New Links

Hi all, it has been such a long time and I am sorry for my slackness. I have however been away on holidays and I generally don't spend a huge amount of time around my computer as TV is a demanding mistress and the attached DVD player is just as bad.

So first of all I've updated my links and I hope you will enjoy the browsing of them. I hope to add some more, but my HTML is less than perfect so I take a while to figure out how to make headings etc.

Ok so about my trip, there is so much to tell. Firstly the ice skating part, well, my girls did so good!!! The came last in both competitions but they learnt so much and they were technically competitive. As in their technical marks beat those of other teams which is so fantastic. Milan was so dirty and I'm glad we didn't spend too much time walking around it. The inner city was nice enough, but the main streets where we were staying and where the ice rink is was quite filthy. Switzerland was the most beautiful place I have ever seen. It was truely breathtaking. I felt a little out of place in the Swiss-German part since I don't know any german let alone swiss-german. Neuchatel was absolutely gorgeous. It was truely breathtaking and if I could go back anywhere it would be there. It wasn't too cold even with snow-capped mountains surrounding us.

Paris was nice, but busy and I was sick so I didn't appreciate everything to it's full extent. I found that my sense of direction was quite lost most of the time too. Even with a map I found myself scratching my head. Thank goodness for their rail network which is the most efficeint I've ever used. Not as luxurious as Australia, but more frequent. Also their consept of what sort of ticket you buy was quite smart too. They had sections where tickets were a designated price regardless of how many stops you went, so you could swap lines and go from one side of the city to the other for no more than AUS$2. Their ticket machines however onliy take coins or credit cards, but none of our cards worked in their machines, so we spent a bit of time walking around a few stations looking for a person to serve us which meant we missed seeing a few things.

So getting to England was a whole barrel of fun. See firstly we had to survive the car trip to the airport and realistically Parisian drivers are nothing compared to Italians, but still scary as!!! Then, in the darkness of the morning, we dropped mum and Liz off at the terminal and dad and I (me for translation purposes) went to find the car drop off which was of course, 3 terminals away. not to mention we'd missed the last fuel place before the airport so we had to drive for 16km to the next closest and back again as the cost of an empty fuel tank made it worth the risk. We ended up almost running to try and get to the other terminal but the only way from one to another (well with them in different buildings and all) was either a free bus or train service. At first dad thought I was loopy and he almost didn't follow me, then when I realised the bus about to leave was the one we wanted I almost got run over trying to stop it. So we reached our terminal and met up with mum who had logged us as being at the airport, we then went through a passport check to get into a huge long line to actually check our luggage in. So with only minutes to go before the cut off time for luggage check-in, we were rushed aheadand checked in properly. This was not the end however...within meters of the ramp down to the plane, was another security check. Now these people are rude and paranoid. Mum who had blood blisters on her feet and was therefore limping was told to take her shoes and socks off (without the help of a seat), she was then touched up to check she wasn't carrying anything dangerous and then told to put her shoes and socks back on (again without a seat). The main security guard was the rudest person I have ever met and I have never wanted to cause anyone as much physical harm as that guy.

Thankfully we had the best (male) flight attendant I have ever had. A guy named Pat on British Airways was incredibly lovely. So we made it to London and made our way to the car hire place who weren't ready for us so we entertained ourselves for over an hour. We finally got under way and headed to the countryside. Still getting used to the Tom Tom (GPS) and having driven on the right side of the road just hours before, made our first day ever so slightly stressful. We visited Shakespeares birthplace and a few other small towns before finding our accomodation and finally some dinner. We visited Bath and Stonehenge on seperate days and we managed to visit castles such as Hampton Court Palace, Glastonbury (King Arthur), Warwick Castle, Windsor Castle and Kensigton Palace just to name a few and they were magnificent. We stayed in the city for 3 nights but due to arriving late, traffic and the lack of being able to transport from site to site instantly meant we missed some things. Liz and I went on the Jack The Ripper walking tour while mum and dad got lost trying to find the hotel, we went to Les Mis, we saw Buckingham, Big Ben, Westminster and the Tower of London, again just to name a few. But traffic mostly and getting lost, stopped us from seeing everything we'd wanted to in the city itself.

Before we knew it we were in Italy again, picking up our hire care from the Leonardo Da Vinci airport. We went straight to accomodation that night and barely stayed in one hotel/town for more than 24hrs. We saw Venice, Florence, Ravenna, Sorento, Amalfi, Capri, Sienna, Pompeii and Rome and those were just the places we actually stayed a night in. If you have a map, follow those places East, then South West, then North to Rome and you have our 10 day travels in Italy. In Italy, the coast road, although scary as anything was awesome and walking from one side of Rome to the other was pretty amazing too. There seems to be too much to say and I'm running out of steam. My parents haven't even looked at the Italian part of the holiday and already have over 1000 photos picked out. I'll make some sort of photobucket or something so I can share the wonders of Europe with you all.

As amazing as it all was, there is no place like home and my home was were my heart was. It's hard to travel away from your home when you leave so much of yourself home from you.