Heading to Inverness

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G’day all
Currently I am doing this blog on the way to our last leg of our holiday the Cock of the North Tour

We again apologise for our lack of communication this time around but we are having too much fun to do anything when the day ends....LOL

Not really Internet connectivity has been dodgy so when we can't upload photos we don't bother

Since our last blog we have visited Civi...Civ....ahhhh the port for Rome, Cagliari (Sardinia),
Seville, Lisbon and Vigo.

Please note that some of the photos might be out of order but we will try to get it right.
(Julia: Actually I’ll have a go at putting them all in order before we publish them… lol)

After we got back to England we took the train to London and stayed where they are doing all the work for the Olympics....it is going to look really good when they are finished.

Now for details

Rome: - Here we went on The Path of the Gladiators tour...9 hours! 3 hours were taken by travel and then 3 for the tour which took us on a walking tour of Rome including a trip through the Colosseum, the Forum and the Parthenon. Amazing. (Julia: The other 3 hours was free time to explore by ourselves. We found our way to the Trevi Fountain but Mark didn’t get to throw a coin in the fountain because there were thousands of people around it. But we saw it. Mark wasn’t very impressed with Rome… too many people, but the history is truly amazing.)

Cagliari: - We had a quiet day after the Rome trip and just stayed on the ship. (Julia: The staff had a water volleyball tournament at the pool and they challenged some of the guests to play… I would have volunteered to play but the pool was too deep, it was 5’9” at the shallow end! Honestly… lol)

Seville (Cadiz) :- Here the port is right in the city so we just got off the boat and went walking ourselves. (Julia: The streets were very small and it was a very old city, one of the oldest in Europe I was told. It’s very pretty and even though it was a very warm day, walking around the streets was fine because they are so small that not a lot of sun gets in there and they stay fairly cool. We walked around the foreshore area and spotted heaps of fish, almost jumping out of the water. We thought it might have been a good place to throw a line in, until we smelled what they were eating.. yuck… lol)

Lisbon:- We went on a river tour here which was very peaceful and relaxing but we got to see quite a lot of the sites. (Julia: We met a lovely couple on there and spend a nice couple of hours chatting with them. We found that we’d meet people and get on really well with them and never see them again.. lol Maybe they hid from us! Nah, couldn’t be that surely. Lol)
This was also Julia's birthday so first we both had facials then we went to the French Restaurant on board. I got Julia a nice gold watch that actually works on her arm. (Julia: It’s still working really well and hasn’t lost any time at all. It’s a lovely watch, very special xx The fancy French restaurant wasn’t anything special either… the staff was very pretentious and decided, because we didn’t buy a thousand dollar bottle of champagne or a 100 dollar bottle or wine, we weren’t going to receive the special service. Though I did get a nice little birthday cake, chocolate of course! )

Now the result of Julia's facial is that she couldn't go out in the Sun for the rest of that day and the next day, which was a pity since we had booked a walking tour of Vigo the next day. Luckily they refunded the tickets for medical reasons. (Julia: Because they hadn’t told me before I had the facial that I wouldn’t been allowed in the sun they let me have the money back. It was a lovely facial, but I would have changed to another day if I’d of known I wasn’t allowed to go out.)

Vigo:- Though we didn't go on our tour but again the port was right in the town so since it was a rainy day we went for a walk through it without any problems for Jules.
The last 2 days were sailing back to Southampton were very rough...absolutely brilliant...lol 20 to 30 foot swells. (Julia: I didn’t realise the swells were that big… It certainly was fun walking around. You could have actually got a sunbed to sit on, there was no one using them at all.. lol )

Ok, I’ve just added some of my stuff into that lot and Mark’s decided it might be snooze time so I’ll try and fill in some of the London part.

We got to the hotel from Southampton on the Saturday and settled in ok. It wasn’t quite what we expected but because of Wimbledon we couldn’t find anywhere else to stay so we just had to make do and put up with it. It’s only a couple of days right.. lol

On Sunday morning we really needed to do some washing so we found a laundrette and spent a couple of hours there. It was still fairly early when we’d finished so we headed into London on the underground and went to the London Eye to have a look around. Well, let me tell you! We thought there wouldn’t be too many people around.. hahaha silly us. The cue was huge, hundreds of people waiting to go on it. We decided we’d buy our tickets but go on it on Monday. We ended up going on the river cruise. It was a lot of fun and very informative.

