18th October - now

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Hi all,

Next weekend’s update...

On Saturday morning Auntie Margareth and Uncle Albert arrived from Holland to spend a few days with us. We picked them up from Gatwick and spent the weekend doing touristy things. On Saturday we spent the day looking around Guildford. We gave them our own walking tour, since the free ones they held on Sunday aren’t held over the Autumn/Winter period. After seeing the sights - the castle, the main road, the two Alice in Wonderland sculptures, the river etc, we went down to my work and I showed them around.
On Sunday we went into London. We had a good look around the free part of the Westminster Abbey - it’s so huge! And even heard the organ playing through the walls as there was a service going on. We also went to Buckingham Palace - although we couldn’t look around inside anymore because the Queen is back.

We managed to navigate the buses, and went to Hyde Park. It really is massive! We only walked through part of it, but even that took ages. The park was really busy - lots of roller skates, and dogs and people. We saw the memorial to Princess Diana, which is this funny stream thing that you can walk through. It is like a river that just goes round in a circle, but it has bits that go up and down, deeper and more rapid-like. We also saw the war memorials that were near Hyde Park. There were ones from Australia and NZ - quite nice to see them.

When we went to see Nelson’s column but there must have been some sort of Indian concert going on as the statue was covered with fences and there was loud Indian music and about a thousand Indians wandering around.

We then moved on to the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge before heading back home again.

On Monday it was back to work again for us (if you can call it work! I’ve never had a job so easy in all my life!) while Auntie Margareth and Uncle Albert went back to London. At night we were going to go out for dinner, but after my walk home from work where I got so utterly drenched that my trousers were sticking to my legs, and Daniel’s ride home made his jacket so wet he had to wring it out, we decided to order in! In actual fact, the weather here hasn’t been too bad - it’s cold but it hasn’t been raining too much - we must have got that over with when we first arrived!

On Tuesday I took Auntie Margareth and Uncle Albert down to the train station as they left to go back to Holland. We had lots of fun and many laughs with them. We plastered some photos around the house while Daniel has away grocery shopping - even though there were tons of them, it took Daniel a good 30 seconds to even see them, and he missed the ones by his bike and on the front door! From then on it was war, with photos being hidden everywhere!

Now we’re back to just the two of us again. We have quite a few trips planned including Scotland this weekend, Rome in 2 weekends time, and Paris two weekends after that. Then it’s home time. Time really is flying!

Well, I better leave it at that and give the computer back to Daniel so he can finally finish his blog from 2 weekends ago!

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Photos

The Big Ben with the London Eye
...just to prove we were in London

Break time
...it's hard work all this touring!

The Police outside Buckingham Palace
Look at the gun! They've got men like that all over the airports too! Scary looking!

Tanning in the sunshine
...yeah right!

Hyde Park
...this is the memorial fountain to Princess Diana (doesn't look much like a fountain though - it's that circular looking river thingee)