Hungary :)

Hi All

Apologies for not blogging in so long... we've been doing so much! And now I have heaps of cool photos to share :)

Firstly, Hungary last week was brilliant. Gorgeous place. We spent 7 lovely days sleeping in in the morning, and walking throughout Budapest for the rest of the day :). We also seem to have taken millions of photos of which I've picked a couple shown below.

I've uploaded all of our photos to our new photo album site: www.flickr.com/photos/richncorryn and am in the process of adding labels and descriptions. The albums are on the right hand side of the page, and just select the "Hungary" one (or whichever one you want to look at).

We spent the first few days in the Pest side of Budapest (east of the Danube), where we went to see the gorgeous St Steven's Basilica (pic on the right). The detail throughout the basilica was amazing. You can see all of the pictures on the flickr website. A lot of them a blurry though as you are not allowed to use a flash inside the basilica.

We also took a 3 hour train ride out to Lake Balaton one day, which is the Hungary equivalent of the sea side. You can see a pic on the left of all the people crowding into the water and on the beach. The water is apparently slightly alkaline and is said to be medically beneficial (although we didn't notice anything?!)

Back to Budapest, other sights we visited included going out to the city park in the far east of the city, where we saw Heroes Square, spent hours looking through the Museum of Fine Arts (including the Inca exhibition - getting our background research done for our trip to Peru in October!), and the Museum of Contempary Arts (which was a bit disappointing for the entry fee). We also visited the Széchenyi Baths and the Vajdahunyad Castle (which was spectacular). Also in city park we saw the largest hourglass in the world (pic on the right with me in front of it to give an idea of the size!). It was made to commemorate Hungary joining the EU, and is turned once a year. Apparently it is able to adjust the rate of sand flowing through for leap years and temperature changes. Incredible.

Back in the center of the city, we also took heaps of photos of the parliament building (pictured on the danube on the left), and the Fisherman's Bastion in the old part of the city, i.e. in Buda (picture on the right), and also of course, of the Grand Palace & the Chain Bridge. Gorgeous photo on the left of them at night.

Also in the older part of Buda (west of the Danube) we meandered around old old old streets (pic on the right)which had gorgeous colourful buildings everywhere, the building where Beethoven lived, and lots of curiousities everywhere. See picture of a flying nun in the corner of a building (pic on the left) to see what I mean.

One other curiousity that I thought was really cute is a statue sitting on the railing called Little Princess. Her knees are shiney because people touch them for luck. Pic on the right.

Finally, we also spent a day north of Budapest in Szentendre, a cute town with lots of shops. We went to see a "mini museum" which had the smallest book in the world! See flickr for photos. Pic of me on the left standing under a street sign to Budapest and pic of

Richard on the right meandering through the town streets concentrating on a wooden puzzle we bought from one of the toy stores.

I've also updated our previous Windsor Castle post with our pictures. Including a cool one of us with one of the guards (how cheesy!) :)

Lots of love to all back home :)

Royalty

Hi All

Hope you are all well & happy. We had a lovely weekend, despite a rainy Sunday. Friday night we went out for dinner in Soho with Amanda. Fantastic food, and so many people everywhere! We then headed back towards Covent Garden for some cocktails in one of the trendy bars there, and spent the evening lounging on a big sofa drinking "Hunk" Martini's (which are a lot sweeter than the real thing). Lots of fun.

Saturday, Richard & I headed out to Windsor Castle & spent a good couple of hours meandering through the castle, listening to our audio guide & taking heaps of photos. Very touristy. The Dolls house was absolutely incredible. It is a full mansion with teeny tiny rooms and teeny tiny furniture. Teeny tiny cars out the front and a teeny tiny wine rack in the basement. The banquet room has a full set of teeny tiny silver plates and cutlery, and the housemaid's closet even has a fully functional teeny tiny vacuum cleaner (about 5 cm high). The plumbing and electricity works, and even the library has walls lined with teeny tiny bound books. Apparently it was made as a gift for Queen Mary, and all of the master craftsmen of the time made something to go in there. Even the walls have teeny tiny replica's of master works of art. Check out the queen's bedroom on the left (keeping in mind that the whole room is no bigger than around 20cm2), and the "day" nursery on the right (there is another nursery for night time) with the minature toys! Incredible. (if you want to see more -> http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page4488.asp)

Actually the whole castle was amazing. It is apparently the largest castle still in use in the world. Incredibly the public is allowed to see a huge amount of the castle. We saw the state apartments and the church and took heaps of photos (although you're not allowed to take photos inside the castle). Example pic on the right.

After spending hours in the castle we headed to the Long Walk (pic on the right),where some friends had kindly supplied heaps of food for a picnic. We spent the afternoon on the grass drinking champers and getting into some really good food. Lovely. We also saw a couple of weddings go past which was interesting to watch. Would be great to have the castle in the background of your wedding photos!!!

Sunday we headed up to St Neots for a BBQ with the PwC team, hosted by one of the directors in the team. His house was in a gorgeous village, which was having a scarecrow festival at the time. There were some really interesting scarecrows out the front of people's houses. Quite realistic! Unfortunately we didn't take our camera. It rained on and off for most of the afternoon, however that didn't stop the kids from using the bouncy castle & the rest of us spent a lovely afternoon chatting undercover.

Anyway, this week we're hoping to go to the Nottinghill cinema to see Moliere tomorrow night, and then on Saturday morning we're flying to Hungary for a week's holiday in Budapest. Should be fun :)

We've also just about finalised our round the world tickets, and it looks like we're going to have a few days in Brisbane in mid November, so will have to organise to catch up with everyone there!

Hope you're all well & happy! Have a great week :)

London by the Sea

Hi all

Hope you've been keeping well. We've had some brighter weather since the last post, so have had fun getting out and about. Yesterday we spent a day by the seaside in Brighton. We sat on the pebble beach

(picture of Richard on said beach on right), and had some fun at Brighton Pier, looking at all the rides & having a go at some of the skill testers (with no luck unfortuately! See pic of Richard on left trying to win a Simpsons doll).

We also went to see the Grand Pavilion, and while we were there, were lucky enough to see a concert band in the gardens. We pulled out our picnic blanket & enjoyed the sun, the gardens and the lovely music for most of the afternoon. Long enough for my nose to turn pink :P (See pic of the pavilion on the right - strange to see such architecture in Brighton - looks similar to a lot of the pic's we took in Turkey!).

On Friday we went to the PwC Summer Ball which was fun. Lucky for me, my dress arrived in time for the ball - Mum posted it from Brisbane a week earlier for me (thanks Mum!) which meant it arrived just in time for the ball. The ball was fun, good food, nice venue (the brewery in London) & they had some arcade games where you're racing on ski's through trecherous terraine. Unfortunately when I had a go I managed to crash into most of the obstacles on the course :P (Pic of me on the left in full concentration trying to ski! Pic of us on the right in our dinner wear - Richard looking very spiffy in dinner suit & bowtie :) although I think there's a thumbprint in the middle - Sorry!)

Anyway, I've finally uploaded all of our photos to date! I've also updated all of our photos on our website (au.photos.yahoo.com/richncorryn) so if you're particularly interested in checking out all of the photos, have a look there for the full album of them!

Keep well & happy :)