Visitors to London!!!

Well it has been some time that I updated my blog and I am sure most of you know that this is because I have been traveling a lot lately! April has been a very crazy busy month, and somehow I managed to only work 1 day this entire month!!! This was made possible by some visitors from home. Justin came for a few days at the beginning of the month and my parents visited basically right after that.

I have become pretty good at being a little tour guide in London although maybe need to brush up on my British history some more to be really good! hahah but when Justin and my parents visited I kept them busy with seeing all the important sites that London has to offer and since both of them weren't in London for too long our days were jammed pack with seeing the sites and lots of walking! I even made up a mini itinerary in order to get everything done!


We also saw a few museums (Science Museum, Natural History Museum and Imperial War Museum), Memorials (Albert Monument, Princess Diana Memorial and Monument for the Great Fire of London) and walked through a few parks (Hyde Park, Green Park, Kensington Gardens), some churches (Westminster Abbey and St Pauls)  and lots of different tourist sites!

Mom and I at Princess Dianna Memorial

Dad and I at the top of Monument

The stairs!!

Monument

I showed them things such as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (sounds nice, but it is actually really hard to see anything...this is why I didn't go to the Royal wedding) from there we walked through Green park to Piccadilly Circus. After some pictures we made our way to Trafalgar square stopped for some food. And continued our walk to see the Royal Horse guards and the famous 10 downing street (again can't see anything but cool to see the street).  Then it was Big Ben, Parliament buildings and Westminster Abbey. We then walked towards the London eye jumped on a tube and heading towards Tower Bridge.

changing of the guard

changing of the guard

changing of the guard

Mom and I at changing of the guard

Mom and Dad at Piccadilly Circus

Dad with a horse guard

Mom with a guard

classic telephone booth pictures!

Mom and Big Ben!

When Justin and my parents were in London they both got to experience the London Eye, is really cool to see everything up high. They both got to climb up The Monument, it had 300 stairs I think? Good job Mom on making it up, we got our certificates to prove it...that would be my 3rd time going up, don't think I will go again unless more visitors come! Justin and I did Tower of London and saw the crown jewels and lots of different things. We also went to see a show called "stomp" it was really cool, I def. recommend seeing it wherever it is playing! With my parents we went inside Tower Bridge, this I hadn't done before so it was cool to see the inside and see the way the bridge used to bring the bridges up to allow boats to pass!

Justin and I on the London Eye

Inside Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge

Mom and Dad with Tower Bridge

Overall it was great to have visitors in London to show the different sites to and show them where I live here! I will be posting another blog soon about the different places that my parents and I visited around Europe! I am sure many of you have already seen some of the pictures on facebook from our adventures though!

Lyon, France

This past weekend I went to go visit my friend Florence (Flo), whom I met in Canada when she did an exchange for a year at Nipissing University. We both decided to do the Habitat for Humanity trip to Florida, to enjoy some hotter climates. I hadn't seen her in 2 years so it was really good to see her to catch up and to see some of the city that she lives and works!

The weekend was full with lots of rain and food! I flew in late Saturday night to Grenoble airport (gotta love cheap ryanair tickets!) We spent the drive to her house catching up and more once we got back to her house. After a good nights rest (her room is SO dark you can't tell if it is day or night in her room!) we head out to Crémieu. It is a beautiful medieval village that she lives close to, we take a short hike up a hill to see a magnificent view of the village. I love seeing cities and villages with the original cobblestone and houses. It is really neat to see it and Flo describes to me different festivals that they hold each year here! 

 After wandering around for awhile and the rain is starting we head back to her house for a family lunch that her mom prepared. Now I was thinking just a small lunch, but her mom went all out for lunch. Her brother and her sister were home for the weekend from school so they normally do a Sunday lunch but I think her Mom made it more traditional and bigger for me. We had appetizers, main course, cheese and then dessert too. For appetizer we had some cold pizza then we had these traditional potatoes called gratin dauphinois (which reminded me of scalloped potatoes that mom makes, apparently there is no English translation) and we also had some fowl that had different spices and veggies in it. It was really delicious. Then the next part was cheese. They brought out a variety of cheeses and I tried this one that is a mix between cottage cheese and yogurt. It was really tasty! I thought we were done eating and they decided to bring out some fruit, but I just couldn't eat anymore! 

