Day 15 - Christmas Day

Christmas Day, otherwise known as food coma day. We've had the laziest Christmas ever. We slept in late, then walked downstairs for Christmas lunch at 12.30pm. Five courses later, we were absolutely stuffed to the gills with delicious food. The hotel decorated the dining room beautifully, and we wore stupid hats, popped party poppers and enjoyed the weird tradition of flying balloons - everyone had a long balloon in their gift box that's only purpose was to blow up and then release without tying it, emitting a long fart noise whilst torpedoing around the room. And everyone in the dining room did this. It was great fun.

They lit the fires during lunch, so we spent a couple of hours just lounging in front of one with coffee and mince pies, trying not to fall asleep. Then we went back to our room and did some Christmas special streaming. We bought some 'dinner' yesterday, so around seven we cracked out the snacks and had a makeshift dinner, finishing off the Irish cream in the process. It was great to be able to watch Dr Who as it aired for a change, and we just finished the final episode of Downton Abbey as well.

Tomorrow is entirely devoted to driving 700kms up to Barrow-in-Furness, so we'll succumb to sleep to rise and shine very early in the morning. We hope everyone had a brilliant Christmas back home, we'll update again soon!

- Jess

Day 14 - Christmas Eve

Firstly, Christmas lunch crisis was averted in the morning when we were informed that we could in fact have Christmas lunch here at the hotel, which is brilliant news. With that sorted, we went for brunch at a local cafe, then we made our way down the cliffs for a nice walk on the beach - once again, many people were out surfing, in spite of the freezing wind. The sun was out, so we spent a while exploring sea caves and enjoying the fresh air.

Then it was time to explore some countryside, so we drove to a famous cyder (that's how it's spelled) farm and whiled away the afternoon tasting cyder, drinking tea and eating scones with jam and cream. The Cornish countryside is beautiful, and the sunny skies made for a lovely drive along the (very, very narrow) country lanes.

On our way home we stopped off to get some Christmas dinner treats for tomorrow evening, and we finally got around to eating some Cornish pasty for dinner. Now we're hole up in our room watching Christmas specials, eating Quality Streets and imbibing Irish Cream at an alarming rate. Merry Christmas to all of our wonderful family and friends back in Adelaide, we hope you have a brilliant day, and enjoy the sun for us!

- Jess

Day 13 – Newquay is gnarly, man…

This is such a surfer’s town, in spite of the fact that it’s here in England. We’re overlooking beautiful Newquay beach, which had over 25 people out the back enjoying the excellent waves, I can only assume they either don’t feel the cold, or have heated wetsuits.

We slept in this morning, meaning that there was actually sunlight when were ventured out, so we took the opportunity to walk along the cliffs to the headland to visit Rick Stein’s fish restaurant. It was lovely, a fantastic view over the ocean, and I had some great fried Cod chips. Dogs are more welcome here than in London, in pubs and restaurants they’re frequently found lazing about with their owners, and here was no exception.

After a leisurely brunch we began the hunt for a place to have Christmas lunch. Ah, what naïve sweet summer children we are. I had naturally assumed that we could eat at our hotel on Christmas day, provided we couldn’t book anywhere else, so it was only with mild disappointment that we were told they were fully booked. Oh well, we thought, there’ll be plenty of other places.

Wrong. So wrong. We spent our afternoon walking to every single hotel, restaurant, takeaway and food outlet to be told one of three things: We’re not open on Christmas day; we’re fully booked; try (insert place here) and repeat the first or second phrase. Over twenty venues later, I thought never mind, we can just get room service. Ha! Turns out, due to Christmas lunch, there is no room service on Christmas day. We came back to our room to begin calling less local places in the hope of being able to drive somewhere. After ten phone calls, all of which were met with the same fully booked mantra, we gave up.

We had a nice meal at a restaurant across the road for tea, and have reconciled ourselves to having our own homemade Christmas in our room. However, this is somewhat complicated by the fact that we have neither a fridge nor microwave in our room (as an aside, I’ve rekindled my great hatred of long life milk in tea) so we’re going to have to get creative. Currently drinking Archers and lemonade in a can, ruminating on what to do next.
-  Jess

Day 11 & 12 - Goodbye London, Hello Cornwall

Wow, an epic two days! Apologies for no entry yesterday, we didn't get to sleep until about 12.30am and had to be up at 6.am. So, last day in London was a full day of food, shopping, movies, concerts and awesomeness.

We went back to Electric Diner for lunch, it was excellent, and finished up the last of the shopping in Portobello Road. The rain set in at this time, so we decided to use our vouchers to go and see The Good Dinosaur (review pending). This finished around 4.30pm, so we decided to make our way straight to Camden for our dinner before Ghost at Koko Theatre. We settled into the pub, had a couple of happy our drinks, and watched the very. very long line progress. Security was very thorough, Andrew was frisked three times, I was once and they searched bags. This meant it took quite some time to get in.

