The London Tour

This was one of those walks in which I took lots of photos, so rather then bore you with useless information, have a look at the stunning landscape photos.

I have never seen anything like it!

We also went swimming at Tenby beach after the walks.

It was decided that we would go to oakwood theme park. Oakwood contains the largest wooden roller coaster in Europe. We started off on this little train that took us to the main area of the park. There were three main rides that I needed to get on.

The first ride was the wooden roller coaster. Wooden roller coasters are exciting because they are so crappy.  When you line up you can see glimpses of the track, and I swear it was moving all over the place, which made it all that more exciting.

We made our way to the line and were excited about the fact that were no lines, oh shit. We turned the corner to see a herd of people standing in line.

We waited for about fifty minutes to ride this coaster, and it lasted about one minute. The best thing was that Richard and Janet went on the coaster, but I am still having hearing problems from Janet screaming.

The next ride was a coaster called speed. This ride was more up my ally.

The first part of the track was a tower and the carriage would travel up this track that was on a ninety degree angle. The track then dropped down on a ninety five degree angle. It is pretty hard to explain, but if you imagine a hill that goes up at ninety degrees and then straight after you get to the top it then goes down on a ninety five degree angle, you will know what I mean.

It was such a good ride. It had loops and corkscrews, with the first part dropping you on your head. it was one of those classic thrill rides.

There was also a tree top coaster that was pretty mild.

The last ride we went on was a typical water coaster that would drop you into a pool of water, and would make a massive splash. The difference with this ride is that you were guaranteed to get soaked and were advised not to bring anything onto it.

The boat would go really high and then you would go down a hill, that was also ninety degrees and drop into a big pool of water that would splash about six meters high.

That was great fun, although for some reason that was not enough for me.

On the exit of the ride you cross over a bridge, that gets soaked every time the ride runs. I decided to see what it was like if I stood in that spot. I have to admit that it the wrong decision on my part as I got drenched, more than I did if I was on the ride.

I ended up making some plastic bag clothes to wear in the car.

I had a great day!

Today we went to Giltar Point where the military test fire guns and the public is allowed to walk there aswell.

Not much to say about today, but I did manage to get some of the most amazing landscape photos!

It was absolutely stunning!

Today we waited for Kate, my cousin, to arrive, and arrive she did. We did not end up doing anything today except for settling in and having an amazing dinner.

Today was a relaxing day.

We decided to walk down the beach to the local town of Tenby. The walk was only twenty minutes and was stunning!

We came back to a beautiful dinner and was ready for the next day of our journey!

Today was the day that we would take the scenic route from Shrewsbury to Tenby on the train.

The train trip would take around five hours of travel with one stop over.

Point A - Stop Over - Point B

Pretty simple yeah? You should have seen us asking the ticket inspectors what to do! These guys were dumber than this years big brother contestants. Stupid, I know!

Basically we went up to the first guy and showed him our tickets. He gave us these directions about what to do. After further investigation we found out that our tickets were not valid for the train he had sent us on.

We went back down to re-assess the situation. “Excuse me, what platform do we get on for this train”. We hand the man our tickets.

The man asks another man with a big machine on his shoulder. The new man, we shall call him, john, starts inputting these details into this big machine.

It’s a PDA type device and judging by computer experience, he did not have a clue how to run it.

It reminded my of the train enthusiast group on e’s. After spitting out about five direction cards he asked another person over to assess the situation. I had one look at mum, Lynne, and burst out laughing. I had to excuse myself and walk back up to the platform.

After ten minutes on the platform I looked down to where Lynne was and there were a group of seven train men. One of the men looked like the fat controller from Thomas the Tank Engine who seemed to insist that the train we should catch was the train that had already departed ten minutes earlier.

Lynne was trying to explain to the fat controller, John, that the train had left. He finally gave up on the situation and we had yet another time and platform, to attempt.

At this point we were sitting in the platform lounge with about ten cards with all different information and the one right card.

Nana and I decide to double check this card, due to our prior experience with the train men. We looked at the ticker for the platform and train we were told to get on, and low and behold, it was the wrong train again.

Lynne was sent down again to sort this problem out.

A lady was now at the ticket office. “Hello, do you know what platform we need for these tickets?”

The lady replied, “Platform five, the train is the 2:05pm”.

What took a lady five seconds to explain, took seven men two hours to explain, and the information was not even right!

We got on our train and were finally on our way to Tenby!

Listen to this . . .

The day after we get back from Amsterdam we . . .

• Washed out clothes
• Realized my pants were stolen
• Had a coffee with family
• Went to sleep
• Packed clothes for the trip to Tenby to stay with my uncle and auntie for two weeks

Not necessarily in that order!

I know, hold back! Definitely the most exciting part of the journey!

We had packed our bags, taken our bikes back to the rental shop and were ready for our trip back to shrewsbury on the train. In true weather conditions, on the way back from Central Station, their was a torrential rain storm.

We had perfect weather for the days we were there, and the rain only came the night before we left.

The trip home took about seven hours and allowed us to ponder the journey we had just experienced. Amsterdam, I shall see you soon!

Today we spent half the day shopping. It was kind of hard to shop in Amsterdam because every second shop is a novelty shop.

We ended up buying most of our gifts on this one road which seemed to have everything.

We finished off our last day on a boat cruise and said goodbye to our new family in Amsterdam

Amsterdam 2008

Today we had dinner at Jan and Rogers place.

It was a magnificent feast and Lynne and I thoughrely enjoyed ourselfs.

Thanks again Jan and Roger!

