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Our last couple of days in San Francisco have been busy and fun.

On Sunday we got up early and went and had a look at Lombard Street, the bendiest street in the world. Then we got the bus out to Monster Park (Used to be Candlestick Park) and watched an NFL game, the San Francisco 49ers vs. the Green Bay Packers. There were a lot of green bay fans there, who apparently have some of the best travelling fans, so it was quite cool having people cheering for both sides. The Americans are so funny, they’re a very excitable bunch. If a player does ANYTHING (like catch a ball, make a tackle etc…) they make so much noise and get so excited. Imagine the noise NZ would make if the All Blacks scored a winning try in the last minute of the world cup, then multiply it by 300 and you get a picture of what I’m talking about.
It turned out that Green Bay won, so the guy beside us lost his voice with screaming in joy.

Yesterday (Monday) we said good bye to Tim, who had to go home to Alabama. We then went shopping in Union Square and bought some cheap American clothes. After too much shops, we took a street car to Haight Ashbury, the famous hippie district where people like the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin used to live. There was some amazing Victorian (i think) architecture there, and a funny collection of shops, including shoe shops, funny trinket shops, tie-die hippy shops and the largest record store in the USA, Amoeba Records. We wandered around and went to some of the nice cafes and then went home. On the bus ride we saw some of the not-so-nice bits of the city, some boarded up shops, homeless people and groups of people standing around drinking out of paper bags. But it only lasted for a few blocks.

Today it’s absolutely bucketing down, there are floods on the motor way and heaps of crashes. But we’re leaving to go down the coast where the weather is a little nicer, so we should be OK.

We got up early and walked down to Fisherman’s Wharf to catch a boat to Alcatraz. Out of a couple of hundred people on the boat, i think we were nearly the only ones who weren’t Green Bay Packers fans. They’ve apparently descended on town for the football match that we’re going to see tomorrow.

Alcatraz was cool. Very interesting to see all the old cells (tiny holes) and good views of San Francisco from across the bay. It was strange because it only closed in the late 50′s – early 60′s, but alot of the buildings are really run down, as in they have no roof or floors or windows.

It was on the rock that we started to notice the size of some Americans. It’s pretty crazy. There were a few people that looked nearly as wide as they were tall. And the strange thing is that to start with you can’t tell, because they’re clothes fit properly. None of this tight outfits with bellies hanging out business like in NZ or England.

After getting back to the main land we went down to Pier 39 on Fisherman’s Wharf and found some food. It was a pretty weird place, some decent looking restaurants mixed in with food chains and a strange assortment of shops. I ate a bowl of seafood chowder, served in a hollowed out loaf of sourdough bread. Yum.

Next up was a walk up to North Beach, where we found Washington Square, a park with heaps of Santas wandering around it, and a Chinese lady doing tai chi or something with a sword.

There were Italian flags painted on all the street lamps, and one bit of street suddenly felt like we were walking down the road in Italy. But then it turned American again.

We found the City Lights Bookstore, where Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg used to hang out. It was pretty good shop, and me and Tim had to buy some books there. I should really have bought some Beat writing, but I don’t really like it, so I didn’t.

Outside hundreds of Santas walked past us, on their annual Santarchy (if you say it in american it sounds like Anarchy with an S at the start.) Also nearby we saw a restaurant the Moni had told me about called the Stinking Rose, which sells garlic things. Like garlic flavoured ice cream. Since we’d just eaten a loaf of soup we couldn’t face more food though. Will have to go back.

Round the corner and into China Town. There were old ladies sitting on the street playing twangy music on funny 3 string instruments. And tea houses. And shops selling statues of dragons. A man standing out side a tea shop smiled at us and said ‘Tea Time?’. So we went to another shop and had Bubble tea. Which is a drink with tapioca balls in it. strange but good.

At the end of China town is Union Square, which is shopping central. We had a quick look inside the gigantic 3 story Levis store. We also found the original (I think) branch of my temple (apple store). It looked exactly like the one in London, but the outside was wrapped in aluminium tiles. Hollie then discovered Old Navy and went shopping for a while and bought some cheap american clothes.

