'P' mode on my Camera

Where to begin?  Ahhhhh.....  right!!!  London Victoria station..... 

So New Years Eve day Ryan and I jumped on a mega bus and headed south to London England to meet our Canadian friends Steve (Stumpy) and his fantastic beautiful lovely fabulous girlfriend, Kristina!

We have been living in England for 4 months now and since then we have become accustomed to using the metro on a daily basis, so we assumed that London shall be a similar experience. 

Hahahahah YAAAAAAAAAAA right!

It was hilarious! I would have loved to see the looks on our faces when we walked into Victoria Station, it must have been priceless!

I would say that the population of Peterborough was in this station.  The station itself was like a mall... and we got loss a billion times, stood in the wrong line a few times and continued to be watchful for pic-pocketers.  A long stretch from our humble Hay Market station or central station here in Newcastle!  On top of everything else a one way single ride was a whooping £4.00.  Here it is £1.50 for a single ride.

Anyway we stuck out like sore thumbs because I made Ryan wear a huge back-packing bag on his back and being that he is not a small guy was quite amusing, take a look yourself!

We were able to kill some time get some grub and hang out at the Hilton for a few hours before our friends arrived.  Our friends showed up at 10:30pm, keep in mind that it is New Years Eve!  It was sooo intense trying to get somewhere to celebrate at 12:00 am... we jumped on about a dozen underground metros and got lost about 8 times.  We celebrated with British people who were offering us liquor on the metro and saw really scandalously dressed girls ( like dressed as bunnies and other animals????)

We rushed around the metro station and got lost about 8 times.... literally made it in-front of The Westminster Abbey at 11:58 pm seriously!!!!! It was such a rush and great fun to have our Canadian friends with us as we watched the sky light up with fireworks.  

Take a look at this wonderful film that I made! I am soooo talented!  Edit part of it because I say that we are at Big Ben, but the Building in front of us is The Abbey, but you can see Big Ben if you look closely to your left where to fireworks are going off.

This film was taken after all the people had left, and after we had drunk a few at a nearby pub.  The Film does not give the mess, that was left behind, justice... there was champagne bottles everywhere!!! We went back to the Abbey and Big Ben the following day and there was no rubbish left behind.... so kudos to the London workers!

Here are some pictures of London...

Our first  picture taken in London.... We were obsessed with these outdoor urinals !!

First site of Buckingham!

A panoramic view of London Streets thanks to Kristina and her Sony!

Where Kate and William had their smooch!

The scary security fence behind us....

The ultimate picture op while in London!

Big Ben at its glory!

 
Next was our car ride to Scotland from Newcastle on the left hand side of the road, on the left side hand of the car!

We went around more than one round-a-bout 4 times until we felt certain and safe we had picked the proper exit.

We also at one point drove in reverse on an on-ramp, and on the wrong side of the road on another on-ramp (with all of us saying, “What does that car think it’s doing?” to the car that was going the PROPER WAY).

All and all we had an adventurous trip, and the landscape on the way to Scotland from England is outstanding!  I noticed that I have absolutely no pictures of this... so use your imaginations. Think sheep (shipe the plural of sheep, of course!) and mountainous greenery, so green it looked florescent! 

Scotland brought us a wonderful Hostel, with a bloody hand print on the wall!!!!  But seriously minus the random hand print it was a great place to stay!  Lotsa space and again I have NO pictures!  We slept on Bunk beds !!!

Here are some of our pictures of Scotland

Goodbye England!

Allo Scotland!

Ordering us some drinks and grub... Kristina and I trying to get a photo of the cute bartender...

Where the 'P' Business went down :(

The Dam...  The last place we ventured out to see was Amsterdam.  We took a cruise ship across the North Sea that took about 16 hours on a regular trip, but because of wind conditions took us about 20 hours to make it to the Netherlands!

Our Hostel in the Dam was HORRIFIC! It was the filthiest place I have ever had to sleep in.  It had left over underwear and socks on the veranda from others before us and smelt like poop constantly!

Hahaha.....  The websites pictures obviously lied! Because it looked incredible on the net!!! I believe it saying, “Enjoy a romantic breakfast in our Dutch atmosphere dining room”.   The breakfast consist of, bread that you toast yourself and cheese and ham in tupper-wear containers.  The romantic Dutch Dining room was the same room that the front desk was in and had big bags of linens to be cleaned in huge lumps everywhere!

We had a great laugh and spent a total of about 7 hours (to sleep) in the hostel.

Amsterdam, is not the cleanest city... there is litter everywhere, which made parts of the city gross!!  There are thousands of bikers, even more than cars in Amsterdam!  We almost got ran over by the massive amounts of bikers multiple times.  (They have their own bike lane, and they do not care about pedestrians).

In this one bike 'parking lot' there were 2500 bikes!

We walked for hours, tried on wooden shoes, which made me think of Grandma and Grandpas house growing up! Saw some beautiful architecture!  Even though they are all slanted and sinking the houses are to die for!

