Land of Irn Bru

We said goodbye to London and the ppaparazzi surrounding our hotel and headed to Heathrow for the plane up to Edinburgh.
As soon as we hit the BMI lounge my dads eyes kind of glazed over as he went searching through there various fridges for something. After 5 minutes he came back triumphantly with a bright orange can of irn bru in his hand preceded to open it and down it almost in one. He went on to explain that this stuff outsells coke and pepsi in Scotland. He got  quite passionate about it. I thought he was going to paint his face and start shouting about not taking away his freedom. Not sure how that would have went over in the lounge.

We got to Edinburgh and went to Grannys house and almost got eaten by the dog. Here is a picture of me at the street my dad grew up in,

The dog is called Fergus. He is quite young a boisterous and can pull Grannys arms off. He is crazy. There is also a cat in the house. I think the cat was Auntie Fees but has been left behind for Granny to look after. All the cat does is sleep, eat, fight Fergus and make dad sneeze.

We went to the city and met Auntie Fee after her work. You should see the castle they have in this town. Amazing.

Tomorrow it is seeing my big brother Rudi. I am looking forward to that.

Will

France is on Strike

We went to Paris. The place was on Strike. The weather cold and wet and the Louvre was shut!

We hit the Eurostar from London to Paris. We were excited. We had two main missions for the day.

1) Get a photo of the me next to the Mona Lisa for Charlotte. **

2) Go up the Eiffel Tower

** There is a super Italian restaurant in Albert Park called Ricardos. Above the fireplace there they have a picture of the Mona Lisa and little Lottie loves it.

So we arrive at the Gard Du Nord after an easy journey through the Channel Tunnel. Now taxi queues at this station are already renowned to be bad but with the strike and the blocking of the petrol stations there was about 200 people queuing in the rain. ouch! Dad was not impressed and he whipped me to the other side of the station and harassed a taxi driver dropping a customer to take us. I think his complete command of the French language helped. Well when I say complete command he was able to tell the taxi driver his name, his age and appeared to be ordering a beer! Still next stop the Louvre.

The Louvre was shut. Here is what I thought of that....(see photo)

So what should we do...taxis were hard to find. We could have hit the Metro but there was even talks of that being disrupted.

Alas a guaranteed way to travel the city and bring us to where we wanted to go. We jumped on a Tour Bus. It was heading to Notre Dame and then up the Champs Elysses. Dad had told me we had some very important business to take care of on the Champs Elysees.

He said we had to eat a Jambon et Fromage Baguette.

Dad explained that when I was in mummy's Tummy they went to Paris for a weekend before moving to Montreal. One of their favourite memories was walking down this fabulous Boulevard and chomping on these great sandwiches.

So that is what we did. Cheers to you Mum.

Shortly after that we headed to to the Eiffel Tower. You can see in the photo I am wearing it as a hat!

So we queued for the tickets. Queued for security, Queued for the lift to the first level. Queued for the lift for the second level and finally we made it to the top of this quite marvelous structure.

The views from up high were amazing. I have to admit that I was a bit frightened going up to the top. Dad reminded me that this is why we came and I got some courage up and made it all the way.

Here is a photo from the top. I bought a small souvenir tower from the shop and then we hit the road back to the train station to catch an early train back to London.

We completed half of the mission. We did buy a postcard for Charlotte though that had the Mona Lisa on it. Dad was grumbling about the strikes and suggested that if the workers were made to work the days they had off on strikes they would quite easily extend the extra 2 years the govt want them to work until retirement! Whatever that means.!

Anyway back to our hotel. A big bath and room service beckons.

Will

PS Room service is brilliant. Here is me eating my macaroni cheese with poached salmon in my jammies.

LEGOLAND

I like Lego. Dad always encouraged me to play with it when I was younger - although buying me a 10000 piece star wars death star was more likely to put me off than encourage me. Anyway as soon as I turned 6 and a half all I wanted to do was build Lego. I would build it before school, after school, before the bath, at weekends and any other spare minute I had. I like all the sets, Star Wars, Harry Potter, City, Prince of Persia etc so a chance to go to Legoland was very very exciting.

Lego land is in a place called Windsor. Windsor is more famous for its castle. Windsor Castle is the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world and the Official Residence of Her Majesty The Queen. Today however we were after modern history and we bypassed the castle and went straight to Legoland.

The place is split into a number of sections.

Miniland - this has small replicas of famous buildings in Europe. I liked the Edinburgh Castle and was not sure why Belgium made it in.

Pirates - This had a wicked play park.

Knights - Rollercoaster crazy. See picture below,

Adventureland - Had a wicked water ride and daddy and I went on it loads of times and got soaken wet.

It was a real fun day out. There are few pictures below.  See ya. Will

I kissed a girl....

There were a lot of strange goings on in our hotel. When we were on the Big Red Bus we passed it and there were police blocking off the road and lots of security, flashing blue lights and police escort motorbikes.

Then when we got back, there were about 30 photographers outside. We spilled out of our taxi and asked the doorman what on earth was going on. Turns out Dad was not the only 'famous' person at the hotel. We had the President of Chile and Katie Perry and her boyfriend Russell Bland staying also although not all in the same room I am sure.

