London Life

Well we havent been up to too much in the last couple of weeks so here is a quick rundown on typical life in London (well for us anyway). Melinda is working as a relief teacher so she doesnt usually know where she is working until the morning. Sometimes she has to get up and get dressed and ready and just wait for someone to call!

I (Adam) am working for an Engineering company in Hammersmith. Its an easy walk to work which is much better than getting the tube (the train), but it can get a bit cold when there is a frost about! Friday lunch times for me usually means a quick couple of pints of bitter (cellar temperature - flat beer) down at a local with the blokes at work. I am trying see if I can try every beer in the UK, but it will probably take a few years and a few livers to do that!

On the weekends I usually play Rugby for a local club and then down to the club pub for a few refreshing beers after the match. Sundays often ends up as our day to jump in the car and head off around England checking out some tourist sites. So far we have been to Stonehenge, Bath and Brighton. The picture on the right is one that I took when we went to Bath late last year from inside the old Roman Baths, looking out at the Abbey.

Well this weekend we are heading over to Amsterdam for the weekend which should be an experience. We'll write more about that when we get back.

A quick trip home

For a couple of weeks in January I (Adam) went back to Australia for my friends wedding. I flew in to Melbourne and went straight back to my parents house where I tried to stay awake for the rest of the day! I spent about 10 days in glorious Victoria, where I was delivered 10 days of crap surf, variable weather and loads of Carlton Draft (Victorian Beer). I didnt get to catch up with everyone I wanted to, and the 10 days flew.

Soon enough I was in Brisbane, getting my kilt for my mates wedding! It was a top 5 days in Brisbane, stinking hot weather for someone who is used to top temperatures of 6 deg C in London! The wedding was great and there was plenty of people asking what we had on underneath the kilt!

All too soon, I was back in London and back to work and back to top temperatures of 6 deg C. Time to start planning the next holiday!

Beers and Bones

Over Christmas, we went to Prague for about 5 days. It was a pretty good christmas, we did a few tours in and around Prague. The hotel where we stayed was directly opposite a 'caberet' bar, which I think is a pretty popular place during warmer months with English stag parties! On Christmas day we went to a bizzare chapel about 70km east of Prague called Sedlec (http://www.kostnice.cz/). In there are the bones of around 40,000 people! It was a pretty strange place to be in and many of the other tourists who were there were having a great time posing next to a chandelier made of human bones! The tour guide however seemed to have the willies about the place and he soon rounded us all up within about 10 minutes! He only poked his head in the door to pay the entrance fee and then ran back out to the car to wait.

After a couple more days drinking Czech beer (which is fantastic and cheap), sampling Absinth (nasty), and looking at old churches and castles, we spent our last day in Czech on a tour of Terezin. Terezin is an old fortress which was used as a concentration camp in WWII. It was a pretty sobering experience and was well worth it. The picture above is a gate which has 'Arbeit Macht Frei' or 'Work will make you free' painted above it inside Terezin.

On the last day in Prague it was snowing pretty heavily all day. On the train on the way to the airport there was a lot of pushing and shoving to get on the train! After all that there was no hurry as we were delayed by 3 and 1/2 hours anyway! The plane even had to get de-iced! (not anything exciting for Europeans, but being Aussie it was a first!)

Kick Off

Well here is our first post on to our new blogspot. We have just created it so we will update shortly!

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