Ahh, Amsterdam, the land where practically everything is legal, all the girls sound like Ingrid (our friend, who is Dutch), and you’re statistically more likely to get run over by something than anywhere else in the world. Well, I’m sure that such a statistic doesn’t actually exist, however while we were there we saw a lot of close calls. Take, for example, this lady who was crossing at a little intersection that Jason affectionately called “Carnage Corner”; note how blissfully unaware she is of the tram speeding towards her, from her left.

Look out!

It may not look too serious, but remember that this tram was absolutely cruising along, and old Betsy here on the bicycle – child in tow, as you’ll notice – didn’t give even a cursory glance to her left. Suffice to say she got a wee bit of a fright when the tram tooted at her!

Overall though, I really love how the city promotes bicycles so much, and it’s even better that so many people use the old treadly as their primary means of transport. A little worrying though, when people aren’t giving it their full attention – driving whilst talking on your mobile is bad enough, but riding amongst traffic and trams whilst texting is taking it to a whole new level!

Are you crazy woman?!

Even more interesting are the things that people will transport by bike – it would seem as though anything is fair game. We saw people carrying guitars, surfboards, skiis, and of course children – but probably the most interesting of all would have to be crutches. Go figure!

We decided to partake in this bike riding ritual, grabbing ourselves a Mac Bike each, and riding it through the city, out into the countryside, past windmills and flowers, and around all the cycling tracks we could find in Vondelpark. It really is the best way of seeing the city!

Kristy and Susan showing off their moves

Jason the daredevil

Given that Amsterdam is built around canals, the other best way to see the city is by a canal tour, which we promptly did on our first day. We were very lucky to get a boat that was practically empty, which meant we could hop from seat to seat to get the best vantage point for photos.

Cruising the canals

Amsterdam doesn’t seem to understand the concept of the “public bathroom”. Sure, at the airport, you have countless bathrooms at your disposal, however once you hit the city, don’t bank on relieving yourself without also relieving your pocket of a few coins! I guess they really take the phrase, “to spend a penny”, rather literally – but with inflation, a penny no longer gets you very far; the typical fee was 50 Euro cent. The Magna Plaza shopping centre, just off De Dam, held the title for “cheapest bathroom in Amsterdam” for a while (excluding the hotel, of course); their entry fee of only 40 Euro cent was somewhat of a welcome relief.

Cheap toilets: only ¢0.40!

However, they were outdone in the closing moments of our trip by the unfortunately named department store, V&D – only 25 Euro cent! They also had a sneaky tactic of putting the bathrooms at the very back of the very top floor, so as you were making a hurried dash to the lavs, you couldn’t help but think, “busting… busting… ohh, that shirt would look nice with these jeans!”.

Last time we were in Amsterdam, we didn’t find anywhere that served us bad coffee. Our sample size was significantly larger this time, and once again we weren’t really disappointed anywhere. The only thing that comes close to a bad coffee experience was the little cafe that we chose for our Sunday morning shot; the espresso itself was rather tasty, but the latte had rather too much milk.

But still, no real complaints; the extended time that we sat there finishing off our warm coffee flavoured milk somehow gave rise to me one-upping Susan’s favourite saying of “Yeah no”, into: “Yeah no, maybe”. I’m fairly certain that it won’t catch on though, especially in the face of “Yah ni”, which is the Dutch equivalent of “Yeah no”, and altogether has a much nicer ring to it.

Loving the espresso

Amsterdam is such a wonderful city escape; the sort of place you could go to time after time and always find something new, even if you just do the same things over and over. I just love that it’s so different from London; I’d happily go back there anytime.

A few weeks ago, Aubain and Ingrid asked us to go on a “short country walk” with them today, provided the weather was ok. Things were not looking promising with heavy rain all day yesterday, but today turned out to be beautiful, so off to Otford we headed.

Sure, it was muddy – extremely so, in some cases, and our trousers and hiking boots came back looking very well loved. But it was also extremely beautiful out there; the autumn colours are in full bloom, and there was a rainbow of leaves on the ground everywhere we looked.

Probably the highlight for both Kristy and I was walking through a field of corn. It was just awesome! The way it moves in the breeze is transfixing; it seemed to be whispering to me, “if you build it, he will come”. Stupid corn, that doesn’t even make sense.