By the end of the shopping we were sick of people and it was starting to rain heavily so we got a Cable Car home. I got to stand on the side board thing on the outside. The driver was very funny. It would be a lot more fun going to work on that everyday instead of the tube.

Been along time since the last post. Still working on our ireland, paris and italy posts, that I’ll try and put up soon.

Since we’re in the land of internet, I should be able to get wi-fi in most places we stay, so might try and do a post a day. So here’s the first one:

We arrived in San Francisco after a fairly good and half empty 11 hour flight. So far everyone has been incredibly friendly. We got held up at customs cause the passport/fingerprint/eye scan man kept talking to us about which Disneyland to go to and how we’re smart coming to San Francisco before going anywhere else. Funny.

After locating Tim in the airport we got the BART into town and then spent an hour or so trying to work out the SF public transport. Pretty confusing. There seem to be about 5 different forms of transport and no one way or place to find out how to use them. Oh well, we were tired, we’ll give it another try today.

Our hotel is not bad, it has a massive TV with about 400 channels so Hollie was pleased, and it also has free wi-fi so I was pleased. After satisfying our technology needs, and having a good catch up talk with Tim, we went out and had food.

We went to a mexican food / bar place. On the way we walked past one a typical looks-like-a-movie american sports bar. will have to go back there later. Our mexican place was pretty cool, lots of red velvet booths and massive glass chandeliers. We had $2 margaritas and burritos. Good.

Some fat american ladies came in and one of them lay on the bar and the barman had to climb onto the bar and pour stuff out of 3 bottles into her mouth. weird. like a movie again.

Then we went to a drug store and saw some customers arguing in a funny manner, like on a movie.

As part of our goodbye to the Northern Hemisphere, we popped over to Italy for 8 days. Here’s what we did:

Day 1
We started off with a 2am trip to Stanstead. At 9 o’clock we were in Italy, and by 10.30 we were catching a water bus to our hostel, which is funny, because as it turned out we were a five minute walk from the bus station.

Venice in the winter time is fantastic, the crowds are minimal, and there is a cool mist floating off the canals (we haven’t been in the summer time, but apparently it’s packed and the canals smell a bit funny).

We spent our first day cruising around on the water buses, and wandering around the cobbled streets. It’s so good that there’s no cars or scooters or even bikes, a very pedestrian city indeed, and also very quiet.

After a water bus ride down the Grand Canal, we got off and went to have a look at St. Marks Basilica. Started off by going up the bell tower opposite for an amazing view of Venice, then we wandered around the piazza taking photos of all the pigeons, and finally into St. Marks.
(Another reason for winter Venice visits – no queue – we’ve heard of people queueing for hours to get in here, we just waltzed in.)

St Marks was incredible. It’s completely covered in mosaic tiles of heaps of different colours. The building was MASSIVE. Because Venice is all soggy, and I guess the building is pretty heavy it had shifted a lot over the years. So no wall was straight and it was amazing to think that it’s still there after over a thousand years. We saw some bronze horses that were built in 200 BC.

After being awed by San Marco, we wandered towards the Rialto Bridge and looked at some shops. Lots of papier mache masks, and Murano glass and leather handbags. The Rialto is one of 3 bridges in the world which have shops on them, the other two are the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and Paultney Bridge in Bath, which we’ve been to, so now we’ve gone to all 3.

After that we continued to wander and had some dinner. Awful awful food, people say to go down a side street, but the whole of Venice is side streets. But never mind. Finished the day with a night time water bus ride down the Grand Canal.

