JAC N LOGES IN DA UK

VIVA ITALIA!!

2007-12-15T08:55:00.000-08:00

Okay so it's better late than never hey! Here's some snapshots of our trip to Italy back in May of this year. I love this place! How lucky are Logan and I to have been able to spend our 1st wedding anniversary in one of the most romantic cities in the world, Venice. On our actual anniversary we enjoyed dinner in a lovely little cafe right on the canal under the Rialto Bridge. It was magical.

So enough blurb from me. Here are the happy snaps:

What the Italians do best :-)

VENICE

The Rialto Bridge

Wonderful St Mark's Square

The Bridge of Sighs (behind my head). Apparently the famous Cassanova was jailed here, temporarily, until he eventually escaped.

13th May 2007. Happy 1st Wedding Anniversary to us!

FLORENCE

The Statue of David. The one in this shot is the replica, the real one is in a museum not far from this site. We did go and see it however we weren't allowed to take photos of it, so this is as good as it gets. Even the replica is impressively old.

ROME

What a view hey!

St Peter's Basillica (Vatican City). I rubbed ole St Pete's foot, or what remains of it anyway, for good luck. The Pope was home the day we were there, however no sightings unfortunately.

The Trevi Fountain

A word of warning.....there's 100's more photos where these came from so get ready for the 6 hour slide night when we get home :-)

Until next time xx

MOROCCO

2007-12-09T04:32:00.000-08:00

Hello all I'm finally back in the swing of things with our blog. As most of you know just after I got back to the UK Loges whisked me off to Morocco for a week. What an amazing place! So different to our culture and so much to look at all at the one time. We stayed in a riad , which is a traditional Moroccan building, which was amazing. Here's their website if you want to have a gander www.riadassala.com. To give you a little taste of our holiday below are some happy snaps for you to look at....take special notice of the photo with the guys sitting on the ground. If you look closely you'll see why their professional title is 'Snake Charmer'.

Me and my new friend

The main square during the day

The main square early evening and at night

The very popular snail bars

Standard way of displaying spices

Sunset in Morocco

Yves Saint Laurent's garden. Has recently been opened to public.

And here's some of the cool photos that Loges took

HOME SWEET HOME!

2007-06-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

It was so nice to see so many of you on my trip back to Brisvegas. Surprisingly not alot had changed in the 2.5 months I'd been away.....or maybe not that surprising.

So the main purpose of my visit was to surprise my Dad for his 70th birthday. What a milestone eh, we had a great day. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!

Most of the week was spent hanging out with my folks but I also got to catch up with my McEwan family which was fantastic and of course I also managed a night out with a heap of me bongo mates. All I can say is that pictures (thanks Deedey) can speak a thousand words....

And then after dinner....

Amber, Danni and Sandy very wisely bailed early this particular night which I thought I'd include just for the record cos it don't happen very often!

It was then back to Jacobs Well to spend the last couple of days with my family before heading back to London.

EASTER IN BELGIUM

2007-05-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

I know it's taken us awhile to post this but as they say better late than never. I've actually been working, and throw in a quick trip to Australia followed closely by a week in Italy it's kinda interupted me keeping this site up to date. Oh boo hoo I hear you all say.....okay then so I finally took all your advice and "got a job"!

Before I launch into our Bruges Easter adventure I would like to point out that due to popular request we have now opened up the site so you can post your comments. So go for your lives, we'll look forward to reading them.

Righto onto Bruges. Located in Belgium, Bruges is approximately 1 hour train ride out of Brussels. It is an exceptionally pretty town with a population of around 50,000 people, although over the Easter break (when we were there) the town doubled it's population thanks to it being extremely popular not only to tourists but also the Belgians.

The town is built around a series of canals thus the reason why Bruges is referred to as the "Venice of Belgium".

So enough of the factual stuff and onto what we actually got up to. Belgium is very famous for mainly three things

1. The Mussels
2. The Beer
3. The Chocolate

You'll be happy to hear that we feasted on Mussels for our first meal

We then managed to locate a small pub with over 300 beers available on the menu......of course we had to give that our best nudge. The amazing thing was that with every beer had its own branded glass to go with it....if only my bag was big enough so I could take some as souveniers he he he he! Amber wish you were there with me!

And this was of course where we stayed for the remainder of our first day in Bruges. In fact it turned into a tidy little 6 or 7 hour session. Vecchio you'll also be happy to hear that they have brewed a beer especially for you.......

Yes ole Satan himself has a beer named after him 'Lucifer' and you'll be happy to hear that it was one of the better beers I tasted that day. It was also a cool 8% alcoholic volume which perhaps explains the name a little. I also tried to put my best devil grin on for this photo but unfortunately it doesn't come close to our friend Vec :-).