We ate lunch at The Fox and Hound’s, a pub which was conveniently situated right around the half-way point. I had the lamb shanks, and thought of Mom.

We were so lucky to have such a beautiful day, and it really was a fantastic way to spend it, burning some calories and breathing some very fresh air. I’ll be signing up for another one soon! Check out some more photos in the photo album.

We took two-days off last Thursday and Friday (the astute among you will note that that means I had a one day work week), and headed to Bath. Though it’s very accessible by rail, we didn’t know precisely what time we wanted to come/go (you have to book specific times on the train), and the ticket booking was going to cost in the realm of £80 – £100 for the two of us; so instead, we hired a Nissan Micra and drove ourselves there.

Our first order of business (not including parking, finding our apartment, or eating, that is) was to join a free walking tour. It was great – our tour guide was a very enthusiastic lady who had an interesting voice and a lovely jacket. We learned all about the city’s vibrant history, and saw almost the entire place on foot.

This here is Kristy, standing in front of Royal Crescent. The guy who designed this had quite the fascination in Masonic symbols, so he made this street to symbolise the crescent moon.

This one – called “The Circus” – is the symbol of the sun. It’s actually a complete circle; this is just one quarter of it. According to our guide, Nick Cage owns one of the places in the middle. Wikipedia seemingly doesn’t agree. Anyway, the tour ended up lasting for about two and a half hours – and it was all for free! It was a perfect introduction to the city.

Next on the agenda (not that we had an agenda; it’s just what we did next) was the Twilight Package at Thermae Bath Spa. Thermae is the only natural thermal spa that operates in Bath (or in fact, in all of Britain). Their twilight package entitles you to three hours of lazing in the hot baths and saunas, as well as dinner and a drink in their restaurant. As you can probably guess, it was a very stressful experience, especially sitting in the spa on the roof watching the sun set. (Well, to be truthful, it was raining, so we were more just watching the light grow dimmer, but it was still great!) We left the baths feeling very relaxed indeed, and after sharing some wine and snacks at a local restaurant, we turned in for the night.

First thing Friday morning, we headed straight to the old Roman Baths to have a peek. They include an audio tour with the admission fee, and I was pleased to see that it was earphone-enabled, so I plugged in my buds and took plenty of photos. Good lord, is that audio tour boring! After about three stops I switched to the kids version, which not only contained the exact same information, but was far more entertaining due to all the comical voices.

The baths themselves on the other hand, are anything but boring! The Romans were just so darned clever – the engineering that went in to the place was magnificent! Actually it was pretty disgusting learning about how people lived back in the day; apparently, people never drank water, let alone took baths in it – once or twice a year was “more than enough”. Eeeewwww!

It’s no wonder they thought Bath was a mystical place of healing – it was really just that it cleaned all the disgusting toxins out of their skin! (And given that the ladies rubbed arsenic on their skin to make it look white, and that their lipstick was full of mercury, they would have been quite full of toxins!)

One clever doctor came up with the idea of getting people to drink the water as well as bathing in it (though not the same water, I presume) – and to this day you can go upstairs and have yourself a taste. And taste it we did – it’s warm, and it has a distinctly metallic flavour. I think I’ll stick to San Pellegrino for now.

We had covered most things that we wanted to do in Bath by this stage, so we stopped briefly for a fantastic brunch and coffee at a little café called Same Same but Different, and then headed back to the car for the uneventful drive back to London. Kristy fell asleep. I soldiered on. I’m such a trooper!

Kristy and I both had Tuesday off to spend with the Aussie gang as well. We decided that Windsor Castle sounded like a good option, so on to the train we hopped. We started a bit later than we had originally intended – but that meant we enjoyed huge savings with our Group Saver ticket (2 pay, 4 travel), plus combined castle entry – the whole day out ringing in at just over £15 a pop!

Windsor was cold! I was wearing a thermal shirt, a t-shirt, and a jumper, and was freezing in the wind! I found it difficult to believe that it had reached the full 13 degrees celsius that my iPhone was advertising.

An audio guide is included as a freebie with your admission fee, but it’s one of those stupid ones you have to hold to your ear, instead of one you can plug your earphones in. I much prefer the earphone ones because (a) I always take earphones along just in case, so I don’t have to use the shop ones, and (b) that means my hands are free to take photos.

