'Sondi Dina'

I should be lesson planning.... but it’s Sunday so in Geordie land that means you don’t get up to too much.  Ryan and I have taken full advantage to our Geordie Sundays since moving here.  They usually exist of breakfast in bed, novels and laptop to keep us entertained till about noon when Ryan spurts up and all of a sudden thinks we need to be somewhere?!  When all I ever want to do is have lunch in bed too!

I wanted to write about Geordie Sundays because I want to make sure I remember what it’s like being ‘Geordified’ on this day of rest. 

Back to Ryan’s spurts... all who knows Ryan well, knows that he has anxious energy.  He is not one to enjoy lounging, which is why we fit so well, because those of you, who know me well, know that I am a lounger!  Haha....  Sundays fit me well in Newcastle upon Tyne!  I love them.

There are certain things that a Goerdie must do on Sunday it is not all lounging around.  There are football matches to be watched, pubs to go to, walks on the beach (no matter if it is mid January) and of course my favourite, SUNDAY DINNER!!!

Imagine hearing, in a British accent “Sunday Dinner”.  It sounds kinds like, ‘Sondi Dina’.  I love everything to do with Sunday Dinners, even the way it is pronounced!  Anywhosy so after Ryan freaks out that he has been in the flat too long, we usually make our way to the Coast, City Centre, or sometimes we don’t even make it out of Jesmond.

The coast is the best place to be on a Sunday!  Castles, surfers, the Tynemouth Flea market, Dog running on the beach, and of course ‘SONDI DINA’!  Since living in Newcastle, we have had the opportunity to taste the loveliest Sondi Dina’s from many different pubs (thanks to Mr. Alecks and the German, our tourist guides).  I have fallen in love with the Priory, only because it is touristy and in Tynemouth right next to the coast!  It is sooo British with union Jack couches and chairs and delicious Sondi Dina’s.  

When we think of Pub-Grub in Canada, the first things that come to mind are burgers, nachos, and cokes.  Pub grub here is very different, especially on Sunday.  Sunday Dinners at the Priory consist of, three main courses, Chicken, Lamb, Roast beef, and of course Fish and chips!  These are complete dinners that come with mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and veggies (my new favourite mushy peas!).  It is served on a huge serving platter and for £6.95 you usually get a pint of beer included!  If you pay the whooping £9.95 you get a starter and a dessert! Oh and the desserts, are to die for!  I have never been a dessert person but, my oh my, once you have bit into a sticky toffee pudding in England there is no going back!  I swear I need to start leaving out the desserts I have a wedding dress to fit into!!!

Last Sunday we were able to share a Sunday Dinner with our Canadian guests!  We took them to the coast and went to the Tynemouth castle and had Sunday Dinner at the Priory.  You must understand that even though it is Sunday the British are in it for the day.  When you look around a British pub on Sunday it would equal a Saturday night in Canada, everyone is dressed up and drinking and the pubs are packed even until later in the night sometimes. 

Ryan and I have had many walks on Sunday nights where we would see people out at pubs until 10 pm Sunday night! We would be thinking.... do they care about work in the morning?  It is just the way the British do it!  And I have fallen head over heels with the Sunday life here in Newcastle.

Here are some pics from our Sunday dinner with Steve and Kristina...

Picture of the Lighthouse from inside the Tynemouth castle..

Ryan with his cute face on in the castle....(a ginger looking tanned??)

A shot of the cathedral ruins from the castle....

Steven in a dungeon in the castle... I wonder what he did to be put in there? possibly pee in a public place??? ummmm....

Waiting to be rescued from my loving Ginge!

Ryan being a tender in an old fireplace in the kitchen of the castle...

The Cute Canadian couple.. Steve and Kristina Smooching xoox

'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)