London Shopping, mini golf and Ripley's Museum After several visits to various theme parks, we felt like our last day should be off the resort area.We started shopping the day after we arrived as it is much cheaper than the UK. We bought Jasper a Nintendo DS Lite for his birthday, the kids got a few
London Universal Studios This post is not written from personal experience, so Tim might elaborate later. I stayed in the hotel room with Jasper watching Cartoon Network while Tim and Ella headed out one evening to Universal Studios.Tim had a free ticket (worth $100) courtesy of IBM and we decided after much
London Typhoon Lagoon This is one of the Disney water parks, so we saved this for a warm day. You can swim with sharks, snorkel with tropical fish, surf on the man-made 6 foot waves, choose from about 10 water slides and sunbathe on the lounges. We spent a whole day here while
London Animal Kingdom This was our favourite park – lush and green, not too crowded and more ‘fresh’ looking, i.e. the themed buildings and attractions were not as tired looking as some of the Magic Kingdom ones. It was really a zoo with rides, but so much more! The animal enclosures were well
London Magic Kingdom It’s the classic, fairy tale image of Disney. The big castle, the fake street scenes, the Disney characters for photo opportunities (they now have keepers like security guards to stop them being mobbed), balloons, rides and lots and lots of people. Sitting with Goofy The castleIt took two visits
London The Swan Resort We stayed at one of the Walt Disney Resorts, which is located in the centre of the all the theme parks. It’s where Tim’s conference was held and was certainly handy for catching free shuttle buses between the attractions.It was tacky, tacky, tacky in terms of decor,
London So much to say... I’ve just uploaded 187 photos…. it’s been a very busy and fun week at Disney World in Florida. So this is the quick summary, with separate posts for each of the attractions we visited.Holiday was 10 out of 10. A good mix of lazing by the pool
London Happy Birthday Jasper James! There was a wild party at our place last night, and according to the Mums at school, all their sons slept in late this morning and had to be woken up for school…..Jasper had his 6 year old party straight after school yesterday with 7 classmates. It was a
London If only we could find Hydrogenated Coconut Oil (HCO)... …otherwise known to all you Aussies as Copha.It’s one of the small things you can’t seem to buy anywhere but Australia (or in New Zealand as Kremelta), which lead me a merry chase on the internet trying to find out where I could get some so Karina
London Dali...genius or just really self indulgent? I have always liked the works of Salvador Dali. One of his pictures (Leda Atomica) hangs above our double bed in Melbourne (actually I moved it before housesitters arrived in case they’re not into pictures of female nudes on the walls). This morning was heaven as I walked through
London Back to normal Playing Dippy DucksThe kids reluctantly went back to school today. Ella ‘hates school cos the teachers are mean’ and Jasper faces a spelling test, plus a reading test on the 200 most common words he had to learn over the holidays. I made the mistake of telling the family how
London Camber Sands Further east along the coast from Rye is Camber Sands, which has no attractions whatsoever, it’s a small dot on the edge of east sussex which we went to because Jasper insisted because he was convinced there was a beach there. He had impeccable logic a) it was called
London Rye On Sunday morning, we woke up in our B&B, us asleep in our double room on the second floor, the kids in their own twin room on the third floor, relieved that they’d made it through the night without them calling out and waking all the other
London Hastings You may remember we’ve tried to reach Hastings and Rye once before, well this time we made it! It was great having Eileen and Geoff to show us around as we saw and appreciated much more during our brief stay in Hastings than if we’d seen it ourselves.
London Bexhill We picked up the car early on Saturday and drove straight through to Bexhill to see Eileen and Geoff. After a cup of coffee and reminiscing about life in Jordan for a while, they offered to show us around Bexhill and Hastings which was much appreciated.Bexhill-On-Sea is a small
London Oh I do like to be beside the seaside... Quite unexpectedly on Friday we recieved a call from some very old family friends, Eileen and Geoff Ball who I know from when I lived in Jordan with Mum and Dad back in the early 80’s. Eileen had just recieved the “Bulls Bulletin” – the annual Bull family christmas booklet
London Natural History Museum On Thursday, we decided to get out of the house and head to the Natural History Museum. I’ve heard good things about this, but wasn’t sure what to expect or how the kids would enjoy it. I can now report that it was huge fun for the whole
London Christmas Day in London We had a wonderful Christmas day. It was very peaceful and relaxing with lots of new toys for the kids who spent the whole day playing inside and didn’t want to leave the house; given it was raining all day, this was fine! I think that Santa must of
London A white christmas We’ve had lots of cards wishing us a white christmas – well snow is not likely (not snowed at Christmas here for over 10 years and most people our age in London can only remember one or two anyway), blame global warming, but fog on the other hand! This was
London Jaspers photo safari to Kensington Gardens Ella has continued to feel unwell and so while Karina spent time at home (in the warm) with her, Jasper and I caught the train in to Kensington Gardens. Karina had heard of an adventure playground there which we went to see.It’s called the Princess Diana Memorial Play
London The joys of a real tree We purchased a real christmas tree through the school — everyone has one here, there are very few plastic ones. It looks fantastic, but it’s a real pain! You could (and should) spend the extra 15 pound to get a non-shedding one, but of course, we bought the cheaper one,
London Grey Squirrels, the rats of the trees I confess to never having particularly wondered why the squirrels that you typically see in a Beatrix Potter illustration (think Squirrel Nutkin) look something like this… When all the squirrels you actually see in the parks look something like this… I hadn’t really realised that there were two types
London An ordinary day in the life In some respects, life has slowed down from the hectic feel when we first arrived. With travel and other work commitments, kids sick with colds and the weather quite cool, we generally haven’t been out as much. Still, you have to make the most of the opportunities — today was
London French Champagne I was at the Doctors again on Tuesday, this time to get the all clear after my operation. The good news is that I can now start drinking in moderation again, so what good timing it was to receive the following from PwC as a thank you for my work
London It's beginning to feel a lot like... …it’s bloody freezing cold.Not sure what is with our central heating at home, but we are struggling to get the temperature inside above 15C – 17C, which is quite cool. Karina wears her jacket and scarf indoors most of the day now. Of course outside is even cooler — the
