Wednesday, July 20, 2011

It’s time to say goodbye to London

The last few months in London were spent organising travel ventures, furiously booking flights and hostels, tying up loose ends and discussing the road ahead...

Oh, we did however manage to squeeze in visits to the much acclaimed Royal Ascot races (if you call trudging around in the general admin tent, still muddy and balancing your bag, drink, tickets and form guide highly regarded – then that was us). A super day, that aside. No winners.

Wimbledon was also an event high on our to-do list and although we were not hard core by camping out the night for tickets, we did arrive there at 6.00am and stood in line for 5 hours. Believe it or not but the time flew by (caffeine and some old backyard cricket with a wooden pale bat did help). What a great day, full of tradition, strawberries and cream, Pimms and oh, some fine tennis too. Great get to line up for ‘second hand’ tickets while in there too – Bernard Tomic will be a fine player!


We had such an amazing time in London, mixed experiences with teaching but overall a massive learning opportunity and were very grateful for the time we had. Always something to do, somewhere to go and fun to be had. Oh, and the charity store downstairs from us was also very grateful for pretty much all the possessions we had in our Autumn House pad... Now it is literally only the clothes on our back.

Bye London, been a pleasure and let the next 3 months begin....

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Family Reunion in Torino!!

Bee was lucky enough to have her parents in the same hemisphere again – attending an archery event in Turin – a perfect excuse to duck over to Italy for the weekend... It was so wonderful to see Bee’s parents and grandparents again, who also flew in from Vienna. Now, to say that Bee just made it would be an understatement – yes there is a story...

So the alarm was set for 2.30am Friday morning. It failed to go off and Bee awoke at 4.30. STRESS! She had obviously missed her 3.30am bus to Stansted and now was on a race against the clock to make her 6.20am flight. A taxi to Liverpool Street, and the Stanstead express train – arrival at the airport at 6.00am. Stress, run, frantic, just made it to the gate when they were calling ‘Flight Closed’. 10 seconds later and it would have been all over..... Phew!

Anyways, now in Turin – lots of dinners out (pizza and pasta, red wine, Tiramisu, gelato, who can complain?). It was nice to take it easy for a few days and check out the sites – The Royal Palace, Cathedrals, Museums – nice city but nothing super special.

It was the company that made it very special...