Cotswolds

The Romantic Drive – Cotswold 19-20^th July

After a couple of rainy weekends, we found a weekend with half decent weather to do our first road trip in the UK, the romantic Cotswold. We picked up our hired car Sat morning, and after getting over the shock of petrol prices, and our GPS in placed, we headed off to the English countryside.

Joe was happy to be behind the driving seat, although the little Ford Fiesta was no Golf, it was nice to cruise along the highway away from the city life. The drive reminded us of the numerous road trips we enjoyed back home, however the added advantage here is that the GPS beeps at you when speed cameras were coming up.

The Cotswold is a lovely place, made up many small quaint towns. Cute little English cottages with pretty gardens lined the streets of the town. The English have preserved this area so well, although only an hour and a half away from London, it was light years apart. We felt like we stepped back in time, and everything was moving in slow motion.

We visited various towns such as Stow on the Wold, Lower Slaughter, Bourton the Water, Stanton & Winchcombe and enjoyed numerous Devonshire cream teas in the gardens… very “English”Our favourite was Boughton on the Waters, not only was it the prettiest town (apparently it’s the Venice of the Cotswold with its canals and footbridge) it was the most memorable, as it there we received the phone call from our good friends, Vicks and Vinh who have just given birth to their 2^nd son Isaac. Congratulations guys!

Family in London

My parents, aunts and uncles recently came to Europe for a holiday, and made London their first destination on their 2 week tour of England, France, and Italy. Their first introduction to London was getting stuck in traffic for about 2 hours to travel approx 20km. The stop and start, and unfamiliar roads tired them out by the time the arrived at their destination.
Lisa and I were acted as tour guides, taking everyone to most of the main attractions of London, from Picadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, St James Park, Parliment House, Big Ben, Southbank, St Pauls, Chinatown, up Regent and Oxford Street. We covered the city on the London using the buses and tube, and fortunately for them, the tube was not as crammed with people like usual.
We also took a few keen shoppers, to go shopping in London, visting Regeant Street, Picadilly Circus and Harrods. Everyone was very suprised how good and cheap shopping in London is. Their favourite store however was LillyWhites! where they couldn't resist the bargain.

It was nice to see everyone again, and nice to see my family come London, and see other parts of Europe.

Wimbledon 2008

On 27th June, Lisa and I went to our first Wimbledon tournament, and we were lucky because we got the tickets through a public ballot (like a lottery for Wimbledon tickets, but you still have to pay for the tickets). We went on Friday of the first week of play, and got access to Court number 1. We were counting our lucky stars, because many British people miss out on tickets many years running, and in our first attemp, we got tickets, on Court number 1 (only second to Center Court), where we got to see the likes of Lleyton Hewitt, Anna Ivanovic, and Marat Safin play.

It started off with rain delays, so our first match with Lleyton Hewitt ended up being delayed by 1 hour. It was very frustrating with rain delays, because people get on court, then they get off, then on then off. The 1 hour wait was worse than waiting for a delayed BA flight, as you're always in suspence and hope that the bad weather moves on and play to start.
Once play started, it was clear all the way, and when Lleyton was playing, all the Aussies in the crowd went crazy, even Lisa! It seems a relatively easy match for Lleyton, as he went on to win in straight sets. Anna Ivanovic was next on court, and she was terrible, as she slumped to a straight set slaughter by the Chinese girl Zheng Jie (who made it all the way to the Quarter Finals). The last match of the day was Marat Safin, which got the crowd going a little bit with his antics, and his temper.

During the day, we had to do the tradition Strawberries and Cream @ Wimbledon, only made possible thanks to HSBC, as we got free vouchers to get them. No way were we going to pay £2.25 for a tube of 6 Strawberries with Cream.
Anyway, the day out was a good experience, and throughly enjoyed it. Now we can say we've been there!

