Tuesday, August 28, 2007

No we are not still in Jordan

Well, it seems we have allowed quite a bit of time to elapse between posts. Despite the fact that we are unemployed, spend our days at our leisure and generally have very few commitments we have been flat out busy since Jordan. It's true!

Our trip has really changed gears, the last month has been a revolving door of friends and family in different countries with a bit of site seeing added in for good measure. After a whirlwind trip through Syria and Jordan and back through Syria again we met up with Kate and Andy (who you may have heard of through the fabulously popular Poundster site) on the west coast of Turkey. It was great to see them, take a cruise down the coast, discover gozleme and other great home cooked Turkish food, talk Australian politics and read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that Kate purchased hot of the press in Greece.


We said goodbye to them in Istanbul after some nights out in Taksim, great ferry rides across the Bosphorous and our fill of beautiful mosques.


Inside the Agha Sofia mosque in Istanbul

From Turkey we flew to London where we met up with a score of friends all who tried to convince us that London was really a great place to live. The weather also joined in on the recruitment job, with the our first day the hottest day to date for that summer and the streets filled with sun seekers heading off to the many summer festivals that were on offer.


Self portrait in Picadilly Circus


We had a great time in London and tried to cram in as many sites as possible whilst still seeing as much of Beth, JLo and Louise, and as many West Wing episodes as possible. My favourite site was probably the Tate Modern with a great exhibition on global cities and urban development and some brilliant surrealism and post war European and Amercian art. Other big highlights were sampling the entire Quorn range (would someone please import this stuff to Australia!!) and seeing the Bolshoi Ballet perform their triple bill at the Colliseum!


Jules, Beth, Anthea and Louise at the Pickle

Since I had never been to the UK before and Andrew had family who he was eager to catch up with, we hired a car and drove to northern Wales to stay with Andrew's Aunt Helen and her family. We also met up with Andrew's uncles Phil and Tim for an extremely indulgent dinner in the Docklands area, which was so good that our final day in London had to be somewhat more relaxed than initially planned.

Helen, Jennifer, Dave and Andrew on the west coast of Wales

From London we joined thousands of others in a queue for an Easyjet flight off the island. We flew into Berlin on the same day that my parents commenced their European jaunt and spent a furious four days of site-seeing with them.

Judith and Anthea in Berlin

It was wonderful to see mum and dad and despite the short time frame we got a good balance of seeing the sites and relaxing drinking whiskey in their hotel. The most discussion provoking place we visited was the Hamburger Bahnhoff which features challenging modern art (or as the curator states in his introduction art that is not clearly art).



The Hamburger Hauptbahnhoff

We bid a sad goodbye to mum and dad and then dashed off to Hamburg to visit my old friend Joerg. It was great to see him, but fleeting with only 28 hours in Hamburg. Still, we managed to get a wet tour of Hamburg (the weather was not so supportive here) and indulge Andrew's great hunger for Bratwurst, sauerkraut and other allegedly typical German foods.

Joerg and Anthea in front of the Spice City in Hamburg

We are now enjoying an "Irish summer" in Dublin. The sun came out on our first day here but I haven't seen it much since. But as we are staying with Andrew's grandparents we are happy enjoying some warmth and home comforts indoors.

1 comment:

jLo said...

Hey, there's us at the Pickle! It was so great to see you guys - and I'm glad that your London memories reach beyond the West Wing and Facebook! And I have been inspired anew by the wonder of Quorn. Mmm, quorn.

I hope you're having a lovely time in Ireland. Come back soon...!