| Vickie's travels: New Zealand - 10/10/01 |
| NZ is good, we
did all the volcanic thermal stuff yesterday with boiling mud
pools, sulphur lake and god knows what else spewing out of the
earth. We head down to the south island, end of next week for
a three week tour around the mountains, glaciers and countryside.
I hope to include a dolphin swim and a whale watching trip.
|
| Vickie's travels: Singapore - 25/9/01 |
| Singapore is fabulous, everything India
is not. The food is fantastic, we've had Chinese, Thai, Malay
and Indonesian food. Beautiful gardens everywhere, including
massive orchid gardens. |
|
Singapore by night... |
| The hotel is excellent. Explored Chinatown
where we witnessed an Autumn moon festival with dancing dragons
etc. Also visited Little India, the Arab quarter and of course
the main shopping area. Today is our last day. We fly to New
Zealand tomorrow. We spent it at the zoo on a nighttime safari
- excellent concept. |
| Vickie's travels: India - 13/9/01 |
| Well I've left the Thar desert in Rajesthan
and we traveled up to the Himalayan foothills to escape the
heat. Bikaner was the last stop and it was all right, usual
fort and palace, not much else. The train trip up here was great,
going through remote desert communities seeing countless camels
and watching the sunset over the desert. |
|
The marketplace at Bikaner in the Himalayas. |
| We made it to Kalka early yesterday morning
and caught the toy train up to Shimla, 96kms and 103 tunnels
away. The journey led us around the edge of the foothills to
reach 2180 metres above sea- level. |
|
Sadu 'Holy Man'... |
| It has taken some serious acclimatisation
to get used to the meagre 22 degrees Celsius up here (we've
been used to 36 and above). We've even had to buy small blankets
to deal with it. We haven't seen the Himalayas yet as it's to
hazy, but we still hoping. Great sunsets. We'll probably
stay here for 5 days then head over to Mussorie, then to Nepal. |
|
A chapati man in Shimla... |
| Anyway hope you're all OK, glad we
moved away from Pakistan (only 150km
from the border at Jaisalmer). There's so much news coverage
here, I bet it is worse in England. Anyway speak soon, we're
both very well, if a bit cold.
love Vickie |
| All pictures link to Vickie's
worldisround.com
article. |
|
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|
A slightly rendered photograph of a Lisbon skyline, taken
on our recent holiday in Portugal. |
| Rafferty's Christening booked: |
| Just a quick note to let everyone know we
have booked Raffy's baptism for 6th January 2002. It will be
held at St. Thomas' Roman Catholic church in Canterbury, at
12:15. We will sort out the invites in a couple of weeks. |
| Our Holiday in Portugal... |
| We flew out to Lisbon on the 13th September,
to stay with our friends Jo & James Groombridge. They hadn't
seen Rafferty yet, and we got to meet their month-old daughter
Annabelle. We had an excellent time during the first part of
our holiday: James & I went clay-pigeon shooting and managed
to do a bit of body-boarding on the beaches. There are lots
of excellent restaurants around Cascais and Estoril which we
tried out, and the best part was that we are getting to know
the place quite well now (it's Vanessa's fourth visit and my
third) so we almost feel like locals. |
|
Vanessa with Raffy overlooking Lisbon rooftops, as we revisited
the spectacular Castillo Sao Jorge. |
| Halfway through the holiday, we drove down
to the Algarve for the wedding of Filipa and Max (see next column)
but also managed to explore the area around Faro & Loule.
This was great fun, especially when we chanced upon a little
English enclave in the middle of the Portuguese countryside
at Santa Barbara de Nexe - as we were lost at the time,
this was very helpful! |
|
A picnic at the beach in Caparica. It started to rain so
we ran to a deserted old beach cafe. From the left: Alexander
Modley, Vanessa, James Groombridge, Tiphaine Modley and Jo
Groombridge. |
| On our return to Cascais, we spent another
lovely day at the beach with Jo & James, and their friends
Alexander & Tiphaine, plus lots of children. Jo's parents
were staying as well, so it was quite a party. Vanessa and I
took Raffy on his first train journey - to Lisbon for the day
- and he managed to charm a lot of Portuguese ladies with his
big smiles. We had plenty of time to play with Oliver, who has
grown up so much now, and liked to call Raffy 'The Munchkin'.
Quite a lot of time was spent playing a snow boarding game on
James' new Playstation 2. |
|
The extremely colourful Pene Palace on a hilltop in Sintra.
If you look very carefully at one of the turrets to the right
of the picture, you can see Vanessa, Jo & James. |
| In our last few days we visited Sintra,
a beautiful town in the mountains just north of Lisbon. We visited
its most famous landmark, the Pene Palace shown in the picture
above, which is quite spectacular. Afterwards we went for lunch
in a wonderfully eccentric old tearoom in the town. |
| Sadly it was soon time to come home, but
Vanessa will be going back on the 29th November for another
week in Portugal with the boy. I'll be putting all the pictures
of our holiday on the site in the next few days - when I get
the time, which is a little short these days... |
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| Max & Filipa's wedding - 21/9/01 |
| While we were in Portugal, we drove down
to the Algarve for Max & Filipa's wedding. The drive itself
was a great way to get to know Portugal, with some beautiful
scenery through the hills approaching the southern coast. We
stayed in a lovely hotel - the Ria Park at Vale de Lobo, which
we can thoroughly recommend! Not too expensive either... |
|
Max & Filipa pose for their wedding photographs... |
| The wedding itself was held in a lovely
old farmhouse in the countryside - about halfway between Loule
and Faro: Quinta dos Agostos. The winter weather was drawing
in and the rain poured down, but this didn't seen to matter
at all, and if anything added to the atmosphere. Max looked
great in his pink linen suit (only Max could carry that off!)
and Filipa was simply stunning and reminded us of a slimmer
Catherine Zeta Jones. She did manage to arrive forty minutes
late because of the rain, but that's the bride's prerogative,
I'm told! Filipa's entrance was very cool, accompanied by a
lone saxophonist in the rain playing 'Summer Time'. |
|
The happy couple enjoy their first dance (while Max could
still stand). |
| After a very touching humanist marriage
service, we all adjourned to the large marquis for the reception.
The food was excellent, but we discovered that the meal we were
served was not all that had been provided - there was a gigantic
buffet of cheeses, fruit, desserts etc. that we hadn't even
noticed until later in the evening. There were one or two speeches
followed by dancing and tossing of the bouquet. Rafferty had
a great time and was a big hit with one of Filipa's aunts, who
held him for hours in the evening while we were dancing. The
bride and groom disappeared off to South Africa for their honeymoon
a few days later when Max had recovered from his hangover... |
| Funny lookin' kid... |
|
Jo & James sent us this picture of a friend's child
modeling the latest fashion in Portuguese baby accessories... |
| A new mountain bike for Dan... |
| I recently received a little windfall by
way of some unexpected royalties, and have treated myself
to a brand new mountain bike. It's been four years since my
last one was stolen in London, so it's about time. |
 |
| This particular beast is a Univega Alpina
570 - an aluminium frame hardtail with Manitou forks, Shimano
LX front & XT rear drivetrain and Mavic rims. It rides like
a dream, and Martyn & I went and got it very muddy on Wednesday... |
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