Ewwy, very early morning this morning... the alarm went off at 5.15am, the earliest ever! We decided to leave at 5.45am to allow plenty of time to get to Heathrow, checked in and through security. We arrived at Heathrow at about 7am and had the perfect amount of time and were ready for our flight... then it got delayed by 30 minutes... stinkin' plane arrived late. Oh yea, we checked our bags in... Ekk is all I have to say. Steve's pack weighs 19.2kg, Nicole's weighs 19.9kg and mine... 20.1kg! And that was not including our hand luggage (Nicole's hand luggage weighed 9.5kg and she has already sent a big package home!) The guy told me I wasn't allowed to do any shopping in Ireland (he was joking right???). Anyway after a few more delays we ... read more

So I am sitting here by the Tour Effiel writing today's blog entry after a nice romantic picnic (Yes, it was a nice romantic picnic with my husband and yea, that would be my husband named Steve!). Today started off with a big sleep in until 9am then a major mission to get some washing done, a lot of smelly clothes and no where to wash them since we have been staying in Hotels. Eventually we found a place and put our washing in the machine then paid the money (3.50 Euro) only to find that the machine was broken, had stolen our money and was not going to do anything... had to go and buy more washing powder where we met a man who realised we didn't speak French and had big chats about where ... read more

Early morning this morning as we had to be at the train station by 7am. After a few ker-fuffles (aka dramas) and we were on the train with about 4 minutes to spare before we left! On the plus side, because we were running so late we were allowed to go through Passport control on the Premium side of the area! It was an awkward ride to Paris because I had selected a seat at a table thinking that this would be a great idea... Won't go into details... it was just... AWKWARD! When we arrived in Paris we set off for the Underground and attempted to find some breakfast... at this time it was about 11am so it wasn't working so well and we ended up having a burger each from McDonald's! Got to our ... read more

Happy birthday to my cute little niece who is turning 2 today! Her terrible uncle wasn't there for her 1st birthday and is now missing her 2nd birthday too... shocking! We got up, threw on some clothes and went down to brekkie before they stopped serving it then went back and had showers etc. We left our room by about 11.30 so by the time we made it into the centre of London it was almost lunch time. We came across a sporting type shop that sold bargin labelled clothes so Steve bought a few new clothes. We then decided to brave Primark today - it is a clothing shop that has great bargins but the problem is that there is only one in the centre of London where as a shop similar to it (H&M, ... read more

I had a great score this morning! We had to return our bus and we were given a smaller bus to bring us back to Calais (France) so the cook was 'downsizing' and asked me to chuck a bag full of food out... well me being Dutch couldn't do that! In the bag I found 2 half packets of Stroopwaffles... well they went into my bag for the bus trip home (unfortunately Steve, Tim and Carla caught on so they didn't last as long as I first expected)! Good score aye??? I took the rest of the food to some people who had just arrived and they were very greatful for it too (They even scored a few free beers in the bag)! Anyway we eventually jammed everything into the bottom of the bus and set ... read more