PLANS

Hello again... the countdown is on, and we both finish work for good on the 19th of Dec - hooray! Am quite looking forward to not having to drive anywhere at the exact time that everyone else in the immediate vicinity decides to do the same... unless we want to, of course.
In theory, we've been packing and organising frantically, but in reality, things are slightly behind schedule, so the coming week will be far more hectic - although, we've done this packing everything up thing before, and it's not nearly as big a job this time around...phew!
Last weekend I decided to sack off organising and buggered off for a long weekend in Paris instead... Kent gets motion sickness, so opted out, as the main destination was Disneyland, he (quite rightly) assumed I would want to go on all the rides. I have to say it wasn't quite as big as I was expecting, but definitely still fantastic... my inner 8 year old was captivated by the castle, especially seeing as it's all decorated for Christmas - probably one of the most magical sights I've ever seen. Our second day there was at Walt Disney Studios, which wasn't quite as magical, but the rides were even better, especially the Tower of Terror and the Aerosmith Rock n Rollercoaster... more fun than you can shake a stick at. The only downside was that the second day was Saturday, so it was terribly busy and we had to queue for over an hour-and-a-half for each of those. Worth it though.
The next two days, Susie News and I spent in the city... despite all the awful things I've been told by numerous people, Paris is NOT a dump, and I didn't encounter ANY rude people. I honestly think it's all in how you approach them, and without very few exceptions, people were friendly and helpful - a woman even approached us in the Metro when she saw us looking at the map because she thought we might need help... such a relief!
We did all the standard tourist fodder: Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, a river cruise, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, a wander past the Louvre, a trip on the big ferris wheel thingy, the Christmas Markets, and a visit to a huge department store to see the really big Christmas tree that I'd seen in other people's photos, but failed to locate via google - a lucky guess took us to it.
I loved the place, and could happily spend longer there - it's beautiful, and we didn't really have enough time to look at more of the history (and I think Susie might have got a bit bored of that!)... but there's always next time, I suppose. A few photos are here:

It was a bit of a shame that the weather wasn't particularly nice; our first stop off at the Eiffel Tower was a bit of a non-event, as you couldn't even see the top because of the fog... it was still a bit cloudy the next day, but at least you could see the ground from the top... it is a LONG way up there, or at least it feels a long way in the lift, which just seems to go up forever.
I managed to somehow damage my train ticket one of the days, so I had to jump the turnstiles to get out - no one even batted an eyelid! I did ask at the information desk but the lady said it should work and not to worry... so I had to jump again on the way back to the train - not the most dignified look when I'm not quite so bendy as I used to be!
We're home now, with a week before we leave for Sheffield, then a couple of weeks in Scotland, before we head to Istanbul for a week in the middle of January... which I'm hoping will be warmer, although apparently they have winter in Turkey too, so we may have to wait just a little longer to thaw out! From there we have two weeks in the South and West of England, then a week in Marrakech, Morrocco (again, hoping for warmth, but probably not going to get it) and a week with friends near Bergen, Norway... where it will be extra cold and dark for us... and that's not even half of our holiday yet! Safe to say we'll be well tired by the time we hit terra firma in May...

Take care,
Kent & Eryn x

I can't think of a name for this

Man, it is DARK here now... come 4pm, it's virtually pitch black outside - it's not really hard to understand why misery is common in winter here. I heard somewhere that the sun north of Peterborough is so weak that there's no vitamin D in it... might be a myth, but interesting all the same.

