DanMons
Dan & Mons Joined: July 4th 2008
Logged in: November 18th 2011
Logged in: November 18th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Our home in Woodend
Hi everyone, Just thought we'd write one final blog to let those of you who are living overseas know that we are back (we've actually been back for almost a month now!). For those living in NZ they're probably already wishing we were back over there!!! There was no rest for us when we got back home. Daniel was picked up from the airport with his bike - and the boys headed straight for the hills! I headed home and rather rapidly turned our nice neat house (thanks family!) into a bomb-site, while showing off all our new purchases to my family. We really noticed so many differences in NZ after coming back from overseas - like the lack of cars on the road, and the room everywhere, and how big our house is!!!! (compared to ... read more
Hi again, We've made it to Hong Kong. It's hot again here. We have a two hour stop over. Can't tell you if Daniel is on the next part of the flight or not as he had to go through customs and then check in again, but hopefully it will be OK. We got two seats at the back of the plane for the first part of the trip, with a spare seat next to me. After taking some herbal drowsey pills we both managed to have a reasonable rest. You never sleep properly sitting up in a chair, and especially not with a swarking child sitting in front of us! But the pills seemed to help quite a lot. I'm looking forward to being home now - and a nice hot shower and some clean ... read more
Drinking with Uncle Albert
Hi, We are sitting on freezing cold seats in London Liverpool station waiting for the cheap train fare time (9.30) so thought we would update the blog for the last time from overseas (probably). We had a nice few days in Holland visiting family. It was sad to say goodbye as we have really enjoyed getting to meet them all. I have however made a promise to them - that if I ever learn Dutch properly then we will try our best to come back again - pressure! I have bought myself a Nintje book and an English to Dutch dictionary, so hopefully this will help a bit. Anyway, not much else to report - just a few family photos for our families back home. To the NZ'ers - see you all very soon!... read more
My productive work efforts in Guildford
That’s it...our time in Guildford is over (except for Daniel who has to go back to collect his bike). It’s kind-of sad to leave as we have really enjoyed our time over here, and could happily stay (for a while longer), but at the same time we are looking forward to coming home to see our family and friends, and coming back to the familiarity of NZ with our house, and our things around us. The week was rather uneventful, I again did no work, and Daniel did lots of work. I made some lollie cake for our office shouts, along with getting other NZ food - crunchie bars, pineapple lumps, jaffas and the like. Daniel’s workmates were sad to see him go and offered him a full-time job there, several times!! They even took him, ... read more
Moulin Rouge
Hello all, Monique & Daniel here - writing for the last time about a visit to a different country. We are now on the Eurostar train heading back to London from Paris. Heading back to our last week of work in England - man, time has flown. After arriving in Paris we walked the 3km from the train station to the hotel, past about 1,500 sex/XXX/AO shops! Shocking! After we managed to escape the seemingly never-ending shops, we passed Moulin Rouge, and found our hotel, in a nicer area of the town. We dumped our bags, opened the windows (to get some fresh air other then the smokey smell) and headed into Paris. Paris is full of unfriendly French people, it seems like no-one even attempts to try and speak English, and it appears to have ... read more
The RPO concert
Our last weekend in England…gone…just like that. Yeah, technically we still have two more weekends over here, but next weekend we'll be in Paris and the weekend after that we'll be in Holland!!!! So, what did we do… On Thursday night we went to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play ‘Best of Broadway’. Because of the train’s efficiency, and my high heels and the queue to purchase tickets, we managed to miss the train by 30 seconds - so we had to catch the one 15 minutes later, but managed to only miss the first song in the concert. We had quite good seats (since we got a 2 for 1 deal, we splashed out a bit), and we were in this little booth where there was just 4 of us - quite cool. The concert ... read more
Plazza della Repubblica
Rome...we came, we saw, we conquered... (in rough chronological order) - Santa Maria degli Angeli - Plazza della Repubblica - Fontana del Tritone - Trinita del Monti (and the Spanish Steps) - Fontana de Trevi - Piazza Colonna - Palazzo Chigi - Palazzo Montecitorio - Saint Ignazlo dl Loyola - Tempo Adriano - Pantheon - Palazzo Madama - Palazzo Navona - Colosseo - Arco di Costantino - Palatino - Arco di Tito - Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II - Colonna Traiana - Mercanti Traianei - Campidogilo - Arco di Giano - Circo Massimo - Saint Maria in Cosmedin - Isola Tiberina - Piazza Trilussa - Campo de Fiori - Area Sacra - Chlesa de Gesu - Palazzo Venezia - Palazzo delle Esposizioni - Palazzo di Giustizia - Castel Sant’ Angelo - Musei Vaticani - Basilica Saint ... read more
Well, we made it. I'm sitting at the hostel computer trying to learn how to use these strange keyboards - took me a good few minutes to figure out how to use the @ symbol! First impressions of Rome - WOW! Amazing place with sooooo many things to look at. We've seen quite a bit in our half day here, but I'm not going to bother about telling you about it until we put the photos up at the same time (and that way I can check the spelling also). While Venice had the hand-bag sellers, Rome has the 'junk of over sort' sellers. When the rain came down, which it really did(!!!!), out came all the umbrella sellers - there was barely a person around without one of their umbrellas, which made it even worse ... read more
One of the beer jugs
For some reason it seems that all we really have to tell you about this weekend is alcohol! I hope you don’t all get the wrong impression…really we’re not that big drinkers…I like my wine, and Daniel likes his wine, beer, whiskey, rum, bourbon…!!! On Friday night Daniel and I headed out to the Hog Back Brewery, with about 20 people from my work, for a brewery tour. The tour was fun and we learnt lots about the process of making TEA. Yes TEA. I’m sure you’re wondering what TEA has to do with making beer, but TEA is a brand of the beer that they make at this brewery, coincidentally named the same at the Brits favourite drink (we now know from experience!). TEA, in this brewery, stands for Traditional English Ale. The brewery makes ... read more
Windy Scotland...
Daylight saving has ended…dark nights, cold days, frost and SNOW (yes, snow), skating (on the pavements), lack of sleep due to 3 ½ hour delay in our flight from Glasgow due to a hacker in the Easyjet system leading to an arrival in Gatwick at 2am meaning no more trains travelling to Guildford so a £40 taxi ride instead of a £20 train ride which meant not getting to bed until 3am and being up again at 8am for a late start to the work day which meant walking home in the pitch black at 5.30pm…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start; when you read you begin with A, B, C when you story-tell you begin with Once Upon A Time… Once upon a time, ... read more
