Glasgow

Back in London for 4 days at work and then we were off again, for a long weekend in Glasgow. The week went quickly, Christine was on school holidays but managed to keep herself busy with Mel, galleries and washing! Damien was back at the office working hard for the four days.
Thursday afternoon we met at Liverpool St and took the train out to the airport for our flight to Glasgow. Our roommates from snowboarding last year were from Glasgow and at the end of the week they invited us up to Glasgow. Of course we said we would visit, but we didn’t realize it would take us over a year to organize it!
Audrey and Lorna picked us up from the airport and took us straight to a pub, true Scottish style, love it! It gets better, Lorna actually owns the apartment above the pub! After a couple of pints and a catch up on the events of the past 12mths, Audrey took us back to her place, where we would be staying (she has less cats).
Friday the girls had work, so after bit of a sleep in, we caught the bus into the town centre. It is a small city, so we did a bit of a walking tour. We started at George Square which is the centre of town, and has a number of statues. From here we wandered down to the Cathedral. This is being restored but the inside was very nice, beautiful stained glass windows and in the lower church there is a tomb and medieval arches. Behind the church was the Necropolis, an old graveyard with nice view over the city and some very grand tomb stones.
After a lovely lunch in a little café we headed to the City Chambers for a guided tour. The interior is very extravagant, marble stairways, council chambers and portraits of past mayors. It has been used in films for scenes in the ‘Vatican’. We got to sit in the Mayors seat and saw them setting up the ballroom for the ‘Sportsman of the Year’ presentations.
We had a quick visit to GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art) which has a horse statue out the front that constantly gets a witches hat placed on it, as bit of a joke. Then we got a call to be at a pub back out near Audrey’s, so we jumped on the bus and headed out to meet the girls. It was a night out to celebrate one of their friends birthdays. Sadly Lorna was not feeling well and never made it out for the evening. The night started in a busy micro brewery, The Clockwork Beer Company, where pints and pizza were consumed. Then we headed to the local Greyhound track for a night of racing, woo hoo! With only 5 dogs in each race, we were able to pick a couple of winners, roughly breaking even for the evening. Stumbling out of the dog track we visited another little local pub, an Indian takeaway joint (with fluorescent pink food, mmm…) and then back to the birthday girls place for a night cap! Strangely, Saturday morning Audrey wasn’t feeling very well! She decided to have a day in bed. Lorna, feeling a bit better picked us up, in her red mini cooper, with Candy, her puppy dog in the back. We drove north through the city and up to Loch Lomond. The drive took about an hour, through nice country side and rolling hills. We arrived in a small village, had a bite to eat and a coffee. Then we went for a walk on the Loch with the puppy! The Loch was beautiful and we were fortunate that the weather was nice, blue sky and sunny for most of the day. It was also fun playing with Candy, she loved the water and chasing her tennis ball. We had a few stops on the way home. We had a look at some Hairy Cows, coffee in another little town, climbed a mountain with views back over Glasgow and visited a friend of Lorna’s briefly. Back in Glasgow we found Audrey had dragged herself out of bed, was feeling better, but not great. After a rest on the couch and a glass of wine, we headed into town for dinner in a district called Merchant City. This is an old part of town with small buildings and alleyways, and lots of nightlife. We ate in a great little restaurant, very busy. I ate Haggis, Nips and Tatties while Christine had a Moroccan Lamb dish, When in Rome… After dinner Audrey retired for the evening, but Lorna had grand plans. We bar hopped for a little while, struggling to finish our drinks after eating so much. Then we headed to a nightclub, VIP of course, she is well connected in the Glasgow night scene. The nightclub looked amazing from the outside, it is in the basement of an old church. Sadly the interior was like any other nightclub, they had plastered over all the old stone walls and roof. We had a good night, drinking and dancing. Honestly it felt a bit like the Mt View in Melbourne (one of our locals), that sort of crowd and lay-out, although the music here wasn’t as good!
Our last day in town we headed out for brunch with Audrey. As if last night wasn’t enough I ate Haggis Bruchetta for breakfast. We then visited Pollock Country Park, Pollock House and the Burrell Collection. The house is an old mansion turned art gallery with a lot of old furniture and portraits. The Burrell Collection is a modern building which houses a museum. Lots of cool things in here sculptures, furniture, Egyptian, Greek and Chinese sections. Lorna met us in the park with Candy to say good bye, and then we were on our way back to the airport bound for London again.
We had a very busy 3 days, but loved it, there is heaps of art and culture in Glasgow as well as heaps of parks. Thanks for everything girls, from accommodation, food and drinks , showing us around and good times! See you in Melbourne next!

