| Jersey, Feb 1st - 3rd 2008 |
[10 Feb 2008|08:59pm] |
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Took the boyf to Jersey for the weekend of his birthday because I wanted to do something nice for him, but of course with only having a weekend we couldn’t go very far – I thought we should go somewhere in the UK, then the Channel Islands sprang to mind because it’s still the UK but different, and neither of us had been to any of them before! So of course I chose the biggest one, and I thought it could be a little voyage of discovery for us both and if we liked it we could go back in the Summer when the weather would be better.
I hadn’t told him where we were going as I’d wanted it to be a surprise, and he said he wanted to wear his gorilla suit for his birthday – when I came out of work on the Friday afternoon there he was waiting for me, in his gorilla suit! Not the head, hands and feet, just the body part, but still…! We got on the Tube to Heathrow airport, and little bits of hairs off the suit were flying off everywhere! Everyone was staring at him and smiling or giggling, it was really cute :) We got to the airport really early and went to the Square Pie café, where we had square pies for dinner! As the plane lowered itself towards Jersey we stared out of the window at the blackness and discussed how few lights there were and how deserted the streets were on the ground below. Got into a taxi from the airport (in the St Peter area) and Shan chattered excitedly to the driver, asking him all kinds of things about the island – aaaaw :) Along the drive, noticed all the road names are in French, and a quick look at the map showed that all the areas of the island are called St-something (St Peter, St Helier, St Aubins…). When I paid the driver he gave me my change in pound notes! I knew the Channel Islands use pounds sterling but I hadn’t known they still have pound notes! So that was a nice surprise :) Arrived at guesthouse (in the St Aubins area) and were welcomed by a very nice man who’d been expecting us and had put the heater on in our room a few ours before so it was nice and cosy when we got in there! The room was huge, the bed was massive with big fat soft pillows, the TV on the wall was a little sleek black flatscreen, and I stared out of the window at the pretty lights of the harbour and the little castle fort thing silhouetted in the near distance (later found out it’s called St Aubins Fort). We lounged around in the nice big cosy bed watching TV, and examined the free information pack we’d picked up at the airport before drifting off to sleep… The alarm was set for 7am in order to go downstairs for breakfast, and I stared out of the window again to get an idea of our surroundings – and saw the sun beginning to peek out from behind the horizon! So I stood there and watched the sun rise! I’ve never had the opportunity to do that before, I’ve watched it set behind the clouds of Tenerife… I wished Shan would have been awake enough to share the experience with me but my efforts to wake him fully had failed, bless :) Here's the sun rising, with St Aubins Fort on the right:
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| Holland Oct 20th and 21st 2007 |
[22 Oct 2007|08:43pm] |
Just got back from Holland last night! Drove there and back! Well, I didn't - my companion did, 'cos of course I don't drive :P Anyway, the occasion was Lisette and Raoul's housewarming-combined-with-Raoul's-birthday-celebration party, and Lisette organised it in secret so I was a surprise for Raoul!
It really was a flying visit...here be pictures and a few words...
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| Gibraltar, July 2007 |
[10 Sep 2007|09:01pm] |
Heyyyy folks! 'Bout time I posted in here again eh?! Now that I have my PC down here in London I can concentrate on this more in future :)
So, as some of you know I popped over to Gibraltar for a weekend in July, and here are a few words and a lot of pictures about it :) I'd never been there before and I knew virtually nothing about it, so I jumped at the chance to go - I might never go there again so I didn't want to miss the opportunity!
Gibraltar's official website is here if you want to know more...and here is a gorgeous photo of some general scenery that Shan took on one of the days before I got there to join him:
*sigh* Soooo pretty...
