A trip on the london eye

Well i am making a conscious effort to blog more i am afraid to say facebook and farmville have taken over the past weeks shameful !!.
Anyway these are a few photos taken on the London Eye a couple of weeks ago. It was a birthday treat for my eldest daughter who had never been before she really loved it, we made a day of it and went out to lunch afterwards to a restaurant in covent garden called Wahaccas, a former masterchef winners restaurant superb food mexican food all freshly cooked to order all washed down with a lovely margarita, delicious! We finished off the day by shopping and ended up at Gordon Ramsays wine bar to end our day. It was lovely to spend time with both my daughters at the same time, does not happen as often as we would like so it was very special for me to have that time with them.


View taken leading up to the eye


Loved the shape of this building down below us.
As can be seen it was quite misty.

Some of Londons great buildings

Got snap happy with Big Ben took so many.

One of the most iconic buildings of London

Another one !!!!

The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben from above

in the pod.

I just loved the angles and workings that could

be seen whilst in the pod on the eye itself

View from our pod onto the other, with a view of the

Thames in the background

From our pod the other one looked like it was

suspended in mid air

Quite a good view with the buildings down below.

Good job i am not scared of heights!

An empty pod shell

My favourite picture, to me it just captures everything

the eye is, an amazing piece of engineering

Just another angle from within the pod.

Planning to go on the Eye again at some point at night this time views would be wonderful.

Been a hectic couple of weeks seeing family and friends great to catch up with people who i had not seen for ages, crammed so much in one week, but loved every minute.

Sue our youngest daughter went home yesterday after spending a week with us, the house is so quiet today miss her already xxxx but we had a nice relaxing time together plenty of chats and hugs and laughs, so thankyou Sue .

Amalfi Drive seems like a dream!

My trip to Italy seems a long time ago already, but i can still remember the beautiful scenery of the Amalfi drive.
We had such lovely weather that day unlike some who went the following day , so we were very lucky to catch some glorious views! We had an early start at 8am but it was worth it seeing the sun on the water overlooking Capri and the road was not to busy thank goodness as anyone who has done this will know that the road is very very narrow in places with sheer drops on the left hand side, quite breathtaking at times! The drive took us to the beautiful town of Amalfi, then onto Ravello.

One of the many little villages set in the hillside
With the 5star hotel at the edge! Mega money to stay!

We stopped here for a coffee break just an hour into the journey
i passed on the coffee just wanted to admire the view.


This was just a rock formation honestly!
But it is now known as the Madonna holding flowers
once you were passed it you could see nothing from
the other direction.

A better view i think of the formation

Just loved the colour of the sea here, and the boats getting
ready to go out.

We are now in Amalfi.

This picture i am very proud of, after i looked
in the guide book this was in it.

The original 13th century road in Amalfi

Again this one was also in the guide book.

In medieval times it was named the Valley of the Mills

The beautiful cathedral

Dedicated to the Apostle Andrew

One of the ceilings in the cathedral
I left the flash on and promptly got told off, so

felt i should not take anymore inside.

A beautiful view from Ravello looking down with

the mountains in the distance.

A view of Minnori taken n Ravello

View from the mountains from the coach.

As you can see we climbed and climbed to one of the highest points.

One of my favourite days of the whole holiday such contrasting views from the high mountains to the hillside towns ans the sea of course with its wonderful colours.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUE

So pleased you liked the card we sent, it is usually you that makes me cry with your cards, got my own back ! We will have some bubbles to celebrate when i am down.
Just wishing you a very happy birthday!! Sue thought this was just your sort of humour.
With all love as always Mum xx

Beautiful Sorrento

Well as you can see we really did not have a great time , the scenery was awful, the food bad and well the weather that was bad as well!!!!???? But i may be joking, had a most wonderful time.
Packed so much in one week but still had time to do nothing but drink coffee and people watch down at the harbour.

This iced coffee was just divine and so well presented
the brioche was great to!


our view from the restaurant whilst having our coffee


My pizza was gorgeous thank you for asking!
We were staying in the Neapolitan riviera where the famous pizza
was invented.