Day 2
The next day we did some more wandering and tried to get lost, but couldn’t it’s such a small place that we kept coming across places that we’d been to before. We went to an old Venetian palace called Palazzo Mocenigo which had some fantastic Rococo clothing and furniture. The amazing thing about all the posh Italian buildings we’ve seen is that EVERY surface is covered with decoration; paintings or mosaics or tapestries…

After some terrible lunch, we went out to the island of Murano, where all the glass is made. We got there quite late so didn’t have enough time to see any glass being blown unfortunately. But we wandered around and had a look at heaps of shops with incredible glass in every shape and colour.

Finished off with another terrible dinner and a second night time water bus ride the other direction up the Grand Canal.

Day 3
Another early start and it was farewell to Venice. We flew from Venice to Rome and arrived in Rome at about lunch time. We were staying at a not bad hostel called the Pop Inn right beside the train station, can highly recommend it to any one going to Rome.

We started off by wandering down to the Coliseum. All the old bits in central Rome are very close to each other and you can generally walk between them all.

The Coliseum was good. Huge and interesting, but very run down (as things get after 1000 or so years.) We got a guided tour which was very useful, because there are a lot of bits of rubble that look like bits of rubble, and unless there is someone to tell you what you’re looking at, it could get a bit confusing. Our tour also included an extra hour and a half tour around Palatine hill, just beside the Roman Forum and the Coliseum. It was also quite interesting, but without Lorenzo, our guide, it would have been a pile of rocks and broken columns.

After all that tour guiding we were a bit knackered and had to go home for a bit. Then we went out to Trastavere for dinner. Apparently that’s the place that all the Romans go for their food. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but there far fewer tourists there and the food was about 1000% better than the tourist places in Venice. I had a calzone that was about half a meter long and Hollie had some gnocci with half the Mediterranean dumped on top of it (lots of sea food.)

Although the menu had an English section, we were the only ones in there who weren’t noisy Italians, so we took that as a good sign.

On the way home we couldn’t work out how to get a bus ticket or where to get a bus so we walked, and discovered that the ruins look probably better at night time because everything’s floodlit.

Day 4
Woke up early (again! I thought you were meant to sleep in on holiday?) and went to join the queue for the Vatican Museums (Sistine Chapel etc…) It wasn’t too bad really, the only reason we had to queue for an hour is because we were there an hour before it opened. As most other people seemed to be in large groups, once the doors opened we flew through and had the place virtually to our selves. We wandered down some incredibly huge and amazingly decorated corridors, the stretched as far as the eye could see and again, every single surface was decorated with a painting or a tapestry or a sculpture or something. After going down all these amazing corridors, the Sistine chapel itself is a little disappointing. The famous painting of god + jesus touching fingers isn’t very big. Maybe it was due to my not paying attention in art history, but I always imagined that that painting took up the whole ceiling.

One of the main things that Hollie noticed about the whole of the Vatican museum(s) was the light, they didn’t seem worried about leaving windows open and letting in natural light and fresh air, and so the whole place felt very light and airy because of it.

After making our way back down more amazing corridors and outside, we walked around the walls of the Vatican City and into St. Peter’s square. This is again, amazing. The scale of everything in the square is ridiculously big. But nothing compared to the inside of St. Peter’s. The sheer size completely blew us away. It just goes up and up and out and out and back and back. Apparently it can fit 60,000 people, which is more than most English football stadiums. lots. Didn’t turn us religious though.

We climbed the 550 steps to the top of the dome, which was quite a climb, but the view at the top was worth it.

After some well earned lunch and a rest, we walked to the Spanish Steps and watched people sitting on them. And the sun set. Then we went down a posh shopping street and across to the Piazza Nuovo for dinner. Another decent meal was found, and then we actually followed the guide book and went to a gellato shop that sold over 100 flavours of gellato. Including at least 15 different chocolates. good. It’s called Della Palma and any one that goes to Rome HAS to go there. It’s just by the Pantheon.

