Arabian nights

We have some good friends in Bahrain and Dubai so from the UK we headed to the middle east to do some visiting. We had organized our flights so that we could have Saturday and Sunday with our friends Ari and Linda, in Bahrain. Unfortunately, their weekend is Thursday and Friday in that part of the world. Luckily Ari was able to get time off just for us.

They showed us a good time, taking us out for a middle eastern feast to welcome us, including finishing the meal with some shisha. Good food always makes us happy, so it was a good introduction to Bahrain.

The next day we did a bit more sight seeing including visiting the local mosque. I got to wear the jilbaab and head scarf to make me respectable for the mosque and we got a personal guide to explain a very one sided view about the mosque and Islam for us. It was very informative, though, and they were very hospitable; they even gave us a free juice box.

Ari and Linda also showed us the Bahrain fort. Bahrain was definitely the least touristy place we went to, it felt weird not seeing many other foreigners around. When we at the airport the staff were even surprised to see us traveling there.

Saturday night was our big night in, where we had cocktails around Ari and Linda's beautiful pool. It was probably a good thing that I had a few drinks to relax me as there was a riot not far from their compound; our eyes even started burning a little from the tear gas in the air. Despite this, I never felt In danger. We had a great night; trying to swim underwater, testing our waterproof cameras, trying to solve world problems and making up cocktails.

Needless to say that our Sunday was a bit slow. We still managed to go out for some French Middle Eastern fusion food and visit the local Souq (market). It was sad that our final night came so quickly - we miss you Ari and Linda - but, although it was a short visit, it was a memorable one.

When we arrived back in Dubai the next day we were lucky to be met by our friend Tim who took us back to his apartment. It is such a strange city, there's nothing organic about it, it hasn't developed over time in a natural way, it has been built in a very short period with an absurd amount of money available to developers. There is no real culture here but if you like spending money, well, I think you could enjoy yourself here.

Tim took us to a lovely Thai restaurant for dinner overlooking a pretty amazing fountain show - have you ever seen water dance to Whitney Houston? On our second day we went up the Burj Khalifa - the tallest building in the world. An amazing piece of engineering and really quite spectacular, we only got to go up 450 metres though even though it is over 800 meters tall.

We also checked out some of the malls and the beach. The malls really are crazy. We saw the ski slope, a massive aquarium and an ice skating rink.

 

On our last night of our trip we went out with Tim for a lovely dinner at the Yacht club and cocktails at a hotel bar on the 50th level overlooking the palm. We had come a long way in our 213 days away but it was finally time to come home; we were sad and excited at the same time and I have to say the first few days back in Melbourne were a bit surreal.

We hope that you have enjoyed our blog and hopefully we will have cause to add to it in the not too distant future.

 

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London

We got to London and the weather was beautiful, the city was still in festival mode for the Paralympics and we were greeted by a great host - Debbie, a family friend. All this added up to the fact that it was hard for us not to love London. We even got a home cooked curry on our first night!

Our first trip into town we went up on a cable car, checking out the start of time line and some cool architecture.

We went to see Buckingham palace not realizing that it was the changing of the guards. Needless to say we couldn't get a very good view of the palace or even the guards; the number of tourists was incredible!

Debbie kindly took us on a day trip out to Leeds castle in Kent. I had heard that this is one of the most beautiful castles in Europe, and it didn't diassappoint, especially because we got perfect weather. The grounds were spectacular and although the castle wasn't huge, it was still very impressive.

We watched a very impressive birds of prey show on the castle grounds and met one of the owls after the show.

There was still plenty of London to explore. We enjoyed shopping on Oxford and old Bond Street, checking out the crown jewels at the Tower of London, watching a show in West End, drinking pints in the old pubs, going round the London Eye, visiting friends in the suburbs, watching the Paralympic closing ceremony in Trafalgar square and generally just wandering the streets of this famous city. It was really fun being in the city for the Paralympics, there was a real buzz around the town and watching the ceremony/Coldplay concert on the big screen with all the Brits was better than expected; I kind of wished I knew the words to God Save the Queen to get into the spirit of it all. Overall, I think we got a pretty good feel of London in a week stay here and it is definitely a city we would visit again.

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We got to see a bit of an air show for the Paralympics

As a parting gesture Rita and Debbie, our generous hosts, took us out to the edge of Greater London for afternoon tea (or high tea). The three tiered plate of sandwiches, cakes and scones were delicious and an excellent way to cap our stay in the UK.

 

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England and Wales

We headed south to England to discover that the UK can get wetter than the light drizzle we experienced in Edinburgh. After our few days in a room it was time to go back to camping. I wasn't very keen on this, though, so the first night we eased into it and got a pod at a caravan park instead of pitching our tent. This was at Hoddom Castle, despite being very basic it was more comfortable than our tiny tent. We went for a walk in the mud around the castle and down the river, making sure we enjoyed the north of England.

Our next destination was the lakes district because every British person we had spoken to on our trip told us we had to visit here. It was a beautiful spot with quaint little villages, beautiful lakes and lovely hills and mountains in the background. We found a nice little caravan park on a lake and set up in one of the only dry patches we could find. During the night we woke up to the sound of rain and, despite not being religious, prayed that our little tent wouldn't get flooded. Waking up in the morning we found ourselves dry but the lake had got a lot closer, and there were several tents in worse positions than us.

After checking the weather we braved another night next to our rising lake, and were rewarded with a reasonably dry day for us to explore the region.

Next stop was York a walled city of Roman heritage. This was very popular with the touristS, but we still enjoyed circling the city on the old wall and roaming the old cobble stoned streets, especially a small street called the shambles.

We started driving south from here and ended up in Stratford upon the Avon. We stayed in our little tent at the local racecourse where we watched some hot air balloons taking off before we headed into town for dinner. After a lovely stroll along the Avon into town, and seeing many references to Shakespeare we finally realized what the town was famous for; the birthplace of Shakespeare. We checked out the building where he was born, watched some actors do some soliloquays but we still weren't inspired enough to read some Shakespeare. It was a very lovely town though.

We headed south to Wales, where we stayed in Cardiff. This wasn't really on our list of places to go so I don't know why we headed here, it was a bit of a spur of the moment decision. It was really odd that they still speak welsh here. It is probably the strangest language we came across in our travels. Their words don't seem to have enough vowels. Anyway, it was a pretty cool city.

 

After cardiff we headed to cotswald country to get my fix on the type of England that Jane Austen wrote about. We even visited a little town called Laycock to have some cream tea at the site where they filmed the BBC Pride and Prejudice. It was delightful. We stayed the night in Bath, a popular location in Austen literature. Our highlight here was a night tour we did that taught us nothing about the history but drowned a stuffed rabbit in the river and made us laugh.

 

Making our way slowly to London, we visited Stonehenge where we walked around some pretty amazing old stones in the middle of a paddock. It was actually more impressive than I thought it would be. It's easy to forget, when you have modern gadgets like watches, that people used their smarts on different things in the past; namely things that we take for granted today and don't really think about - like calendars and time.

 

Our final stop before London was Brighton so we could have some true British fish 'n' chips, mushy peas and all.

 

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