Our European Adventure

Crap weather would not stop us from attacking the Portobello road markets! We started the day in the world’s tiniest café, being nudged and elbowed while we plowed through coffees and pastries. Our clothes and hair were soggy, but our spirits were bright, and soon the weather followed!

Markets were a treat. Bought lots of cool handmade bags, belts, clothes etc. but really there was no limit to what you could get there if you were interested. We tried to avoid the stinky fish stalls but couldn’t stop ourselves from looking at everything else. It was a really nice day, finished off at the Prince Albert pub. Saphira loves referring to pubs as “the public house,” and has been desperate to go to another one since we got back from Bristol. What a treat when we found awesome food, music and atmosphere inside! We sat at the rainbow table (appropriate, much?) and saphira drew pictures of all the awesome things we’d been doing while we enjoyed a few beers on the couch. They played cool music and we had a bit of a sing-along too. Lovely.

A bad night’s sleep led to yet another big sleep in. We made it out of the hotel at about lunch time and set off to Mildred’s vegetarian restaurant in Soho. The food was divine. Dunno if Mildred was there though. We did look for her!

We spent the afternoon walking around Soho, Oxford Street, and Regent Street. Got dinner at a 50s theme restaurant (lame! But the beer was good) and just wandered about in a bit of a senseless way. The Christmas Lights had all been turned on and all the shops had their window displays out so it was a pretty fantastic sight.

Day 22: Tuesday

We spent the day exploring the Natural History Museum. Checked out all the mammals and dinosaurs. To be honest, I could have stayed all day, but it was a bit much for saphira.

Just outside the natural history museum was an open-air ice rink! How awesome! We were freezing our butts off so bad, and I thought mel would chicken out, but all three of us strapped on our skates and went flailing across the ice! It might have been romantic with the fairy lights and music, and the elegant figures of dancing skaters, but alas. Captain Klutz had shown up with his girlfriend, and every five seconds he seemed to be flying towards one of us, completely out of control and unable to stop! We had to duck and weave, which, if you can imagine a white whale on ice skates, isn’t that easy.

Saphira has never ice skated before, and her technique is a little hard to describe. It’s kind of like running, or marching, but funnier. She goes for speed, rather than style, and constantly has a panicked look on her face. Okay, we all had that look on our faces with the Captain so close, but there was a definite sense of freaked-outness about her that was pretty funny.

At one stage, Saffi and I totally stacked it and went sliding on the ice. I can’t even tell you how it happened, but I can tell you it hurt! Saffi had the biggest bruise on her bum! After that, she really wanted to get off and never skate again, but we forced her to keep going and by the end of the night she was gushing about what a great time she had and how awesome she is at ice skating. Hmmm.

Poor Mel was left alone the whole time because she was so focused on not falling down that she didn’t want to hang out with us (plus I don’t know if she could keep up with saphira’s super speed). I had saphira practically hanging from my right arm the entire time (despite trying my best to encourage her to branch out on her own!) By about halfway through Mel was having a better time, still with the main goal of not falling down. She seemed to be a magnet for crap skaters, and was constantly being smashed by out of control kids (not forgetting the Captain) and almost stacking it. On reflection, she thinks that she had a good time. I think.

Day 23: Wed

Back for round two at the natural history museum! Actually, it was way better than the first day because we got to go inside “the cocoon”. It’s pretty cool, with interactive stuff for kids and heaps of gross creepy crawlies. You got to spy on real biologists doing experiments and the only downside was the school groups. Oh, yuck. Can’t even count the number of times we both almost started organising this bunch of rowdy kids. Not exactly helping us get excited about going back to work.

We spent the evening in Soho, and made the fatal mistake of trying to find a hairdresser. Returned with the worst haircuts the world has ever seen, and I refuse to write any more about it, because I’m in public right now, and could end up in tears just thinking about that awful night.

Day 20: Sun

As usual, we woke up in our cave wondering what time it was, and discovered we’d slept in. No that we cared, after a great night we deserved a sleep in! We all dressed up (in our one good outfit) for our matinee show of The Lion King.

