Short and sweet – here are some photos of our day walking around London. My feet tell me that we walked around a lot of London, but it was such a lovely day that it seemed a shame to spend it underground. Here’s the next instalment of my London travel diary – promise there are no more of that scary Mary, Queen of Scots.
In London to visit my lovely friend Immy and I had booked a hotel online, which is always a bit of a gamble I guess. Turns out that it’s right across the road from the grounds (well, the back entrance) of Buckingham Palace, which is not a bad place to be. More photos of London wanders will follow, but this one is about my hotel room. On arrival, I was told that I’d been upgraded to a fancy ‘Royal Suite’…which, to be honest, was kind of wasted on me as I’m not a mad fan of the monarchy. But, whatevs, an upgrade is an upgrade and the promise of an exclusive VIP section, with swipe card access – “a hotel within a hotel” – sounded like I would finally be recognised as the Princess that I am inside.
No, not really, but five pictures instead. Here are some snapshots from my day in Dublin.
And one of my favourites – my lovely friends found this on the street near some fairly rough apartments here in Dublin (not today, but I couldn’t resist including it in this post). As you can see, it’s a comprehensive list of some kid’s enemies…hopefully he or she isn’t lost without it…
Before I go on, I do want to say that I realise how lucky I am to be able to travel – especially on overseas adventures to the other side of the world. So, any criticism that I make of plane travel is in that context – a lighthearted whinge, not a serious complaint or gripe about the sad state of my world. Just so we’re clear.
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, my first travellin’ post is about the craziness of long haul flights. I think I’ve mentioned before that on the height scale, I’m closer to ‘pixie’ than I am to ‘giant’, but even so, I find myself tucked into crazy yoga positions as I try to fit in my seat – the one that is to be my chair, bed, cinema, restaurant (and everything else) – for the first leg of my trip: the 14 hour flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi. At least my neighbour was lovely and just the right amount of chatty. A German chap who’d lived in Sydney for six years, he warned me early in our conversation that he had a strange eye condition as he had been hit at close range with a tennis ball a few days ago and now had a medically-induced dilated pupil to ensure that his eye didn’t explode. We joked about the inconvenience of an exploding eye while flying, but luckily he survived the flight with both eyes in order. Although I did panic when I heard a loud hissing noise – turned out he was just deflating his neck pillow. Phew.
Anyways, it was my first time flying with Etihad and they were pretty good. A feature that I particularly liked was the way they managed the ‘wake up’ part of the flight. It’s always so arbitrary – you board at a certain time and you know your arrival time at your destination, but everything in between is really just a mish mash of hours and days as you cross time zones and you’re served dinner when your brain is expecting breakfast. In the olden days, the staff used to just plunge the cabin into darkness to encourage people to sleep, then flick the bright white lights back on whenever the plane clock said it was time to wake up. Like the end of a disco, it was always a shock to the system and felt a bit like being punched in the face. Those days are gone – I appreciated Etihad’s thoughtful way of sending you to sleeep and gently waking you up with their version of sunrise / sunset. Here’s the overhead light sunrise – imagine it through bleary eyes and a frazzled mind to get a better idea of how it seemed at the time…
And to finish that first leg of the journey, here are some mugs that I noticed in a shop at the airport in Abu Dhabi, where I had a few hours between flights. Just because in my confused state, I thought these were pretty amazing.
PS, I’m posting photos on Instagram as I go – I’m everydaysparks there if you want to join me…
Every year, the Sydney Royal Easter Show is a big deal. It’s held at a huge (former Olympic) venue for a couple of weeks and bzillions of people and animals go along to experience country life – woodchopping, giant displays of fruit and vegetables, farm animals and Chiko Rolls. (If you’re not familiar with this bizarre Australian deep fried mystery, you can read more here.) There are hundreds of showbags for little kids and big kids, live music, carnival rides and all the fun of the fair.
But I’ve found a competition that I think should have top billing – I’m amazed that I never knew about it before today. I blame the marketers – too focussed on the rare breeds of alpacas and cows and dogs, instead of our smaller furry friends. The rats and mice. Yes, there is a whole competition for rodents.
Apparently, the Rat & Mouse Competition is a pet class that promotes public understanding of rats and mice within Agriculture and how we accept them in our community. Who knew that rats and mice were so misunderstood and felt so isolated in the farming community? Poor dears. For too long, they have been disregarded as pests, but really all they want is to fit in. I have images of the barn, with the ‘cool crowd’ of cows, sheep, pigs, horses and chickens chatting in the corner – then the rat and mouse come in, “Hey! Hey, guys! Over here! Yoo hoo! Guys! GUYS?” but no one will make beady eye contact.
Anyways, this competition is run by an organisation with the funniest name I’ve seen in a long time: The Australian Rodent Fanciers’ Society. Hmmmm. Bet you don’t see that listed under ‘memberships’ on many LinkedIn or online dating profiles. Sure, the name is pretty good, but it’s actually their website image that has become one of my all-time favourites. Rodents praying to a giant billboard? Sure, why not, Rodent Fanciers – it’s your Show!
everydaysparks 