The night ended in one of the local nightclubs which was interesting to say the least. Again forfilling my duty as husband finder for certain singles I have yet again found a must visit place for you in Belgium....except I can't remember the name of it he he he he....it was late alright! Anyway myself and Prue were the only females amongst a room full of Nordich men.....oh yeah and two Aussie blokes (ie Loges and Jeremy).

The beauty of places like Bruges is that nothing gets moving until around 10am which was, just quietly, very welcome considering our previous nights activities. And even better the hotel where we were staying actually offered greasy bacon and eggs on the menu! I think we were all thanking god for small mercies that morning.

Day two began with a stroll around the town just taking in the scenery that we perhaps might've missed the day prior due to beer goggles. Day two also proved interesting for me because I had somehow managed to pick up a slight gastro issue so along with the beautiful architecture, history and canals I also had an unwelcome tour of pretty much all the public toilets around Bruges (unfortunately no photos here, ohhhhhhhh I hear you all say). Anyway a small technical hitch such as this did not stop us from visiting the Chocolate Festival which was on in town for the weekend (as a side note their toilets were very clean). Yes rooms and rooms containing chocolate in every possible shape and form. Some more creative that others

And of course you can't get through life without this style of chocolate

Before I could get in to take this shot I had to wait for a woman and her approximately 8 year old son to make his choice of just how many of each variety he wanted. Big future ahead for that fella I can see.

So after a few hours of browsing rooms and rooms of chocolate our next stop was at a cafe that had waffles on the menu. Of course! Unfortunately no photos here cos they were consumed way too quickly to allow time for any Kodak style moment. Just believe me when I say THEY WERE THE BOMB!

Following on from our scrummy waffles it was back to the hotel for a freshen up before heading to dinner. Hmmmmmmm I think I can see a pattern developing here. What I did find out at dinner was that not only do the Belgians do a mean beer, chocolate and pot of mussels but they also make a mean hotpot stew. Yummmm!

We decided at dinner that perhaps our hips needed some rescuing so made the call that we'd done all we wanted to do in Bruges (as pretty as it is 2 days is ample time) and would catch an early train back into Brussels the next day to have a look around there.

On arrival into Brussels we decided to head into the centre part of the city. Sounds easy I know, especially when you have a map, but what the maps don't tell you is that there is the right side to walk out of the rail station and the wrong way. Of course we chose the wrong way which took us straight smack bang into the seedy part of town. In fact I had to turn around and ask Loges if it was actually Brussels station we got off at or whether we'd overshot and ended up in Saudi. More middle easterners in this part of town than the middle east itself I reckon. What was even more interesting was that there was not a female in sight. Hmmmmmm I wonder if it had to do with the fact that we were surrounded by sex shops, brothels and the like........I wonder!

Anyway good news is that we managed to navigate our way into what was obviously a big tourist hub where we got to take in some of the infamous Brussels architecture.

Because we were there on a Sunday unfortunately there wasn't alot opened however we were more than content to wander around taking in the scenery and atmosphere.....and read the prices of a pot of mussels and realise we'd been ripped off in Bruges.

One little 'feel good' story to finish off our Belgian adventure. When we were in Paris we discovered that Eurostar has a first class lounge (very similar to Qantas Club). Because we had first class tickets we attempted to get in the lounge only to find out that you had to be a member to gain entry. So even though we knew the case we decided to attempt the same stunt in Brussels, and guess what..............they told us that we had to be a member to gain access (we were bored waiting for our train so decided to amuse ourselves, ok!)..........so forlorn and with our tails between our legs we started to leave the lounge when all of a sudden this guy jumps up and says "wait I keep getting all these passes sent to me and I never use them so would like to give a couple up to you guys", so after many enthusiastic thank you's it was back into the lounge where Loges could check the cricket score and we could enjoy a final beer or few on Eurostar. What a nice way to end our trip hey!

And so ends our Belgian adventure.

WONDERFUL PARIS!

2007-03-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

Bonjour!

Paris was le magnifique (translation? Paris was bloody brilliant)! What a beautiful city and so clean too. Such a contrast to London (although we love London too). Loges and I both agreed that you can't help but admire the Frog's patrionism and pride that they take in their country. It truly is a very romantic and fascinating place.

We had a very early start on Saturday with a 6.30am Eurostar (train) departure from London Waterloo. We travelled in Business Premium which definitely took the sting off the early rise bit. Train is a very scenic way to do it, I would even go as far as saying that I prefer it over flying. Paris is only 2h 50m away, how cool is that! It's like driving to Byron.....at the safe speed of 90km per hour which I never go over (honest Mum and Dad!)........ anyway think that this timing is very civil. We sat in comfort eating our cooked breakfast whilst the beautiful English and then French countryside rolled by. It was a fairly grey day but none the less the scenery was still fabulous. All so green and lush.