Lake Como and Milan

On the weekend of 13-15 June, we went to Como (the Italian Lake district) and Milan in Italy with our friends Ed and Lyn. We flew out on Friday night after work, and thinking because we're flying with EasyJet, and not BA, everything would be OK. However, we got it all wrong, as we were once again delayed on take off, which then compounded our problems. Rather than getting to our hotel in Lake Como at 11-12 midnight, we got there at 1:30 am due to buses replacing trains.
Anyway on with Lake Como, we woke up to a huge buffet breakfast that had possibly 30+ different things things to choose from to eat, which was amazing. After taking in fuel for the day's adventure, we headed for the Ferry Dock, and got ourselves on the ferry, heading for Bellagio (half way up the Lake) At first it was fascinating to see all the little villages, waterfront houses, boats, boats sheds, waterfront hotels, but then everything started to look the same. At that stage we were only 30 minutes into our 2 hour ferry ride to Bellagio, so it ended up being a very nice and long ride! Also the weather was quite overcast, so there was not much opportunity for good photos.

When we arrived at Bellagio at around 12 noon, pushed for time, we whipped out our cameras like a bunch of crazy tourists, and immediately started snapping away, at anything almost, just to get enough photos of the village in the limited time we had. Bellagio is one of the larger villages on the Lake, but still relatively small, with many small hilly cobble stoned streets, lined with Cafe, Bars, shops, and restaurants to cater for the tourists and small local population. It was nice to just stroll around in the streets, windows shopping taking photos, drinking coffee, eating pizza, and not worry about to many cars. There was nothing very distinctive about Bellagio, there's no main attraction to see or do that you can recommended people to see or do. It's more a place to chill out and relax.
After about 2 hours, we headed back to the ferry docks to catch the ferry to the next village, the village of Varena. Varena had just as many buildings as Bellagio, but everything more spaced out. As we wondered around town, we were starting to get hungry and were looking for a place to have lunch. However at around 2-3 ish, everything was starting to close for the locals afternoon siesta. Oh man, such bad timing, and to temporarily hold back our hunger, we got stuck into my emergency food..... choc chip cookies. The highlight of Varena was Villa Monastero, which had a beautiful waterfront garden, which for €3, we got to wonder around at our leisure. Varena was another typical hilly village and by around 4:30 pm we were starting to get tired and hungry, and thought we better head back to Como, so we commenced our 2 hours ferry ride back. Along the way we managed to see George Clooney's (a famous American actor in case you didn't know) Italian villa, a waterfront property on it's own piece of land. We only knew because the ferry stopped right in front of it for a while, and everyone was out taking photos of it. That weekend, George was home!..but we didn't get to see him, and the girls felt they missed out, especially our friend Lyn, who was so smitten that she called him Georney.

When we finally arrive in Como, our quite relaxing day our took a very opposite turn, the town of Como was in full party/festival mode, with life music, food stores, bands, street acts, street exhibitions, and thousands upon thousands of people. Not sure what the event was, but it was a great atmosphere, but being a little tired, and hungry, we had to go look after our stomach's first, and looked around for dinner. We always enjoy dinner in Italy, as it's always cheaper than most of Europe, great pasta & pizza, and easy to drink Italian wine. We settled on this Pizza restaurant, that had the most extensive pizza menu I have ever see, about 5 pages (A4 size) of pizza's. However, we opted for the pasta's for main, and a pizza for entree, and were stuffed!
Wondering around Como that night was like wondering around London, so many people, heaps of noise, street performances, buskers, and music. When in Italy, we cannot go a night without finding a good Gelato, which in Italy generally is very easy (so to coffee). We spent the rest of the night wondering the night flea market dotted along the lake.
The following morning, the weather in Como was terrible, raining! So we caught a train to Milan. I was so looking forward to dropping by this Italian restaurant (run by Chinese people) Lisa and I once at at, which we loved!!!! unfortunately, being a Sunday, it was CLOSED!!!! Disappointed, we headed for the Duomo to grab some lunch, and take some photos of the Duomo (Milan's Cathedral) which we could not get last time because it was covered in scaffolding. We did a little spot of souvenir shopping, and after which we headed for the airport and home.

A nice, relaxing, and enjoyable weekend, eating pasta, pizza, and gelato, what more can you ask for from a holiday.