The fun begins in London!

In the early hours of the morning we touched down in London. It was a beautiful sunny day - no i am not being sarcastic, it was literally bright sunshine, blue skies and no clouds!

We successfully navigated our way on the tube, after being given a free all day pass by a random who was just arriving at the airport (first impressions = English very friendly people) and were on our way to our hotel at Marble Arch! Marble Arch by the way is now on he site of Tyburn gallows where the majority of executions were conducted from 1388-1773.

After checking into the VSC we decided to continue our newly found tubenavigation skills by riding into Oxford Cirus and then walking down Regent St admiring the shops and amazing buildings all the way down to Picadilly Circus.

We then kept up the walk heading down Pall Mall (the beginning of the Monopoly street collection) towards Buckingham Palace where we ran into the Scots Guard band playing astirring rendition of "What a feeling" from Flashdance - definatley not what we expected! We arrived at Buckingham Palace just in tme to see the changing of the guards and hooked up on the back of a tour so we could evesdrop on the guide's explanation of the gates surrounding te Palace, nearest to which we were standing ironically was Australia Gate. The Queen also departed via helicopter while we were there and we saw the changing of the flag on top of the palace from the Queens flag to the Union Jack symbolising her departure.

After this we took a leisurely stroll though St James Park and along the Bridcage walk to Westminster Abbey and Parliment House and of course Big Ben (or at least the closck tower that contains Big Ben) named after Benjamin Hall - lucky his name wasnt Richard Hall (bad joke i know but was on all the tours). More to follow on a later blog.

We continued our walk along the Thames across Blackfriers Bridge to the Southside of the river and along to the Imperial War Museum - on a past trip to this was one of my favourite museums. So we spen the afternoon experiencing the 1st and 2nd world wars via audio tour, walked the trench experience (not as stinky as last visit by the way) and a special Holocaust exhibition - very harrowing.

We finshed the day with a pizza and fell into bed at 7pm -still light out....PHEW

And so we begin... Brisbane-Singapore-London

It was all action stations as we finally got ready to leave on the European trip of a lifetime. After spending 6 hours in the Gold Coast hospital the night before thanks to a last minute appendix emergency (Kate's - not mine or Dave's)and then having to locate the poor little patient the next day - we were serriously diverted 10times before someone was able to locate her in the day surgery unit...

Anyway - we were off!!!!!

The flight from Brisbane to Singapore was reletively uneventful and seeing as it was around 2-12pm at night for us we didnt have the great urge to sleep at all. Once in Singapore we found our next departure gate -which was conveniently located next to our arrival gate (someone was a thinker there) andset off to explore the awesome airport. Our exploration was short lived when we dicovered these free automated calf and feet massagers along the concourse and then sat there getting massages for around 40mins. (we were also trying to sort out our travel sims in ths time not just sitting around some more for the fun of it). We figured it was also proactive DVT management and that the little kids that wanted a go could just wait!

The next leg of the journey was in an Airbus A380 (the big double decker planes for those not in the know). We went for a hiking adventure up the stairs into business and first just to see the comparission between our humble squasiness and the luxury that an extra couple of grand makes.

13-odd hours later we landed in London.

Just as a side note: Snaps go out to Dave's for his first time out of Oceania and for touching down in 2 new continents in 1 day!

The Beginning...

So we've been planning this trip to Europe for around about a year now... well actually to be completely honest we've been planning to take the trip ever since we graduated from uni however money, engagements, weddings and house buying kept getting in the way.

Finally we came to the conclusion last year that if we didnt go now we were going to have to wait until we were 70 - Dave just didnt feel that running with the bulls at the age of 70 was going to be a wise idea and hense we bit the bullet and decided that June 2011 was the time to go.

So in exactly 19 days we are going to be flying out of Brisbane airport bound for the other side of the world - London.

The following posts will be the summary of what we hope will be a great near 4 month adventure. I am sure there will be many ups and hoepfully only a few little hiccups along the way - i have watched the amazing race and am fully aware of the stressors of navigation and travel in foreign countries. If we manage to come back still married after 4 months in a tarago van then we'll be doing very well indeed.

Stay tuned... this is only the beginning...