UK Weekends

As we are leaving Europe soon, we are conscious to make the most of every weekend that we have left over here and as such I ended up spending two consecutive weekends in the United Kingdom (Johnny came with me for one of them). Both weekends were spent doing touristy things and having a lot of fun with good friends. Here are the run downs...

London

Near the beginning of August, our good friend Melissa travelled from Vancouver to London (and Paris) for her 30th Birthday. She wasn't quite making it to Dublin so we thought that we would pop over the water to see her and while we were at it we would finally do a few touristy things that we have been meaning to do in London for a while.

We flew over very early on Saturday morning with our friends Craig and Maura and quickly checked into our hotel before heading out to meet our friends. One benefit of Johnny travelling so much is that he has accumulated a few hotel loyalty points so we decided to treat ourselves by staying in the Sheraton Park Tower - a nice hotel in the very post area of Knightsbridge - within walking distance of a lot of the main areas in London with lots of flash cars for Johnny to ogle.

Over lunch we caught up with some friends that live in or around London: Emily & Peter, Nivi, Lorraine & Simon. We then raced off to the Apollo Theatre to catch the matinee of a show that I have wanted to see for ages, "Wicked". And it really was wicked! :-) Well, I thought it was anyway - poor Johnny is not a fan of musicals and thanks to the early morning flight I had to poke him awake a couple of times! Ha ha!

That night we caught up with Melissa and her friends for a few drinks in Soho and a lot of laughs - great fun!

The next day was a beautifully hot sunny day so after a lazy brunch Johnny and I set off determined to be good tourists. We went for a walk past Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and went for a ride on the London Eye before it was time to head back to the airport. Different airports that is - Johnny headed off for two weeks work in Cape Town from Heathrow Airport while Rebecca joined Craig and Maura in Stansted Airport for the flight back to Dublin.


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Bristol

As you may have figured from previous posts, the girls that I play netball with and I have become very close friends in the last few years and have gone on a few weekends away together. Therefore, when they found out that I was leaving the country, it seemed only fitting that we went for one last girly weekend away together. Sharon, our captain, is from Bristol in the UK and she said that she would like to show us all her home town so the 6 of us headed over there for the weekend.

As you can imagine, a lot of drinking and dancing ensued as we enjoyed all sorts of what Bristol had to offer - from an outdoor jazz gig to a club on a boat - but we also managed to do a bit of sight-seeing on the hop-on-hop-off tourist bus (love those buses!), getting off to walk along the large suspension bridge and check out pretty Clifton village, a wander through the cool eclectic St. Nicolas Markets, and some shopping in stylish Cabot Circus. I even managed to get in a quick 3 mile run along the banks of the River Avon which was a great way to see some of the sights.

Sharon's lovely Mum and Dad looked after us while we were there also - picking us up from the airport and dropping us back there after a fabulous home-cooked meal on the Sunday. Thanks so much Mr. & Mrs. Ward! :-)


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And goodbye UK - we will miss having you as our neighbouring country that we can pop across to for the weekend! It's not goodbye forever however, we will be back!