bRIGHT ON!

Well tomorrow we're off to Oktoberfest for 4 days and before we go swimming in those massive steins we thought we should update you on the weekend just past.

Saturday saw us head out to some of London's architectural sites as part of London openhouse. We met early at London's busiest building for the week; the Bank of England. We arrived excited to view the vaults, but were quickly informed that the vaults we're not open to the public despite our faithful TNT saying they were. Regardless of this negative spin we powered on and visited the Mr and Mrs Wyatt recommended muesum. We got to lift a 13keg golden nugget and battle it out on the hot air balloon for inflation, turns out J is better at keeping the economy in check despite never having paid bills in London, who would have figured? Afterwards we headed to Llyods of London but the queue was longer than George Street so we opted to head to the Guildhall and the accompanying Arts Muesum where we learnt all about 6's and 7's, off to coventry and saw the oldest window in all of the UK. After a quick spin around the area, bored and hungry Bec exited stage left with J in tow. We crossed the thames and headed to the Tate Modern for a 'Bec's highlight tour' which saw the end of our Saturday.

Sunday we rose bright and early and made a quick (but VERY good) decision to head to Brighton as the weather was lovely. We arrived shortly after 10 despite track works and wandered down to the beach front. We headed along the water making a beeline for the pier and its infamous rides such as crazy mouse and the Beatles renowned slide Helter Skelter. Afterwards we explored the quirky, oriental-style royal pavillion and had a traditional british lunch of fish and chips on the pier. Taking in as much of the beautiful summer sun as possible we decided to stroll once more along the beach before heading home. Bad, bad, news!!! Whilst dipping her feet in the ocean swell, one of Bec's thong was sucked up and quickly dragged away in the water. Paniced she approached the nearest mother and child pair who were lapping in the water and asked if the child could swim out and retrieve her thong.... to which the british (non-australian slang comprehender) replied "he most certainly can NOT!" So the thong sailed slowly awy just out of reach and all hopes of retrieval were dashed. But every cloud has a silver lining and shortly after a nice pair of ballet slippers were purchased.

Finally, on Monday we spent the better part of 2 hours wandering East London in search of the famous graffiti artist Banksy, we scouted 30 but only found 5 originals in addition to Jamie Oliver's fifteen restaurant (which we plan to book into and eat at later). It was a fun afternoon despite being abused by some cockey geezers who tried very hard to inform us that he was a sham as he only used stencils, STENCILS!!!!

And so ends this wrap up, we hope you enjoyed yet another tale from the whirlwind adventures that are J and Bec... XOXO

Apparently these deck chairs and rock candy is not all Brighton is famous for...

Deemed the 'larger person' Jarratt was forced to have me slam into him as we took a spin on one of pier rides!

Us on ... you guessed it, Brighton Pier!

Us at the Royal Pavillion.

Banksy's Ode to Tesco

Castles, Cuddles and Clapham.

Our first week back in London from a great 6 week holiday and we moved down to Clapham (Clap’you, Clap me, Clap em all) Junction into our friend’s studio, to start the hunt for our new place. Problem was we both wanted different areas… Bec with her common sense thought it would be better to stay placed in north London where we both worked. However adventurous J wanted to try something different in the south.

After a week of debating and little looking, we got a phone call from Adam, a little old Irish man who runs the tavern at Oval. The rest is history. We moved to Stockwell (south) between Clapham and Oval, so Jarratt won. Our house is a three bedroom place opposite a park, which we share with 2 other boys – Timmy and Pete. Our room is quite large with an ensuite and we are very happy.

After settling into our place on Saturday, Saturday night was spent out on the town with Dave and Bec celebrating. We rose dusty the next morning and headed out to Leeds castle to explore, watch jousting and stone the crows. Later that evening we met up with Jarratt’s parents for their favourite quirky Italian dinner. It was great to catch up!

Over the week spent with the olds, we visited Vertigo 42 – London’s highest bar, with great views over London but pricey Champagne! As well as Hampton Court Palace where we missed the last ferry but had a ball racing each other to the centre of the hedge maze. We also visited Buckingham Palace, saw the Phantom of the Opera and took shifts at entering the Old Bailey. It was a great week, we give five Michelin stars! A big thumbs up!!

Vertigo 42 - definately a room with a view.

Moment of impact - perhaps the best photo I have ever taken! Whatcha think?

Us at Leeds Castle.

Happy at our new home (heading to Hamptom for the day)!

Maze Winner (because J cheated!!!!)

Dinner with the folks at ol' faithful: Taromina!

Adios Espana!

FINALLY! An update! I hear you all cry, well sorry! It has been rather busy on the western front! What being back to work, moving house, parental visitors and London's open house weekend! But I'll leave all that updating for the next entry... this one is just to wrap up the Spain trip for all you avid readers! Now... where did we leave off?

Ahh... Ibiza! Be still my beating lovehearts, what an amazing place! We had an amazing three nights in San An, where we followed Alice down the rabbit hole to WONDERLAND! An amazing gig featuring Peter Tong and Groove Armada at Eden nightclub - a whole 5 minute walk from our sauna of a hotel! The second night was spent at Es Paradis where we entered as part of the VIP list and experienced our first agua (water) party! The last and most relaxing night was spent watching the last of the sunlight hours disappear at the sunset strip taking in the music of Cafe Del Mar and Savannah! Before we knew it we were back on the disco bus and heading to the airport to fly out to Valencia where tomatoes were waiting for us.

Our first night in Valencia we discovered litre sangria for 75cents and loaded up! This quickly lead to a hasty decision to join the pub crawl, which goes down as the worst on record! The second day we joined a free city tour of the sights, but bailed early in pursuit of the holy grail! That night we headed out to a local village to attend the water/wine festival but not before purchasing our vessels at a 1euro shop. The festival turned out to be one of the most amazing things we ended up doing all trip. Basically you take your vessel and hand it in to venders on the side of the street and they fill it with vino for free!!! We were unable to actually reach this but in broken English we (plus a few friends, popeye, wilma and fred) found a very friendly restaurant owner who sold us a 7 litre jug for 3 euro! The festival finishes with you wandering the maze of streets shortly before dawn where the locals throw water all over you from the balcony! We made a mad dash back to the bus at around 4am, as if you weren't there you were left behind. We arrived back to our hostel around 6am only to catch a few z's before being up and ready and back on the bus for 7:30am to head to La Tomatina.

La Tomatina is incredible, scary, but incredible... picture this, a town street about as wide as 4-5meters and thousands upon thousands squeeze in. Just when you think you can't possible squeeze anymore in, they drive 5 lorries through the street, dividing the people like a river and drop their load of tomatos. So the pictures you see of people frolickin in the puree is not exactly what we experienced. I think the most exciting and fun part was when we managed to escape the shirt ripping locals by following one of the lorries out and throwing tomato paste at the clean people we passed. Followed closely by the kind neighbours who hose you down before you scamper back onto your bus. The last afternoon we spent catchin up on sleep and testing our spainish by ordering from an entirely spainish menu.

The final days of our trip were spent in Madrid where we consolidated all we had learnt by taking in a free (private) tour of Madrid. We also enjoyed our last Tapas crawl where Bec introduced J to the most amazing gambas (prawns) alioli he had ever eaten!

All in all, Spain was remarkable!!! Without selling it short, it was the best holiday we have ever had!!!

"Follow that rabbitt!!!!" Crossing the looking glass into WONDERLAND

Bec and the Holy Grail

At the water/wine festival... vessell in hand!

Us in Madrid, our final day :(