We can hear the fat lady singing.

It's with very mixed feelings that we finish this Blog.  I have enjoyed the process of writing every week or so and Richard has loved showing you his photos, so it will be sad to stop doing that.  He has inserted some more of his favourites here.  On the other hand, the pressure is off - we are nearly back to normal now and we don't have to keep thinking of exciting things to share; well, there won't actually be exciting things to share, will there?

We've had the most outrageously fabulous time over the last four and a half months, as you can see from the blogs.  Lots of things haven't gone into said Blog - the odd time we've argued about which way to go in the car or which Art gallery to visit or where to eat dinner.  Sometimes arguments were had over nothing at all - mostly due to tiredness - and instantly forgotten.  Occasionally, the odd door was slammed and a few rude words yelled - always by me, never by the Supreme Being I had the good sense to marry.  Calm, cool, collected and always considerate of me and my sometimes precarious ADHD mental state, he carried the whole trip, ensuring I had earphones and music to listen to when places were noisy, a charged-up E reader for when I got bored in Hotel rooms and always, always chocolate just for whenever. As a result, I was happy the whole time we were away, not anxious about too much at all and very aware of how lucky I was, am and will hopefully continue to be.

And then there were the things he had to be thankful for; very organised and almost anal about lots of things, I had made sure we always had a nice room, plenty of eating -out opportunities and a warm welcome from the many friends with whom I had organised to stay. Our rough timetable was kept, but we had plenty of flexibility built in, so we could take advantage of invitations or extensions of time in places we were fond of and most flights and accommodation were paid by the time we left NZ, in order to have some funds for exploring and visiting sights we wanted to see.

We just complement each other - that's the way it has always been and this trip just proved it again.  We had spent many years being married to other people and now we thank Heavens for every minute we are able to be together.  Long may that continue!

 

Sloppy stuff over - now some Fascinating, Fun Facts about our trip.  Hope you find them so.

In 17  1/2 weeks:

Beds slept in - 36
Old friends (or families of) caught up with - 15
Family Members visited, stayed with and cool stuff done with - 12
Money spent - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !
Kilometres travelled: (just because you asked, Martin!)
By air - 36, 804 km
By train - 1743 km
By bus - 1655 km
By underground - too many km in too many cities to be accurate, but lots!
By car - 5163 km
By tram - 15 km
By boat - 94 km
On foot - Feels like loads, but in reality, we were a bit lazy and could have done lots more walks!
Days we needed to wear our raincoats - 1...yes, really!!
Favourite food experiences NOT at a restaurant- Jo's cheesecake, Christine's curry, Gotti's minestrone...the list would continue but we'd run out of room.  We have some very talented cheffy friends!
And at a restaurant - with Elke and Gotti in Lindum, near their home,"our" Tapas bar in Merida, Spain and at La Mediterranee with Bill n Don in San Francisco
Favourite drinking experience - Port tasting in Oporto (they have a gorgeous sweet, white one they chill and drink as an aperitif - wow!) and Michael's lovely selection of wine.

 

Favourite Hotel - The Eaton in Hong Kong, but The Hilton in Las Vegas is a very close second
Favourite B&B - The Blue House, Lake District, England
Outstanding performances - Placido Domingo in Verona at the Opera Festival, Swan Lake at the New York Met, Fado singing in Coimbra, Portugal
Best cultural moments - The Monet panels at The Orangerie, Paris, just about everything in Barcelona that Gaudi designed
Favourite days out:
Sans Souci Palace, Potsdam, Germany
Boat trip on Norfolk Broads on board "Betsie Jane"
The Grand Canyon
aReandaRe narrow boating with Sandra and Barry
Bristol walking, lunch and boat trip with family
Cruise on Lake Ullswater, England
Walking the Nikolaiweg with Elke, Gotti, Maria and the Gang in Austria
And evenings out:
The Swan - with Mike, Chris, Paul, Sylvie and Naomi Hobden
Dinner with Cuzzies at their place in Bristol
Rehearsal of The Builth Wells Male Voice Choir at the local pub where we stayed in Wales
Twilight cruise on the Seine, Paris
Wandering up and down the Strip in Vegas with our son, Shawn
Over the top, awesome sights - The Grand Canyon, all of Venice, the new laser light show on the Eiffel Tower, Casa Battlo in Barcelona.