The famous villa where Sophia Loren , Gina lolla Brigida
stayed and Tom cruise got married!

With this view i can see why it was chosen! Stunning!

On one of our many walks down to the harbour front

and there were sooo many steps, Lynda did really well

as she had a swollen foot at the time.

Another little narrow street

Sorrento with its many tourist shops

but you can avoid these if you just go a few streets behind

the main area.

Still lots of people!

A view of the Marina Grande

With a view along the Sorrentine peninsular

Taken from the other way with the Marina Piccalo

at the end. Our boat for the day was moored just offshore!

Same view

This was just a snippet of Sorrento it was so beautiful we may go onto Amalfi next time then Pompeii and Herculaneum which were fascinating .

As my trusted guide book said " Amalfi the coast for falling in love"

Brrrrrr who turned the teperature down!!

Well arrived back on friday night and was greeted by my daughter with a lovely smile and a hug, she had text earlier in the day " i know you don't want to come home you two shirley valentines but i am really looking forward to seeing you" made me smile! spent the night at her house then made our way home to cornwall on saturday after a lovely lunch at Toys Hill in kent (home cooked ham egg and chips). My friend dropped me off at Launceston and Tony picked me up from there. So we had a great run back only 4hrs from kent, unlike our trip up which took nearly 7hrs the dreaded M25 again, got caught in a bad accident where everything just stopped for over an hour and half so frustrating and tiring.
Had a super holiday our hotel great and the food really good met some lovely people so if you are reading this now P and M i didn't write anything bad LOL we hit it off straight away which was great we met up in the evenings and had a good laugh and a gossip!! such good company so thankyou both! In fact we are all meeting up with our respective daughters in december!
We did not do all we had planned but we certainly made the most of our week there in Sorrento and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves from the moment we arrived to the time we left.
Just chilling out today in more ways than one its blooming freezing after being in temeratures of the high 20's sitting here typing with my jeans and two jumpers on brrrr. Will get some pics up during the week it was so beautiful can't wait to share the sights. Shame we can't get smells over the blogs because they were fantastic too lemon, orange and olive trees i can smell them now.

Pasta, Pizza and Pompeii

My case is packed and i am ready to go to Italy on friday!!
My friend and i are off to Sorrento for a weeks holiday, been planning this for a while but only booked it last week due to my friend having a foot operation, which i can report was a great success and she got the all clear last week.
We will be doing a couple of trips whilst out there one being Pompeii and one to the island of Capri, with maybe a boat trip thrown in. This is our hotel just about a mile outside of sorrento, seems a little more quiet than some we looked at in sorrento itself , apparently overlooking the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius . Although the weather does not seem to great at the moment over Italy we are hoping for at least a few days of good sunny weather. Fingers crossed!!
We will drive up to my daughters tomorrow and spend the night there, that way we will be the right side of the dreaded M25 we can then make our way to Gatwick after the morning rush hour. We are parking at my friends sister-in-laws so no airport charges either!
It shall be great not to have to think about cooking as eating out is one of my favourite things to do in Italy (or anywhere for that matter!) you can sit and people watch ,even if it is just sitting with a lovely cappachino or ice cream. Mmmm i can just taste that ice cream now.
It will be an adventure i'm sure Lynda and i are not known for our sense of direction at the best of times LOL we even managed to get lost in a car park once that is another story!! Our families do get a little worried i think but we are big girls now and can look after ourselves JUST!
So Bonn voyage people for a week or so. The camera and charger are packed in readiness!

Rainham Marshes

On a visit to essex to stay with friends last week they kindly took us to Rainham Marshes, we had never been before so it was a pleasant change. Not to much activity bird wise but still a lovely walk. We were very fortunate to see a water vole swimming about in the streams, but my dear hubby had gone wandering off again!!! with the camera, i was not amused! i must admit to feeling very privileged to see the vole beautiful creature.

