NEVER LET IT BE SAID THAT OUR WALKING OUTFITS ARE UNFASHIONABLE

Just to remind you of our sartorial choices:





Now, let me direct you towards The Sartorialist, "Selected as one of Time Magazine's Top 100 Design Influencers", where the most recent photo is of this gentleman in Tokyo:



Now, if that's not a thumbs up for leggings under shorts, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS! Mind you, his shoes without socks don't look ideal for hiking...

UK10: WEDDING DAYS

Thanks to D for writing this up!

Saturday 13th March

Our first morning back in London, and we woke disgustingly early – 3.30am, with no more sleep. But we didn’t feel too bad, which was the main thing. After waiting until a decent hour, we walked with M&A from their house to the Bull and Bush pub (it has a song!). It was about an hour and a half stroll, with the very beginnings of spring in evidence all around us – crocuses and snowdrops fighting their way out of the ground.







A delicious lunch was had by all, after which we decided against walking back, so we jumped on the bus and had a restorative afternoon nap.


M at the pub!

Then came the exciting bit – the ironing and steaming of our wrinkled suits! E (the groom) showed up, and we all piled our selves and our weekend luggage into a taxi and headed off to Malmaison, our hotel for the next two nights. After a satisfying dinner in the hotel restaurant’s ‘private’ dining room, we went our separate ways and slept soundly in our 4th different bed in 4 nights.

Sunday 14th March – Wedding Day

We woke at the relatively respectable hour of 6am (although we had also been awake from 2 until 3am) and treated ourselves to long, hot baths after watching the sun rising over Charterhouse Square.



Breakfast was enormous, consisting of a continental buffet as well as a full cooked breakfast, but we figured our next meal wouldn’t be until dinner at the wedding so we should probably stock up. When I then went to get into my finery, I found that my suit was a little tighter than it had been! After we had both dandified ourselves (we both received plenty of compliments throughout the day for our cravats!), we posed and pranced and pretended to be fashion models for the photographer. It was kinda fun, striking poses in a cobbled London square in the chilly mid-morning sunshine.







And here's a photo of the bride before she got dressed up! I haven't got any (publicly available) pics of the couple yet. I'm sure there will be some around soon.



After the snaps, and with lots of logistical planning to make sure E & L didn’t see each other, we all shuttle-bused over to the Barbican centre to prepare for the long-awaited event! After a momentary panic when we had no idea where we were meant to go, we found the correct lift, and other family members, and arrived at the conservatory terrace, overlooking the conservatory – a large green house full of tropical plants, fish and turtles. Rather a spectacular venue.







* Ceremony was here
* Reception was here
* Dinner & Dancing were here

The room quickly filled up, everyone got into positions, and D – the ring bearer – and his brother A, with sons T & Y in tow, were the first down the aisle, followed by E and parents, bridesmaids, and finally, L (the bride) and her parents. The ceremony itself was fairly formal, but also quite accessible – the Progressive rabbi and the service schedule explained various elements of the ceremony, which included L’s grandmother stepping up to read out an Apache blessing, and E’s (and therefore also D’s) grandmother reading out a compilation of Shakespeare quotes about love. L’s choir, Shabbat Resouled, provided music throughout. The ceremony ended with the front of the room being bombarded by bubbles!







People mingled and chatted, making their way to the second stage of the day’s official proceedings – the reception in the conservatory. It was a little chilly in there, but we were glad of this fact by the end of the evening, as the dining room became unbearably hot towards the end. The evening progressed as these things do – dancing, speeches, food (pretty good food, at that), more speeches, more food, more dancing, more speeches, dessert, disco!

Here is a video that was made for the wedding by Daniel Moses, featuring family and friends (including us!). It's pretty LOL.

'TV WARS' WEDDING VIDEO from Daniel D. Moses on Vimeo.

By the time the main course came out, D was feeling the jet lag pretty badly. Fortunately, his Best Men speech (in conjunction with other brother A) featured a dance number that served to fix him up for a few more hours. You’ll have to wait for the wedding video to see the dance number! By the time the dancing started, we were both fading fast. We spent most of the last part of the evening sitting in the cool conservatory, until we finally gave up, and left the party, with A and O and their sleeping boys, and distant (but lovely!) cousins P and M, and walked back to Malmaison. It took us a while to actually get out of the Barbican, but when we eventually did, it was only a five minute walk back to the hotel, where we went straight to our room and collapsed.



All our wedding photos: click here.

"I FORGOT ABOUT THAT"

We walked about 25km on Sunday! We went from Eltham, down Diamond Creek to the Yarra, then along the Yarra and up to Ivanhoe train station. Full post to follow when I get around to uploading photos.

From the "I forgot about that" files, for future reference:

* That little pinching feeling on my little toe? It is probably a blister. I need to remember to take my boots off and apply a bandaid immediately!