We arrived in Paris at Gard de Nord station at around 10.30am where our adventure immediately began with us trying to decipher the French Metro and Railway systems. All very challenging when the signage is all written in French. I mean how dare they use their national language on their signage. Bloody rude French ha ha ha!

Amazingly we managed to navigate ourselves in the right direction on our first attempt and arrived in the Tuileries about 15 minutes later. As soon as you walk out of the station onto the street your breath is immediately taken away by the sheer beauty of your surroundings. It might've also been the sight of the Cartier shop sign too :-) Anyway moving right along for those of you who have not been to Paris the Tuileries is located very close to The Louvre, Champs d Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, of course the amazing Eiffel Tower, in fact to most of the major attractions in Paris. It is also where alot of the exclusive shopping (window in my case) is located and the famous Ritz Hotel.

Our accommodation was located in the Tuileries, and was aptly called "The Tuileries Hotel" however as the saying goes "it aint the Ritz"! Our room was typically European, it was tiny tiny tiny and actually made our place in London seem like a penthouse. In saying this it was everything we needed. It was cosy, very clean and most of all extremely well located.

After dropping our bags off at our hotel it was straight back out on the streets to start our sightseeing. First stop was the Louvre for a couple of Kodak moments.

Even on a cold and very wet day the crowd here was still phenominal. We decided that we would leave The Louvre as our last stop for the day so continued on to Notre Dame.

It was exactly 12 noon when we were walking up to the cathedral so the famous bell was ringing loud and clear. Me being the extremely funny person I am immediately asked Loges if the Hunchback was up there ringing it to which his response was "you know you're more like your Father than you think" (thanks Dad!).

Yes we actually plucked up the courage to go inside even though walking into a church is always risky for us. In fact I really related to Joan of Arc's shrine when I came across it cos I really felt like I was going to burst into flames at any moment. Seriously though it truly is a magnificent structure. Despite the pushing and shoving from fellow tourists we really enjoyed our time there.

After Notre Dame it was chow down time so we navigated our way to the Latin Quarter. Mate if you can't find a cafe, restaurant or bar that suits here well you deserve to starve. You name the cuisine or the cocktail and it'll be available here. Chevvy there was this great kebab shop there that actually had chips as one of the ingredients in the kebab! How cool would that be if we had a place like that after one of our nights out on the sherbets! Bugger off Macca's buffet I say! I didn't actually try one but jeez they looked good. Loges and I ended up in this very cute little Italian cafe where we enjoyed yummy pizza and our first bottle of French red wine (Bordeaux).

After a leisurely lunch it was then back to The Louvre. Of course our first stop was the Mona Lisa. Unlike what alot of people say it was actually bigger than I had imagined it would be. I think after hearing people say how much smaller it was than they expected I went in with the belief it was going to be about A4 size which it of course wasn't. After the Mona Lisa we spent the next two hours or so browsing through the many different galleries. After the Louvre it was back to our hotel for a freshen up and to get ready for dinner.

We had received a couple of very good local French restaurant recommendations from Melissa (Tooms) and Matt so set out to give them a try. Well bless the very unpredictable French cos we tried two out of the three recommendations and both were unbelievably shut! On a Saturday night! By the time we discovered the second restaurant closed it was 9.30pm and Loges was starting to delicately gnaw his arm off so we agreed that we would perhaps not try our luck on the 3rd restaurant and made a bee line back to the Latin Quarter.

Our dinner adventure ended well cos we ended up going to this tiny little French Fondue restaurant which was loads of fun. We were the only non-French people in there which made us entertainment for the regulars (which I think most of them were) whilst we gave it our best shot. Well we must have done okay cos none of them were rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrollably at anytime, or perhaps they were just polite.

Day two started off with a trip to the Catacombes. The long story short is that back in the 1800s the cemeteries were becoming overcrowded and as a result the current dead of the day were being buried alot nearer to the ground surface. Problem was that many rife diseases were causing a higher death rate and because the dead weren't being buried deep enough it was causing the disease to spread even further. To fix the problem they decided to exhume the long buried bodies (or bones) and move them to one of the disused mines that were located 20 metres below the surface of central Paris. Initially the bones were thrown at random into what was now called the Catacombes. They're not quite sure who made the call but out of respect for the dead it was later decided to arrange the bones in a more artistic manor. Here's what they ended up with:

This was just a small section of what turned out to be tunnels and tunnels and walls and walls of the same thing. Loges was quite intrigued by it all but I found it very eerie and even disturbing. We were 20 metres below the surface in very dark and narrow tunnels with walls like this on either side. I almost felt like we were intruding. Very strange feeling that I'm not keen to revisit.

