House and home

Before I started to travel, I was definitely a home body, I loved having a place that was something I could call home, and even though I don't own a home it’s always nice to have somewhere that you feel you can just be you and have everything how you want it. Moving half way around the world hasn't taken that out of me, though I have relaxed a lot more about the living situation, I still miss having that home feeling. I have been living in my current flat for 14 months, I think that's about the best approximate time frame and while I have been here 14 months I still feel like a stranger.

You know that feeling when you come home from work and it's nice to just relax and unwind after a long day, I don't really feel like I can do that here. It's hard coming up with a compromise about living conditions when you know you're travelling and as long as you've got a decent room that's the main thing. The room that I am renting at the moment I actually really like granted it's small, but that's OK for me, right now I have no need for anything big and spacious. The whole house is actually rather nice, and I do think it is somewhere that has great potential to be a lovely place.

Prior to finding the flat that I'm in now, I did feel like I was in dire straits trying to find somewhere to live in London. It can be hard when you're on your own; you need to find a room that seems comfortable, warm, welcoming and most of all in your price range. Goodness when I was on the lookout did I see some horrible places, and I did start to become extremely worried that I wouldn't find something that was in my price range that wasn't freezing cold, mouldy, grubby, or the size of a shoe box. So I think that's why as much as where I am doesn't have the most comfortable vibe, it's nice and I'd much rather be here than living in some grottsville.

I think it just boils down to that situation when you just don't really seem to click with the people that you live with, and that's me right now. I just can't seem to click with my flat mates and it makes the living situation harder than it should be. Don't get me wrong I do get along with them, but it's always those small meaningless conversations, and though I do get along with some more than others (there are 4 other I live with) it still doesn't really seem to work. Though this is not all without effort and I have tried to be friendly and extra nice, I do like to think that I get along with a lot of people, it's just a little bit unfortunate that I've managed to find a bunch where I can't seem to break that sense of unease.

I do very much look forward to the day when I will have something that will be home to me again, and hopefully my own home. Though for now I still consider myself lucky, I have much better living conditions than a lot of people in the world and I am grateful for having a roof over my head, it's just a shame that I really can't enjoy this house like I should be able to and that I look forward to the day I move out of here and into something much more me.

Madame Tussauds

On Saturday a few girlfriends and I went to Madame Tussauds for a girly afternoon out. Zaira had managed to use some sort of magic to get us two for one vouchers, though unfortunately her magic didn't work in making the queue go any faster, note to self (and others) Madame Tussauds on a Saturday afternoon has a rather large line, and it will take you two hours to get in. The two hour line didn't really seem to affect us, I hadn't seen the girls for a while so two hours went by rather quickly with us all having a good catch up chat.

Once we were in, it was a great adventure... we got to meet celebrities! I don't like to count the fact that they are made of wax. So we had our photo with Bruce Willis, got up close and personal with Leonardo DiCaprio and took some hot snaps with Christina Aguilera. After the first room, we managed to somehow get on the X Factor, the Madame Tussauds version. So we all put on our sunnies (because that's how we roll), and sing and dance the Peyonce (that was our band name), version of Single Ladies, by Beyonce. Though we must have looked and sounded absolutely horrific the judges gave us great feedback, especially Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowel.

 After our X Factor experience, we headed on through to see more celebrities. We got to see Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Audrey Hepburn. There was also a sport and world leaders section which was fun, especially when Jayne decided to comb Hitler’s beard! The musical influence section was a bit of a hoot; I had my picture taken with Michael Jackson, and gave Justin Timberlake a peck on the cheek. 
 

 After all this excitement, we headed towards the scary part of the tour, so scary that only Jayne and I were brave enough to do it. Now I don't want to give away too much and spoil what goes on for those who are yet to go to Madame Tussauds, but walking through dark rooms with horrible noises and people that could either be wax or real all around, it is a tad creepy, but definitely worth it!

We were nearly at the end of our journey for the day, and we got to finish it off with a little cab ride through some of the history of London then a 4D experience like none other I've been to!
Madame Tussauds is a great afternoon out, and I would recommend it to anyone young or old, there is plenty to do and see there and would be great to go on one of London's rainy days when there isn't much happening outside.