Our friend said "bet you can't guess what this was built for?"
It was a wartime look out station for german submarines that tried to secretly get up the Thames river. Who would have thought it!


Again something from the war if you enlarge the picture you can read all about it!


Description of the numbers in the above photo



Wildlife at last on the pond. The small ponds where the frogs had been in the early summer were mostly dried up due to lack of rain in the area.

They are still quite cute!

I am informed by my friends that this is a little grebe

well a baby little grebe stood watching it for ages diving in and out of the water

it was really enjoying itself!

Mummy little grebe

A giant frog in one of the many streams

And again

The visitors centre has not long been built, very well equipped with telescopes dotted around that you can look through, very informative staff as well. Well worth a look in fact there is an open day tomorrow which looked good.

Took a surprise trip up to eseex last week left on the thursday and back sunday. The surprise was for the eldest grandaughter who was 16 and the family were having a bbq for her, we kept it a secret from her until we knocked on the door the afternoon of the said bbq, her face was worth the 300 mile trip (priceless in fact) she was gobsmacked. Had a fab time just family and a few friends great food and good weather. So happy belated birthday Amy! Can't believe she is 16 makes me feel very very old!!!

A wonderful week

We all had a wonderful week apart from the weather being not as good as we had hoped, but we packed loads in. We played stupid games listened and sang along to their music and laughed so much your tummy muscles hurt, they are now so grown up i can't believe that they are beautiful young ladies. It was great so thanks girls.

Nothing like walking bare foot in the sand






Just about to go body boarding Jess and I
at Mawgan Porth beach


Jess how can you resist that smile !


Captured unawares love this one of Jess

Amy, after not surfing for two years just got

up on the board and surfed like she hadn't

been away!

As you can see the sea was quite rough,

The following day we went to flambards theme park and the sun shone.

There were a few big rides as you can see, but not being to adventurous Amy missed out on going on some as none of us would go on with her. But we had a good day. Apart from the rides there is an indoor part called the blitz , where you can take part in an air raid when you here the sirens going off, very effective the actual floor shook with the noise of the aeroplanes going over, there were different exhibits as well, unfortunately you were not allowed to take photographs.


The log flume where we all got soaked

as you can see it was quite high, great fun!

They all went on the racing cars tony thinking

he was Louis Hamilton!

The concentration was apparent! Amy did really well

considering she had never been in one!

All of us in the hall of mirrors. Quite a scary bunch

This was fun with me screaming at the top of my head

as it went around the corners, much to the girls delight

they found it funny!

These were helicopters that were on a monorail that

you had to pedal, i must admit i was a little scared as you

peddled off the station and looked down into the ground
it seemed like there was nothing between you and

the ground!!

Here you can see the monorail it seemed quite high

On a rainy day Jess receiving a guitar lesson from

grandad, she managed to play part of

"Scarborough Fair" after only a short time,

well done Jess

My beautiful granddaughters relaxing on the couch after dinner

We did finally get the car fixed it was the sensor after all and not the cam shaft thank goodness.

Took the girls back on the thursday took nearly 6 hours, 31/2 hours to the M25 then guess what a traffic jam AGAIN ! hate that road so much with a passion.

Got to stay up for a few days to see other daughter and some friends. Got to see our best friends daughter who is over from florida have not seen her for 10 years, she now has a daughter of her own who has a brilliant floridian accent, very sweet.

And finally you can all have a laugh, i was pestered by daughter sue to go to her combat and kick boxing class " oh we never do things just us two" i could think of better things to do together i thought. This was after a bottle or two on the friday evening and we had to be there by 9.30am next morning, i got up slight hangover but made it, and actually quite enjoyed it, it was certainly a good work out, boxing gloves on i started battering all that built up tensions away great therapy. And if anyone upsets me well i can now give a good kick box! I do have a picture but thats for me to keep !!! maybe one day.
Had a good time the house seemed so quiet when we got home no N Dubs no Lady Ga Ga to sing along to. So thanks to the Breadstick queen (Amy) and the choritzo kid (Jess) we had a fab time