Now that explained all the kerfuffle. I wanted to meet Katie Perry. I was even going to tell her that I too was a Canadian in the hope I would get a kiss and that she would like it. Alas it was not to be. She was hiding out before she headed to India to get married.

We did see the Prez of Chile though. Dad said his football team were exciting at the world cup and that he was trying to be a bit like Margaret Thatcher and get his workers out the mines. He was a nice man. We saw him at breakfast and later that day he was on TV as he met the Queen. How cool was that? When we saw him he smiled nicely so we think Chile is a good place to go to and will put it on our list next time.

Will

Land of the Dinosaurs

First stop on our Tour where we got off was the Natural History Museum. Now the building itself should be in a museum as it is absolutely fabulous (apart from the 70's extension that some madman put on it).

They have the best dinosaurs exhibit ever. We got there just after opening but it was already packed and everyone wanted to go to see the Tyrannosaurus Rex that was growling. It was excellent. They also have this huge Blue Whale model. Amazing to see how big they are against a lot of animals I thought were big like Rhino and Elephants. After the museum we jumped on the bus and hit the main sights of London.

artistic picture by Dad

Houses of Parliament - CHECK (Named after Daddys favourite Sauce)

Tower Bridge  CHECK (the one the Americans thought they bought)

Tower of London CHECK (more jewels than mummy here)

Trafalgar Square CHECK (The lions look like dogs with wigs on)

Buckingham Palace CHECK (Her Majesty was home and meeting our breakfast buddy - more on this later)

The city of London has such amazing history and you could explore it for weeks. We took the big red bus shortcut and did it in a couple of hours and hit the hotel for a rest......Will

This is England

Flight from Johannesburg to London was uneventful. Mind you we were not impressed. The inflight magazine said Toy Story 3 was to be shown. The screens however painted or in this case showed a different picture. Dad pointed out this error to the Steward who said nobody had complained before! Dad explained that nobody had got on the plane with a 4ft tall Woody from the movie with them before! Still after that disappointment I settled down for a snooze and woke as we arrived into London.

One of our challenges on arrival was what passport queue to get into. Dad has a British one and I have a Canadian or a NZ one. If we went through the UK Nationals Line will they get upset with my passport? Or should we join the "Visitors" line even though Dad has a UK one. We were debating it for a while as we walked the 40KM from our arrival gate towards immigration, when a lady arrived carrying a sign that said "Irving". Excellent. She then managed to guide us past all the long queues and right to the front of immigration. Bingo. Dilemma gone. Turns out the hotel sent her to get us to our driver as dad cannot be trusted I think.

Whilst we waited on our bags she was delighted to find out that I had a NZ passport and explained that she was going to go to NZ on holiday next year and wanted ideas. Dad being the expert on NZ (loud coughing noises) talked about all the places to visit that have poo or kak in the name. Anyway we grabbed our bags and met our driver. As we were about to leave the lady asked for an email address so our mum could fix all dads bad advice, so dad scribbled something on a bit of paper. The driver thought he was giving her his autograph and all the way to the hotel the driver was asking dad if he was someone famous. Dad was in denial of course but I told the driver he was very famous in our house.

We checked into the hotel but alas there was no room ready - ouch. However they found us a small day room for us to go and chill out. We showered changed and headed to the only place a young boy should go to. Hamleys Toy Store. The biggest in the world. Yippee.

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OOOPS sorry that was me just emulating the meltdown I had after finding they had no Harry Potter toys. Disaster. Still we did some xmas shopping for Charlotte and then headed to the big red bus to give us a tour.

Will

Good Bye Safari - Hello Old Blighty

Well the Safari came to an end. We were sad to go as it was an Awesome place.

The staff at ULUSABA were fantastic and very very nice. The chef even made me a special pizza. (Oh! and mum just in case you thought it was all pizza a beer with daddy here is a photo to prove that I at least picked up a piece of fruit!)

So we left on Friday and went in the small plane again and headed to Johannesburg airport.

The ride back to Johannesburg was very very bumpy. There were lots of clouds and thunderstorms in the area. The plane had to weave its way through the clouds and the storms.A lady on our flight was very frightened. I told her it would be okay and that I was not scared so she should be okay. I am sure she appreciated it but was a bit green at the moment.

Here is a picture of the clouds that we came across on the plane.

When we landed in Joburg we were met at the airport by Dads friend Trevor. We decided to take the new train from the airport to Sandton where we were staying. Dad explained that there used to be lots of trouble in Johannesburg, (especially when he lived there) and a lot of businesses had moved from the CBD to this place called Sandton. The Train was good and very safe. We checked into our Hotel and then went out to dinner with a whole bunch of Dads friends. I was very tired and after a while I almost fell asleep at the table so Dad carried me home early and I went to bed after a long day.

On Saturday we went shopping. I got some soft cuddly toys for my wee sister. I kept trying to drag dad into the diamond stores but he kept mumbling and going cross eyed so I guess mum has to wait another while!

That night we headed back to the airport, probably ate fruit at the airport and headed off to London.

Will