* Same goes for that pinching feeling on my instep . . . even if I don't think it's a place a blister SHOULD be, it's still probably a blister!

* Water is good. Drink it.

* Replenishing sodium is important. Do it.

* Warm-downs are VERY important. If you don't do enough you will end up with a thigh cramp in the bath! Painful and hilarious!

* Don't hike in worn-out boots. I'm going to the podiatrist today to hopefully get new insoles (usually this takes a couple of weeks). Once I have them, I will be buying some new boots, as the sole on my pair has worn through.

Despite this list, I had a good time! Yay for walking.

IN WHICH I HAVE A LOVELY WALK, OH YES

Dan was feeling extremely poorly, so he decided to spend the day at home. I, on the other hand, was more than ready to go for a nice long walk. One of the circular walks in the Cotswolds guidebook provided by the cottage went close by, and was a bit over 8kms in length, so I set off by myself.



The walk was amazing – everything was covered in frost, and the heavy mist meant that visibility was poor.



However, the mist made everything look white and magical, and I realised that sometimes this makes the scenery even more beautiful – every new landmark appears out of nothing in front of you and vanishes behind you, lending an air of mystery and discovery even to the most common objects.





It also makes navigating by guidebook instructions amusing, as you can’t always see the “trees in the opposite corner” that you’re meant to head towards, and when you do, they loom up quite mencingly!





I was swaddled in numerous layers of thermal clothing and waterproofs, but after a quarter of an hour, I had to take off my jacket and hat and wipe away the sweat I’d worked up. About twenty minutes after that I touched my hair and realised that a frost was forming in it!



That was pretty much the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me, so I was glad that an old Welsh man and his dog appeared out of the mist and I could share my excitement. The dog even had frost on her ears!



About a third of the way through the walk I heard some strange swishing, crushing sounds, then a few gun shots – not too far away. Peering carefully over one of the drystone walls, I saw a few huddled figures standing at regular intervals alongside a field of dead corn waving large white, yellow and orange flags.



At first I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but I bumped into a couple of fellow walkers (from Leicester) who explained that it was a pheasant shoot: a number of beaters walked through the corn, herding the (somewhat farmed) pheasants towards the shooters, the pheasants would run until they had no room left and then take flight, and the people with flags would try to ensure the pheasants would fly in the direction of the guns. The pheasants weren’t all that stupid, however, and we saw quite a few take off in the wrong/right direction. I say the pheasants were ‘somewhat farmed’ because they were raised from chicks in a yard opposite the field, and then released into the cornfield and fed regularly until it was shooting season (one shoot a week for 14 weeks, I believe). I was in two minds about what I was watching – on the one hand, I am vegetarian and not particularly into the idea of shooting defenceless birds as a ‘sport’, but on the other hand, I doubted I would witness such an event again for a long time, if ever – and it does seem somehow quintessentially English. (More on this in the next day’s blog!)



I ended up walking with the Leicester couple the rest of the way to Burford, which was mostly pleasant, as they had spent the past week in the area and had some good suggestions for things to see, walks to do and places to go.



We were all impressed by the iciness and wintry appearance, especially as we made our way down the gentle slope of Dean Bottom, and the old medieval church of Widford appeared to our right.



We visited the church to see the wall paintings, dated from around 1350, and looked at (but didn’t explore) the ditches and mounds that are the remains of the medieval village.



We made it back to Burford after the last bit of easy strolling along the river.



Well, it was easy apart from the slippery ice, which almost did for one of my companions a number of times! We parted ways and I walked up and down the main street, ate my little roll, and then headed back towards the cottage.



I met up with M, A, E and L near the house and showed them the footpath to Burford.



It’s a very quick walk to the main street, down through a field and then straight over the bridge. We looked in a number of shops along the street – a cosy little second-hand-antique-collectibles shop was the highlight, and I bought a country gentleman scarf from the Oxford Shirt Co.



We had lunch at the bakery, which was bustling and friendly, and the meal was filling and warming.



As it gets dark at about 4:30, there wasn’t much chance for more exploring, so we had a lovely dinner and sat around in front of the fire watching DVDs, playing sudoku, and reading until bed time. LOVELY DAY!

REGARDING AMSTERDAM: COLD, JETLAGGED AND HAVING AN AWESOME TIME!

Well, here we are in Amsterdam, sitting in our bed at Lloyd Hotel, where we decided to have an hour of sleep at about 4pm and woke up at 11pm. Heh. So much for willpower. I can barely remember the alarm going off! And so we have decided to try to stay awake until 2 or 3, and then catch another few hours of shut-eye at a reasonable time. Yay for free wireless access at this place, so I can write to you from bed!