Day 5
We got a sleep in! Finally. Had a quick walk down to the monument of the nameless soldier (or something) and watched the Polizia (or cabineri? what’s the difference?) blowing whistles at American tourists who were doing things naughty (like sitting on steps). Then we picked up our hire car and braved the streets of Rome. Looking back, it wasn’t that bad. At the time there was a bit of shouting and confusion because we had a terrible map and Italians stop sign posting things for no apparent reason. But the Italian drivers were very good. Even though it may appear like they’re the worst drivers in the world, to be able to drive the way they do and not crash/run over old ladies/bring the city into gridlock, i think they must be good. or lucky.

We managed to get out of the city unscathed and headed south towards Naples. The autostrada (motorways) are fantastic. 3 lanes and the slowest you can go is about 120kph. We averaged about 140, the fastest I think I’ve driven and I was still only in the middle lane. After driving for a while we got to our town, just south of Naples, called Vico Esquense. It was sort of like an Italian version of Timaru. Bit of a strange place really. I think it would be a bit nicer in the summer. It’s where they invented pizza by the meter, and that’s all the restaurants (a bit of a nice name for the large barns where you could buy food) seemed to sell.

Day 6
Got up and had a weird breakfast in our weird hotel in our weird town. Then drove over the Sorrento peninsula and dropped down onto the Amalfi coast. At this point my camera ran out of batteries and so we had to buy a disposable. grr.

The Amalfi coast was quite beautiful. The odd bag of rubbish chucked on the side of the road was a bit sad, but other than that it was very nice scenery. Our favourite town I think was Positano, the most northern town on the coast. Lots of little windy streets weaving up and down hills all around the bay.

Amalfi was also nice, but seemed a bit more touristy and the square was full of Italian boy teenagers shouting at each other and trying to attract the Italian girl teenagers who were also shouting at each other. they were all sitting on scooters and smoking and shouting. shouty smokey Italians.

After spending the day driving and stopping and looking at the ocean we went back around the end of the Sorrento peninsula and through Sorrento. not as nice as it sounds. but as with our Timaru-like place, i think it would be nicer in the summer time.

Day 7
We drove north to Pompeii, and then spent 4 hours wandering around the excavation site. It’s massive, we both imagined it would be a few streets and some houses, but it was a decent sized city, including a 20,000 seat stadium. We might have benefited from a tour guide or detailed book here, but it was fun just wandering around and looking at the houses, brothels, bath houses, shops and streets. There was writing on the wall that we could read. (we couldn’t understand it, because i guess it’s in Latin or something, but we could read the letters. something you don’t imagine you can do with 2000 year old writing.)

After Pompeii we drove up Mt. Vesuvius. Not much of a view from the top because the whole of the bay of Naples is a smog pit, but quite interesting. We got a bit lost coming down and drove through some fairly disgusting bits of Pompeii, Ercolano and other outskirts-of-naples-towns. Blurgh. Rubbish tips.

Day 8
Back to Rome today, it took us an hour and half of easy driving on the motorway, and then another hour and half of more shouting and confusion trying to get through Rome back to the train station. But we made it back to the car rental place with 15 minutes to spare, so that was good.

After that drive we needed a reward so went back to Della Palma and had another gellato, then went and had a look at the Pantheon. Again, amazing, huge, old.

We then went up to the Trevi Fountain which seemed to be where all the tourists in Rome had congregated at once. Then we walked down to Piazza Poppolo and watched the sunset from the top of a hill there.

Back to Trastavere for dinner, and back to Della Palma for one last gellato.

Day 9
Our last day in continental Europe for 2006

We started off by going down and looking at a piazza that Michelangelo had designed. We’d been there at night time a few days earlier and decided that it was much more spectacular at night with the flood lighting. There was quite a nice church next door where they have a weird looking baby jesus carved out of wood, and where Francesco Totti (Italian footballer) got married.

One of the cool things about Rome is that just about every street seems to have an amazing church, that if it was any other city in the world, would be the centre piece of the city. But in Rome these places aren’t even given a second thought. They’re just there. And there’s only ever about 1 other person in them.

After our church admiring, we went into the Roman Forum and had a look. another place where a tour guide, a good book and more energy would have been useful, but also fun just to wander around it.