The theatre itself is beautiful, a four tier Victorian number in dark red and gold, entirely appropriate for the type of metal we were there to see. The opening act, Dead Soul, were great, they didn't play a long set, but it was an excellent mix and a very tight show. Then it was time for Ghost. The level of expertise, quality of stage production and general stage presence is something I've very rarely witnessed. They played an epic two hour set, there were costume changes, and the musicianship on display made for a truly unforgettable ending to our time in London.

We were exhausted, we collapsed in our hotel room, and were up at 6am to pick up our much anticipated car, the beautiful...Citroen Cactus. Let's be honest, it's a bumper car, but one which drives beautifully and is perfect for the driving we'll be doing. We left London around 9am, and wound our way to Stonehenge on the way to Newquay. We stopped at a Little Chef (a motorway staple) for breakfast on the way, and it was surprisingly good, the coffee in particular was far better than we were expecting.

I was not prepared for the view you get of the monument as you drive to the visitors centre, you can see it from miles away! Rather than walk due to the howling wind and rain, we caught the visitors bus, took some photos, and then were on our way. It's a fascinating place to visit, but there's only so long you can ogle ancient rocks in the middle of a field.

From there it was non-stop driving to our hotel on a cliff in Newquay. We have a brilliant room, but we arrived in the dark so we'll have more to report tomorrow about the town.


- Jess

Day 10 - Museum-o-rama

Today was museum-o-rama! We began our morning at the beautiful Victoria and Albert museum, a stunning building with mosaic floors and a really eclectic mix of Mediaeval treasures, Asian artefacts, both ancient and modern, and some brilliant exhibitions devoted to the national theatre and, bizarrely, shoes.

After lunch we crossed over the road (they're all next to each other) into the Natural History museum. It was very crowded, but fun nevertheless. T-Rex was in fine form, oodles of rocks...and more rocks...sparkly rocks, space rocks, weathered rocks...all the rocks. The blue whale was under construction, so we could only see him through scaffolding. We had a quick cup of tea at the conclusion, and then made our way next door to the Science museum. Because holidays have begun, they're open until 7pm.

The Science museum was great - there was a room devoted to Ada Lovelace which included her correspondence with Babbage and an actual Difference Engine. There was an exhibit which traced early clocks all the way through to the internet with everything in between, a hall of engines, space exploration, biology, mathematics and many interactive displays. It was fascinating, but by this point we were exhausted.

We made our way to a local pub which had live music and settled down to a Sunday roast and a pint (Scampi and G&T for me) and stayed for a while listening to the entertaining guitarist. Wandered home, wrote post, bedtime. Last full day in London tomorrow, not sure what we'll do during the day, but we end with seeing Ghost (band, NOT musical) live tomorrow night in Camden.

- Jess

Day 9 - Laundry Day

Today was really about a little rest, only 12 000 steps, we had a bit of a sleep in until nine, then went for brunch back on Portobello Road at Electric Diner. We wandered around for a few hours, I bought a vintage coat that belonged to a 'London celebrity' (*sure* it did...) and we bought some gifts.

Then, as inevitably happens, it was time to do laundry. Yay. After that was done, it was dinner time and we had Pizza Express, which was tasty, did a little more shopping, and then came back to our room. A rather boring day, but we needed to rest. A few observations:
The tea here is lovely, as you would expect, though lots of places are perplexed when you ask for honey. Filter coffee is big here, we've had both good and bad, I'm not yet convinced by it.

Customer service is either exceptional or totally non-existent, there's no middle ground to speak of.

Dogs are allowed everywhere, which is adorable and weird, the tube has signs saying that dogs must be carried on the escalators, and people take them into shops, but people don't pick up after them very well, at least, not on the footpaths.

Times that things end/begin are strange - retail shops sometimes open at nine, or ten, or eleven, and close between 4pm and 10pm, though it's not consistent between types or even location. Pubs stop serving food really early - we were 'too late' at seven o'clock and turned away. It seems to be seven thirty at some other pubs. But again, inconsistent. Supermarkets are sometimes open until 10pm, but it seems dependent on size, or maybe type?

Christmas jumpers are a celebrated thing here, at least a third of people wear them when out and about.

It's also been so 'warm' here that daffodils have sprung up in confusion, apparently.

We're now well rested, so it's back to more intense touristing tomorrow.

- Jess

Day 8 - London Zoo

Today was enjoyably spent with the creeping, crawling, bounding, slithering and otherwise occupied animals of London Zoo. We met some pygmy goats (and now I want one) and there's a walk through Tamarind and Lemur exhibit where you can get up close and personal with these ridiculously cute monkeys (yes, Lemur's are apparently a type of monkey).

Following our trip to the zoo, which took all day, we were exhausted, so naturally we found a cinema and went and saw Star Wars for a second time. It was even better on in second viewing. We were in Camden Town, which surprisingly had most of the food outlets shut by the time we came out, very odd as it's a 'party' part of the city. Some clubs were open, but pubs had stopped serving food, so we found a fantastic ramen place and enjoyed some excellent Japanese food for dinner.

A note on yesterday, in addition to seeing Star Wars, we found our way to platform nine and three quarters, where I acquired Hermione's wand and had photos of me pushing my Hogwarts trolley through the entrance to the platform. We also did lots of shopping in Carnaby Street and Kensington.