London Town

After a fourteen hour flight which is cruel and inhumane punishment we finally got to London and to our friend, Alana Britton's home. It was great to see AB and she has made us more than welcome. She is girl after our own heart and has given us her discount cards, two for one vouchers and a list of the good pubs in London.

This morning we are meeting Lanie, our baby girl, in Trafalgar Square and we are looking forward to seeing her and looking after her for a few days. We are also tonight catching up with other friend, Rob and Nat Henness, for dinner at Greenwich.

Yesterday, John and I spent the day in London. It was wonderful to see all the sights again and it is an amazing city to walk around with a piece of history around every corner. We started off in Trafalgar Square and finished up in Southwark Cathedral. Along the way we meet many interesting people and saw some of the best sights London has to offer. We had lunch at the pub John worked at when he was here in his youth so that was a nice stroll down memory lane for him.

We booked tickets for a performance of Macbeth at the Globe Theatre. This theatre has been reconstructed near the original Globe Theatre and pretty well true to form to the orginal. For those of you who have seen Shakespeare in Love you'll appreciate what it looks like. We have standing tickets for Saturday night and we are looking forward to being groundlings.

Well have to get organised to meet our baby. Hope all is well at home. We have booked our flights back home from Paris and will get in on Wednesday June 9.

Kua la Lumpur - against the odds!!!!

We have had a couple of days now in the very liveable Kuala Lumpur after a couple of traumatic days before we left which have affected our whole holiday plan. I will explain here cause I hope only friends are reading this and you will understand. We are now ending our trip in Paris and will be home by about June 9 as at 2.30 pm on the day before we were due to leave I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Shitty but true!! After miraculously getting an appointment with a surgeon on Friday afternoon, he agreed that we could have only six weeks of our holiday. We thought it would be great to go to London to s ee Lanie and be there with Paddy and Abbey and then have our long waited time in Normandy and Paris. So now we will be returning after Paris. The other amazing thing on that day was that John had a sore tooth and went to the dentist to be told he needed root canal work. So what a wonderful day last Friday was. Hopefully all will be well, we will have a wonderful time because we know it won't be so wonderful on our return and my dear sister will put appointments and surgery in order for when we get back. So PLEASE some prayers for our wellbeing and the slow growth of whatever is in me and for John's tooth.

We had a great flight over. the plane actually had quite a few spare seats and John had two seats and I had three. Could even lie down and have a snooze. Air Asia's food leaves a lot to be desired but we quite like them as an airline. We had a great day today in KL. Went up to the Skybridge on the Petronas Towers, walked a lot, visited the Royal Selangor Club (a British institution) and Mederka Square, found the real Little India which was mostly shut because it was Sunday and did a bit of shopping. Good day.

Exhausted now and ready for the feet to be up. If anyone ever wants a good place to stay in KL the Hotel Chinatown Inn is great. Only $33 a night and very clean big rooms.

Take care everyone.

On this Saturday April 24, we are leaving Brisbane bound for Malaysia, London, Normandy, Paris, Tuscany, Belgium, Tunisia, Czech Republic, Telford and back to Malaysia. We get back to Australia on August 29.

We will see our baby, Alana and her boyfriend, Ben, in London. We are staying in London with an old friend, Alana Britton, who both John and I have taught with. She lives at Lewisham. Paddy and Abbey will also be in London for a day while we are there and they will come and stay with us for a few days in Normandy. Lanie and Ben are also coming to Normandy and we will have a week in Paris with them. We are trying to talk them into coming to the Czech Republic as well.

So all in all it's pretty exciting for us, a bit nerve racking as we prepare to go, but everything is now dropping into place and once we are on that plane, we will feel RETIRED!!!