Now last time we came to the UK we did a river cruise, walked around London, did all of the touristy things. When we went home we were watching The Great British Menu and the winners got to cook a dinner for Heston Bloomin-what’s his name at The Gherkin. Now this building looked huge on the show and seems to stand out quite a lot on the London skyline but we somehow missed it when we were over there. So we thought maybe it was a new building and it was still in construction when we were over there in 2008. Nope. We’ve seen this building in lots of movies and television shows since then.. seems like every movie made in London has the gherkin in it.. not a new building at all… lol. So this time we made sure we took some photos of it.. and I honestly don’t know how we missed it last time.

Monday 20 June: Today we got up early so we can head to the London Eye and beat the crowds.. wrong. We got there at 9:50am and it wasn’t supposed to open till 10. It was open and the line was starting to get a little long. The can cram heaps of people in the capsules though so it wasn’t long before we were in and heading up. It was a fantastic view and very enjoyable trip. It takes about 40 mins to do a full rotate so we had ample time to check everything out.

After we finished on there we bought a “Hop on hop off” bus ticket and travelled for a bit around London on it. There was a guide telling us all about London and famous places and people. We got off at the London Dungeon and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours getting scared (well Mark spent a couple of hours laughing at all the girls screaming.. lol) There was a couple of rides in there, one of them Mark couldn’t go on but I did. We’ve got a picture of me enjoying it.. I’m sure Mark will get it on here to show you all at some stage. lol It was a great place and showed the dark side of English history. There are actors in there that leap out at you to scare you and take you through what it was like way back when. It really was great fun. We hopped back on the bus and listened to the guide again and got off out our station and headed back to the hotel.

Tuesday 21 June: We got on the underground and headed straight for Baker Street Station to Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks museum. We thought once again to beat the crowds… lmao.. yeah right. We didn’t have long to wait but there was sooooo many people in there it was a bit hard to get up close to see all the exhibits. We took stacks of photos so you’ll be able to see all of the rich and famous we rubbed shoulders with.. lol They have a new ride there (well new for me.. it’s been 20 years since I was last there)you get to go in a taxi through “London” through the ages. It was really fun. There is also a 4D show there. It’s a Marvel cartoon show in 3D and air shoots out of the seats at certain points and mist. It was fantastic to see and a lot of fun to watch. It took us a couple of hours to get through all of the different levels and we both really enjoyed it. When we got out of there we did notice there wasn’t any cues. So guess what… don’t go anywhere early.. everyone must have the same thought “beat the crowds” but they end up being the crowds. Lol

Wednesday 22 June: Today we had another washing hour… we figured we will be on the train trip for 5 days and we might as well get it done. It wasn’t much so it didn’t take very long. We went and wandered around the area for a bit and had some lunch then had a relax for the afternoon. We headed to the West End to have dinner and then see a show. The dinner took so long we were actually worried that we wouldn’t have time to eat, but it finally arrived and was very nice. Then we headed off to the Lyceum Theatre to watch The Lion King. Wow.. what a fantastic show. Mark hasn’t seen the movie and he really enjoyed it. I loved it… I’ve been wanting to see it for years and I’m so glad we finally did it. We’re actually booked to go see the Phantom of the Opera on Tuesday night before we head home.

Well that’s it for now… I’m going to pass it back to Mark so he can have a look and see if there’s anything he’d like to add to it. We’ve just left Edinburgh Station so it’s taken us about 4 hours to update this.
Love you all xxx

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Comments

[mother]

hols
jules and mark you make it sound brill .When i was up visiting lel we went to the dungeons they where good .Im so glad you have had a lovely holiday we miss you and bev does to . .I go away sat with the girls .looking forward to it .Again you make it sound real well done love to you both mam and charlie xxxxxxxxxx