Sunday, January 16, 2011

London 2010 Recap

I've finally had a chance to gather the photos from the cameras (actually I've just remembered, I've got a bunch on my phone I need to get too) and put them into a single set on Flickr, so here is a set to give a view of what our holiday was about. Obviously it does capture every moment, but it certainly captures a lot of them


A bit of a recap of what happen towards the end of our trip.

On the 29th (or was it the 30th, it's all a blur) we took the boys into London again and met up with Uncle Jamie and Aunty Phaik and visited the Natural istory Museum. Mitchy absolutely loved it and rated it the best part of his holiday. Here are some photos of us standing in front of the giant dinosaur skeleton in one of the halls

We had a great time wandering the halls and seeing the amazing exhibits - and it was all free! Mitch walked around with eyes the size of dinner plates. Sam and Lucas had lots of fun to walking around and looking at everything. It was great to see Jamie and Phaik again and we wished at the time we'd been able to spend more time with them, but all too soon it was time to get back on the train and make the journey back on the Surrey.

We spent New Years Eve with Michael and Lorraine and Krissy and Glenn and played cards up until midnight and watched the fireworks in London on the TV. Meeks was feeling sick so she had an early night and was in bed at 10:30pm!

A couple of days later we visited this cool place called The Lookout which was near Krissy and Glenn's place in a place called Bracknell. There is a huge outdoor play area with walking tracks and all sorts of things, but we mainly went for the indoor area (because it was raining) which was sort of like Questacon in Canberra. There were a whole bunch of fun sciency experiments (that may be a strange set of words to place together - yes science can be fun, just ask the guys from Mythbusters!) which were really hands on. Again, Mitch had a lot of fun and the little boys enjoyed playing with everything without really having a clue what was going on! There was a giant piano
And human body experiments
And a giant frog!

Thanks to Michael and Lorraine taking the boys for a night, on the 3rd and 4th Meeks and I managed to get away for a night in a hotel in London. We had dinner with Jamie and Phaik in a cool little Mexican restaurant in/near Bayswater and then went off to a bar where they go frequently. It was great to see them without the kids and to have a chance to have a chat. The next day Meeks and I got a chance to walk and walk and walk around London and visit some of the sites. It was freezing cold, but wasn't raining and was fairly clear and just as we reached Buckingham Palace started to snow a bit. It was a really great time and we loved the chance to have some time just with each other and to see some of London.

A couple of days later and it was time to head home. The less said about the flight home the better. If the trip to London was experiencing the 4th level of hell, the trip home was slightly better, only the 3rd level of hell. When we landed back in Sydney, someone must have been praying for us, because we were through customs and had picked up our baggage in record time and walked out to see the lovely smiling faces of Phil and Shaz who met us at the airport with our car. After the difficulty of the previous 24 hours of travelling, it was such a delight to see the faces of our friends, we are so thankful they got up early in the morning to meet us and it made getting home so much easier and so, so, so much more pleasant.

So that was the end of our holiday. Thanks so much for Michael and Lorraine's generosity and also to Krissy and Glenn (and Hannah) for letting us stay with them.