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| Italy, June 2006: Florence |
[24 Apr 2007|08:33pm] |
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Finally – the post you’ve all been waiting for!! Yes, it’s our day trip to Florence/Firenze, which it would have been much too awkward and time-consuming and expensive to make our own way to. Ooooh, I may have to do a few separate posts about this, as we saw and did so much in just that one day :) Hmmm, where to start…I know, here’s a picture of me looking all poetic somewhere between the Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany regions: I’d decided to be Frida Kahlo that day, heh heh! Well, we got our wake up call at daft-o’clock in the morning (5.30am) but my sister and I had already been awoken by our phone alarms just before that. We made our way to beach number 16 to get picked up in the coach at 6.30am, and we were the first people there when the coach came! The driver was Fabio – you may remember he was driving the coach that picked us up at Rimini airport when we arrived in Italy and he gave me a big ‘heyyy baby’ smile and I giggled and he giggled back…! So then of course I was thinking ‘How nice, going to be spending most of the day with the hot Italian guy…’, heh heh ;) The coach had arrived 10 minutes early, and 2 young ladies with Manchester accents got on and sat in front of my sister and I, and all they did was moan and complain, right from the start! They were in their early 20s I’d say, and they had such a bad attitude, later on in the day I seriously wondered why they’d bothered to come on the trip at all. One of them grumped: “Who we waitin’ for now?”, other one replied: “Dunno…I’m sorry but if I can get out of bed and out the door for 6.30 then anyone can”, then they just sat there bitching about waiting for other people and when we were going to leave – they hadn’t even looked at their watches or phones to notice that we still weren’t due to leave for another couple of minutes, they wanted everything their way!
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| Italy 2006: Gabicce Mare |
[23 Mar 2007|01:47pm] |
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As I mentioned in my earlier journal entry about Cattolica, Gabicce Mare is the next-door resort, and seems quite small and quaint. Lots of good little shops though :) They have a very good magazine shop, where I bought a package of 3 (Italian) tattoo magazines for 6 euros, yay! They also have a little cosmetics shop that we finally found Deborah make up in – it’s an Italian brand that we discovered the previous year (2005) on Tenerife (it was new then), and since it’s my sister’s name we had to buy some of it! It turned out to be really nice to wear, quite good quality, and we wished we’d bought more of it! So when we knew we were going to Italy we intended to buy some more but we couldn’t find it anywhere, until we saw it in Gabicce Mare so then I was happy and I bought an eyeshadow/pencil stick-thingy and a pink shimmery lipstick :) Anyway…! My sister and I had been on the beach (in Cattolica) for a few hours that morning, chillin’ out and also filming attractive blokes in shorts and with very nice bodies without them noticing ‘cos I was using the zoom on the camera! Oh and we had a little bitch about some girl I filmed a little bit ‘cos she was all flabby and podgy, wearing a little g-string bikini and all her dimply cellulite was wobbling all over the place as she played ping-pong or something and she thought she looked gorgeous, ha ha! So when we’d had enough of the beach (and ran out of hunky tanned young Mediterranean dudes to perv at) we went for a wander over the little footbridge to Gabicce Mare for a look around. But unfortunately it was still siesta time, so we sat outside at a little café and had some drinks – I had another one of those hot chocolates that you saw a photo of in an earlier post! It was a tiny place, with only one waiter – and he was soooo cute! Looked to be in his mid-20s, shaved head which I don’t usually find attractive but this guy was so smiley and laughing and chatty and friendly, he’s the kind of guy everyone likes I reckon! So we had something nice to look at while having our drinks, heh :) Then suddenly the whole town got really busy, people filled the streets for evening strolls and shopping, they all seemed to come from nowhere! Then our parents joined us and we all had a little walk around and a look in the shops.
