Lake District - September 2008

We rented a car for a week in September, and headed north to the Lake District. We took our tent and camped for the week. Cheap trip, while we were waiting for our passports to come back from the visa office. It was very relaxing, we did plenty of walking around the English country side. It was nice to get out of London for a while.


Us at Keswick.

Lake Buttermere was Shannon's favourite. We got there fairly early in the morning, and the lake was so still it was like a mirror. Made for some great photos.




We were pretty lucky with the weather while we were there. It only rained for one of the days, but rained quite heavily most nights, made for muddy walking.





On our way home we spent a night at Stratfod-upon-Avon, the home of Shakespeare.The house Will grew up in.

Cultural Event - August 2008

In August we got a bit of culture in. We went to the Shoreditch Festival and saw the Proms in Shoreditch Park with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra . We had a great night out.

The fireworks were good too.

Wembley Stadium

We have managed to get some tickets to a few football/soccer matches this year. The atmosphere at the games is amazing!

This match was England vs Czech Republic, which ended up 2 all.

Beckham taking a corner.

New place to live

Not sure if this is really of much interest to anyone, but at the beginning of August we moved into a new place in Brixton. We moved to a quieter area across from a park, with two Aussies from Canberra.

Dani and Thommo in London Town

Dani and Thommo eventually found there way to London. We did a few touristy things with them that we hadn't got around to doing yet.

After visiting the Olympic site, we made our way to Greenwich, went to the National Maritime Museum, the Queens House (The house was given by Charles I to his French wife Henrietta Maria in 1635) and the Royal Observatory, where we saw Greenwich mean time and stood on the meridian line.
View of greenwich Park and the O2 arena

We went to the O2 Music festical in Hyde Park, where we saw Powderfinger and Ben Harper, who were great, along with Eddie Grant, and others...of course, being England, it rained, but not the entire day, so all in all it was a lot of fun!
Also visited Hampton Court Palace, in Surrey, which was built in the 1500s.


Shannon in Hampton Court gardensSadly, their trip had to come to an end, but it was great to spend time with them all. Thanks for coming to visit us!

London in the Summertime

Summer in London is great. It isn't an Australian summer, but it is definitely something to look forward to after the British winter!

We spent a lot of our spare time in the commons, playing tennis or in beer gardens, not that you could tell from our tans, or lack there of!

We got up early to line up for Wimbledon day pass. This enabled us to see all of the courts except Court 1 and centre court. We were there from 7.30am until end of play at 9.30pm. It was a very long day, but a lot of fun.
Shannon in front of the draw board for the day.

Court 3, we saw Tommy Haas play.
Along with this guy...
And Elena Dementiava, along with many others. We also saw the giant that is Venus Williams. She really is a big girl, very tall and solid. A great day all around, and I think we will go again next year.

Tuscany - May 2008

May also saw us heading back over to Italy, this time to spend time with Dani and Thommo, and Alan and Judi. We flew into Bologna, which we checked out for a few hours before getting the train to Florence, where we based ourselves for the week.

It was great to catch up with Dani and Thommo, after not seeing them in over a year.


Four cheeses tortelini is fantastically amazing in Florence!


Ponte Vecchio, Florence

View over Florence from Fiesole
Not the clearest of days, but a nice view of Florence and the Duomo in the distance.


View of Florence at night from Piazzale Michelangelo

We did quite a few day trips, inlcuding, Sienna
Sienna
Lucca and San Gimignano

After saying goodbye to everyone in Florence we headed to Cinque Terre. We stayed at Riomaggiore for two nights and did the 9km walk between the five towns.
Riomaggiore
View from along the walk of Vernazza. It was quite tiring, but very rewarding. And the pesto pizza was amazing! Italy is definately one of our favourites so far.