We finished our Roman adventure with some more gellato on the Spanish steps, watching the street vendors trying to sell exactly the same things as each other to uninterested tourists.

Well well. It’s been a long time since my last post, since then we’ve done quite a lot. We went to Ireland and Paris in August, I’m writing about these separately, and will put them up soon.

In September we went to Buckingham Palace and had a look at the Queen’s dresses, house and art collection. You never hear that much about visiting the Palace, but we thought it was well worth a trip. Lizzy’s got a fairly good art collection, and the public bits of the palace are quite amazing.

In our ‘Things to do before we leave’ we also went to the Tower of London and St. Paul’s cathedral. We were a little disappointed with the Tower, but we saw some cool huge Ravens. St Paul’s on the other hand was amazing. So far most of the churches we’d been to were no longer working, and they didn’t have roofs and windows or anything like that. But St. Paul’s was all still very much there. Amazing mosaic floors and walls, and the view from on top of the dome was worth the climb.

In October we went down to Bath for my cousin Barney’s wedding, to my new cousin-in-law Laura. It was a really nice wedding, all proper and stuff with singing and churches and a horse and cart taking the bride and groom off into the night. Nice to hang out with some family for a weekend as well.

In November, we managed to get some tickets to go to Twickenham and see the All Blacks wallop the English. Ha ha. It was the first game in the new Twickenham, 82,000 people, a record, and the way the English are playing at the moment I doubt they’ll sell out again for a while.

After wrapping up work and packing up the flat in November, we went to Italy for 8 days, again, I’m still working on that post. So check back soon.

We then spent our remaining week’n'abit in england saying goodbye to family. We started off in Cambridge to see Aunty Sarah. Cambridge was very christmassy and they had people singing in the square and decorations every where and coldness. We had a couple of days in London chasing bills and landlords and things, and went out for tea with some of my cousins. We went to a turkish restaurant and told them it was Hollie’s birthday (it wasn’t though, but hers hadn’t been too far away.) They made her dance to Shakira on the table. Then we went down to Wallington for the weekend and up to Yorkshire for a few days and said goodbye to all our remaining cousins. Lots of food and wine and food and goodbyes.

Goodbye England. See you in a bit.

One day in July, we went to the London Zoo in Regent’s Park. It was fairly expensive to get in (£14 each!) and not really worth the money. Most of the poor animals looked miserable, and many of the displays were run down and very old looking. But we saw some good animals: Okapi, golden tamarins, pygmy hippos, reindeer, a giant anteater and we got to go into the spider monkey’s enclosure and nearly touch them. Exciting. We also discovered that the bellowing we can hear when wandering around Regent’s Park is Parrots, not Elephants, which is what i thought it was. There aren’t any elephants. There are some photos on the website. Click here to see them.

At the end of July we went to my (second?) cousin Julia’s wedding reception. It was in an amazing old house (when I say house, i don’t mean 3 bedrooms and a garden, I mean a house with a name at the front of it, this one was called Dorchester House (i think, i forget, must look that up), and therefore very posh.) And heaps of my mum’s family were there, so it was good to catch up with all of them. Even though I couldn’t remember who most of them where.

It’s August now, and we’ve done quite a bit. A few weekends ago we went and got on a boat from Westminster up to the Thames Barrier. These are a collection of weird aliens standing in a line in the Thames, and if the tide gets too high they lift up a barrier thing and stop london from flooding. Quite weird things to see. I haven’t put any pictures up yet, but will do soon. After the barrier, we stopped off and had a wander round Greenwich which was good.

The next day we got up early and went on a train to Canterbury in Kent. It was a fairly nice old english town, complete with Top Shop, GAP and an assortment of mobile phone shops. And the cathedral. HUGE cathedral.

The weekend after our barrier/canterbury visits, we went and watched the All Whites (NZ’s national football (soccer) team) play Charlton Athletic. We thought it would be a bit of a walloping, but the all whites played well and it ended 1-1. It was good to see the english football fans in cheerful mood. Since they didn’t really care about the game’s result, they were all jolly and chatty.