Audio guide or no, we managed to arrive only a few moments before the last free walking tour was departing, so we hung around in the gift shop and waited for the guide – Art. We thought we had scored a tour all to ourselves, but at the last minute, a group of loud, incompetent (“How do I get the guide to play, Margie?”), and somewhat overweight ladies joined in as well. No prizes for guessing their country of origin.

Anyway – Art knew a thing or two about the castle, and it was great to get the information from someone first-hand. We learned a whole bunch of facts which I almost instantly forgot; but two things that I remember:

• One of the Kings decided the tower walls weren’t high enough, so had them extended by an extra 10 metres. This caused the foundation to become unstable with the extra weight, so engineers had to re-seat the castle in the late 1990′s.
• A man in a pink tutu and full beard managed to bypass security and gate-crash Prince William’s 21st birthday.

Yes, fairly random. Truthfully I remember a whole lot of what he told us, but they’re the ones I thought were most interesting .

After fairly thoroughly sussing the outside of the castle, we headed in to St George’s Chapel. It had lots of interesting stuff in there – for example, we got to walk over the grave of King Henry VIII. The chapel also contains a display of a crown, shield, and flag for each member of the rather lamely named Order of the Garter. Though these were extremely interesting and very detailed, I still think that if you were founding an order of knights, you’d name it after something really cool, like, “The Defenders of the Dragon”, or “The Conglomeration of the Panther”; naming a group after a garter sounds like you’re just setting yourself up for a loss – it’s no wonder England sucks at sport.

Our final stop on our tour was inside the castle itself. Unfortunately by this point we were running short on time, so we had to rush through the rooms quite quickly. (Oh, by the way, you’re not allowed to take any photos inside any of the buildings.).

There were a number of stand-out rooms for me; namely, the very blue room for the Order of the Garter; St George’s Hall, which contains the shield of all the previous members of the Order of the Garter; and the Waterloo chamber, containing a portrait of each of the main players that helped in bringing down Napoleon at The Battle of Waterloo; and all of whom were seemingly named “Lawrence”. (I later learned that they were all painted by a guy named “Lawrence”.)

Windsor castle made for a spectacular day out, and I’m glad that we finally made the trip out there to see it. Well worth a visit!

I took Monday off work to spend some time with Jason, Louise, and Criag. After ticking most of Craig’s tourist boxes over the weekend, the gang didn’t want to do anything too touristy; so we headed in to Harrods for some shopping, ate a Chicken Katsu Curry from Wasabi for lunch, and then headed for a walk through Hyde Park.

It was beautiful to see all the Autumn colours on the trees, and to walk through all the leaves fallen on the ground! We walked from the bottom of the park up to speakers corner at the top, near Marble Arch. There was no-one speaking though; apparently it’s more of a “weekends in Summer” thing (it was very cold with the wind whipping along).

We jumped on a 22 bus to get home, which was almost door-to-door. Best of all, our timing was absolutely perfect – it started raining the moment we sat down on the bus!

Jason and Louise are back in London, and their friend Craig has come along with them! We spent the weekend walking around some of London’s finer attractions. On Saturday, we hit Borough Markets, Tower Bridge, Shad Thames, The London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace.

Yesterday it was more walking; this time we covered Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, and Trafalgar Square. There was a huge Diwali celebration going on in Trafalgar Square, which actually looked quite interesting; but we didn’t stay long because it was rather cold!

We finished off the weekend with some drinks at one of my favourite London pubs – The Porterhouse. We all especially enjoyed a beer called Trappistes Rochefort, which – at 11.2% – was one of the strongest beers I’ve ever had; and yet, we all thought it tasted like Coke! You could really get yourself into some trouble with a few of those bad boys!

On Sunday I took some photos for Al’s band – The Violation Complex. As you probably guessed from the name, these guys are the next big thing in the Christian Folk and Country category.

The guys wanted some photos for CD inlays, press packs, promo material etc. so I gave it a whirl. I think it went ok – we took about 300 photos in two hours! Al said, so long as they get 4 or 5 good ones out of it, they’ll be happy. I think I met that quota.