Snowboarding Videos

Val D'Isere - French Alps

We had both taken Friday off work as we needed to clear out our room so we don’t have to pay rent whilst at the snow. We never look forward to this as it takes ages trying to stash everything away, and then you always find more stuff. We managed to tidy the room in record time and had time to spare. Mel was also packed and ready to go so the three of us headed out for a walk. We headed to Notting Hill and had a quick look at Portabello Rd which always has lots of nice food. I wouldn’t let Christine buy anything as we had heaps of food already for the bus ride. She settled for a coffee and brownie at one of the many cafes. Time was slipping away so we headed back to DC, got our stuff and headed to Victoria Bus Station for the Snow Express at 7pm.
The first part of the journey was ok although we missed the first ferry which was annoying. This meant we had to wait at the ferry terminal for an hour on the bus. Finally we got on the ferry found a spot and started our picnic dinner. With our combined remaining food we had a bit of a feast. Cheese, dip, olives and bread topped off by a bottle of wine, to help us sleep on the bus of course.
Once back on the bus we all tried to sleep. We were lucky because the bus wasn’t full so we all managed to get two seats to stretch out on. This was good for the first couple of hours but not so great after 18 or so hours. We did manage to get a decent sleep, partially thanks to a few sleeping pills. The last part of the ride dragged. The bus dropped people off where we got off last year, to transfer to the Chamonix bus. At this point we figured we were nearly there (1.5 hr from Chamonix). Not so we were the last stop so had to make stops at a number of different resorts dropping of a few people at each. Thankfully we finally arrived at around 3pm. We wandered around Val D’Isere a little dazed and confused until check in time which was 5pm. Finally we got into our room, unpacked, got our boards organized, showered and headed down for our first amazing dinner. Sunday we slept in, not going to get a chance to do that aging for a few days. Then after a bowl of coffee (no mugs, crazy French people), we hit the slopes. Christine and I hung out on the green slopes, but were happy with the variety of beginner’s runs. Mel headed off to find the blue and red runs, to ease herself into the week. After a picnic lunch the three of us did a few runs together, Mel on her ski’s and us face planting our way down the hill on snowboards. We attempted a blue run all the way back to town, but the lower we got it was very icy and very painful. In reality, we were both quite happy with our first day, we took it easy but seemed to remember some of what we had learnt last year.
Monday morning we were up early for our bowl of coffee, and then met our instructor, Antoine. We had a rough morning. Maybe it was the early morning or maybe it was trying to impress the instructor but we weren’t as good as the day before. It didn’t help that he took us right back to basics, about 3 levels below what we had been practicing the day before. After a big lunch back at UCPA we headed out for the afternoon, which was a bit more successful. We were getting the hang of doing turns again. Over all out of ten I felt I achieved about a 4, let down by a tough morning. The evening I spent in the local swimming pool, but Christine didn’t bring her bathers, even after being reminded. We then came home to find our neighbours were French (bad), brang a sub woofer sound system (really bad) and played shit doof doof until the wee hours of the morning! Day 2, was a really good day. More practice linking the turns and then learning switch (basically riding backwards). This came fairly easy for both of us, being ambidextrous. I actually got told off in class for doing it yesterday, I didn’t even realize I was going the wrong way! Christine also had a really good day. The afternoon we tried some blue runs, visibility dropped and it started snowing. Still doing well, until the last run, where Damien did a spectacular ‘windmill’ face plant, must have looked brilliant! A dampener on a good day followed by a few more crashes on the way home, over all about 8/10. The evening did the stretching class before heading into town for the night show. There was a light show on the mountain, trick jumps, hundreds of skiers riding down the mountain with headlights on and a fireworks show. Dinner was a big seafood cook up we had a few drinks and then headed to bed to suffer through the noisy French! Wednesday was a half day, so we slept in. Last year we headed out for another full day, but this year we needed rest, old age and I have a cold. We had a walk around town, checking out the shops, ice sculptures and ice rink.
Back on the slopes we had a mixed afternoon. I was struggling early but the instructor helped, by challenging me to go faster and do smaller tighter turns (5/10). This helped, as there was less time to think about what I was doing! The rest of the class was attempting to do 180 jumps. Struggling with standing up I was busy with my turns, but Christine gave it a shot, and came off second best, landing awkward on her hip. The snow was good today after 12 hours of light snow. Mel, who can ski, but hasn’t had lessons before has been doing the black runs and traversing the whole resort. She says she is enjoying the lessons which is good to hear, and is learning new skills, going off piste and through saloms and moguls. Dinner as promised by Helene, our friend in the kitchen, was a local specialty. Bread, cheese, cured hams and traditional stew. This is to go with the Salad bar, cheese table, buffet mains, dessert table and ice cream fridge that is on offer each night. The food in this place is amazing, you always walk away happy but wishing you hadn’t eaten quite so much. Thursday was a fun day. We headed to the top of the resort and snowboarded on the Glacier. There was fresh powder everywhere, nowhere near as icy as you expect the glacier to be! This part of the resort you can ski on all year round. Finding a bit of confidence in the soft stuff (yesterday I just sank), and taking the instructors advice to ‘embrace the speed’ I provided the class with another spectacular stack. We were boarding from off piste onto the piste for a bit, building speed and then off up into powder. That bit was fine, but seeing the rest of the class had stopped on top of a 2m lip of powder snow, I maintained the speed to get over the lip, planning to stop on the other side. I didn’t realize that it was a sheer drop on the other side of the lip and ended up sliding 10m down the mountain, on my face. I was fine, it was all soft powder, and everyone was laughing when Christine pulled up and asked, ‘where’s Damien’. Overall it was a good day prob a 7 out of 10.
We had lunch in a restaurant in a cosy little ski town, it was so nice. Sadly we didn’t take the camera that day, possibly a good thing given my big slide earlier in the day. It was a shorter afternoon, Christine stuggled again today feeling a bit sore. Afternoon at the UCPA helped cheer her up, Crepes and chocolate sauce. Mel and I headed to the pools again for a recovery swim. The girls then hit the town and didn’t make it home until late. Friday was our last day of classes and was exciting as we were boarding from Val D’Isere to Tignes another resort nearby. It was no surprise that Christine struggled and only boarded for about an hour. After some narrow runs to get to Tignes we headed up and spent the morning dong blue and red runs. Lunch was at the UCPA Tignes. We did a few more runs after lunch before heading back to Val D’Isere. Definitely the best day yet possibly a 9/10 and no major stacks to report back. Friday night everyone from the boarding classes gathered for drinks before dinner which was fun, nice to mix with everyone off the board. Then it was another great dinner, drinks, its Christine’s Birthday. She was very surprised when Helene, our friend in the kitchen, brought out a birthday cake and everyone in the UCPA sang. After dinner we headed out on the town for a few drinks to celebrate. The decision was tough, sleep in after a night out or hit the slopes for a few hours, possibly the last time we will do so in the French Alps. After possibly our last bowl of coffee in the French Alps, we braved it and hit the slopes. Christine joined us minus the board, which meant we had our own personal photographer. Mel and I did a few runs, modeling for Christine before heading off to some of the easier runs with better snow, for one last blast. It was another good morning, just cruising. At the end of the week I’m definitely happy with where I finished, but am a bit disappointed that I didn’t learn to jump and didn’t get to ski home. We then rushed back, returned our gear, cleaned or room, ate lunch, had a last walk around the town and boarded our bus for the long ride home. It wasn’t too bad on the way home. The drivers put on two dvd’s for us and we slept ok again.