The start of November was a bit damp, to say the least. Angus & Janet came up for the night one Friday, and after a drive to a town with dodgy name, Kent managed to convince them to got to the football with him in the afternoon (Janet didn't seem best pleased when she realised that not going was an option, especially as it was pouring as I dropped them off - she seemed even less pleased after the game, as a result of the delightful language football fans like to hurl at the opposition, the ref, the goalie, other fans, etc).
That Saturday night was a big public (although not free) fireworks display at the park by our house. Mother Nature co-operated by rolling in the thunder clouds and opening the heavens...despite this, there were still thousands of people there, and the fireworks were very pretty. The station I'm based at had a stage so we went along, dressed in all the thermals I could find, to help hand out glow sticks and get drenched - fun.
My Aunty Paula came over for a flying visit, under the guise of keeping an eye on my 18 year old cousin, who had a work conference in Amsterdam. I met her in London and we had a couple of days being touristy, which was fabulous. Kent really doesn't like the city, and I do, so it was a good way of me seeing more without having to drag him along too... We started at Buckingham Palace, where Aunty P's camera promptly decided that it couldn't really be bothered to take photos - lucky there's not much in London town to take pics of then. It also started raining. Being the tough tourists we are, this did not halt our plans at all, and I made her walk to Hyde Park corner to have a look at the war memorials (the Australian one does out-flash the NZ one, but both are lovely), then down to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, across the river and past the London Eye. The next day we managed to get 3/4 of the way up St Paul's Cathedral, through the Tower of London, complete with a Beefeater/Yeoman Warder (just like on the gin!) tour guide who was just brilliant, to the switch on of the Regent St Christmas lights and then to Chicago - the show, obviously, not the city. It was great, just like the Sound of Music show, which we saw the night before (think I would need reining in if I lived there - there are sooo many shows to choose from every night).
We had an early start to get to the airport for a flight to Amsterdam the following day, and navigated the public transport to get to our hotel in one piece and quite quickly - not a bad achievement as this sort of thing usually falls under Kent's list of responsibilities, and I tend to be a bit rubbish at map-reading etc. The camera is also usually Kent's thing, so I cleverly left this with him in Ipswich for safekeeping - not smart, but at least I didn't leave it at the airport this time.
We had a wander in to the middle of the city, which, like most cities in Europe, comes complete with canals and pretty buildings - I thought it was lovely, and instantly felt guilty for not wanting to go there earlier.
There were only 2 ports of call planned for Amsterdam - the first was the Anne Frank Museum, which we wandered through in the afternoon. It's in the actual building the Frank family and others were hiding in for much of WWII. Anne's father survived Auschwitz (she died in Bergen-Belsen one month before the camp was liberated) and was responsible for publishing her diary and creating the museum. It was very well done and good to see, but in that uncomfortable, upsetting way that anything to do with the war is - but maybe that's just me
The second was completely different, but very predictable - the Red Light District. As you might imagine, it's not marked on the city map, so we meandered around a bit, wondering where the action was.. this continued for about half an hour until one of us spotted a shop selling all sorts of eyebrow-raising bits and pieces, followed by another, and another until we encountered one of the windows you hear so much about... Interesting to note the girls were mostly quite gorgeous, but not always 'all' woman; one of these girls with a, errr, bulge in her knickers did waggle her finger at Aunty P and beckon her towards the window. Naturally, the pair of us giggled like a pair of schoolgirls and walked a bit faster... it was eye-opening, for sure!
It was only a flying visit, so the next morning we headed back to the airport and I came back to Blighty, while they carried on to Paris and Rome.
The next weekend, Kent wanted his refereeing immortalised/photographed, so I braved the chilly wind and racked up over 800 photos in an hour and a half - thank you, continuous shooting. Here are some of the more successful ones (and other assorted pics):


Of these, about 5 were actually ok... that's 0.6%, so I don't think Annie Leibowitz has anything to worry about as yet.
Aunty P and Anna arrived back in London a week later, which coincided nicely with Angus and Janet's leaving party, and Angus's birthday at the Southerner bar, which was a very NZ-y night. It was kinda nice to finally be in a room full of people who talk proper and don't laugh when you say 'excellent'!
Quite a busy month... and it's getting busier as we start sorting ourselves out to leave work and Ipswich in less than 3 weeks - eek!
We've just booked our flights home, which was a bit depressing, but I imagine by the time the 4th May rolls around and we've been living out of our backpacks for months, we'll be ready to get back to the real world...
Anyway, enough about us, got any gossip?
K & E x

The blog is back

Hiya... so we haven't posted for a while as we didn't think there was anything exciting to report - but things have been happening...
Kent's brother got married on the 11th and we missed it - am gutted. The photos are great, and it's wonderful that with digital etc we could see them a couple of days afterwards - not the same a s the real thing though. It's the second wedding we've missed... this whole OE thing is great, but missing out on days like that isn't so much.
I had to make my third call to the emergency services last weekend, after a car swerved in front of me on the motorway and hit the hard shoulder, flipping over twice in the air, then disappearing into some trees... it was pretty scary, especially picking my way through the bushes trying to find the vehicle whilst on the phone to the nice police chap, convinced I was going to find dead people - surprisingly, the two (late teens) boys were up and about, chatting like nothing had even happened. Hopefully that was just the shock and the whole thing gave them a bloody big fright... I had to give a statement to the police and agree to testify incase they go to court for dangerous driving. I'm hoping they see sense and just plead guilty so I don't have to.
As if the drama factor wasn't high enough after that little incident, we noticed a couple of bizarre transactions while checking our bank account online a couple of days later, and discovered that somehow we've been the victims of credit card fraud - to the tune of about £900. Thankfully, the bank, who have been a bit crap in the past, were really good and blocked my card, which they made me chop up (the first time I've had to do that!) and they've refunded our money, so no harm done long term -but a bit worrying. Kent has convinced himself it's because I bought perfume online - although when I emailed to let that site know they might like to check their security, they assured us it wasn't them and agreed to help the bank out in their investigations, so who knows?
We've also had the delightful incident of Kent forgetting to pick me up from work... because he also forgot he had the car and got a ride home from work himself...oops, his bad! They lock the college at night, so he had to cycle to work the next morning - and it's pretty hilly, for Suffolk.
Not too many photos this time round, although we've just bought a sexy new DSLR (that's flash like a fancy film camera, only digital), under the guise that we can get someone to use it at our wedding... but mostly for Kent to play with.
Our big trip next year is coming together nicely, we both finish work on the 19th of December and then it's off in to the big wide world for 4 1/2 months of no work...bliss!