Okay, we loved it. The costumes, the sets, the singing, the puppets, it was all amazing. Saphira’s favourite thing was that there were little kids in the show! The little girl who played Nala also played a cute little elephant which Saffi thought was just brilliant. And the boy playing Simba was adorable!

After the show we hung out in Covent Garden. Very tempted by the cupcake shop! Saphira really loved the buskers and the fairy lights.

Day 21: Mon

Monday ended up being a bit of a write off. We spent the day sleeping in and organising the rest of our trip. Booked trains, flights and hotels so we still felt pretty good about ourselves at the end of the day, and über excited about Italy and Greece!

At some stage we had to decided to extend our stay in London based on the fact that we’d spent a few days in Bristol, we hadn’t been particularly well, the weather had been crap, and we’d slept in too much to get everything done that we wanted to do. So we had a nice relaxing day checking out the Tower of London.

We were looking around King Edward’s chamber when a knight from the past started chatting up Mel! He turned out to be quite knowledgeable about all things medieval and we had fun asking him questions and trying to explain to him the purpose of television. That was great, but the best was when his wife rocked up. She was in a perky mood and felt like teaching us a dance (there were about 20 other tourists watching us, which was just great). So she taught us the steps. We all had to hold hands and walk around to the left, then the right, then something else, la-di-da, then “we all hop around in a circle”. All of us, including her husband, started actually HOPPING ON ONE FOOT (very awkward when you’re carrying a camera around your neck and you’re unco and a fat old bag like me) and she started cracking up laughing and said, “Oh no, I didn’t mean hop on one foot!! No no no… Like THIS….” Which meant not hopping, but SKIPPING – somewhat easier and less embarrassing than hopping, fortunately, since by then a small crowd had gathered and we were all giggling and blushing and puffing with exertion.

We saw the crown jewels (yawn) and got our heads full of history before departing under the big stone gates to walk along the thames and off to that giant circle of tourists in glass boxes, the London Eye.

Heaps of the major parks and gardens around London had special Bonfire Night fireworks displays on, which just happened to coincide with the time we chose to go on the Eye. Brilliant! There we were, looking out over the whole city, while flashes of brightly coloured fireworks shot up from different corners all around us. It was totally cool, although not nearly as cool as our own fireworks on the mound in Bristol. Maybe we should have been passing round a bottle of Baileys?

Have to mention the cute Italian restaurant under the train station where we had dinner. Stone walls, candles, and a slight shaking with every passing train above us. Nice. And the wine was amazing.

Sadly, we woke to find that James had already left for work, so we spent the morning just hanging out and chatting with Dom, Kiri and Liz. It was nice just lazing around and drinking coffee and acting like we didn’t have to leave. We were sad to go and Saphira spent pretty much the entire train ride sobbing and sighing and dramatically pronouncing, “I JUST MISS EVERYONE SOOOO MUCH!” Ever since we left she’s been asking, “What do you think Elijah’s doing?” and “What do you think Elijah would say about my drawing?” and “Can we PLEEAASSE buy one of those for Elijah?” It’s heartbreakingly beautiful.

The reason we had to get back to London was to see Wicked. Wow! We were mesmerised from the moment it started. Loved all the little references to the parallel story of the Wizard of Oz. Loved the music. I think we all fell a little bit in love with Elpheba. The thing I love about musicals is that everything that you want to happen, happens. Just when you think, “Now would be a good time for everyone to break into song and dance around,” they do! I love it! Oh my gosh I love it.

Finished the night off at Nandos, which is surprisingly better over here than the one at Buranda shops. Pigged out on hommus with chilli oil, corn, and peri peri chips. Hurrah!

After MUCH effort we finally managed to arrange to see Kiri, Dom, James, Liz and Elijah for a couple of days in Bristol. Took the train in the morning (after an annoying and stupid mix-up we missed one train, but they got us on another and asked Kiri to, “Please apologise to Miss Jones for the inconvenience.”)