When we got home from the football, we wandered over to Regent’s Park where there was a free festival and Arrested Development! where playing. Sadly I couldn’t really see them because half of london showed up and got in my way, but we were treated to another lovely display of english people chucking their rubbish any where but a bin, and peeing any where that took their fancy.

Last weekend we went to the Science Museum. It was fairly interesting, but not as amazing and interactive as I’d thought it was going to be.

And that brings us up to date. Hopefully the next post will be a bit sooner, so I can explain things a bit better instead of saying everything is just good or bad.

Toodle oo.

After the Isle of Wight, we continued our summer of music by going to some of the Wireless festival in Hyde park after work one day. Strangly way more laid back than the Isle of Wight. We started off by watching the amazing Raconteurs, then later on saw the super furry animals (pretty good, the lead singer – ghryff ryhss or something welsh like that, wore a power rangers helmet,) and then we finished the night off with the Strokes. jolly good.

After that, we went to Somerset House on consectutive nights and watched Jose Gonzalez and then Fat Freddy’s Drop. Jose was amazing – he plays that song on the bouncy ball Sony Bravia ad, and Fat Freddy’s (NZ band) was pretty good too, glad to see it wasn’t just kiwis in the audience either. Somerset House is an amazing place for a concert, they light it all up and it goes red and blue and stuff. It’s the place we went ice skating way back ages ago. At some point we’ll put up some photos.

(P.S – there are some videos of the isle of wight and these concerts at my YouTube (www.youtube.com/verygiraffe)I’ll post them here when i get round to it.)

Our summer of music then wrapped up with a fantastic concert by the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Earl’s Court It was during our heat wave of about 35 degree everyday, so was stinking hot and sweaty inside the building, and we had a night mare trying to find our tickets with hollie having to travel backwards and forwards across london. But it all turned out ok and the show was good.

The weekend after Amsterdam, we headed off to the Isle of Wight Festival. Started off by leaving home at about 8.30am. Got to Southampton Ferry terminal at 11 for the 11.30 boat. The 11.30 boat left Southampton at 1pm. After a boat trip, some queing, and a bus ride, we arrived at the festival campsite near Newport, Isle of Wight, at about 3pm.

We then wandered around and found a campsite and headed into Newport for supplies. By 6pm we were finally organised, and ready to go festivalling. A very long day and we hadn’t even heard a plink of music. First night was not bad, Goldfrapp first(didn’t really watch them), followed by Placebo, who were very good, followed by Prodigy, who were fantastic, even though they seemed to play exactly the same set (plus a few new songs) that they did when i saw them 4 years ago. After the bands, we went back to the tents and went to sleep.

An hour later we began to discover that camping at english festivals isn’t the funnest thing in the world. It turned out we’d pitched our tents in the middle of a stag party. yay.

Now, where as most groups who have a lot of tents are clever (they pitch their tents in a circle, all facing in to each other, thus clearly indicating that they are a group,) our lovely neighbours were not so clever (this was proved even more in night two, where one of them decided to do a belly flop on his tent, broke it, and then realised he had no where to sleep for the next 2 nights). They found an area of ground, and pitched their tents all higgldy piggldy, looking like they were 5 tents unattached to each other. Then, when they came back to their tents, they started getting upset that some one else (us) had set up in the middle of thier group. grrr. stupid people. grrr. Eventually cameron shouted at them to shut up, and hollie shouted at the one who tried to sit on us. and they quietend down at about 4. grr.

Next day we woke up at 7ish, and played loud music and talked loudly to each other, and woke up our lovely neighbours. they looked a bit grumpy but i think it dawned on them that they’d brought it on themselves.

