After our very full Day 2, we were a bit sore and weary when the alarm went off at 8:00 am the next morning. But we pulled ourselves out of bed, packed up the car once more, and headed off with our now slightly smelly dogs. Wicket was feeling better after his tick extraction, but still wasn't sure whether or not he had forgiven us for giving him a bath the night before. Ziggy, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy to be on the road again. He lept up onto his shelf and watched out the back of the car [View Full Entry]

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Awoke in the sunken bed and found that the mist had come down over night, making it very picturesque in Wootton. Mary packed up the unseemly amount of mess that we had made in one evening while Martin took the dogs out in the mist, was very scenic. Had a delicious breakfast with fresh baked croissants and then bade farewell to Killingworth Castle with some still warm baguettes, squeezed our ever expanding possessions into the car and got back on the road. Next stop was Stonehenge and as the mist began to clear it looked like it was going to be [View Full Entry]

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At the butt crack of dawn (9am for us) we dragged ourselves out of bed and packed up the car. I'm not sure anyone has ever smashed so many things into the trunk of a Nissan Micra before, but after several tries and a couple of good shoulder slams the hatch finally closed. We were off! Ziggy spent the first several hours sitting on the shelf above the back seat crying and occasionally farting. It made for a very pleasant drive. Wicket, reveling in his role as "the good child" slept most of the way, waking up only briefly to snarl [View Full Entry]

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For my birthday Martin surprised me with a trip to Glasgow! We got up early in the morning and set off on the two and a half hour drive into Scotland. Lucky for us Ashley was around to watch Wicket and Ziggy so we were dog-free for the weekend. Woohoo! We arrived at the very impressive Hotel Du Vin around mid-day. The hotel had bought out an entire terrace of old stone houses and converted all of them into rooms. It was very old and traditionally decorated. We walked in and all the men were wearing kilts (man-dresses, as I like [View Full Entry]

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We decided to sleep until we had to check out of the hotel and, fortunately, due to a misunderstanding of the Oslo public transport system we still had valid one day passes for today as well. We decided to push them to their limits and take the metro out to the ski jump at Holmenkollen. This is the home of the second oldest ski jump competition in the world and is supposed to provide great views of the city. Before heading up there we went to a bagel shop for some brunch. In contrast to the tourist sites Bagel Juice was [View Full Entry]

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Once again we chose to stay in bed rather than have breakfast, but after a restless night of falling between two mattresses you tend to value your sleep. We walked first thing down the main street through the city center and saw the very large outdoor skating rink in the center of town. It was very impressive and we thought briefly about going until we noticed how good everyone out there was, including the 6 year olds. We figured we could embarrass ourselves at home so there was no need to do it while on vacation. We passed on the skating, [View Full Entry]

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We had set our alarm for 9:30 am in order to make it downstairs for breakfast which ended at 10. However, when the alarm went off Mary couldn't be bothered to get up so Martin decided to wait until 9:55 and then run down and grab what he could to bring back up to the room. On his way out Martin looked outside to see what the weather was going to be like today and was disappointed to see that it was grey and dim despite a forecast of sunny. He brought back some bread and jam, ham, cheese, and yogurt [View Full Entry]

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Again we were setting off from Liverpool and we got there with no fuss, but sadly our flight was delayed about 90 minutes. When we finally set off the flight was incident free, although the view of the Norwegian landscape at just after sunset was very impressive. We landed and got the coach from the airport to Oslo, which was a somewhat painful but hassle free two hours. We arrived at the bus station and rather than try and deal with public transport, Martin decided that they should get a cab to the hotel. This backfired somewhat as the hotel turned [View Full Entry]

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We again decided to sacrifice breakfast for an extra hour in bed but again the sun was shining and we were raring to go. As usual, the second day is harder as you have seen all of the easy stuff on the first day but we had a good plan worked out. We again went past the vatican only this time we headed south to the Campo de' Fiori, via a tiny pizzeria where we purchased (yep, you guessed it) a really nasty, overpriced, greasy pizza. No, actually it was amazing but you already knew that. Campo de' Fiori is a [View Full Entry]

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We got up feeling pleasantly dry but separated due to the two mattress double bed so favoured by continental hoteliers, we had missed breakfast but the sun was filtering through the curtains so we packed up and were ready for a long day's walking. We left the hotel and walked about five minutes into a new country, albeit one with a population of 800 and an area of 0.17 square miles. There is fortunately no passport control to enter the Vatican City State but there was a bunch of discontent looking cab drivers who had seemingly ended their industrial action. St. [View Full Entry]

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