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| Italy June 2006: shopping in San Marino! |
[18 Mar 2007|02:14pm] |
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A few photos I just had to take… :) There were quite a few little specialist alcohol shops here and there, and in one of them I was rather bewildered at the extensive array of absinthe on display inside! All different shaped bottles of all different sizes and all different brands… I didn’t buy any because I just couldn’t decide on one! Outside that same shop I just had to photograph two bottles featuring really great artwork on their labels… See what it says at the bottom of the label? ‘The wine of love’, aaaah :)
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| Italy, June 2006: San Marino, Museum of Curiosities |
[11 Mar 2007|12:03am] |
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As mentioned in my previous post about San Marino… I shall just quote for you some writing from the San Marino book about this weird and wonderful place: “This is the only museum of its kind in the world…The examples on show, some original and others reproduced, document human eccentricity and curiosity. ..This is a permanent exhibition and is open to the public 365 days a year. Amongst the most unusual pieces on show are a trap for fleas, a watch to wear on your nose, several cups for men with moustaches, the world’s longest fingernails, the ‘glass suits’ completely covered in mother-of-pearl buttons of the Pearly Kings and Queens of London which date from 1920, glasses for people with cross-eyes, an electrical device to stop adolescent boys from masturbating, Venetian clogs with 60cms-high platforms, an umbrella-whip for a one-horse carriage, a petrol-powered hairdryer, glasses for wigs and many, many more.” Did you hear that – open 365 days a year?! Christmas Day curiosities, anyone?! :D
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| Italy June 2006: San Marino |
[07 Mar 2007|11:43am] |
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“Welcome to the ancient land of liberty” (greeting at the border of the Republic of San Marino) My parents had told us a little about San Marino, which they’d visited when they took their Mums there in the early 70s (as mentioned in my previous journal entry), but I’d never heard of it before then, and all I knew was that it was a whole town or city built up and around a huge mountain more-or-less in the middle of Italy. But I later found out that it’s a separate country! That’s why I said in my last post that it’s a country-within-a-country! San Marino is (so I’m told) the smallest republic in the world. The Vatican City is officially the smallest country in the world, with Monaco (within France) a close second, but I would guess San Marino is third. It’s an ‘independent state on the Italian peninsular’, according to the book about it that I bought there for my Dad. It stands between the regions of Emilia-Romagna and Marches, and it's center is Mount Titano, 738 meters above sea level. At the very top of Mount Titano is the administrative center and the seat of the government – the city of San Marino. The country is famous for its’ 3 medieval towers spaced along the edge of the mountain, which is a very touristy thing to walk along them – but we ran out of time to do that due to exploring everything else, the last bus back down to Rimini left at 7.30pm!
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| Back to Italy again! June 2006 |
[16 Feb 2007|01:15pm] |
Well, finally finished my Paris section so I can now continue telling you about the Italy stuff that I'd interrupted... :)
You may remember my last journal entry told you about the nearby resort of Riccione. Well that evening when we got back to Cattolica (our base) we went for a little walk down by the harbour and found a footbridge across the little river which led to the next-door resort named Gabicce Mare (pronounced 'gabeechee mah-ray'; the word ‘Gabicci’ isn’t in my dictionary, but ‘mare’ means ‘sea’ so I guess it’s somewhere-on-sea). That was a really pretty little place, very quaint but lively and with lovely lights everywhere in the night. Absolutely full of cute little shops too! We looked down one of the main roads to see a small restaurant/café that had an Elvis impersonator singing into a microphone, standing out on the pavement in front of it – white jumpsuit-era Elvis! All the people watching him were standing on the other side of the road, afraid to get too close to him! He was really good and entertaining, and got a round of applause after each song (we only stayed to watch one or 2 songs). The next day we thought there wouldn’t be many places open or things going on with it being THE Catholic country and it being Sunday, so we decided to stay in Cattolica for the day. How wrong we were – it was business as usual! So we had a chance to look around all the shops, at the beautiful Venice masks of all different sizes, colours, designs, details, prices…gorgeous fans of all shapes, sizes and decorations…funky and cool bags with pictures of characters such as Betty Boop, Hello Kitty, Whinny the Pooh… I bought this really cute little tshirt:
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| Paris August 2006, Day3: Notre Dame Cathedral |
[13 Feb 2007|03:06pm] |
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We emerged from the Metro station and walked along the Seine, quite high above it, and the old part of Paris looked so beautiful in the night, the lights of the cafes dancing on the water like multicoloured glitter fallen down from the black velvet sky. Then we saw it, emerging majestically above the tops of the trees, softly floodlit with a gentle, spiritual white light, appearing to peacefully glow from within – Notre Dame. ‘The Cathedral of Notre Dame…is the historic and geographic heart of Paris. Its foundation stone was laid by Pope Alexander III in 1163, and construction was completed roughly two centuries later.’ (From ‘1,000 Places To See Before You Die’, again)
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| Paris August 2006, Day 2: Artwork |
[22 Nov 2006|12:51pm] |
As I said in my previous post, we returned to the hotel and did some Artwork. Before we went to Paris Shan had asked if he could draw and write on my body, and I thought that was a great idea and bought some cheap little liquid eyeliners for that purpose. I also wanted to draw and write a bit on him, and here are the results...