We wandered over to the festival and looked around until the bands started. Quite a good range of music on Saturday. Suzanne Vega was early on, and the Proclaimers. Then some newer stuff from the Kooks, who were surprisingly great, and the Editors, who were surprisingly flat and uniteresting. It was very nice on Saturday afternoon, because most of the english had run off to the pub to watch their football team scrape together a win against Paraguay. Odd people those english, most of them seemed to spend £100 pounds on tickets, and what ever they spent on transport etc… only to go to the pub for most of the main day of the festival to watch football, and then come home and spend the rest of the weekend at their campsite, drinking and getting incredibly sunburnt. Oh well, never mind, more room for us.

As the evening rolled in, so did the red and white clad hoardes back from the football, just in time to see thier favourite band, Primal Scream. No comment. After them though were the Foo Fighters, and for what ever reason, most of the crowd went off to get drunker or something, leaving a reasonably empty field for us to stand and watch. It was good, there where green lasers, and since there was less of a crowd, we didn’t get beer thrown at us (another weird english habit, after queing for ages for a drink, they then come back to the stage, and hurl their cup forward to cover everyone in beer ?!?)

On Sunday we awoke early again, much to the delight of our just gone to sleep neighbours. We wandered back over to the festival and had a look at the rides and the market and stuff. The rest of the day was spent ambling around, eating and sitting in the sun, the only band we saw was Procul Harum (Yes, whiter shade of pale, played at the original Isle of Wight festival Procul Harum) who were pretty good. A Whiter Shade of Pale gave me goosebumps, as it does.
After that, we wandered back to our tent and started packing up. Our neighbours asked why we weren’t staying for Coldplay, so I told them I’d seen them before and they weren’t worth the wait, then they all said that that’s the only band who they’d come too see. Hmmm. (another weird english habit – blinding loyalty to coldplay.)(haven’t they seen the videos? chris martin wears black, jumps around on one foot, rants about fair trade, and makes a joke about giving you back 15 pence becuase they came on a few minutes late) (by the way, yes, i did go and see coldplay, but it was at the start of thier gigantic tour before i knew this. and hollie made me.) After packing up we headed back to london, an uneventful, and que free journey.

So a quick Isle of Wight Festival round up:

Good things:
The weather
The kooks
The pork rolls
The prodigy
The atmosphere most of the time
the foo fighter’s green lasers
the corn on the cob
the foo fighters
placebo
procul harum
the toilets, usually
£3 for a litre of beer

Bad things:
Weird english habits (throwing beer, not using the huge and numerous rubbish bins – not every body likes walking through piles of left over food and toilet paper, obsessiveness over coldplay)
The toilets, sometimes
Editors, Dirty Pretty Things – dissapointing
Primal Scream – i don’t get it? why does everyone love them so much. i guess i had to be there.
£2 for half a millilitre of water
Our stupid neighbours.

So, not bad really.

Thank you.
Come again.

It’s been two months since my last post, so let me cast my mind back a bit and try and remember what’s been happening…

… I’ve remembered, and since quite alot seems to have happened, I’ve cheated and will write a few posts, back dating them.

After a few weeks back from our wedding in NZ, we jumped on another plane and took off for Amsterdam for a long weekend. Good town. Stayed on the edge of the red light district, which was good for interesting evening walks.

On the first day we wandered around and found the Heineken Factory which we didn’t know existed, and went in to have a look – it was a good thing to do, not the same as most historic european attractions, and reasonably interesting. For 10 euros you learn how beer’s made, and get about 4 free drinks along the way. And not much of a que. After that we just wandered around (it’s a good city to wander around in) having a look at the town. Had a special muffin in a special coffee shop (the muffin wasn’t that special, and the coffee shop was a bulldog – the McDonalds of dutch coffee shops).

Next day we went and checked out the Van Gough Museum, which was good. Then got on a barge and did a tour of the canals. Good as well.