So after our experience to the Catacombes we were both ready for a big pick me up and what better way to do that than a visit to Paris' most iconic attraction the Eiffel Tower. It was a very rainy, windy and cold day on our first day so we were very relieved that day two, our Eiffel Tower day, was bright, sunny and clear albeit a little on the chilly side but who cares. Anyway after 2 hours lining up to get tickets up we went to level two of this amazing structure. Think I'll let the pictures tell you the rest of the story here :-)

It was absolutely freezing up there but it didn't stop us from spending a good solid hour an a half up there just taking in the very spectacular view. Bloody lovely!

By the time we came down the Eiffel Tower it was getting late so we decided to take a stroll up to the Arc de Triomphe and start to make our way back to our hotel down the Champs d Elysees taking in all the activity on the way.

Tonight we were off too.......

WOW! What a fantastic show. So much going on, so many spectacular costumes, so much colour and glitter. No words can really describe Moulin Rouge, it really is something that you have to experience yourself. Even Loges really enjoyed it as did pretty much all the blokes in the
1000 strong audience. Hmmmmmmm wonder if it was for the artistic qualities or perhaps because there was alot of skin happening on that stage. No I'd say definitely the artistic qualities :-/

Day three we decided that it would be our taking in Paris day where we'd just wander the streets taking in the atmosphere, oh yeah and trying some of the Parisian delights such as pastries and baguettes. Our first task of the day was to check out the infamous Alexander III Bridge which is Paris' most decorative bridge. I'm not 100% sure of this (someone may have to shed some light) but I think it was also the rendezvous point where Carrie Bradshaw and Mr Big finally admitted they were meant to be in the final show of Sex and the City. Regardless of whether this is true or not Loges and I decided it was so stole a little kiss when we were there. Awwwwww I hear you all say.

We decided that this would be our day to make a stop at the Arc de Triomphe also. Big bonus was that whilst we were there we witnessed a bingle on the mad roundabout which supposedly happens approximately every 12 minutes or so. We were there for longer than that and didn't see any further mishaps but perhaps they were on the other the side to where we were.

As you can see we had perfect weather which fit in perfectly with our plans. After visiting the Arc de Triomphe it was time to start making our way towards our hotel to pick up our bags and head to catch the train back to London.

We decided that on the way we'd pop into a little patisserie we'd seen the day before to grab some little treats. Now you would think from my French intro to this chapter that Loges and I are fluent in French.......alright alright alright not that easily fooled hey. You'd actually be right in saying that our grasp of the French language actually sucked big time and this could not have become more obvious than on our little food trip heading back to the hotel. Loges was very brave and stepped forward to make our order in the patisserie however seemed to break more into Spanish than he did French which I thought was hilarious but obviously the little French man behind the counter didn't cos we didn't quite end up with what we ordered. We did get the vanilla slice but unfortunately instead of the chocolate eclair (that I'd been looking forward to our whole trip) we ended up with a coffee one. Oh well all part of the experience. Next it was time to pick up a baguette along the Champs d Elysees and it was now my turn to attempt to order. I had a great start with "Bonjour", but then went downhill from here with me saying "can I make a take away order", hmmmmm not good. Anyway I made a fair recovery by actually pronouncing (by fluke only) the baguettes we wanted correctly. Phew very stressful but hilarious at the same time.

So food now purchased we then found a nice spot in one of the many parks in the area and enjoyed a late picnic lunch. After lunch there was time for one last gaze up the Champs d Elysees

before heading to the train station to catch the Eurostar back to London which this time was made very comfortable with a hot meal but more importantly free flowing champagne all the way. Not sure whether the very academic couple who sat next to us, who did number puzzles all the way home, quite enjoyed it as much as we did though he he he he.

So now it's back to reality. I have an interview tomorrow with a recruitment company to have a chat to them about job prospects. Having become very accustomed to being a lady of leisure I've decided to ease my way back into the workforce by doing temp work to start and then maybe looking at something a bit more permanent down the track. As long as I'm getting okay dosh we'll be happy.

Anyway all hope you enjoyed our Paris chapter. Next on the agenda is Bruges in Belgium for Easter. Mmmmmmmm chocolate and beer!

Take care, til next time!

TA DAAAAAAAAA, WELCOME TO OUR BLOG!

2007-03-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

Finally here is our much talked about blog space that will keep you up to date with all our UK and abroad adventures. We'll do our best to post stuff on it as much as possible and will be sure to include lots of colourful and funny piccys for you all to enjoy.

For our first posting we thought we'd share with you some much requested photos of our new digs in London. So for your viewing pleasure here's Villa del McEwan!

The view from the front door (told you it was cosy!):

The bedroom:

The lounge room (with me doing what I do best) and the courtyard that runs off it:

Where Loges life is when he comes home drunk and too late:

And finally our compact but workable kitchen:

That's it for now cos we gotta go pack for Paris (brag brag brag) but rest assured there will be another much longer posting next week with stories of our antics over the last week and a half.