After a massive lunch Flo and I headed to Lyon for some site seeing and dinner later on with a few of her friends! It was rainy so we brought our umbrella's along and walked around "old Lyon" which has cobbled streets and a lot of different restaurants that have traditional food at them. We decided it was too wet to walk up the hill to see the church so we took the subway up...much faster too! There was a service just getting out, so Flo and I walked inside to check it out. I am always soo amazed with the churches, so much details go into every little thing. 

Fourvière

After checking out the city a bit we met up with two of her friends and searched for a good place to have dinner. Another one of her friends is meeting us there and will be later so we have a drink and decide on what to eat. There are soo many choices and I figure to go with trying the real traditional food for dinner. It is a 4 course meal, my appetizer is escargot, my main is duck leg and specialty potatoes, cheese and then a massive dessert. All the food was sooo good and I am so full that I can barely walk! We head back to Flo's car and drive back to her place for another amazing sleep!

Escorgot

Duck & Gratin dauphinois

Profiterolles

Monday is the last day I am in Lyon and Flo wanted to show me Grenoble but with the way my flights turned out and with the rainy weather we decide to head back to Lyon for the day and to do some more wandering around the city. It was a really good visit to see Flo and see Lyon would have preferred to do without the rain, but can't always have it all! Her family and friends were really friendly and were really good with speaking English with me...although there was a few times where they would speak French and I would be very confused!


2 more days and Justin is visiting me. He flies in Friday morning, but I can't take the day off because I have to give my kids a test so will go and pick him up and tell him how to get back to my place (I hope he doesn't get lost!) He will be in London until Tuesday. Hopefully I get work Wednesday as lately I have not been getting work on Wednesdays. Work Thursday at my regular school and then Friday I am picking my parents up at the airport and then we are traveling around Europe for a few weeks in April. It will be a lot of fun! Am quite excited to have some visitors soon!!! Oh and 3 months today I will be home! 

More pictures from the weekend ----> Lyon,France

Viborg, Denmark

Stephanie and I 4 years ago in NZ

Stephanie and I in Viborg, Denmark!

This weekend I went to visit my friend Stephanie, whom I met on the Kiwi Bus in New Zealand about 4 years ago. I flew into Aarhus which is just over an hour away from where she lives in Viborg. She picked me up from the airport on Saturday and we drove through the country side, seeing lots of open fields and even a camel?

We picked up some food from the grocery store for the weekend (think mass amounts of fruit) and after arguing who needed to decide what we would do that night, we decided to just stay in Viborg and go out for a casual drink. I met her parents at their house, and enjoyed a couple of beers with them. After meeting her parents we went back to her place for dinner. Stephanie made me a delicious dinner of rice, beef and broccoli! We watched a bit of TV before planning on heading out. Except I kind of fell asleep watching TV so we decided to stay in and watch a movie, and then I fell asleep again! I guess the combination of waking up early for my flight and not feeling so good hit me hard that night. Sorry Stephanie!

The next day was Sunday, now Sundays are normally pretty boring since nothing is open and normally when I go away for the weekend it is fine since I am normally going back home that day. But since I have to work Fridays my weekend trips are now from a Saturday to a Monday, so my full day is a Sunday. We decide to walk around Viborg and show me some more of the city. The only thing that I knew to see in Viborg is the cathedral, whicharchaeolgical excavation indicates that a church had been situated there since the Viking age and the present cathedral dates from 1876 and is one of the largest granite churches in Northern Europe (thought you might enjoy a bit of history on it!) But it being a Sunday I am unsure of when to go inside the cathedral. We take a look inside and I could hear them singing so decide it is best to come back afterwards, since didn't want to interrupt a service to be a tourist looking at the cathedral.  After doing some walking around of the city and of seeing a beautiful park (would be nicer either if there was snow or if it was summer) with a nice lake near by we come back to the cathedral. The inside of this cathedral is beautiful! Lots of paintings on the walls and there is a massive candlestick in the middle of the cathedral is well worth the wait. We make our way up the many stairs of the cathedral to see the view from the top of the bell tower. Its such a beautiful view of the church, and we even get to hear the ringing of the bells right beside it (yes its loud!)

After a delicious lunch, we head back to Stephanie's apartment to just chill, catch up, share pictures of what has happened in our life since NZ. We then have yummy dinner of pancakes and fruit and wine! hahaha yes we never had it the night before, so we decide to enjoy it with our pancakes! Since it is Friday and we have to leave fairly early for my flight tomorrow and also there aren't much options to go out, we decide to put some DVDs on and watch some movies! After watching two movies, its lights out! Didn't do a whole lot in Denmark for site seeing, but was really good to see Stephanie whom I haven't seen in awhile and to catch up with her. We are hoping to meet up in London and maybe get a few more people from the Kiwi bus to meet up as well!

