We thought we'd try and wait for a lovely sunny day to make the trip out to Hampton Court Palace, but at the rate it's going so far, we could have been waiting quite a while! So, we hopped on a train and paid a little day-visit to the former palace of Henry VIII. The palace was actually originally started by Cardinal Wolsey in the early 16th century, but after he fell out of favour with the king (and consequently lost his head), Henry conveniently took over all his lands and wealth and snagged Hampton Court. The place was built over [View Full Entry]

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Another week in London consisted of my return to work and James still being a man of leisure, thus the need to escape and pretend we were still on holiday. We got some cheap bus fares and made our way north to Cheltenham to visit Jenni & Mat and attend the Postslip Beer Festival. Proceeding our arrival, Jen took us on a walking tour of the lovely centre of town and 15 minutes later we were at Jen's place. Cheltenham is really pretty and thankfully summer decided to show up for the weekend and it was beautifully warm. We took it [View Full Entry]

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Our first venture into the English countryside was a day trip to Bath with fellow Melbournites Dannielle and Rob. After a somewhat rocky start to the morning with Dannielle and Rob almost missing the train, and then about a 40 minute delay halfway through the trip, we got to Bath late Sunday morning. The morning started off with a brisk wind, but thankfully after our pub lunch the sun decided to come out. Now, when I thought Bath, I thought of this as a major tourist spot people visit and there must be a few things to do. However, the main [View Full Entry]

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Warning: historical facts and gruesome descriptions are contained below, proceed with caution. Summer you say? So we're talking sunshine, warmth and blue skies, yes? Hmm, no, this is England we're talking about after all. We finally offloaded the plane after about an hour and a half of circling and sitting on the tarmac after Heathrow was recovering from a very bad storm. I might have been a tad optmistic thinking I would get two summers in one year. We are currently crashing with the lovely Sian and Adam in Swiss Cottage, and in the midst of job searching and house hunting, [View Full Entry]

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Once we checked in to the Andromeda Villas, we were able to relax a bit. The accomodation, though having a slightly spartan feel, was comfy, and the views, well just look at the photos. You hear everyone talking about it, but you can't really appreciate Santorini unless you go there. We were staying in the area called Imerovigli, the highest point. We were on the cliff face, looking straight out towards the setting sun. [View Full Entry]

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James here. Believe it or not, our train actually arrived in Cairo on time! Though we were driven a little mad by our temporary guide who constantly sang the song from 'The Wedding Singer' throughout the night, but with a few variations. The next day we arrived back in Athens, happy to have a break from busy Cairo. We had booked one night in Athens, planning to make the ferry ride to Santorini the next day. We decided after checking in to our room to go and book the ferry. Well, apparently there's a world cup going on at the moment [View Full Entry]

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We said fairwell to our Nile boat today and had an early morning off to the Valley of the Kings. We were up early enough to get a piccie of sunrise, so it was quite early and I was not full awake until we got to the place where we met our mode of transportation to the Valley of the Kings - donkeys. Now, I've had a little experience with horses before, but donkeys are in a whole league of their own. There are no such things as stirrups, the reigns were a thin piece of rope that apparently was more [View Full Entry]

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This morning James was a tad under the weather. But it wasn't just due to the antics from the night before, it seems that the chicken from the previous day had caught up with him and he had a touch of the gastro. We both managed to get up that morning and do a tad of shopping in town, but by the afternoon, he stayed on the boat and in bed while I headed into town to visit the temples of Karnak. We made our way by horse-driven carriages to the colossal group of temples built by a heap of different [View Full Entry]

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This morning we were up early again for a quick stop at the temple of Edfu dedicated to the falcon-headed god Horus. Okay, quick bit of mythology for ya - there were originally 4 Gods that were created - two guys and 2 chicks. Each were betrothed to the other, and Seth wasn't too impressed when he got stuck with the ugly sister of sadness who cried all the time, and wanted the beautiful Isis who was the goddess of beauty and music. He was supposed to be the King, but as he was such a grumpy and jealous dude, the [View Full Entry]

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245am is really a time for sleeping I've decided. Unfortunately this was not to be today, but we were headed for Abu Simbel which was about the only place I was willing to get up for at that time of morning. We were up and packed and on the bus by 330am and were given our little breakfast boxes to eat later on the bus. We then made our way to the area where our convoy of buses met to all make our way to Abu Simbel which is a 3 hour bus trip there, and then 3 hours back to [View Full Entry]

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