I’ll be interested to see what they do with the photos; I told them they should talk to Konrad if they want something special. We’ll see!

Flights to Croatia turned out to be ridiculously expensive; so much so that it turned out to be £50 cheaper to fly to Rome two days earlier, pay for two nights of accommodation, and then fly from Rome to Split. So that’s precisely what we did!

Rome was extremely hot; around 32 – 35 degrees each day, and ludicriously humid; it was just like a super hot Brisbane summer. Ahh, the good old days…

Kristy, Shelley I hadn’t been to Rome before, so Julian played tour guide and took us to all the sites. Kristy also had a go at playing Tour Guide Barbie, but she decided it was too difficult to read a map whilst walking; this revelation came after she walked directly into somebody, apologised profusely, then came to the realisation that she had actually walked into a light pole.

Anyway – we started our sight-seeing with the big one: the Colosseum. It’s big! We paid for a tour guide who liked to say “eh?” at the end of most of his sentences, but it meant that we got some of the history of the place (fascinating!) and we got to skip the huge entrance line. €19 well spent.

Our colosseum ticket also entitled us to entrance to the ruins of the Roman Forum, which served as the central meeting point for shopping, politics, and religion back in ancient Rome. Once again, absolutely fascinating; Rome must have been such an inspiring empire in its prime!

A tour of the forum should have been included with our entrance, but after searching in vain for half-an-hour for our tour group, we gave up and got an audio guide. Julian, Shelley and Kristy then got to experience Tour Guide Gerrod, as listened and dictated the audio guide to them. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough.

We ended up walking past the Trevi Fountain at least three times; the first time we had sought it out, the other two times were kind-of accidental. It was much bigger than I had imagined it to be, and at least four times larger than the original (located at Caesar’s Palace, in Las Vegas). It was quite magnificant – and quite popular! There was a constant stream of people flowing around, as well as two guards armed with whistles, which they blew angrily at anyone who got too close to the water.

We briefly walked (or strutted, as the case may be) down the Spanish Steps, though we weren’t allowed to stay long as a film crew was setting up at the base. Once again we were hurried along by angry men with whistles.

We also managed to squeeze in a brief visit to St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City (on a side note: I wonder how Vatican City did in the Olympics?). That place is enormous; it’s hard to describe just how big it is, but suffice to say that its capacity is over 60,000 people. Yowsers!

We parted with a few euro for the privilage of walking to the top of the cupola, for a bird’s eye view of the basilica (inside), and over Rome (outside). It was money well spent, even just for the walk; in parts, the hallway was so narrow and at such an angle, it felt like you were walking through one of those crazy “fun houses” at a fairground.

Probably the highlight of Rome – at least for me – was the food. I had always expected coffee in Rome to be spectacular, and sure enough, it really was. Though I feel I didn’t drink anywhere near enough of it, the shots that I did have were divine. Every cafe that I saw had at least one giant coffee machine, each with four (or more) groupheads. If there’s anything the Romans can do well, it’s a shot of espresso.

We ate fantastic dinners on both nights that we were there. Our first night’s meal was particularly interesting; instead of choosing from a menu, we simply sat down and were served the food of the day. This started with a course of antipasto, followed by pasta, then a meat main, and finished with dessert. Delicious food, extremely filling, and all for about €23 a head, including wine.

I thoroughly enjoyed our brief visit to Rome, and given that I threw a coin into the Trevi fountain, I look forward to the next time we’re there for an espresso!

(More photos available in the Rome photo gallery.)

On Thursday last, we flew up to Scotland to surprise Stacey for her birthday. As it turns out, she had already worked out that we were coming, though at least – for once – it was almost entirely not my fault. I think she got her biggest clue when John and Tiff (other friends of hers that she knew were driving up) asked her, “what time are you picking up your friends from the airport?”. Yes folks, not too many ways of explaining yourself out of that one.

Anyway – for her birthday, Racey decided that she wanted to climb Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the British Isles. So, that’s what we did – and it was an amazing experience!

Our team of seven (us, Racey and Wes, John and Tiff, and Tiff’s sister Gemma) started our ascent at about 10:30 AM, and we made pretty good progress all the way. The first part of the mountain was very green and lush.