Coming's and Goings!

Carly, our Canadian house mate, is heading off to OZ, so she decided for her last hurrah to have an international dinner. This was pretty cool as everyone bought a dish from a different region. We were a bit slack and made nachos, but the problem was we had been online booking stuff for the way home and lost track of time. We basically missed the mains and have the nachos ready for the dessert course, opps. No one seemed to mind although we missed out on Chris’s stella pork chops which smelt amazing.

Sun - Spitalfield Mkt, brick lane with New Mel
We headed to Spitafields markets with with Mel2 who is new to the house. She is friends with one of the other girls and is from Malasia/New Zealand. We had the intention of getting some sort of memento of our time in London. Spitifeilds generally has a bit more arts and crafts stuff than a lot of the other markets. The only problem is that Christine is so fussy! She likes lots of the clothes, handbags and jewelry but not the art works. Very frustrating! My favorite part of the market trip is always lunch. We headed over to brick lane where they have a food stalls with Moroccan, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Greek you name it. The problem here is there is too much choice and everything smells great. It takes ages to decide what to have and then your never sure if your happy with what you have or if you should have got something else. Sampling everyone else’s is always good though.

Chinese New Year – Mel (new) Sun 6/2/11
London’s celebrations of the Chinese New Year is supposed to be the biggest outside of Asia so we decided it was worth having a look at. Mel came with us to Trafalgar Square where there was an opening ceremony with crackers and a lion dance. We unfortunately stood downwind of a homeless man, a mistake we won’t make again, but this was the only place we could see from. The whole square was packed! There were lots and lots of speeches of notable people in the London Chinese community saying how fantastic it was to have so many people there, boring! Finally the firecrackers began, lots of cracking and smoke. There was another ceremony of dotting the dragon’s eyes then a dragon dance which was kind of cool. The best part of the whole fiasco was the Lion dance. This consisted of a couple of guys under the one costume jumping across raised platforms. It was quite impressive.
We left Trafalgar Square and headed to the stalls to try and find some Chinese food. After fighting through the crowds we managed to find some awesome Chinese Pork Buns. These tasted home made and defiantly filled a hole. We continued on our way and got stuck in the crowds. There were just so many people, including mothers with massive prams, that it was hard to move. There were people pushing to get through but there was nowhere to go. We decided that Chinese New Year in London was way overrated and started to try to head home. We finally made it out of the masses and onto the tube ready to head home.

Mon – Mel (Brisvegas) arrives Heathrow
Our friend Mel from Brisbane who went home before Christmas last year decided she wanted to come back to London to see out her Visa. Christine’s B’day trip to the French alps put a bit of a firecracker under her and she made the decision to come with us. Christine, working near Heathrow airport, was able to surprise her at the airport so they had a long catch up on the way home. I had made a huge Curry the night before so it was leftovers and wine for dinner. It is great to have Mel back as we have been missing her heaps. Deans Court wasn’t the same without her.