The Travelling Twines

We arrived back in the wonderful country of Germany last Wednesday, 22nd November flying from the not-so-loved Stansted airport into the quiet little airport in Duesseldorf! My friend, Sabine and her mum, Monika kindly picked us up and drove us to their home in Essen. Why were we visiting Essen, you may ask? Well, I (Meg - if you hadn't already guessed....) was an exchange student twice in Germany. The first time was after Year 11 in 1994 to Essen and the second was in 1996 to Ostfriesland. Sabine and her parents were my hostfamily then. Was lovely to see them after such a long time. Essen is actually the German word for "food" and boy, did we enjoy some very delicious home-cooking from Monika while staying with them for 5 days. We were very spoilt ... read more

Last Sunday morning (12th Nov) we caught the train from King's Cross to Guiseley, Leeds up north in Yorkshire. My (3rd) cousin, Lauren lives there with her husband, Ben and their gorgeous golden retriever Archie. I hadn't seen Lauren in nearly 7 years, so it was fantastic to see her again and to finally meet her husband. Cameron met them both for the first time. They have a beautiful terrace house and we really enjoyed our three days with them. Lauren's sister, Gemma (and her boyfriend), her mum and her grandparents also live in the same place so it was just wonderful to catch up with all the extended family again! Yorkshire is absolutely beautiful. The countryside is just amazing. Monday afternoon we took a drive to the Ilkley Moor and saw the Cow and Calf ... read more

Greetings all, As the resident expert on Holland, Meg has let me take over duties for blogging today. This is Cam by the way - that's right, not just good for making a monkey out of myself in photos. So what's with the weird title? Well, after leaving our fine German friends, we caught a train to Amsterdam. Our journey started badly when we we're unable to buy tickets at the train station and ended up paying almost double for our tickets on the train. This is due to the machine not accepting notes or credit cards, but the ticket inspector would cut us no slack. So Meg's first impressions of Holland we're unfavourable to say the least. Our hosts in Amsterdam put us up for the next two nights and showed us a little of ... read more

Haven't really had a chance to really sit down and update our blog. So much has happened over the past 10 days. We've been catching up with all of my old friends here in northern Germany and it feels like we've been here for weeks. Thought we'd sit down and let you all know what we've been up to. Last Tuesday, 24th October we flew to Berlin. Our friends Tina and Rob were there to meet us at the airport. Tina is a school friend from my time as an exchange student in Leer, Ostfriesland back in 1996. She now lives in Oldenburg with her boyfriend, Rob and they both drove to Berlin to spend a few days showing us around there. What an amazing city. We had a fantastic little hotel right in the middle ... read more

Well, that about sums up our 4-day stay in Phuket, Thailand. Honestly the food in Thailand was absolutely AMAZING - we spent most of our time finding one of the the bars, cafes or restaurants at our hotel to enjoy the delicious food and cocktails!! We arrived at the Cape Panwa Hotel in Phuket on Monday, 9th. It is such a beautiful hotel. The staff are so friendly and welcoming and the facilities were fantastic. Our good friends Jason and Sarah stayed there last Spring and highly recommended the hotel and we're sooooo glad we went. (and highly recommend it to all you guys!) Our four days there were filled with relaxation. We ate.......got massages.........ate...........got facials and haircuts (note, Cam's super short hairdo)..........ate and drank...........rode on an elephant.............shot a .38 revolver.............ate..........did Batak Painting by the pool......... ... read more