 

Unexpected delights - Las Vegas (ALL of it!), Merida and its magical Roman history and architecture, the gorgeous countryside in the Dordogne area of France, barbeque with friends Emmanuelle and Norbert in their garden, near Nantes, France
Highlights - Now we're both stumped.  We can't think of anything we did that wasn't a highlight - 4 1/2 months without a hiccup - we are truly blessed and feel so fortunate to have been able to do this now.

Honkers and Home

We arrived in Hong Kong all excited about the things we would see and do in our three full days - a kind of "last gasp" before we settled back down again.  However, although the flight from Moscow wasn't bad, we both felt very jet-lagged and needed to sleep once we got into our room at around 1 pm on Friday.  The Hotel is lovely and luckily we had booked a room with "Club Lounge" access, which basically means food and drinks almost round the clock.  We didn't feel like braving the "outside" once we had woken up, so we had something in the Lounge and fell back into bed.  Not a great night's sleep for either of us, so we decided a swim first thing Saturday morning would be the ticket.  Unfortunately I did something to my back getting into the pool and have been very unhappy since. We have seen nothing of Hong Kong except the Temple St Markets - luckily only a slow stagger from the Hotel. 

The rest of the time, we have dozed - rousing ourselves to go to the Lounge for gin, snacks, gin, breakfast and gin (ranked in order of importance). And thank Goodness for that Lounge, or we would be curled-up skeletons by now! It's really unusual for us to be jet-lagged coming this way as we usually feel it going to the UK, but boy!  Richard is exhausted and shows no interest in any sightseeing at all and I just can't.  Now it's Sunday night and my back is getting better but it's still painful standing and I can't walk for too long at all just yet.  A nice 14 hour plane trip tomorrow will be just what we need!
We have managed a bit of shopping and Rich has crammed it all into our new bags (ahem!) so we will not be too burdened down once we do eventually touch down in Gisborne. Feel free to comment if you can see a bit of a difference between the luggage we started off with in April and the photos below!  But as I said when Kuwait Air lost my bag way back, "What's the point of travelling light if they lose your bag because it's too small?" They actually DID say that's why they lost it!

Hopefully all will be well, tomorrow I shall wake up a new woman and Rich will have slept a whole night through - cross your fingers for us!
There is of course a flip side to this saga - we now have to plan a trip back here to do all the things we didn't get a chance to do this time.  No worries, mate!
Monday morning update - we both slept very well and all night long for a change.  Rich is feeling way more energetic and my back is definitely on the mend.  So, to those of you that DID cross your fingers for us - mwah!
Off to the airport now - nearly the last one!  We have a short leg to Kuala Lumpur and a couple of hours on the ground before our transfer to the ten hour Auckland flight - extra leg room seats, yay!

The next Blog will be the last and will be written in the comfort of our little Gisborne gaff.

Heading South

Berlin! Richard had never been and I hadn't visited since the wall has come down.  Lots of things to see and experience, so we set to with a will.  We loved the Pergamon Museum and the scale of the exhibits  - the rooms were enormous and the pieces were really see-able.  An excellent way to spend a morning.  Another highlight was The Museum at Checkpoint Charlie including a really neat little film about the two families that escaped over the wall back in the day by building their own hot-air balloon.  There was a replica in the museum along with lots of other cool 'escape stuff', including two hollowed-out surfboards.  Too much information, though, and very sobering when we read about how many people were killed or imprisoned during escape attempts. We also visited the East Side Gallery, which is the longest remaining part of the wall - lots of graffiti-style art, which was meant to be the point of the exhibition, but the wall itself was exhibition enough for us.  Once again, we were reminded how lucky we are to be living in New Zealand.

Next was a great train trip out to Potsdam where Fred The Great had a summer palace - and what a palace. Lots of buildings of all different architectural styles and lovely gardens with various themes - we had wonderful weather and a great day out there.

