Story behind the photo - London

Since moving over here, I've taken a LOT of photos. I have no idea of the number, but I'm fairly sure it would number in the thousands.

In an attempt to record some of the things that I've seen (and hopefully not forget what all my photos were of), I'm going to do a Story behind the photo post each week. I have my photos sorted into folders by location, and the folders are in date order on my computer. So, I'm going to work my way through one folder each week, select a photo (using this website), post it, and write what I remember about it.

Without any further ado.....

I had to really think what this is actually a photo of. When my friends and I arrived in London (at about 7 in the morning), we checked into the hotel we were staying at, wandered the area, and did a double-decker bus tour of London. There are a couple of companies that do them (as far as I know they cover a very similar route), we went with The Original Tour. This photo (I'm almost 100% fairly kind of sure) was taken as we were driving past Buckingham Palace. It doesn't look like much.....I'm sure I had a reason for taking it at the time. I do know, it wasn't until several months later, that I discovered you could actually tour part of Buckingham Palace in the summer months....

Travel Wish List

The longer I spend living in Europe, the greater my list of places I want to travel to becomes. If time and money were no object, here is the list (in no particular order)

1. Gallipoli for Anzac Day (this should happen this year, was meant to go last year but the ash cloud got in the way)

2. Iceland

3. Giants Causeway  completed! visited 13/2/11

4. Jacobite Steam Railway

5. Edinburgh (to see the military tattoo again)

6. Spain (probably Madrid and/or Barcelona, but anywhere in Spain would be good)

7. Normandy/D-day area of France

8. Switzerland (not sure where, have visited Lucerne before but would like to see more)

9. Portugal

10. Germany for Christmas markets (probably Nuremburg)

11. Norway

12. Sweden

13. Finland

14. more of Belgium (have already visited Brussels)

15. Southwest England (Cornwall/Devon)

16. Cinque Terre area of Italy

17. Sorrento and Capri

18. Pompeii

Let's see how far I get through the list in 2011....

You know it's cold when....

You see this on the streetlight outside your window:

Dear postal services...

Why is it that posting items can be such pot luck? Surely, except in exceptional circumstances (e.g. weather, or an extra busy time such as Christmas), delivery times should be fairly standard?

Right?

Why then, do things I post back to Australia take anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks to arrive? And why do multiple parcels, all going to the same city (different addreses, but all relatively close by to each other), take varying times to be delivered? (I  posted Christmas presents home two weeks ago - one arrived in a week, one arrived in two weeks, the rest are still out there somewhere....)

And why does something that was posted after something else arrive first (my Christmas card from my family arrived before their parcel, and I know the parcel was posted first).

I'm sure I'm not the only one curious to know....

Yours,

a (rather curious) girl from oz

Things I never thought would happen, volume one

The weather forecast for the weekend where I live is for temperatures of around 5-6 degrees celsius.

When I heard that, I thought to myself, "that sounds like it will be kind of warm, it will make a nice change."

I wonder what my pre-moving-to-the-UK-when-temperatures-around-10-degrees-were-considered-cold- and-it-didn't-happen-very-often self would think of me now.

(and yes, I'm expecting this list to grow :-) )

Explain, please...

To the woman I saw yesterday while out and about in London:

I totally agree with you. It was cold yesterday. Definitely a day for being wrapped in warm clothes, a warm woolley scarf, gloves, etcetera.

So why were you wearing open-toed shoes?

Anybody care to elaborate, please....

Why me? Or.....what seems to happen every time I try to take a plane trip

I just got back from visiting some Christmas markets in Germany for a few days, and I'm starting to think that I should stop trying to travel by plane for a little while. I was delayed by 6 hours going over, and 3 hours coming back today (both weather related).

Flight delays and/or cancellations are starting to become a bit of a theme when I travel. See, for example, what's happened when I've flown since coming to Europe:

visiting Berlin last year - delay coming back to England due to mechanical problems

visiting Italy this year - it was during one of the British Airways cabin crew strikes, our flight was flown by a charter airline......*shudders* not my favourite flight experience ever...

visiting Copenhagen this year - I was only supposed to be there for 4 days, then fly back to London and out to Turkey, and join a group tour which included being at Gallipoli for the  ANZAC day dawn service. Then the volcano in Iceland happened.....and I didn't get to Turkey, spent a week extra in Copenhagen

I know that's only a short list, but it seems that every flight I try and take has some problems. I think maybe I'll stick to taking the train...