The final day we went to Anne Frank’s house, which was very interesting, and then rented bikes and rode around in the Vondelpark for a while, then attempted the streets – for a town famous for being cycle friendly, it was pretty scary – I guess since all the cyclists and motorists are used to each other, they just charge around at full speed and some how avoid crashing into each other. Then we went back to London. Click here for some pictures: Amsterdam Photos

The weekend after that, we had our UK wedding reception, for all of our friends and family who couldn’t make it to New Zealand for the ceremony. Mike + Sorrel (uncle + aunty who live in Wallington) where very kind and organised the whole thing for us, cooked lots of good food and let us invade their house. It was a good chance to catch up with lots of people we hadn’t seen for a while. (If any one who was there has some photos, can you send me them please, I;ve been sent a few, but their all of us cutting the cake.)

So that’s that portion done. More to come soon…

Quite alot’s happened in the last month.

At Easter time we went to the Lakes District (in the north of england). We rented a car and on easter friday drove up to York. Had a bit of a wander, went inside the York Minster where there was a wierd religious play going on, and Ali + Cameron went to the Jorvik Viking Centre where every York visitor should go. It’s very exciting. Tells you about vikings and stuff. That evening we stayed with Aunty Kathy and cousin Chris’ large dog Rosie. She’s a lurcher.
Next day headed across the country to Lake Windermere (with a brief stop in Harrogate for tea + scones at Betty’s.
We stayed in a some rooms above a pub in the town of Windermere, which was solid with english tourists (the town, not the room). A nice place the lakes, very lakey. Saw alot of water, reminded me of the NZ lakes abit. When I get some time I’ll put up some pictures, then you can see the lakes for yourselves. The highlight of the weekend (for me any way) was going to see Beatrix Potter’s old houses, where alot of her illustrations were inspired. That sentance looks abit funny, but you know what I mean. I’ll find some examples and show you. Whilst in the lakes district we also went across a lake on a ferry, walked upon some rolling green hills (where cameron chased a sheep, naughty) where we got a good view of a lake, and had a picnic beside a lake. But didn’t swim in a lake. It was abit cold.
On the way home, we got to experiance the true english holiday treat – getting stuck in a traffic jam on the M1. But it wasn’t too bad, only lasted about 40 minutes and we saw an old Routemaster driving along. (Check back here later for a video of it.)(Thrilling).

A few days after easter, we jumped on a plane and flew back to New Zealand. Quite an eventful time was to follow. To start with sister Amelia had her 25st birthday party in a club in Christchurch that had walls that changed colour. Also aunty Jude from australia had arrived for our wedding, so it was good to catch up with her. Then we went up to Wellington to get Hollie’s visa extended. Pretty painless (they had it processed in less than a week!). I also discovered that guinness is cheaper in NZ than in london (as are many things). But they pour it wrong and it tastes wierd.

Then we headed down to the Mackenzie country to prepare for the wedding. Luckily our parents had done so much stuff already there was hardly anything for us to do. So we just lazed around (I did anyway), until Saturday, the 29th of April, when lots of people showed up from all over the place and we got married. There are many many photos for us to sort through, and when we do, they’ll go on the website (by the way the new website address is www.tomandhollie.com) (but don’t go to it at the moment, it’s a bit of a mess). Here’s one:

So that went well. It was great to see so many people, and hopefully everyone had a good time.

Again, check the website in a while (a week or so) and there will be a more detailed report. Or not. maybe.

So after the wedding, Hollie + I headed up to stay a couple of nights in Lake Rotiti which was nice and quite and we saw some native birds. Then we came home, and then we flew back to england.

Unlike January when we came back and wanted to leave again, this time London welcomed us back with about 25 degrees and daffodils and squirrels. Spring was here. But then it buggered off again, and we haven’t seen it since. It’s wet and miserable. Blurgh.

And finally, last week I went + saw Radiohead, which was amazing. I have a horrible phone-made video of it, which I will put on here later on and you can all be jealous. If you like radiohead. If not, it may not have much affect on you.

EDIT —-
Here’s the horrible phone video:

—– EDIT

I’m going to bed now. And maybe tomorrow I’ll add these videos and things I’m promising. Toodle oo.