The first thing everyone noticed about us when we got to Bristol was, “You’re so colourful!” I guess after living in the bland shades of grey of England, people start dressing to fit their environment. We, on the other hand, look like a trio of travelling gypsy clowns. We can’t help it! We just like being bright! And the other thing that our dear Aussie friends commented on was, “I can’t believe how strong your Australian accents are!” (Code for: “you guys sound like total bogans,” - which we do.)

Bristol is cool. Lots of hills, colourful townhouses and brightly painted doors. Far more trees than boring old London as well. The fact that it was Guy Fawkes night and we were finally in the company of people who knew our names, and noticed the same strange things about English people as we did, gave us great reason to celebrate. A plan was hatched to climb the “mound” with some DIY fireworks – and maybe there’d be some other people up there too. Woohoo!

Dom came home from work and we left Liz in the kitchen (baking! Oh yeah!) to go out in Bristol and pick up some fireworks. Dom and Kiri were excellent guides and we got to check out Kiri’s work at the Olive Grove or whatever it was called, until one of her workmates spotted us standing across the road taking photos and generally acting goofy. When she waved to Kiri with a slightly confused look on her face, we hastily made tracks.

Almost had to witness Kiri purchasing an ugly home made Halloween mouse from an op-shop but were saved by Dom’s sarcastic comments. Phew!

The fireworks shopping experience was slightly surreal. We all walked in and looked around with no idea what we were looking for or how to ask for it. It’s weird that the fireworks don’t actually have pictures of what the fireworks will look like on them. So how do you differentiate? The fireworks man asked if we wanted lots of colour, lots of noise, or both. Ummm…? We ended up with an interesting collection of explosives that would apparently look kinda impressive when set off at night. So, happy with our purchases, we proceeded to the park to meet Liz and James and Elijah. That plan got hijacked by the absolutely freezing weather, and we all agreed that hot chips at the pub was a much better idea. So there we were, with our bags of fireworks (James came back with a fairly big bag himself, after “just popping in for a look to see what it’s all about”) crowded around a table at the pub (the very same pub we’d scoffed at earlier for advertising FREE JUGS!! of water), drinking typical English ale (flat and warm, just the way we like it) and generally feeling good about ourselves.

It really was great to feel so welcomed by our friends and be able to talk rubbish and laugh with people who just got us and didn’t give us weird looks all the time. Saphira pretty much fell in love at first sight with Elijah. Pretty cool because the last time Dom, Kiri and James saw Saffi she would have been not much older than Elijah is now. She drew him pictures and took him for little walks and basically just tried to mother him as much as possible. Totally cute.

We ate dinner in the lounge room at Chateau de Lay/Kleinig and sloshed down some wine before donning all our warm clothes for the climb up the mound. Got up the top to find a bonfire, a great view and a stack of drunk English people. What’s wrong with this picture? A heap of people sitting on top of a mountain in close range of a bonfire setting off fireworks at random!?! It was great. Really really fun. Saphira was such a trooper, hanging out with us, chatting to Kiri while James, Dom, Mel and I tried to work out what to do with our fireworks and took turns with the dodgy lighter. We had a great time swigging from our shared bottle of Baileys, watching people setting off different fireworks, and braving our own.

The best was when Dom set a huge one off right over the crowd of people. Whoops! The rocket went flying at a big bunch of strangers… it was pretty loud and firey! We all just ducked and laughed and thanked the universe that it didn’t set anyone on fire! The big box we bought had to be buried 20cm into the ground, which was fun since we didn’t exactly have any digging implements except for the plastic tubes we used to launch our rockets. We gave it a solid home in the ground and if I say so myself, it was awesome. What wasn’t awesome was the stupid idiot dog that kept barking and trying to attack the box where the fireworks were coming from. I don’t know how many times it burnt its dumb dog nose but it kept going back. Later we saw the dog’s owner and realised that the dog was actually the smart one in his household in comparison.

It was cool too because on top of the mound we could see all the other fireworks being let off at random places around Bristol as well as the ones on the mound. It felt so sly and illegal, even though it was perfectly legitimate, to let off fireworks in a public place whenever we felt like it. So much fun.

Ended the night with a sweet cider from the off-license and Kiri and Dom even lent us their bed, the gorgeous things. We felt very taken-care-of and loved.