London and riots

This time a week ago London was not the place to be, what started out as a small protest in Tottenham, turned into 3 days of riots, looting and stealing. The usually bustling, lively city of London went very quiet and eerie by the time Monday afternoon came around, supermarkets closed, people were sent home from work, shops were boarded up and everyone was walking around with a sense of unease. I was finding it hard to believe what was going on around me, and though I never saw any trouble over the days or rioting, it was bizarre to try and get my head around the fact that something like this would happen somewhere like London.

Monday was a strange day, you didn't want to watch the news and see these terrors ripping apart this amazing city, but you couldn't not watch the news as you needed to know where all this was going on and every now and again throughout Monday evening you would've found Neil and I peering out of the bedroom window on lookout for when they would decide to come and steal, destroy and burn down shops in our area. Thankfully they never did come, though there are always those poor people who have now lost their homes, jobs, and places of sanctuary.

Everyone is still talking about it, all blaming one another for what happened and it's hard to know whose fault it is. The communities blame the police, but the police had no power to lay on brute force. Then there are the people that started this all, where do you even begin to solve that kind of a problem. The government, at what point did they fail for this to all occur. I'm not starting a debate about this, there is far too much of that happening right now on the news and Internet for everyone. 

For now though things seemed to have calmed down again in London, it is still a wakeup call though, that something like this can just spring up without any warning. Let's just hope that for now and a long while that London will remain riot free.

Bath & Stonehenge

A day trip to Bath and Stonehenge is a great way to spend a Saturday out of London to get away from all the chaos and rushing around, and also a great way to spend a mid-July summer’s day; it’s just a wee bit unfortunate that an English summer tends to consist of cold, grey, wet weather. The weather wasn’t going to dampen my spirits on this little trip out though. So on a rainy Saturday morning Neil and I were up early to make our way to Baker Street to be collected by our tour bus. The drive out to Stonehenge was nothing special, mainly due to the fact that the drive was along a big motorway.

I didn’t really have any expectations on what to expect from Stonehenge other than they were a ring of massive rocks that were made about 3000BC and no one knew how or why. And that’s pretty much all Stonehenge is, it wasn’t the nicest of days to be walking around taking a look as it was raining, but it was good to go and see and hear a little about the history behind Stonehenge.

After a short stop at Stonehenge, we were back in the bus and on our way to Bath via all the old back roads, which was lovely as it was really nice to see some country side and little towns for a change. Unfortunately once we’d made it to Bath we had a very limited amount of time to spend looking around due to the tour only being a day, fortunately I was lucky in that Bath is only a small town and you can get a good feel for what it’s like a have a good walk around in a few hours. So first stop was the Roman Baths, these were really nice though I did imagine them to be much more spectacular and much bigger, but I was still happy with what I saw. Once we’d seen the Roman Baths Neil and I decided to have a walk around grab some lunch and hope that the rain would stop.
After the rain had stopped and we were full on our lunch, we went for a walk through a lovely park and then along the river so I had a good chance to get all snap happy with my camera and take some lovely photos. To end the day in Bath we went to a little traditional English café for cream tea (tea and scones).

All in all, the day trip to Bath and Stonehenge was a great day out (rain aside), the highlight was just the small pleasure of walking around Bath and seeing the town the Abbey, Roman Baths and the lovely gardens. I would recommend Bath it is a lovely place to see for a day trip out of town.
Now I need to work on where the next stop will be…

Malta, the beach and the sun!

I have to confess that I'd actually never heard of the country Malta until about a year ago, I'm going to put that little bit of dumbness down to being from a small country at the bottom of the world, so that’s my excuse for being unaware of amazing places. I'd had a bit of annual leave left over at work and was a little unsure of where I was going to go with all this time off, I wanted to have an overseas escape with Neil so we put forward some ideas of where to spend an extra long weekend and Malta made the cut, mainly due to the fact that when you type in 'Malta' on a Google image search the pictures that come up are so pretty!

We embarked on our trip away at some ungodly hour of the morning, after about an hour and a half of sleep. As you can imagine after such little sleep we were extremely tired, though I think the excitement of a long weekend away in a warm, sunny place kept us going through the 1.20am start. We arrived in Malta just after 10am, collected our luggage and then made our way from the airport to our hotel. This journey took much longer than expected, not only due to the fact that the bus route was through every little side street in Malta, but we did also seem to be on the bus of death. The buses don't have air conditioning, so to help cool the bus down they drive around with the door open, and also the bus drivers are the craziest I’ve ever come across, I did start to have questions as to whether any driver in Malta actually held a drivers licence!

