Tuesday, July 22, 2008

London Bridge is falling down

The girls in Bath

We finally made it to UK and Paris for our longest trip ever... and I know there were definitely moments there when dear hubby was ready to just kill Tasnym... cos I felt that way too... Somehow she got into the mode of wanting to be carried everywhere, refusing to move from the pavement she is sitting on until no one else except her papa returns to carry her. Daniah too became an absolute koala refusing anyone else when her mama is around... my arms became muscular from the trip!! Colleagues said that I am now half of me from before the trip! Yeah and slowly but surely gaining back that half!!


I would say that it was a good trip... I loved the natural history museum - to get to see the dinosaur fossils and the bones of the blue whale... wow!! Stonehenge and the changing of guards at the Buckingham Palace was a let down... maybe too much hype than anything else.



Having both sets of grandparents around was a good thing - as extra sets of hands to carry things and manage the girls.. The long flight was a killer and the earlier road trips drove us simply nuts as we just kept getting lost - finding ourselves going the wrong way on the map... and to think that SOME PEOPLE said there is no need for the GPS thingy in UK.. yeah right... the same people who ended up putting themselves on fire cos of stress... just looking for the hotels took more than an hour... as we went round and round... We even ran out of clothes to wear cos some people insisted that I should not be bringing so much clothes, the same people who ended up shopping for clothes cos he did not have anything to wear... hmmmph!

Not forgetting the saga that we went thru when I left my phone behind in Kensington Park. The whole of Singapore was trying to get hold of us in UK and that was on our first day there. I am amazed at my good fortune that the guy who happened to walk past my phone when it coincidentally rang (cos a friend in UK was calling me) picked the call and agreed to return the phone to me! There began the whole saga of my entire family trying their darn hardest to get hold of us after my friend contacted my friends in Singapore to get in touch with me in a very circuitous way..... And I did get my phone back from a very nice person by the name of Mehdi who works in Royal Albert Hall.. Thank you so much!!
And to think that I also left my camera behind in a toilet in Edinburgh and also got it back! I am becoming so forgetful and absent minded!!

My house is till a mess, the suitcase is still lying in the hall ... and we are still dealing with the jet lag... but the memories were worth it... how do you grapple with looking at a building that is 800 years old? Or that a room you are in saw the birth of a King 500 years ago? Living in a bed and Breakfast was an experience... but we definitely could do without all those stairs ... to think we were staying in the attic!

Feeding ducks and swans at Windermere, Lake District

Paris was not as nice an experience... the snobbery of the people, the filth of the metro... it just spoils the entire experience when the places we were at were so nice.. where else can you meet Indian guys selling crepe (that's French Prata!!) speaking French with the snobbery attached!! and the fact that someone attempted to pickpocket my dad! The guy we met at the tourist information counter at the airport was so arrogant... he should definitely not be working there... he told me off for mispronouncing Les Halles..."Its Lee-Al, its French" with a dismissive snort... huh! like I would know how it should be pronounced and like as if he can pronounce Bedok!

Painted faces in Disney. We paid $25 each and they wanted it wiped off after an hour!Never forgetting her trademark pose!!

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