Posts from — September 2008

Well wasn’t that worth the effort?  We may have nearly killed ourselves on a speed tour of the UK, but this morning at 5am we crowded around the laptap on a hotel bed to watch a live stream of the AFL Grand Final and low and behold the mighty Hawks won!  Who would have thunk it?! We celebrated with a trip into London on the Underground although to be honest a big nap in the luxurious hotel beds would have been my first preference. Here’s hoping the mighty Hawks repeat the triumph next year so that the boys can go to the MCG to see the match.

Richard and I have been having a joke all around Europe about an article he read listing the ten most disappointing tourist attractions (as voted for by tourists). In the top five was Stone Henge, and we both agreed that a few old rocks on the edge of a busy freeway may not be quite as awe inspiring in real life as it is looks in the tourist brochures, and after our exhausting tour of the UK we very nearly decided not to drive the extra hour or so out of our way to see it. In the end we made the journey and we were so pleased we did. Here is Miss Zoe showing us how much she loved this ancient monument (although just to show that the article wasn’t complete rubbish Hamish was quite puzzled about all the fuss over a few rocks…).

Speaking of Miss Zoe - I couldn’t help but show this shot of her on her way to the toilet after just rolling out of bed. Ben Nevis - the tallest mountain in Scotland is somewhere there behind her (we never could work out exactly which one Ben was).

And here’s a shot to show why I don’t take many photos. This is the family in action in London today photographing squirrels. I think most of the time 3 sets of photos is enough, but I like to take a few shots of the family (that is when I can catch them without cameras in hand!).

We have one more night at this lovely hotel and then we’re back to the van. We will stay at a campsite in London for several more days and then we are all very excited to be heading to France. Croissants here we come!

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So what do you do at 11pm at night when you’ve been driving all day? Fiddle with Google maps of course. I’ve been having a bit of fun making this map because I get to work out exactly where we’ve been after a long days drive (hubby navigates so this is the only map I ever see). Then I found out you can add little notes and pictures, and now I just can’t stop fiddling. I’ve linked to the map on the left tool bar so drop in every few days to see where we’ve been.

We left Scotland today and we all agreed that the rugged beauty reminded us a lot of our beloved Tasmania. Hamish declared it his favourite country so far (well it was a tie with Denmark but I think it had an unfair advantage what with Legoland being there and all). Here he is showing us how much he loves the place:

Zoe told us that Germany was her favourite country because you can drive as fast as you like on the freeways there. A future racing car driver perhaps?!

I guess this sums up where we are, or at least where we’ve been, because that was in England, and we’re in Scotland now. I have managed to skip any photos of The Netherlands entirely which is due to the fact that I finally succumbed to the campervan illness curse and developed a fever on the evening we arrived there. Lucky for me we were staying with the most wonderful friends who looked after us and I was able to fight the fever from the comfort of a real bed (as opposed to poor hubby who had to do it from the top of a campervan). I managed to drag myself up for a couple of hours each afternoon for a small amount of sightseeing but I don’t have many photos to show for it.

We are doing a speed tour of the United Kingdom in an attempt to a) make it to London in time to watch the Hawks play in the AFL Grand Final (which was a good compromise to the initial suggestion of flying home for the weekend), and b) meet up with my sister in Paris before she returns home to Melbourne. The fast pace means that my knitting is coming along much slower than I would like, but I hope to catch up when we get to France and slow things down a little.

We are only managing to find internet access every third day or so, so I apologise for the brief post and promise to catch up again soon.

Ahh yes, the van of ill-health became too much for us (well for the ill part of ‘us’ which was everyone except me) and we took the soft option in Denmark by staying in accommodation without wheels.  Actually in Copenhagen we took an option so soft it came with a bath :)  We absolutely loved Copenhagen but sadly we only spent a few hours there and again the best sightseeing we could muster was a bus tour around the city (and even then hubby slept for half of it).  It is definitely on my list of places to revisit one day.

Here are my cheeky monkeys in front of the Little Mermaid:

Hamish with Hans Christian Anderson:

A shot of Nyhavn Canal from the bus window:

And here’s the Legoland version!

That’s right - we could only spend an afternoon in Copenhagen because we had to rush off to the far more important Legoland. Actually with my trusty tour organiser so sick we worked out far too late that Legoland is in fact nowhere near Copenhagen which in part explains our short stay. If anyone has ever wondered where Legoland is then I would say imagine heading for the end of the earth, and then stopping a few hours before you get there. When we did in fact get there, after what seemed like weeks of driving, and saw a few odd Lego creations outside the front of a deserted entrance gate on a summery 14 degree day in the rain, hubby and I got a little nervous about the wisdom of our treck. Thankfully Legoland turned out to be every bit as good as we had hoped, and honestly just seeing the smile on Hamish’s face would have been enough. Here are a few photos of the little man and his lovely grin:

There are no pictures of Zoe smiling because she managed to develop a fever the morning we arrived and she hardly made it out of the pram that first day. She rallied for the second day which was good timing as the driving rain also stayed away the second day and we had a great time.

After a full day at Legoland we got into the van and drove back to Germany where we have stopped shortly on our way to Amsterdam. More updates soon!

I can’t believe we’ve left Germany already - it seems like we just arrived. I was just getting a handle on the most basic of German phrases and I had reached 140km per hour on the autobahn without breaking into a sweat. But move on we must, as Legoland awaits us, as does Copenhagen, Amsterdam and good old England. Actually I think Hamish is more excited about heading to England than he is to Legoland. He doesn’t much like not being able to understand a word anyone says. Me - I’m well used to being treated like a fool because I don’t speak the language. My ego has had a good toughening up and my years of studying sign language have come in extremely useful as I have mimed my way through the German countryside. The little lad has found it a bit more challenging.

Seriously though I am a bit sad to be leaving Germany so soon. The history is so vast and so rich - and at points so recent. in Berlin you don’t have to conjure up images of princes from long ago - you can see the photos from just 20 years ago of a reality so vastly removed from our own. Sadly with all the sickness going around we spent more time in our campervan in Berlin than we did actually seeing the city, but hubby managed to rally on the last day so that we were able to see some sites (even if many of them were from a sightseeing bus!). Here are a couple of snaps I took. The official photos will have to wait another day or two.

Zoe at the holocaust memorial in Berlin:

That tiny spec at the front is Hamish outside the glass dome on top of the Reichstag building:

Updates from Denmark soon!