Once we'd made it to our hotel (safe and sound), it's was time for a bit of freshening up then off to explore the surrounding area. The sun was perfect, and it was so nice to go for a walk around the most amazingly blue water I've ever seen. So after having a lovely stroll and doing a small amount of exploring, we stopped off for a drink and a nice dinner at a beach front restaurant. On the menu and also what Neil ordered was the traditional Maltese meal, rabbit! Yes in Malta the national dish is rabbit, so naturally I ate Thumper and I have to admit he was rather tasty. After we had eaten Thumper we slowly made our way back to the hotel making a couple of stops via some pubs.

The plan for day two was to head out to the little island of Comino and soak up some sun. So after what was another early rise with togs and beach towels in hand we were collected from our hotel and taken to the boat which we would leave the main island on and make our way out for a little day tour. The boat took us out to Comino, were Neil and I decided to get on a smaller jet boat and go for a bit of a tour around some of the caves around the little island, as well as a bit of a high speed thrilling boat ride. Once we had our exciting jet boat ride, we made our way towards the Blue Lagoon, and blue it most certainly is! I couldn’t stop taking photos and even when I look at the photos now all I want to do is jump in. I have never seen such clear crystal blue water; it’s like something from a postcard. I was most happy that we got to spend the best part of 4 hours here, because it was perfect, this is what holidays should be all about, exploring small islands, swimming in crystal blue lagoons, and soaking up some amazing Mediterranean sun. This certainly turned out to be the highlight of the trip.

After making our way back to our hotel on mainland Malta, we were back out and heading towards St Julians where this is meant to be packed with restaurants, nightlife, and music. By this point I was starting to feel rather sunburnt and was turning red rather quickly, so much for ‘amazing’ Mediterranean sun. We stopped off for a lovely meal then headed towards the clubs and bars for a few drinks and a bit of a boogie, or does dance sound better? A few drinks and a couple of not so nice, cheap pina colada’s later we managed to talk a taxi driver into giving us a not so expensive cab ride back home. At some point during this taxi ride I’m sure my life flashed before my eyes and I do remember thinking on multiple occasions “thank Christ I have travel insurance”, the drivers in Malta I tell you, they are one of a kind and that kind is insane!

Day three I woke up in a world of hurt, no I wasn’t hungover if that’s what you’re thinking, I was sunburnt, burnt to a crisp would be more of an appropriate term to use, so the plan for the day was to stay out of the sun at all costs, which doesn’t work too successfully when you are on an Island that guarantee’s all day sunshine. This was our last day in Malta, so we thought we’d end it just strolling around seeing the last lot of sights in Valetta, Malta’s capital. Valetta is lovely and it was nice to have a walk around and see some cute side streets, old churches and stop at little gardens and café’s. Getting lost is very hard, even though this is a capital city, you really can’t compare it to a city as it’s so small, but that made it nice for just looking around and was what we both wanted to do on our last day. After spending a few hours in Valetta, we headed back to Qawra (the area that we were staying in) to go out for a nice dinner before making our way to a village feast. Now the nice dinner consisted of snails, yes that is right, snails! I ate two and they are different, definitely one of those foods that your imagination gets the better of you.

Village Feasts are something that go on all through the summer in Malta and is basically a big event, with food, stalls, bands, rides, and fireworks which are made by the locals of the village. The feasts are what the villages use to outdo each other and show each other that they are the best village in Malta, they are really fun, very busy, and most definitely a must see. We managed to score an open top bus tour on our way to and from the feast, which was great as we got to have a bit of a history lesson and understanding behind the whole shebang. When we arrived we just walked around, looking at all the different things going on. Managed to get an ice cream that came to 7 euros, we were the unknowing tourists that got picked on by the locals, so word of warning go to a feast and do not buy an ice cream! After watching the band play, we got in a good position ready to watch some fireworks. These fireworks I’ve never seen anything like them before, they are right in front of you and on these massive moving contraptions that turn into all different shapes. I couldn’t think of a better way to end our short but very sweet holiday.