We ate and drank very well in Berlin; I reacquainted myself with German bread and Richard made friends with various sausage and beer combinations - yum!

Three days there and we headed off to Munich on the bus - a long trip but the lovely Elke and Gotti were there to meet us, as promised.  They live in a barn they have just finished converting in the countryside about 30 minutes away from the big smoke and we were really impressed with the job they have made of it.  It's just beautiful inside and out and is a real credit to Gotti's fine craftsmanship and Elke's eye for the quirky.  Not that we were there long, as we set off for Lake Attersee the next day, in the Salzkammergut area of Austria for a long weekend.  We had a gorgeous time there, walking, eating, drinking and chilling together.  Gordon and Maria were there as well, as they always are when we are with Elke!  Gordon is a bit of a gourmet, so he is always there whenever food is, Maria loves walking, especially up hills, and Mario  - well, he has just started tagging along whatever we do.  They are easy company and we had a fabulous time together. We had never been to the Lakes area before and, although it was a little misty most days, it didn't rain and we have some fantastic pictures of the beautiful lake and forests.

 

Back to Elke and Gotti's for more eating, drinking and being merry.  We took a quick train trip into Munich to have a wander about , but by now, we found ourselves getting tired easily and were more than happy doing "Nichts" at home.

 

We were sad to go on Thursday, but that meant that we were that much closer to being back in NZ.  Besides, Elke, Gotti and the gang will be with us in the next few years, we are sure of that!

There's nothing like it!

Aah, the English countryside.  Everywhere we've visited on this trip, we have been constantly surrounded by beautiful scenery - the San Francisco Bay area, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy were all gorgeous in their own way, but there is something about England. When we are there, we always know we are there - maybe it's the kinds of trees and bushes, maybe it's the colours, but it's always a delight to be walking and wandering, no matter what the weather.  Driving, however, is a different matter - the motorways (my dreaded M word!)  are heaving, the country roads are full of day trippers trying to avoid the motorways, but needing to keep to their 'schedule' and the tour buses - OMG, as they say!
Recently, we  braved about 4 Ms and scooted Oop North to The Lake District.  We had no sun at all but no rain either, so we managed to get out and about a lot, although it wasn't overly warm.  Autumn colours were superb and the air was lovely, fresh and crisp, particularly in the mornings. 

We stayed at a great little B&B for three days and visited Windermere by car, Ullswater by boat and fitted in a few walks around some gorgeous little towns and villages.  Conishead Priory was lovely with walks in a forest, to a beach (sort of) and to a Buddhist Temple in the extensive grounds. Ulverstone was a fabulous little town with some cute shops, pretty views and a very old, interesting church.

Then back to the bosom of the family.  Mike and Chris' three children were all home for the weekend so we had a lovely dinner out at the local pub and a fun time watching some old films of the kids as babies and toddlers as well as some of 'when Dad and Uncle Richard were young'.  We are going to miss seeing these guys every couple of weeks - it's become a habit we are very loath to break ! Still, they are now threatening to come and try some of our Kiwi hospitality within the next few years - bring it on, we say!

On the way back to Surrey for our last few days in England, we had a not very nice task to complete - a visit to Chester!  "Not very nice?", I hear some of you say - "Chester is a fabulous city to spend time in."  Indeed it is and here are the photos to prove it.

But near Chester is where Sandra and Barry have moored their narrow boat for the winter and we had to go to say farewell.  Barry is in Gisborne at the moment, so we will catch up with him next week once we are home, but we don't know when we'll see Sandra again - could be three years or more.  Lovely to see her and be on the boat again, BUT...