This type of lopsided houses were everywhere! Amsterdam is a city built below sea level and is surrounded by man-made dams and canals to level out flooding.  Some of these houses show the effect of collapsing buildings!

These boats are used as bike parking lots.  Look closer and you will see that they are covered with bikes!

 Believe it or not, many of the beautiful houses were in the Red Light District.  There would be this amazing townhouse right above 4 hooker windows, but then again this is Europe, and sex is seen differently as we see it back home.

Dam Square...

Red Light in the day time....

Cheers to Kristina and I that we are no longer on the DFDS SEAWAY SHIP!!!

Christmas Re-cap!

Ahhhhh.... January 10^th 2012, almost a full 3 weeks past Christmas and I have finally found a pocket of time to blog about our Jolly Christmas and New Year’s holidays! 

Where to start... Oh yes!! Our Christmas dinner!!! Ryan and I made THE MOST LOVELY Christmas dinner!  It was our first holiday dinner that we cooked together, and man oh man we are good cooks!

I will not lie, for the entire week leading up to Christmas; I thought for sure our first Christmas dinner was doomed!  In actuality we were both extremely surprised how talented we are in the kitchen!

Caramelized dill carrots roasted garlic potatoes stuffing and orange stuffed chicken!!! YUMMY!

 

 

This takes talent! and talent is what we have! ha!

This was Ryan's formal dinner wear... he really went all out this Christmas and pulled out the Barclay's T-shirt!

We, along with the German, Mr. Alecks and Amy opened our gifts on Christmas Eve.  We were far too excited to wait until Christmas!  Being on our lovely wedding budget, most of our gifts were just silly prank gifts.  My favourite gift of all was our gift to Mr. Alecks (by the way this is Daniel).  

Daniel has become a regular at our house, which we love, but I have become rather bothered by having to walk through 3 doors and down a flight a stairs to unlock our flat door to let him in.  Therefore I decided to have a key cut for him.  Ryan and I were not too sure how well the German (Anne his gf) would appreciate him having a key to her place, but we decided to go ahead with it anyway.   To make it even better we found a big box and filled it with Styrofoam peanuts and taped the key to the bottom of the box!  It was priceless watching him open such a big gift only to find a small token of our laziness due to not wanting to open the door when he comes to visit.

'Daniel, in a Geordie accent': "Really guys, I don't think there is much in here?!"

The hunt continues....

Dig Deeper Mr. Alecks!

ahhh... there it is!

Enjoy the pictures... and stay tuned for the wild travels on our New Year Holiday coming up next! xo

Richard at 10:30 pm...

Enjoying some of the gifts from Santa... Dog Paw throw, champagne and beer...

Gifts from Canada!!! Moola in the cutest stockings from the Aschabers'!

Richard at around 12:00 am.... With some of our gifts..

Sisters

Where Anne is most of the time.... baking or cooking the best stuff on earth!

Playing guys against girls 'Strike Out'

And then... this happened??? (please watch video below)

Christmas Update!

Santa Came to 12 Craghall Dene this Friday!  Except his name was John Lewis!

This Friday, as I was contemplating making a trip into the ‘Toon’ (city centre) to buy Christmas food (crackers, cheese, chocolate, cakes ect.) a kind British man stood on our door stoop holding a box full of just that!!

Naner and Diddo (Nancy and Dad) were so kind to supply us this year, while we are far away from the Christmas cheer, with the Christmas essential goodies! 

Having all the fun goodies here have made it feel much more Christmasy! Plus I was sooo excited that I didn’t have to trek out into the cold weather and buy a £2.10 metro ticket. 

Here are some of the goodies!! Wine, chutney, crisps (chips), cakes, chocolate, cookies, bark, coffee

The lovely basket as well! can put my throws and blankets in after :)

Our grown card collection! Although we received some today they won't even fit!

My stocking from Mary Ann and Marty :)

We are truly missing Canada at this time of the year, but are also looking forward to our visitors who are coming this New Years Eve.  Our friends Steve (Stumpy) and his girlfriend Kristina are flying into Heathrow International airport London, on December 31^st!  And we are sooo excited to welcome 2012 with some fellow Canadians.  I am thinking our time in London, during NYE will be quite the experience!  I am planning on freezing my fanny off, as it has been pretty cold here lately! 

While they are here, we are also visiting Amsterdam and Scotland!  Should be a great time and I will definitely blog about all our adventures!

Richard, our British potted Christmas Tree, is doing well!  He now has an extension cord and lights :)

All we need is Kirby for this annual Christmas tree picture! :(

The type of Christmas that warms my heart...

December 1^st: Dress up the kid in their Sunday best and hurry on down to Devonshire Mall, where you can wait in an hour long line up at Santa’s Village, and place your child on a complete strangers lap.

???? Why do we do this?  Only for our sweet little darlings to grow up and realize that, “Santa” or “Santa’s helper”, as my mom used to tell me when I asked, “how can Santa be at Devonshire AND Tecumseh mall all at the same time?”  