[they may not be worksafe because there's some naked flesh available, but nothing actually naughty]
( click here for pictures )
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| Paris, August 2006, Day 2: afternoon/evening |
[15 Nov 2006|10:53am] |
Lots and lots of things in this instalment: extreme football skills, aggression on the steps of Sacre Coeur, the hiding Eiffel Tower, anonymous buildings, crepes on a fountain, the ancient obelisk, deformed statue, strange circus, evasive lingerie, The Paris Incident, posh restaurant, links to make up and perfume...
( click here to read all about it! )
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| Paris August 2006: Day2, Sacre Coeur |
[08 Nov 2006|11:33am] |
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So, we went back down the hill and had a little walk around looking for a shop that sold batteries. We found one, purchased batteries, and continued walking. Although it wasn’t a bright sunny day it was rather hot, so when we spotted a cute little café we sauntered in to have a little sit down and drink. We had iced tea, put new batteries in both our cameras (mine had also decided to die by that point), and carried on back up the hill to Sacre Coeur again. We went a different, quieter way this time, avoiding the manic hustle and bustle of our previous journey up there, and found this rather pretty water tower: Yeah ok it’s just a water tower, but it’d make a nice building to live in wouldn’t it?! See, you could have it converted into apartments, or have one big main staircase spiraling up through the middle, with lots of little rooms branching off it…
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| Paris August 2006: Day 2, part 1 |
[26 Oct 2006|01:44pm] |
OK, so, on our second day in Paris we decided to go up to the Amelie cafe again (Cafe des Deux Moulins) but to have breakfast this time. It was just as packed as the other time we went there - a real tourist spot! Good atmosphere though, all lively and friendly. The poor waiters were running round like headless chickens trying to serve everyone, but the one that came to us was very happy and smiley and friendly, not at all grumpy-harrassed! He spoke so fast I had to ask him to speak in English (bit too rusty with French to understand rapid-fire vocab!), and we ordered chicken with 'chips' that were more like crunchy shreds of potato shards (Shan's food), and I had salad/quiche/gazpacho/diced melon, and pomme d'amour tea again, naturellement, and when I ordered that the waiter said 'nice accent!', hee hee! We sat at the back this time, and almost underneath the signed Amelie poster:
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| Hello! *waves* |
[29 Sep 2006|02:39pm] |
Just a little note to say that this journal has recently been updated, but it didn't appear on any of your friends pages (I checked some of them), I don't know why! It took me a while to do the entry as I had technical problems with it, and lack of regular internet access, but I finally got it finished and changed the date on it, to update it. But it didn't show up anywhere! So click on my username to read the post before this one, which is my first about my recent Paris trip (with pictures!) :)
Thanks! :D
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| Paris August 2006: Day One |
[23 Sep 2006|07:48pm] |
Shan and I woke up nice and early, all excited, got our stuff together, and got on the train from St Albans into London – luckily for us is was the fast train that goes straight there without doing all the stops along the way that the slow train does. Well, in theory anyway...in practice, the ‘fast’ train turned out to be very slow, even without all the stops (Shan reckoned it had arrived early so was going slow to make up for it). What should have been about a 20-minute journey ended up taking about 40 minutes, thus getting us to London slightly later than we’d have liked. Then of course we had to get on that horrible little Tube to Waterloo, where the Eurostar terminal is. Shan had his printed-out info from when he’d booked the tickets online, with which he had to go to an e-ticket machine, input the ref. number and get our tickets printed out. But it only printed his tickets, not mine! We waited a minute or 2, and seeing that nothing was happening we spoke to a nice French man who worked there who said the machine had made a mistake and was faulty, and advised us to go to the ticket office to get my tickets printed out. He asked what time our Eurostar was, then informed us the check-in had just closed and we’d have to miss it – because of that damn e-ticket machine! Fortunately there wasn’t much of a queue in the ticket office, and we got my tickets and were told to try to check-in anyway, but the man at the check-in told us we’d just missed it and had to go back into the ticket office again to see if we could get on the next one! More of a queue this time, but when we got served the nice