and maidens as they played in the interactive ‘Knights Quest’ area
• did some brass rubbings

and generally had a great day right up until we left the ‘Battleaxes and Broomstix’ tour part-way through because the girl leading it was hopeless and didn’t seem to know what she was talking about when describing the films that were shot there…

Alnwick Castle


The bailey of the castle


By the time we got back to our car, the parking was packed, as was most of the town from the look of it. We headed back towards Newcastle and then west towards Hexham to try and see some of Hadrian’s Wall. According to our map, there is a road that runs along the wall, sometimes right up close and at other points 3-4 miles away, but always in the same sort of direction. Problem was, the wall just didn’t seem to be there. There were plenty of stone walls, but the sort that farmers build to separate paddocks, not the type built by ancient Romans to keep out invading Scots. Finally we came across a couple of big chucks of the wall that were still reasonably intact, but there was nowhere to stop near them. After stopping in a couple of carparks that looked promising but didn’t really deliver, other than some cows, we found ourselves about halfway across England - the place is so tiny.




We followed advice from our trusty guidebook to go to the place they said had the best views, which we’d earlier thought would be too far away, that whole over half the width of the country thing. We parked in a little carpark, climbed a hill, used some of the cool livestock-proof gates and found ourselves right at the ridge of a series of hills, along which ran Hadrian’s Wall. Once we’d had our fill, we went back to the car and headed back to Newcastle for dinner. Yummy, Sunday Roast.



Hadrian’s Wall

Saturday 25 August:

An early start to beat the long weekend traffic out of London saw us arriving in Newcastle at 12.30pm. Most big cities here have Park and Rides set up, where you park on the city outskirts and catch a dedicated bus into the most touristy part of town. Newcastle’s, however, is set up in line with their metro system, so we parked at a metro station not too far from where we would be staying the night and got into the city centre from there. A very helpful attendant at the station helped us buy the best value ticket and gave us tips about some of the things we should do during the day.

We caught the train to Newcastle central station and then wandered around the city centre. We had lunch in a foodcourt in one of the many shopping centres (both of those things are rare in London). We spent quite a bit of timein the Newcastle United FC shop, deciding if we should buy my brothers and dad anything and if so, what. We decided against a NUFC themed wedding gift (sorry Josh) and they’ll have to wait to see if we bought anything…

We wandered through the covered market where we bought awesome (and super cheap) yarn and a yummy muffin and were tempted by pretty Doc Martens. We went right up close to St James’ Park (home of NUFC) and were mildly impressed by the stadium. More impressive was the Metro station, decked out in black and white, team emblems and even a football pitch with ‘walk of fame’ type imprints on it IN THE STATION. We wouldn’t have even seen that stuff if we hadn’t been planning on catching the train.

We headed to the coast where we wandered along a beach (still fully clothed and wearing our shoes, even though some crazies people were swimming), marvelled over the disused swimming baths, bought icecreams, admired the castle ruins and took photos of the cool station. Then we followed the advice of that guy from earlier and went and caught the ferry across the Tyne, which was covered by our travel tickets. As we got to the other side, Graeme proved he is still a big kid by becoming enthralled with one of the big ships that was clearly headed across to continental Europe, so we sat and watched it take a long time to turn itself around and head out of the river.

Tynemouth Longsands

The station

Graeme and the ship

From here, we caught the train back to our car and went and checked into our accomodation for the weekend, a motor inn on the M1 that allows us to easily explore the area. After making use of the bathroom we headed back out, aiming for the Metro Centre, which is apparently Europe’s biggest shopping centre and where we figured we’d find a cinema and restaurants type set-up to get some dinner. As we were driving there, we saw a sign for the Angel of the North, which we were planning on checking out anyway, but not until later in the weekend. Since I was driving and the light looked really good for taking photos, I made the decision to see it then. It was very un-crowded and was a cool thing to see up close (and photograph :D), and the light was good, although the sun sets behind it, so it’s butt was lit beautifully and the front was in shadow. oops, I digress… We saw the Angel of the North then continued on to the Metro Centre.

After several failed attempts to even get into the car park (confusing signs), we found our way and parked near the bowling lanes, since that was one of the few things visible from the outside. Graeme has been wanting to go bowling for MONTHS, so he went and checked the price, decided it was fair and (being used to much busier bowling alleys) asked if they had and lanes available. Sometimes it is hard to believe he is 27, like when he gets so excited about the prospect of 3 games of bowling. We actually ended up playing 4 games each because the lane kept eating the bowling balls and by the time we were finishing the 3rd game the place was pretty quiet and we had a couple of guys at our lane trying to work out what was wrong with the machine, so the manager told us to play another game which Graeme used to get his best score of the night. During play we had drinks and snacks from the bar and by the end we didn’t really need a proper dinner, so we headed back to the motel in time for Graeme to watch Match of the Day and me to write this before heading to bed. Tomorrow… Hogwarts!

