It always amazes me when you travel to another country and have mutual friends with someone on your trip. Our last entry for this trip is about the many champagne houses in Epernay and Oger. A 9:20 meeting time on a sunday morning means there were bound to be a few sore heads in the group, luckily Nikki and I were not one of those people. We hopped on our coach and made our way to our first champagne house, The Moet et Chandon house, one of the biggest champagne houses. It has over 28km of champagne cellars beneath its grounds and sits proudly at the start of Avenue de Champagne, a street lined with the biggest champagne houses. After sitting through Moet’s most recent promotional video (yawn) we started our tour, the cellars are much ... read more

After just two hours and fifteen minutes we arrived in Paris. Although we knew we were in another country it was strange to think we could get to another country faster than it takes to visit Nikki’s mum in the north of England. As we walked along the street we found a restaurant for dinner. If the chic French decor and quaint patisseries on every corner were not enough to convince us we weren’t in London any more then the menu was. Featured on the mains was ‘Raw Beef’. We’re not talking steak cooked blue, we’re talking about a plate with raw beef on it and sat just outside was a woman eating just that, most definitely not what I would call good food. We arrived late so after dinner (which included escargot) we went straight ... read more

A question many men probably already know the answer to. A question all women have known the answer to all of their adult lives (women are more intelligent after all). Is it true what they say about men that like things big? What I'm trying to get at here is if what they say about those men is true, that they are trying to overcompensate in some way, then the people who had the idea for almost every structure in Dubai have got a big problem (pardon the pun)........that is of course IF size matters! ;-) In Dubai everything is big. As soon as one huge building/manmade island in some unique shape/mall is finished someone is building another one....that’s bigger. It has the world’s tallest building. The world’s only 7 star hotel and The world’s highest ... read more

On the morning of the wedding I was woke up with a kiss from Nikki, Nikki and I are extremely competitive, to the extent we even make wishing each other happy anniversary a competition, I knew that as soon as I opened my eyes she was going to say something along the lines of “Today’s our wedding day” so I had to beat her to it. After the kiss and before I opened my eyes I said “Happy wedding day” I heard Nikki laugh at which point I opened my eyes and whispered “I said it first” followed by Nikki saying quite loudly “No that’s cheating”. Ah what a great way to start the day lol. We had to meet at the reception at 9am to go in to Kiruna to register our wedding and sort ... read more

What to do for my Nan’s birthday? Let me tell you a little bit about my Nan first of all, she is an amazing woman and if there was a picture in the dictionary of ‘A Cockney Nan’ it would be her picture (if you’re not sure what a cockney is Google it or search youtube for ‘Catherine Tate Nan’ that IS my Nan!). In the past Nikki and I have taken my Nan to the theatre and other shows but my Nan doesn’t like people making too much of a fuss and is most content sat having a cup of tea & eating a cake so Nikki suggested tea at The Ritz. As we got near the entrance the staff could see my Nan had a walking stick and asked if she would like to ... read more