Today was a big of a museum journey. We took our bikes and just sailed off the seven seas. Museums, museums and more museums.

It was quite nice though. We went to this pancake place that does specialty pancakes. You can get all these topping on it such as bacon and cheese. It was so filling but really good.

After that we went to a few more museums and finally got completely lost and ended up in this street with loads of bars and nightlife.

We decided it was time for dinner and tried to find anywhere that had seats outside. We finally found this grill bar that was really great. Nice food and nice atmosphere.

I started hitting on the waitress because she was so cute!

I have to say that Amsterdam have some of the hottest bar girls ever! Every single place we went to eat, was a visual delight. Ahh the joys of Amsterdam!

We rode back to the hotel to save up energy for another day.

So today was the day that we intended to explore Amsterdam. We had planned to do a couple of things before we started the whole troop through the town.

We went and activated our special 72 hour IAMsterdam cards, hired some bikes, and we were off.

Amsterdam can get bloody confusing if you don’t know how the canals work so I will admit that the first couple of days I was nearly run over, crashed and fell into a canal within the first hour of hiring a bike.

Their are hardly any cars in Amsterdam which is really weird. Bikes own the roads, unlike Melbourne, and their are even separate mini lights for bikes where all traffic has to give way.

Our first stop was the stedelijk museum which is a modern art warehouse, quite literately.

They are currently relocating so the entrance was so hard to find. I felt like I was walking through a public toilet in Flinders Street where one of the cubicle’s was a “Lion, witch and the wardrobe” magical passage.

Once we were in the Museum we were treated to amazing photographs and a complete floor dedicated to visual and electronic art.

The one piece I remember was an interactive amp on a swing arm. This piece of machinery was amazing and well worth the free entry we got with the Amsterdam card!

I will try and post a video of it, it is really amazing!

We then went to the Nemo science center for kids. It is basically the same as science works.

From kids to prostitutes, the red light district was our next stop.

If you ever go to Amsterdam, make sure you view this area. It is basically window shopping for sex. You walk down the canal and you have windows, defined by black lights and red lights with girls tempting every guy that walks past.

I really can’t explain what I saw, but it was a pretty crazy sight. There are also live cinemas around that feature shows that contain 2 on 2, couple, bananas (Don’t ask, ok fine, it involves the audience eating a banana placed in a particular spot), and the finale, wait for it, animal!

It’s one of those things that has to be experienced first hand because it is way to hard to explain.

After that I went back to the hotel and a pretty good sleep.

Well here we are sitting at the station getting ready to take the train to Amsterdam. The train ride was made in a couple of journeys.

We trained it from Shrewsbury to London, London to Brussels and Brussels to Amsterdam.

We were put on this train called a Euro Train. Now I hate that I am about to say this in relation to the train enthusiast group in Melbourne, as I don’t see myself being part of that group at all, but this train was unreal.

The tracks are made to tilt and the whole carriage, which is traveling at about 100mph, tilts about 35 degrees when turning a corner to compensate for the force. It is bloody amazing.

We stopped in London and pursued The London Look, as Kate Moss would say, and continued on our journey to Brussels, Belgium.

There is this really long tunnel that goes underneath the English channel and I have to say that I was expecting a grand entrance with see through walls underneath the sea.

Yeah, it’s not.

The time it takes this train to get through the whole tunnel is about the same time it takes one of our trains to go entirely through the city loop. These trains a bloody fast!

The tunnel looks like any other tunnel so we were not expecting it. One minute we are in England, the next minute we are in Belgium.

We got off at Brussels and had a coffee at the local coffee store, and I don’t mean the coffee stores situated in Amsterdam!

The next leg of the journey was from Brussels to Amsterdam and now we were on completely different trains. After a bit of confusion we eventually found our platform and proceeded to step on to our carriage, which was first class due to circumstances.

The train was a shit heap and did not look like the first class carriages of the other trains we were on, but we are not ones to dwindle so we found a seat and proceeded to continue with all our luggage.

We got through half of our journey, in first class, which seemed odd as there were people standing in the carriage. The ticket inspectors came across the carriage to stamp our tickets and informed us that we were sitting in economy and that first class was the next carriage across. We had to troop across the carriages with about six pieces of luggage and eventually got to our seats in first class, which still looked a little like economy anyway. It was a bit of a laugh!

We eventually made it to Amsterdam and met our special tourist guides for the week and went off to our hotel to drop off our stuff.

We then went to the locals best Amsterdam Coffee Shop which sells a huge selection of pot, free to smoke where ever you like.

It is pretty unusual, coming from a country where all of that is illegal, to have coffee shops devoted to selling pot a mushrooms.

There was a guy smoking a spliff that was the size of a small coffee mug. It was great!

I have to admit that I did not try anything to do with drugs or prostitutes! So no great stories there.

Sorry Guys

PS: So who wants to do a friend trip with me to Europe? Two years of saving and a happy adventure for all!

I can’t seem to remember what happened on this day but there was definately a feeling of excitment because of the Amsterdam trip.

The tennis was also on but  ‘Come On’ and Murry, the English man, lost, so it was a little depressing!

We basically were in packing mode for the trip ahead at 730am the next day. Very exciting!

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Lynne, Mum
Happy birthday to you

It’s Lynne’s birthday today and in true traditional Australian spirit, we clean up Pats garden in beautiful summer weather.

We then went on a really nice boat cruise and took lots of photos.

We then had a really nice meal at the Shrewsbury Hotel.

A great day!

Happy Birthday Mum, first one in England for over 35 years.