Strap yourself in... it's a catchup!

Ok... In a complete turnaround, I'm going to attempt to fill you in as quickly as I can... a novel may still follow...

I managed to snare tickets to see Stevie Wonder at the O2 a couple of weeks back, much to the chagrin of a couple of my workmates, and he was awesome! It was his first tour of the UK in ten years or something, and initially I was a little un-engaged as he played a LOT of album tracks - slow ones, at that! - but he rolled out about an hour of hits at the end, which was just fantastic... and free, so it doesn't get much better than that.
The next week it was back to the O2 for Nickelback (another blag - I'm getting rather better at this now!), which I'd jacked up for Kent months ago, after he insisted on watching the 'Rock Star' video on YouTube over and over and over again... They were just amazing live - a notch above anyone I've seen live in the last few years - and there were a couple of families there with younger kids who were really getting into their airguitars - it was supercute!


We met our friends Jordan & Jax at the tube station afterwards and brought them back to Ipswich with us.
The next day was beautiful, so we drove to Hickling Broad and hired a boat for half a day for a bit of a cruise around... we've done this before, and probably will again - it's great - so be warned, if you're planning a visit anytime soon!


Some of my workmates had a flatwarming that night, so it was, ahem, a fairly late night/early morning for all bar Kent, who is far more restrained. This proved to be quite handy as he got up early to cook us all a wicked breakky before we wandered into the park and then drove to Flatford, just down the motorway from us in Constable Country for a picnic... people have been urging us for months to pop down, as it's rather pretty, and quite peaceful. We had a lovely wander in the sun before dropping J & J back at the train station.
In other news, we had to call the police (thank goodness we had to call them while I was at work, as the emergency number here is different than at home!) after our neighbours decided to have a rather loud fist fight outside... in the middle of the afternoon. Luckily no one was seriously injured, after my hero Kent intervened and pulled one off the other... and was promptly accused of being racist as one of them happens to be dark-skinned. Ah, you just can't win, can you?

Oh yes and Kent's been to two football games this week... Ipswich Town lost both of them... perhaps he's a jinx for them?!

It's been lovely again today, so we went to Sutton Hoo, which is an Anglo-Saxon burial ground, where archaeologists unearthed a massive burial ship just before WWII. There's quite a lot of evidence to suggest it's the one holding Raedwald, who was King of East Anglia in the 600s - it was pretty cool, and there's a great story that the old woman who lived on the farm there kept having dreams about a huge burial procession for a King and so funded the digging... personally, I'd have thought the unusual mounds in the field on her otherwise flat farm might have been a giveaway, but it's nice to have a story.
Incidentally, it's between Sutton Hoo and Orford Castle, where we went next, that I found apples that actually taste like apples... let's face it, they've been a bit rubbish for ages, but we drove up a narrow dirt path and found a farm that sold them...mmmmmm... they tasted exactly like the ones we had as kids.
Orford Castle was also pretty cool. I have to confess that I do get a little 'castled out' at times, thankfully this one is almost a 'castlette' - it's still standing, but only one really big tower and a couple of small ones attached to the main one. It's good and tall, so there are amazing views of the north of Suffolk from the top; especially good views from the bit of the top Kent climbed over the fence to take a video of... I think he thinks he's Indiana Jones... or Lara Croft?
Not mega-quick, but not too bad to sum up the last few weeks... we'll spend the next few planning Christmas (sorry, but someone has to be the first to use that word) and my trip to Disneyland Paris with Susie News - YAY!
Take care,
Eryn x