Conditions were quite hot – so much so that the lady at the information desk told us it was the hottest she had seen in the six years that she had worked there. Consequently, we were all fairly stocked up with water, and we took frequent breaks to drink it.

There’s a lake at about the half-way point, which provided a good opportunity to look back on the path that we had walked, as it snaked its way up the mountain. (The lake is just out of shot to the right, in the second photo below.)

Now that we were at the half-way point, the trail became significantly more rocky, and steeper too. With each section we climbed, the temperature dropped, and the wind picked up. A rescue helicopter circled over our heads for a while, then eventually hovered and did a medivac, which reminded us that people really do get hurt doing this climb!

The closer we got to the top, the more we noticed that the greenery had given way to a much more barren, rocky landscape. Some of the sections were immensely steep – we had to be very careful not to mis-step and fall.

The last half-hour or so of the ascent was completely in a cloud. It was really starting to get cold (there was a large patch of snow on the ground in one point), but moving kept us warm.

Finally, with smiles all around, we made it to the summit! The base of Ben Nevis is 22 metres above sea level; the summit is 1,344 – so we had climed 1,322 metres in about three and a half hours!

We found a spot as sheltered from the wind as possible, and stopped for about 20 minutes while we ate our lunch. It wasn’t long before we were on the move again though, as we didn’t want to get too cold and cramp up.

At first, it was nice to be walking down, as you employ completely different muscles to do so. Of course, it wasn’t long before those muscles got tired too, and coupled with fatigue, it became a very arduous journey. Towards the bottom, I definitely stumbled and slipped a few times, but thankfully, we all made it down incident free.

We had taken bets as to what time we would be back at the starting point, and Stacey was freakishly only three minutes off with with her guess of 5:41 PM (we got back at 5:44 PM). We had been walking for seven hours!

I’d have to say that this was probably the hardest thing that I have ever done, though there wasn’t any point where I thought I wouldn’t make it. All that climbing certainly takes its toll though – our legs are still sore four days later!

On the weekend, Kristy and I joined up with DJ Puu for a camping trip to Seven Sisters. With it’s lilly-white cliffs, it looks like Dover, but it isn’t.

After a pleasant drive (just under two hours from our door), we parked our car, grabbed a clotted-cream morning tea (well, one of us had the clotted-cream), then got our kit on to go “canoeing” – which was really “kayaking”. Not being equipped with a waterproof camera, I am short of photos of this event, however we were not dressed for style, so perhaps that’s a blessing in disguise. Anyway, the water was cold, and the wind was strong – so after two solid hours, we were completely exhausted, and rather pleased to be setting foot back on dry land.

The kayaking was absolutely great fun overall, but it left us with a killer appetite. We sat on the bank of the river and hoed into the food that Matt had brought for lunch.

The campsite was about one mile from the carpark, so after lunch we locked up Matt’s wheels, and hiked our way in. The scenery was very pleasant, and we couldn’t have asked for nicer weather!

Unfortunately, the camping grounds had already filled up by the time we booked, so we weren’t able to tent it up. Instead, we were to be staying in the “sleeping barn”, which – apparently – holds up to 38 people. We couldn’t find any pictures of the “sleeping barn” on the website, and once we saw it, we knew precisely why; no-one would ever want to stay there if they saw it first.

Less than appealing. We also figured that to fit 38 people, you’d be quite snuggled against random stranger number 37 sleeping next to you.

We decided to get over ourselves and go for a walk around the area. It really was a beautiful spot – lovely green fields with a river running through it, and right next to the beach and its cliffs.

It was also really windy while we were there. We were (see how many w’s were in a row then?) having trouble just trying to stand up straight!

Looking around the landscape though, I got the impression that high winds were not too unusual for the area.

After walking to the beach, up the cliff, then back to the campsite, we decided that we’d seen pretty much everything that we wanted to see in Seven Sisters, and the call of our own comfy beds was too strong to turn down. We ate dinner at the “camping barn” (it was quite effective in lightening the load of the esky), then hiked back out again.

Still, a lack of camping and high winds didn’t stop a bit of spontaneous frisbee from breaking out!

We had a smooth ride back to London (a little too smooth for Kristy – she was fast asleep within about 10 minutes), and after an exhausting day, we were very pleased to crash into bed that night.

A few more photos from the day are in the Seven Sister’s photo album.