Flights from Melbourne to London were OK. We were in the VERY LAST ROW, which turned out to be quite alright. The first flight to Singapore felt like it was about 48930 hours long, but the longer one went by smoothly with lots of sleeping and delicious curries (mmmm, PICKLES!) There weren’t any screaming children, and despite the usual whatever kind of service and the fact our movies on demand didn’t always work (oh, Qantas, why so average?), it was fine. I watched Mamma Mia! And despite a couple of issues, which I managed to ignore slightly, I LOVED IT, OMG. SO MUCH FUN. And the crappy sound quality meant that Pierce Brosnan didn’t sound half as bad as I expected!



For a second I thought we had free wireless in Heathrow Terminal 5. I got the laptop out and all (after changing in the bathroom and drinking a cup of Earl Grey tea and sharing a sandwich from Eat). I wouldn’t have been TOO surprised, given that it is so far away from anything resembling society that it might as well be . . . well, to get there we went on a sekrit bus with a bunch of tired and/or obnoxious Australians complaining about/loving the cold (STEAMY BREATH!) for about seven hours through a variety of concrete tunnels, and I thought perhaps instead of flying they were going to bus us to Amsterdam.



Alas it wasn’t so. So we got on a half-full plane for the 45 minute flight. The squalling child in the row behind us was more than made up for as I went from side to side of the plane to watch the sun rise – it was gorgeous!



More flight pics

As we came in to land I started squeeing about the frost that was all over the grass, and the fact that some of the wee irrigation channels and whatnot had ICE on the side of them, and that the houses were all pointy and that I saw some WINDMILLS . . . I squeed quite a bit. We touched down and managed to guess our way onto the train to Amsterdam Centraal. When we got out of the station . . .

IT WAS COLD!!!



It was bright and sunny, but OMG, my face just about fell off! Dan got us some tram tickets, and the conductor on the tram was very nice – he got us exactly where we wanted to go. The room at our hotel wasn’t ready yet, but the kind staff member locked up our bags ready for us to return, and we set off to explore.



Walking was nice, even though my trousers seem to be basically the coldest item of clothing in the world – not cold as in ‘letting the cold through’ but cold as in ‘taking the cold and MAKING IT COLDER’. WTF? Tomorrow I will wear thermals underneath! Then again, what can you expect when you are walking around in weather that is COLDER THAN BEING INSIDE YOUR FRIDGE?! I kept having to make detours to crunch the frosty grass, or make finger prints in the frost on picnic tables and cars. I’m really grown up, yo.



We were in Amsterdam for a couple of days in 2005, and back then we went to a couple of museums and wandered around trying to find a vegetarian café that had been recommended (we found it, it was good). This time we were not looking for anything in particular, and it was very enjoyable. We took off in any old direction, along canals, through slightly higgledy-piggledy alleyways, into a shopping centre called SISSY-BOY HOMELAND to keep warm for a bit.




We followed some street signs to HOMOMONUMENT, which is exactly that – a kind of platform over the water of a canal dedicated to men and women who have been persecuted because of their homosexuality (but not you bisexuals and other queers, sheesh!). We saw an ad for Kiki on Steroids, but it’s only open from Wednesday to Sunday (it was Monday) and closed on the 4th of January (we’re back through on the 5th). ANNOYING!




After that, it was time for a snack, so we went to Sara’s Pancake House. Unlike the person who wrote this review, we had adequate service with a smile (and, like everywhere, the switch to English without even needing to ask), I had a plate of deliciously moreish poffertjes, and D had a kind of pizza pancake. Yes, it was overpriced, but we weren’t complaining – it was warm and we were fed!




We decided to walk along the canals back to Amsterdam Centraal, then catch the tram to the hotel. We managed that without too much hassle, wandering along the less-touristy parts, watching the street cleaners do their thing, seeing the front of a van fall off and the driver almost drive over the top of it, taking a detour through the Bloemenmarkt (so many tulip bulbs for sale!), trying to catch the last bit of the sun as it gave up its feeble attempt to rise to a point that made it look like anything more than early morning or late afternoon . . . Did I mention it was cold? IT WAS COLD!



At about 3pm, we made it back to the Hotel, got our bags and found our room. It is a lovely room – sparsely furnished, but with a big, super-comfy bed, a nice hot shower, and lots of polished floor space. Our views are quite nice – waking up at 11pm and looking out the window, we were treated to a complete change, with strings of lights sparkling over the water. The basketball court down below is now completely frosted over. It’s beautiful.




Well, I’ve just spent 2 hours editing and uploading photos, so now I will post this, then try to sleep for a bit more. Tomorrow we’re off to Ameland, where the top temperature is forecast to be OVER ZERO DEGREES! (The low is minus 4, though.) One of our Dutch relatives is driving us from Lelystad, which is very kind of her, and which might mean we get to stop off somewhere and look around. We shall see!

More Amsterdam pics here!