Click on the photo above to see my set from the 3rd and follow along with the commentary. Graeme was chief photographer on the 4th and hasn’t put his photos up yet, but I’ll edit when he has

We always wake up earlier on weekends that we are going away than any other day of the week. This time though, instead of interrupting our Saturday sleep-in, we were up and away before peak hour had really kicked in on a Friday morning, our travel plans being dictated by the date we could get Tattoo tickets. By 7.30 am we were at Kings Cross station, wondering what to do while we waited for them to announce which platform our 8am train would leave from. I pointed out platform 9¾ to Graeme, but we didn’t take photos or go up to it because we didn’t want to look too lame. We grabbed some drinks and a snack and sat and watched the crowd and the trains, then our platform was announced so we headed over and got on the train to Edinburgh. It wasn’t quite as exciting as the Hogwarts Express, but still the idea of catching the train from Kings Cross to Scotland was kind of nerdy cool, especially since I wasn’t the only person on the train reading one of the books.

We got into Edinburgh Waverley at lunch time, so we stopped at the first place we found and ate. Then we went for a walk through the park, past a burnt-out building still surrounded by firemen and some uninspiring street performers, then up towards the Royal Mile, stopping to look at the Museum on the Mound, which was about banking and money in Scotland and had some very cool old coins, showed how they made money and included £1000000 in cancelled out 20s. We spent several hours on the Royal Mile, watching street performers (and in Graeme’s case, performing), checking out shops and wandering through free exhibitions - basically doing the stuff that we hadn’t got around to last time we were there (last year, also at festival time, meaning we have no idea what regular Edinburgh is really like). After finding our accommodation, checking in, hanging out the window to take photos and convincing Graeme it wasn’t time for a nap, we walked back to the Royal Mile to find some dinner, stopping along the way to enjoy another street performer’s show.

By the time we were finished dinner it had gotten cold and the wind had picked up tremendously, so we considered going back to one of the shops closer to the castle, where Graeme had spotted some potential extra jackets, but instead we encountered the queue for the Tattoo, already packed and long with over 30 minutes until the gates even opened. So we just kind of milled about for a while, refusing to join the ridiculous queue that was now well down the road (unlike Europeans, we don’t consider queuing an enjoyable pastime, especially when so many people are likely to ignore the queue and just push-in) and then deciding to sit on the base of a statue and wait. Eventually we joined the massive throng of people headed up the narrowing street to the castle forecourt and finally got to our seats about 10 minutes after starting time, but it was OK because it started even later than that.

The Edinburgh Military Tattoo was on our list of ‘Things We Must Do Whilst in the UK’ and it didn’t disappoint. It was great to see it live and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

At the end, it was back into the scrum of people and slowly back to our room for the night. We kind of felt like we should be heading somewhere else, being the festival and all, but we were too tired.

Saturday morning we had a cooked breakfast and checked out before heading back to the point where we’d stopped our exploration of the Royal Mile the day before. As we wandered further down we discovered we were way too keen to get going and most things were still closed because it was before 10am. We reached Holyrood Palace, which marks the opposite end of the Mile to Edinburgh Castle, but decided against going in after we flicked through one of the books in the shop and figured it wouldn’t be worth the admission (we’ve seen enough palaces and castles to last a lifetime, so there has to be something special to attract us). Instead we headed around it and came to the base of a big hill we had seen from our room and had thought might be cool t climb. So we did. It was pretty long and parts were very steep, but the views we got over the city were worth it.

We headed back up the Royal Mile, stopping to get some fudge and then headed to Parliament Square where we sat on one of the big stone fence-rail-type things, watched some performers and ate some fudge (yum). Once we, along with about 10 others, got told we weren’t allowed to sit there for some ‘public safety’ reason, the place kind of lost its appeal (it was just ridiculous because the day before the place was constantly occupied by people, being the only thing anything like a place to sit in the area, but since it was now officially festival time, some power-tripping volunteer decided no-one could sit there). So we headed away from the festival and down into the park, which we wandered through for awhile. Running out of things to do, we decided to head for the shops in the hope of finding something to occupy us and maybe some food. We had lunch at TGI Fridays and then wandered along looking at the shops. Once we were sick of the crowds in all the shops, we headed to the park where we sat for awhile before going in search of some sandwiches to take on the train and then heading to the station where we caught the train back to London.