Entries Tagged 'Sweden' ↓

A selection of videos spanning Australia, UK and Europe. No membership card required.

OK, its taken me a while, but I have finally updated our adventures in a three-part series below, imaginatively titled:
Chapter 1: Pre-Australia

Chapter 2: Australia

Chapter 3: Post-Australia

Comments:

Jules Clark (May 5th, 2006 at 4:48 pm)
Well played. As a virgin viewer of this blog I am amazed at the abundance (and dare I say quality) of content and absolute lack of photo authorisation on this site. there are a couple of absolute crackers…a few of the grinder in particular that I have been looking at on a friday arvo at work that crack me up…nye brings back some of the momory that was lost…so well played sir. But I do have one Q tho big fella, it seems to be missing a few of your bday present photos…please explain, maybe they’re buried somewhere? As reuss would say - you know what I’m talking about.

Wonderful audience, thanks for your patience, time has come to resume transmission. After almost two months of slogging it out at work, we have finally neared the end of our Australian hangover (inflicted by all you bastards). For at least a month we were the official old married couple, having only left the house on a handful of occasions and having an average bedtime of 7pm.
Summer is on its way though and having endured the harshest of conditions for 8 months, Europe starts to come alive. We’ve just come back from a long weekend in the Lakes District – home of the Derwent pencil, Beatrix Potter (wrote some kids book apparently) and you guessed it, lots of beautiful lakes. It’s been lovely to slouch around the Lakes, eating lots of traditional English fayre, breathing in the fresh Cumbrian air and generally slacking on the couch in front of some movies.

The weekend before last was spent in Stockholm, home to lots of blonde people and presumably tennis supporters. Our tour guide for the weekend was Kristi, whose parents are Swedish, who can speak fluent Swedish (debatable!), but has never set a foot in the country. Kristi’s eyes lit up as soon as we hit the tarmac and we couldn’t help but get caught up in her excitement. Scandinavia is a tantalising place – the wonder of the Northern lights and vast cold lands. Stockholm didn’t dissapoint. After making Kristi translate every billboard from the airport to the city we found ourselves in Stockholm’s old town. Gamla Stan is a little isle in the heart of the city with inviting café’s, restaurants and of course homeware stores (saw hundreds of these shops lining the streets and only one Ikea). We spent most of our time here gorging on traditional Swedish pastries. Stockholm is an archipelago (I knew year 10 Geography would come in handy one day) made up of 14 main islands, part of greater Stockholm’s 24,000 islands! We did a boat trip and rode some bikes around the main island attraction Djurgarden, which has a huge parkland surrounding some residential areas, a circus, and a few of the big museums. Even at this time of the year, a lot of the waterways were covered in ice. We stopped off at the Vasa Museum which is a huge 17th centure boat that was recovered from the bottom of the Stockholm harbour. Sodamalm is the bohemian centre of Stockholm and after dragging the girls on a 10 mile walk across the width of the island, we reached some local markets where we had a quick browse around and inevitably devoured more traditional Swedish cake. Next on the tourist agenda was the Absolut Ice Bar where we paid £10 for a shot of Vodka! It was a good laugh though, especially watching everyone smack their head on the highly transparent glass viewing window outside. Takes some great marketing to make you pay £10 and stand in a freezer for 45 minutes, bravo. As much as we wanted to taste the reknowned Stockholm night-life, we couldn’t really afford to, this place is seriously expensive. Can’t wait to check out some more Scandinavia.

Going back a further couple of weeks was the traditional Cambridge v Oxford boat race. We met a bunch of mates at a local pub in Putney and proceeded to write ourselves off (not the best idea on a Sunday). I saw 10 seconds of the race, which was enough of a distraction from the drinking. My head hit the pillow at about 4pm. Rowing is fun.

What else have we been up to:

Briefly caught up with cousin Quentin and his fiancee Kristy in SOHO for far too many beers on a school night.

Came very close to seeing Wolfmother at the Camden Crawl, a bunch of gigs spanning 4pm to 4am throughout Camden. The queue for Worlfmother was 300 metres long and the venue was tiny, no luck there!

Caught up with Scott (my sisters boyfriend) and Glenn (Scott’s brother) for our annual get together while they attend a few trade shows throughout Europe. Went to a very cool restaurant called Busaba just off Oxford St.

Went to Richmond Park with Kate Mac for the afternoon a few weeks ago. Richmond is on the fringes of London and has some beautiful river side pubs and a huge park with roaming packs of deer. London is full of suprises.

I was gifted a visit to Leiths Cooking School (they write a bunch of cooking bibles which are big over here) because one of my workmates organised a holiday on the same day he was due to redeem his cooking gift voucher received from work for his Birthday (Thanks Julian!). Despite teaming up with some freaky American guy who worked as a freelancer “taking pictures of nature spirits”, had a great time cooking up salads, panfried swordfish and an awesome rhubarb dessert that would almost rival Mum’s, almost.