Dutch-sounding man behind the counter managed to get us the last 2 seats on the next Eurostar an hour later – yay! So then we were safely on the Eurostar, which was a new experience for both of us. It’s lovely! A very smooth ride, very clean and comfortable, and such a long train – about 20 carriages! The food section didn’t really have much available at that time though. Anyway, most of our fellow passengers were real business types, proper ‘executives’ in expensive suits, with expensive luggage, tapping away on their laptops on the little fold-down tables. Made me feel like a right scruff, in a fun type of way! Most of the journey seemed to be through countryside of both England and France – it only took 20 minutes to go through the Channel Tunnel (2 and a half hours journey in total). We arrived at Gare du Nord and made our way to the ticket office to buy a Paris Visite card, where I did my first bit of French speaking to ask the man for the cards and I got it all right and he understood me exactly and I was all pleased with myself! (in case you’re interested I said Je voudrais deux carte Paris Visite, pour trois jours, pour dans le centre de Paris, s’il vous plait) Then we hopped onto the Metro and it was only 3 stops to our hotel, which was right over the road from the exit of the Metro station. Oh, and I’d bought a new mini suitcase for the trip (it was very cheap in Asda) and on all our journeys that day Shan had insisted on carrying it everywhere for me – what a gentleman! Aaaaw :) Anyway so then we got to the hotel, which I’d promised Shan I wouldn’t look for online as he’d wanted it to be a surprise for me. It certainly was a (lovely) surprise! All Eastern style (Arabic/Egyptian, y’know?), bright warm colours of rich fabric draped everywhere, so opulent and extravagant and luxurious. Such detail everywhere, such wonderful colours, and that wonderful Eastern music playing in the background (belly dancing type music, but with singing – I love that stuff!). The Arabic-looking man who checked us in was just SO gay and camp, he was great, so smiley and friendly! He told us all the rooms don’t have numbers, they have names, and our room was named ‘Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’ – how wonderful, I love his paintings! We later found out the other rooms had names like ‘Edith Piaff’, and…erm…other famous French historical figures that I can’t remember right now :( But anyway the nice man then gave us some papers, one of which was a welcome letter-type thing which said at the top ‘Dear Mr and Mrs [Shan’s surname]’! I laughed and exclaimed to Shan “Oh, when did we get married?! I don’t remember that!” Shan just laughed and the check-in man giggled while covering his mouth with his hand, like “Oops! Sorry…!” I kept giggling at it after he’d gone, I found it hilarious (although Shan looked a bit scared…!). Oh and the man also pointed out to us the tickets for a boat cruise along the Seine which he said was in with the price of the room, all paid for…Then we were able to get in the lift to our room. The back of the lift was clear glass, and as we ascended we saw lovely paintings up the wall behind of Toulouse-Lautrec style Can-Can dancers and other sophisticated French figures! How pretty! All the inside of the lift was padded velvet-type fabric and gold detailing, really opulent (I will keep using that word, it’s very appropriate!). Our room was a little small but I didn’t mind that at all, I found it rather cosy, and it was beautifully decorated, with a lovely view of the street and all the people below (and a lovely little fountain). The hotel is in the same area I stayed in when I went to Paris in January, in the lovely Montmartre area, just on the edge of the Red Light District! Very bright and colourful and lots of fun :)
Now I’d like to continue my story in words and pictures...
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| Italy, June 2006: seeing and being seen - Riccione |
[23 Jul 2006|01:17am] |
Riccione is the next resort along from Cattolica, and just 2 train stops along(whereas Rimini is 4 or 5). This was the best city for shopping, in my opinion – all it seems to have in it is shops! Just endless streets full of shops…shops shops shops…and even a few 99cent shops – extremely rare in Italy, it seems! Do bear in mind though that in countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal it’s not quite the same concept as our pound shops – not everything is 99cents, just a lot of things (but all the other stuff isn’t much more expensive, and some things are cheaper) even though it says outside that everything is 99cents. Bit annoying really! Anyway I of course bought lots of cute little fun things for myself, including one or two Hello Kitty things (which were only between 1 and 3 euros) so that was me very happy :) There were also a few antiques market stalls which were very interesting but none of us were prepared to pay antiques prices, heh heh.