If you were to ask any Child, “Why does Santa come to your house on Christmas Eve night?” they may respond with, “To give me presents!”  Which I can’t blame them for saying, because we have made Christmas out to be this over commercialized wonderland that screams money!  This year has been so nice to witness some true Christmas traditions that scream love as oppose to money, here is what we have been a part of so far.

It’s hard to believe that I am a primary teacher, I have no decorations up in our flat and it is nearly Christmas!  I am not the type of person who starts decorating for Christmas on Halloween, or starts shopping for Christmas gifts in September, and I am definitely not the type of person who bakes up a storm and plays Christmas music.  

Baking! Hahahah reminds me of the time my mom and I went to a ‘baking exchange’.  We brought a bottle of Baileys.... which explains it all.

What has been amazing this year, are the wonderful people that we have met and the amazing traditions that we have learned and have been a part of.  I hope to share with you the Christmas spirit Ryan and I have been a part of, beginning with Nicci and Dave’s gift to us.

Nicci, I promised to explain more about her from a previous post so here we go.  Nicci, is that kind of person who you seriously aspire to be like.  You know the yellow ‘what would Jesus do’ bracelets?  Well there should be a ‘What would Nicci do’ bracelet, because she truly thinks of others before herself continuously, and is the most thoughtful person I have ever met!

How we met (because I love this story so much):

I met Nicci in an Issues class, in Windsor last year.  We sat across from one another and she spotted my ‘X’ ring.  The lecture was about to begin, but she said “Hey you went to X!  My brother went there”.  Well, let me tell you, when you went to a ‘uni’ that has the population of about 10 people! You become intrigued when people’s brothers have gone to the same one.  The lecture started, so we as good students got quiet and listened in.  I, with my ADD, looked over at Nicci and realized within 10 seconds who her brother was.  I was soooo excited that I blurted it out (OOoopsS!).  “Your brother is Reeder!” Hahahah still makes me laugh.... anywhosy Reeder is Ryan and My really good friend.  He is our MC at our wedding and we cannot wait to visit with him again!

So that is how we met!  Earlier last year Nicci went on to explain how she would be moving to England to teach while her husband attended medical school here at Northumbria University.  At the time I thought, wow! Could you image! Teaching in another country!  So funny to think now that we are both here teaching British students all about how wonderful Canada is!

Nicci, unlike me, has that primary teacher thing going.  She has already decorated her flat, baked up a storm, got her Christmas pictures done, sent out Christmas cards, got Christmas lessons ready for her classes and continued to stay on top with her family, as she calls them, in Tanzania.  Unbelievable!  That to me means Christmas more than any man dressed up as Santa, who is probably getting paid.

Our first Christmas gift this year came from Nicci, she converted pringle cylinders into cookie packages and baked an enormous amount of sugar cookies for more than have the population of Newcastle, kidding! But she did make a lot! Also inside her British cards, was a professionally taken photo of her a Dave, along with a cookie cutter and the recipe for her amazing sugar cookies!  It was sooo thoughtful of her to give us a gift!  Ryan loved the cookies, I quote him saying “These are Legit!” made me wonder why I couldn’t “Be like Nicci!” haha... Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of her lovely gift so you will just have to trust me that they were really cute and well done packages!

Our next gift came promptly on December 6^th which is what the Germans know as, Saint Nikolaos.  Our flat mate, Anne is also one of those ‘let’s bake for Christmas!’ kind of people.  I have already posted about Anne in a previous blog, so you can find out more about her here, Ope.  

Saint Nikolaos is an old German tradition and is consequently where the modern day Santa Claus comes from.  Saint Nikolaos was traditionally known for his miracles, and went on to be notorious for his secret gift-giving.  Saint Nikolaos specifically would place coins into people’s shoes that had been left out on the night of December 5^th.  The tradition changed throughout the centuries, primarily from coins to peanuts, then to sweets and fruits.  Anne explained to me today, that it has become commercialized just like Christmas has, and that children get actual gifts left in their shoes on the night of December 5^th.

Our shoes must have been properly scrubbed and shined because on December 6^th Saint Nikolaos paid a visit to 12 Craghall Dene. 

That morning, as I was getting ready for work (in the dark, because it’s always dark in England) I noticed a basket on our living room table.  I thought Anne, who had just left for work herself, had forgotten the sweets she was bringing to work that day.  I took a closer look at the packages inside the basket and to my excitement one of the packages was labelled ‘For the Canadians’.  Yay!  After work, Ryan and I opened the packages that were left by Saint Nikolaos (Anne).  There was fruit, mince pies (English Danish that is yummy!), Canadian peanut butter (FINALLY!) and maple syrup.  Anne has been asking Ryan to make blueberry pancakes all week, and now I know why!  Hahah she has supplied us with blueberries and maple syrup so on Sunday when we get our Christmas tree we are going to make pancakes.

On a side note I made the German and her British Daniel try our peanut butter and they agreed that it is different than the stuff here and that it is lovely! Aha!