A friend's wedding gave Mr C and I a fantastic opportunity for a weekend away before Baby C comes along. Somehow I've not been to Bath properly before. I've passed through on the train many times and even been for a job interview there, but the city's delights escaped me until now. An evening wedding meant that we had plenty of opportunity to explore on foot before we dressed up for our trip to the Assembly Rooms for the ceremony and reception. Even the weather was nice to us! The wedding itself was lovely. A beautiful bride, an opportunity to catch up ... read more
A Polish interlude…
I have a much more exciting reason behind the latest blogging interlude. Mr C and I have just returned from a fantastic long weekend in Poland where we saw our dear friends C & D marry.There are many tales to tell of a beautiful wedding, delightful Polish countryside and a journey on a red London bus. At the moment though there's a pile of washing to tackle and work to prepare for tomorrow morning. I promise I will return to fill in the gaps and hopefully share some pictures. ... read more
Tallinn
A post of few words today.Mr C and I spent a lovely weekend in Tallinn with his work colleagues. Most of our time was in or around the Old Town which is a fine example of a medieval town complete with fairy-tale towers and town walls. Strong Russian influences were also very prominent. This cathedral was built to remind Tallinn of the Tsarist rule from Russia in the early 1900s. As you can see though the weather didn't always oblige for my photographs. The journey up to the top of the Town Hall tower certainly made my legs burn, especially since the depth of some of the ... read more
Helsinki
As promised, a first instalment of our recent trip to Helsinki and Tallinn.The mysterious ways of airline costings meant that we actually flew from London to Helsinki first, before continuing to Tallinn 24 hours later by boat. So, a whole 24 hours in Helsinki in which to unwind from work, whilst also making sure that we got to see all the key sights. Helsinki is one of those cities that most people have heard of, but it isn't really a big tourist destination, and people don't instantly connect it with a specific site like they do the Eiffel Tower with Paris.A walk round on the ... read more
Did you miss me?
Sorry for the absence. This time it was somewhat more exciting that just life getting in the way of blogging. Mr C and I have been over to the Baltic and have visited Helsinki and Tallinn within the last week.As seems to be usual for us our return journey yesterday involved a cancelled connection, a six hour wait in Copenhagen, delays landing in London due to thunderstorms and a nearly lost bag! In total fifteen hours from leaving our hotel to arriving home. As you can imagine I'm a tad shattered (not helped by the fact that we both went back to work less than twelve hours after landing) ... read more
The train triangle
It's been a busy couple of days this week. Work has taken me up to Scotland for a series of meetings and I had some wonderful train adventures in the process.It didn't start off so well though yesterday morning. As usual, I left plenty of time to get into London to go to Kings Cross where I was due to catch my first long distance train north to Edinburgh. I started to get worried as my little train from St Albans suddenly slammed on the brakes less than half way to London. I got even more worried when the driver came on the tannoy and apologised for the sudden stop and said that he was ... read more
Port Isaac
The centre of our stay in Cornwall was the delightful fishing village of Port Isaac. Here we rented a little cottage from the National Trust for our stay. The Birdcage - centre of picture The Birdcage was really like no other cottage that I've been in before. It is split over three floors and the main body of the house is though to be over 200 years old. On the ground floor you open the door straight in to the kitchen. Off to the side is an extension containing the bathroom. A very steep set of stairs takes you from the kitchen up into the lounge and a further set of steep stairs goes from ... read more
Silence is golden…
Apologies for the blogging silence. As Liz has pointed out in the comments I left on a bit of a cliff hanger sitting in the dark following a power cut one evening. That threw all my plans to pot and hence I wasn't able to tell you about our planned long weekend away.Mr C and I have just returned from a wonderful break in Port Isaac, Cornwall, where we've been celebrating our first wedding anniversary. It was a truly perfect trip with the most amazing weather for March. There is so much to tell you about, including cliff top walks, National Trust properties ... read more
Britain by train
This week I seem to have been sending most of my time on trains, or in meetings. Out of the five working days this week I have only been in London for one, and am again elsewhere tomorrow. I often have meetings away from my main office, but not normally so many in a week. Being constantly on the go is very tiring in itself and hence I decided to travel everywhere by train this week, rather than driving as I often do (mainly as to save time admittedly). As well as the obvious carbon benefit over driving I do find that there are many other advantages and disadvantages compared to just ... read more
Would you shop here?
I'm always amazed at the obsession with "celebrity" that seems to go on and how some shops and restaurants try to cash in on this. Outside the Belvedere Palace in Vienna we saw the following adverts on a lamppost.The question has to be, would this make you shop here? ... read more