We stopped for some ice cream in a nice little café not long after we’d got there and sat at an outside table. Just as we were finishing our ice creams a holiday jet flew over us, obviously just about to touch down at Rimini airport, and my goodness the noise… The house here in England where I was raised and have kept coming back to is quite near Liverpool John Lennon Airport so I’m well used to planes flying over the house and well used to the noise of them, but I have never seen a plane as close to the tops of the trees as that one in Riccione! It looked like I could reach up and touch the underside of it as it zoomed past, and the noise got so unbearably loud I had to put my fingers in my ears – something I used to do in our garden when I was a child while running into the house crying (I had extremely sensitive hearing then), but haven’t done for years since. It really was one of those ‘Wow!’ moments (*gasp!*, *sheesh!*, *phew!*, etc!), we all just sat there staring at each other with open mouths after it had gone!
After siesta time (about 3pm-ish) we searched for a café that had chairs outdoors and a big screen so we could get settled and watch England’s first World Cup match (playing Paraguay), and it was so nice to sit there in the lovely hot weather and see our team march to victory :)
Our time in Riccione was mainly spent shopping (mainly window-shopping), as it seems more ‘trendy’ and cosmopolitan than the other resorts we’d seen thus far, not so much tacky touristy things. The people we saw generally in the streets seemed to be trendier too, like more hip young things! Maybe Riccione is one of those ‘well-kept secret’ type places that only the in-crowd know about and don’t want everyone else to know about… :)
( Click here for loads of photos! )
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| Italy, June 2006: exploring - Rimini |
[19 Jul 2006|10:33pm] |
As you know by now, Rimini is the ‘big city’ just along from Cattolica, and the place most people have heard of. According to the glamorous fashion magazines I collect on a monthly basis (!) Rimini is the new ‘It place’ for the see-and-be-seen crowd, the fashionable and trendy place to name-drop, y’know?! The place with all the hippest clubs, apparently. I couldn’t see any of that type of thing there though, it seemed like another inland holiday resort to me, although with more upmarket shops! On the train from Cattolica we got off at the stop that’s just called ‘Rimini’, but the stop before that is called ‘Rimini Miramare’ (mare = sea; ‘Rimini-On-Sea’ I think) which is the actual beach resort and seems quite a way from the town center where we went. So maybe that’s where all the hip young things go :) I really liked the town though, it’s very chic and cosmopolitan – and the history... Such incredibly old buildings and structures of historical importance; I absolutely loved that side of it, fascinating stuff.
For example - Arco d’Augusto (The Arch of Augustus), which dates from the year 27 BC. Can you believe that?! I mean, 27BC and it’s still standing now! It’s the oldest known Roman arch in the world, it’s a miracle that it’s still intact! I was just standing there staring at it for ages before even approaching it, enchanted by it. Ok I’ve been to Chester so many times and that’s full of Roman ruins but this is an absolutely beautiful intact arch in the actual country of the Romans – makes it somehow more magical! I mean, look at it –
Maybe from the photo you can imagine how awe-inspiring it is in real life :)
It’s a triumphal arch in honour of the Emperor Augustus, and it stands at the junction of the imperial highways of ancient Rome: Via Flaminia and Via Emilia – the latter is where the name of the region, Emilia-Romagna, comes from (via = street).
More history – a beautiful old Roman bridge we happened upon which caught my attention in a similar way to the Arch. It’s the Ponte di Tiberio (Tiberius bridge), over the Marecchia river – this one dates from AD14-21! It’s still in use now, as if to demonstrate forever the excellent craftsmanship of the ancient Romans and also the pride and respect of modern Italians who no doubt continue to repair and maintain the bridge rather than knock it down and build a modern one – nice one chaps!
( click here for photos and more interesting things about Rimini )
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