Sabine our Couch Surfer Host

When arriving in Switzerland to stay with our first Couch Surfer host we were greeted by our host - a wonderful lady Sabine.
She lives in an appartment in the middle of Berne. When we arrive there were also two americans staying with her that had been there for 4 night. She is a very hospitable person. We slept in a room on the fourth floor (that will work of the meal of cheese). t was very clean and very comfortable and amazingly quiet in the middle of the city and even has a lovely garden.

After we stayed with Sabine we visited the Alps. We rented a room at the base of the Eiger and the view was magnificent. There was an unexpected cold snap and a lot of snow. It was a great delight to experience this in late May.

On the way to Switzerland

We stayed in a nice hotel that night -then drove on in the morning to get to Switzerland.
We came across medeavial wall city, Langres. Quite a stunning place. We stopped the car and decided we'd walk around the wall of 3.6 kilometres.

While in London we bought a GPS Sattelite Navigation unit. We have used it to find homes of our hosts. It was amazing this funny voice telling us to turn left and right. Amazingly enough it took us to the door of the address where we were going to staying.

Moet Chandon

After our visit to Peronne we drove not knowing where we were going only knowing we need to head south.
When I look at the mat carefully I noticed that we were in the Champagne area. Oh I thought we better go and sample some bubbly.
We decided to visit the Moet Chandon vineyard. It was strange because it was in the middle of the town of Epernay. We went for a tour in the very ancient cellars of which there are 28 km and 100 million bottles stored. We couldn't wait for the English tour so we went on the French tour. I didn't understand any of it - but the cellars were amazing.

Peronne France

Christele was our first host, we met her through the Homelink organisation and stayed with her and her two children for two nights.
They were very welcoming and hospitable and the three children were a delight. They made a meal of cheese that night for us - which we had never seen before. Thee must have been 4-5 kilo's of cheese. Wow! three plates full of beautiful french cheese.

Their house was an old three story house with five bedrooms and huge glass family room and kitchen which overlooked the garden. Christele was a Super Woman looking after three children and working as a journalist and very busy - then having us a guests.

Peroone is in the area of the Somme Battle field. We visited beautiful quaint villages and many cemetaries including a large Australian one. The one thing I really loved as we were driving arrive the area was the great expanse of water - rivers and lakes, but also beautiful poppies everywhere. It was like the Fury's song of the 1st world war in the green fields of france and watching the red poppies dance. It was quite a sombre experience.
The next night we cook a BBQ - however it wasn't a gas BBQ but one using coals and not very easy to get going. However we drank lots of wine and it didn't seem to matter!

Leaving for france

We left for france on the 24th May. It was a strange experience queing up in the the car at a place like an airport. The Ferry was huge and had a cew of 200 people. On board were many shops and cafes. It was great watching the white cliffs of Dover disapear into the distance and at the same time being able to see France.
Once we had left the ferry we had to take great care to drive on the right side of the road - very scarey

Lady Jane Grey's House

This is located in Bradgate Park in Leicester.

Bradgate Park

Bradgate Park is located in Leicestershire. Leicester is where I grew up. I wanted to show Tony this very special place as I have many happy memories of visiting it. It was a very blustery day, but still as beautiful as I remember as Tony was impressed with the park.

Lady Jane Grey's house is also located in the park. She was Henry VIII's grand daughter and she was Queen at 17 years of age and was queen for nine days befoe they choppped off her head for treason. Poor girl!!

Tony's day on an open top bus

I took a tour of London on the open top bus - cost me £19 ($40).

So I went round 1.5 times.

Here is a good picture of the Tower Bridge.

Alex's birthday

It was Alex's birthday on the 16th May.

We went shopping in London for the day and bought many lovely things.

It's always good going shopping with her.

The new car

We have now bought our car to go on our travels.

It's a peugoet 407 station wagon, diesel and is very smart.

It cost £2000 and we should be able to sell it when we get back.

We have also bought a Satellite Navigation unit which will navigate us around europe. Alex was disgusted with us as she thought we should use a conventional map.

Pamela, Geoff and Me

Here is Pamela Geoff and myself at the river after we had sailed Mum down the river.
It rained most of the time but that didn't seem to matter. It was a very special day and I think Mum would have approved.

Scattering Mum's ashes

The Woods family had organised to meet on May 11th at Pamela's house, to remember Dad, as it was one year since he had died and to scatter Mum's ashes as she had died unexpectedly 10 months later.

Geoff, Pamela and myself with the grandchildren Sarah and Florence and one great granchild Kara all took part in a simple but very special ceremony.
In the morning we all made origami paper boats.Some of us had written little notes inside the boats before they were folded. Crocheted flowers were made from mum's wool. Mum loved cake, so a huge chocolate cake was made. A candle was lit and photos of mum and dad were placed around the candle.

The weather was not the best and we'd had showers on and off all day. In the afternoon we walked down to the river in the most beautiful English countryside with our paper boats, flowers and ashes. We stood on the bank of the river and placed a handful of ashes and a flower into the boats and placed them on the fast flowing river.

Some of the boats sailed quickly down the river into the distance and other sailed for a short while and sank. When they sank the paper slowly unfolded and the ashes dispersed into the water. It was quite a lovely sight.

We were hoping to have the chocolate cake next to the river, however because the weather was bad we went home and talked about Mum and Dad in front of the fire, shared the cake around and placed a slice of cake next to the photo's.

One of the interesting things of the day was talking about mum's writing. She had started to write her memoirs and there were many things we knew nothing about, some quirky stories and some dark things about her family - but they're another story.

Here in London

We have now arrived in London and staying at Alex and Jasons. We are looking for a car or a van so we can drive around europe. Tony drove around London yesterday with me map reading and we did really well considering we were in a transit van which we had borrowed of Jason. We are off today to buy a mobile phone and a Sat Nav. However nothing is as straight forward as you think it should be!!
Coffee - now there's a story, the english cannot make good coffee and we refuse to go to a Starbucks, well we managed to find a place that was pretty good, however it cost $4.50. I'm missing my coffee made by Glen at Yarra Coffee. I don't think we'll have trouble in Italy and France though. The prices of meals are double and tripple what we are used to paying and no gaurentee of good food - from experience it's pretty bad. However we are going to try an indian tonight and Alex is paying for my birthday.