Yummy Lunch!!!

Yummy wine!

Good combo...pancakes and wine!

More pictures of the weekend (not a lot!).....Viborg, Denmark

This weekend is St Patrick's day, I was hoping to go to Ireland but just didn't work out with the price of flights. If I had booked it originally when I wanted to go it would have been cheap, but leaving it too last minute caused any flight to be really expensive to go for the weekend. So looks like I will be staying in London this weekend. But next weekend I will be heading to Grenoble/Lyon to visit my friend Florence for the weekend. Again will be good to catch up with her and hopefully do a bit of site seeing as Lyon is a bigger city! Then I have a week and my parents will be visiting me. We have planned a trip to Holland for 5 days and then also a bus tour for 12 days. Will be an exciting few months ahead for me! I am excited for everything that I get to see and do!!

Celebrity Juice

Celebrity Juice

So last night I had the pleasure to go with a fellow teacher to see a screening of the show Celebrity Juice.

Two of the teachers...Az & Toni

I was asked on Thursday by one of the teachers that I work with at my Thursday school to go to a show that has the actor David Walliams from Little Britain. Both actor and show I had no idea about, so I said yes I would go but only if he didn't have any other friends who desperately wanted to go with as really I had no idea about the show or the actor. I ended up looking up the actor and watched one of the shows. Yes the humour is a little different than what I am used to, but seemed pretty funny at different parts.

We met up and joined a long que (line) in front of the BBC, we got to the front and was told that the show was running 2 1/2 hours late. So we decided to go grab some drinks and come back in a few hours. When we came back we went into the studio, was allowed a free drink while we waited to be called. After a short wait we got escorted into the right place to watch Celebrity Juice. It was a pretty funny show, although I am sure of what we saw that night, from the 2 hours that we were there only about 20 min of it will actually be used for the show. I will post a link of the actual show that I got to see but since it is not up yet it is interesting for my Canadian friends to see what the show is.

Jedward ( http://www.planetjedward.net/ )

 

Keith Lemon

Check out the show, here is a link from you tube: Celebrity Juice Video

Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath!

I said I would update in a few days and it is just that a few days! Oh where does the time go! I have been off this entire week because it is half term. I decided not to go anywhere and get some stuff done around here and just to relax (also because we looked into flights wayyy to late!) Well Melissa and I decided that we should at least do a day trip and decided that Windsor, Stonehenge and Bath sounded like a good idea. We found a cheap bus tour to the three and booked it for the Monday and Melissa headed to London early on Sunday!

Melissa taking pictures of her many Stanley's along

All ready for our "tour" of Windsor Castle

 


 Our first stop was Windsor where our tour was going into the castle that the Queen visits on weekends. I really didn't have a lot of interest to pay to get in, but once we realized all of the time we had in Windsor we decided to go in anyways. It ended up being okay because I found out that I can go as many times as I want in the next year!

Our next stop on our bus tour was Stonehenge but not before we had lunch! On our bus there was an option to have a 10 pound lunch at a hotel, Melissa being cheap opted out on that and had a wonderful lunch of chips (fries) and a chicken burger for half the price! We then headed to Stonehenge where I had heard that it was weird because it was just off the side of a road.Which it is but it is still cool to see these massive rocks in the middle of nothing, it is basically just fields here.Definitely worth it to go and see it though!

Stonehenge!

Me at Stonehenge!

Melissa & I

Roman Baths!

Me by the Roman Baths!

Jane & I!

 Our last stop of the day was Bath where we got to go and see some real Roman Baths! Again we had a lovely commentary on the Baths but we opted to listen to the child's version this time! Much more interesting!



 We didn't have a lot of time in Bath and it was starting to rain and we were a bit tired from the day but we tried to venture to Jane Austen's house but unfortunately you had to pay for it and we only had time to pop into the museum. So we opted just for some pictures with her!

 






 Overall it was a good day of a bit of site seeing in England. We even got free tickets for a Jack the Ripper walking tour.  Unfortunately Melissa was going back to Nottingham on Tuesday and the first tour was on Tuesday night. I asked my friend Charlyn to come with me on Thursday night and we went (along with a slew of other people). I didn't really know anything about the murders but it was really interesting hearing about it and seeing the area that they took place in. Our tour guide was really good and was really interesting to see the different bars and places that the women were last seen before they were murdered. I have been looking at a website that he suggested it is www.casebook.org which has all information about the murders including letters from Jack the ripper.