Family, friends and faces

Another week gone  - they are whizzing by at the moment, just when we want to keep on spending time with family and all our dear old friends from way back.  A few days with each of them is not enough to catch up on 12 years of absence. 
Everyone is well and fairly healthy, some have had children, there were at least five or six new faces to meet and the babies that we knew have all matured into lovely people that we haven't had enough time to get to know properly. This MAY mean we will have to come back.  Watch this space ...
We haven't been very active but have had a very damp, pretty hike up on the Ridgeway above Oxford, an excellent stroll around Winchester and a quick look at the famous cathedral, and a good walk along Basingstoke canal towpath.  We are becoming seriously tired and actually a bit run down, with the result that both of us have had colds this week and I am still a bit lethargic and have an annoying cough - a rare occurrence for me.
Nonetheless, we are heading off up to the Lake District tomorrow for three days and then we are going to stay overnight in Chester on the way back so that we can spend some time with Sandra on the narrow boat before coming back to Frimley for the last couple of days in England.  Next Sunday we leave for Berlin, Munich and Austria, so there will be no Blog until the following weekend.
This week's pictures are all about the "Three Effs" of the blog title.  Take a look - you may even be in one of them!

Loafing, lazing and lolling about

Yes, we have been unashamedly blobbing this last week as well! But we have doing it in excellent company.
We set off from Surrey before 6 am about ten days ago to avoid the horrid traffic on the M25 - my nightmare road!  The plan, although inconvenient, worked and we were in Southwold, Suffolk with the lovely Ant and Ben by about 9.30.  We had a quick restorative cuppa then went for a gorgeous walk along the seafront, past all the lovely little beach huts and on to the pier.  A great morning continued when we got back to Ant and Ben's and all worked together on their NZ trip plans.  They are heading over at the end of January and have a nice 5 week odyssey travelling in both islands.

 

Time then to be off up to Suzi and Mike's in South Walsham, Norwich.  We had an all too-quick three days with them, walking, talking, cooking together and trying to convince them to emigrate to NZ - didn't work!  Hopefully they'll come out for a visit before the girls (11, 9 and 5) get too much older.

Next on the agenda was Wales for about a day and a half - a real whistle-stop visit.  We wanted to go back to Hay-on-Wye, a lovely little spot known as the "town of books" just crammed full of the most interesting book shops we have ever seen.  That took up most of a day, just browsing and wandering around - a very pretty little town with a ruined castle overlooking it and in a very picturesque area.  We stayed the night at a B&B in Builth Wells, famous for its Monday nights!  The Builth Wells Male Voice Choir rehearses every Monday night at the Greyhound pub.  Seen it, done it, bought the CD!  (Well, they were actually so impressed that we had come to them all the way from NZ that they GAVE us the CD). A lovely night of entertainment and a first for both of us - listening to a very professional and experienced Welsh Male Choir.  Lovely men - friendly, welcoming, interested about NZ, delighted that we had enjoyed the music and very proud of what they do.  And free to boot!

On to Bristol where we had arranged to stay with my aunt who is now 82.  We hadn't seen each other for 41 years at which point I was 16.  We had never managed to be in the same country all these years although her daughter and I had met quite a few times and are in touch (another good reason why I am a Facebook fan).  We spent quite some time catching up on 41 years' worth of news, as you can imagine.  We had time also to have an explore around with 2 local, enthusiastic and free tour guides!  We had a good look at Bristol and took a great little river cruise - an excellent way to get a feel for what we think is a lovely city. It was amazing and we really didn't want to leave!

Now we are in Wantage, just outside Oxford, where we are staying with Claire, an old and very dear friend (she told me to put that in!) and an ex-colleague.  Already met up with Stephen and Lou and their three children, babies when we last saw them and now gorgeous, mature, intelligent and thoroughly nice people.  Tomorrow we meet up with Mandy, Gary and their children and the next day, the lovely Serge and Caroline - all lovely, old Oxford friends from 11 years ago.  These people were the ones who made Oxford and living there so special for us - we often talk about the Oxford days and having the opportunity to remember those days now with our friends is fabulous.
So, it's people time now, rather than places.  We are feeling rather  'placed' out (not to mention 'spaced out') and are beginning to look forward to coming home and staying in the same place for more than 5 days! Besides which, the weather is rapidly deteriorating now, we are wearing sweatshirts almost every day and the daffodils are up in Hagley Park (Christchurch).  NZ beckons!