Senior Morton's World Tour
Kids are done, work is done, Grand Kids…Eh… they'll be here when we get back!
Relaxing day
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 04 22nd, 2013Sunday 21st April
A quiet day today adjusting to the time. Weather is sort of overcast with occasional bursts of sunshine, but quite mild in the early 20’s. We went up to the local shops in the morning as we didn’t have any Wi Fi for the I-Pad, so we purchased a Telstra card and put it into the computer, then organized the authorization. ( I hope Craig is impressed that I mastered the technology all by myself!!) So once again we have our blog.
In the afternoon we drove out to meet my cousin Marian and her husband Alan Perkins and spent a very pleasant afternoon with them catching up on some WA news. I forgot my camera , so wasn’t able to take any photos. It was a quiet day relaxing.
read comments (0)The trip that nearly wasn’t!
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 04 21st, 201320th April
Well we nearly didn’t make it! I was going through all our travel paperwork and I noticed there was nothing that looked like a ticket. I felt we should go to the travel agent and enquire why, but Jill said ” don’t be silly, they don’t use tickets now” and the agent who gave us our itinerary should know what they are doing. Having seen all those films where people turn up to the airport without any tickets or passports, I wasn’t convinced, so decided to phone and they said ” Yes, you should have tickets, would you like to come and get them!!” I think we would have looked rather silly in South Africa trying to convince them that we should be allowed to fly on their aeroplanes without tickets!! Anyway, we arrived at the airport having been delivered there by Fi, with our luggage, passports and tickets where we were confronted by many booking in computers instead of booking staff. We duly looked helpless and a kind Qantas gentleman came and guided us through the booking process and we were soon through the baggage check and headed off to our departure gate.
The trip across to Perth however didn’t earn Qantas any brownie points. We found out their marvellous new fangled ticketing systems placed Jill in row 55 and me in row 56 right behind her. I noticed later that within 3 seats of where we were sitting there were ten obviously single travellers. So we complained to the stewardess and luckily we were able to swop with one of the single travellers. Lunch came and they had run out of whatever it was that was good and we got what was left. For afternoon refreshment, they simply ran out and gave us whatever they could lay their hands on. So, I am not inclined to recommend Qantas to any other travelers. Let’s hope our next leg of the journey is better!! We arrived in Perth 15 minutes early, but they forgot to tell the person who drives the disembarking arm and so we had a 15 minute wait for him to turn up before we could leave the plane. We were met by Penelope and managed to get home without any further incidents about 4.30 pm Perth time.
Yes, we’re off again!
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 04 14th, 2013Sunday 14th April 2013
Yes we’re heading off again, this time to Perth and South Africa and so we are busy getting everything ready. This trip is going to be more catching up with family than touring around, but who knows we may get a bit of sightseeing in along the way.
Hope you enjoy travelling with us.
Grandpa fulfilling his final babysitting duties at Nicola’s house before we leave.
Farewell London and happy birthday Craig!
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 19th, 2011Tuesday 18th October
Let’s start off by saying happy birthday Craig, which we should have said yesterday as he is so far ahead of us! Hope he managed to have a great day.
An earlier start today as it is our last day in London. We caught a tube to Cannon Street station, as I wanted to replace the photos I lost of Tower bridge and theThames River at low tide. Got some nice photos then walked along the river bank towards the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. We came to the tower and walked around the perimeter and got some more photos. Then we crossed over the Tower Bridge by foot. I got a photo of Jill with one foot either side of the drawbridge looking far down into the river. After we crossed the bridge we walked back towards the Globe Theatre along the Southern Embankment. The HMS Belfast, a World War II warship is permanently moored in the Thames as a memorial. This is a very old, less developed part of London with a lot of interesting back streets. We came across a replica of Sir Francis Drake’s Galleon called the Golden Hinde in which from 1577 to 1580 he sailed 140,000 miles, including sailing around the world. Then we came across the ruins of Winchester Palace which was the home of a 12th century bishop.
We eventually arrived at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and had a guided tour around the theatre. Unfortunately the season for the actors had finished a couple of weeks earlier so we couldn’t see any performance, but it was very interesting nevertheless. It was also interesting that for the several theatres in the area at the time of Shakespeare, the main competition was the bloody and cruel sport of bear baiting, where a large Russian bear would be tied to a pole and dogs set on it to kill it. This was one of the favourite sports for Queen Elizabeth I.
We continued walking, and crossed over the Millennium Bridge until we reached St. Paul ‘s Cathedral where we replaced some more lost photos and got some pics of the protest against the economic situation here.
Then we became a bit disorientated, but found some very interesting back streets and landed up back in Fleet Street, so we had our lunch (stuffed potato in its jacket) in a cafe there before continuing up Fleet Street until we reached Temple Bar where we saw the Royal Court of Justice. We then headed for the nearest underground station where it turned out that Jill’s oyster card had been drained of its balance, even though we had put money on it this morning. When exiting the station this morning at Cannon Street she had inadvertently clicked out and then clicked in again, so all money on the card was used up. Had to eventually put more money on the card after some deliberation with the ticket officers. We then decided to go to Marble Arch and see if there was anything worth buying at Primark. There wasn’t however, so we wandered down Oxford Street until one of us (Jill) was exhausted, so we had a cup of tea then got the tube back to Earls Court for the final time.
So, this is the end of our blog!! The whole trip has been rather exhausting but most enjoyable and we would happily do it all over again. Our only disappointment was that we didn’t get to see much of Shaun, but understand that he needed to accept the job.
THE END
A walk through Kensington Gardens …
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 18th, 2011Monday 17th October
Today we started off the morning by packaging up and posting off the numerous leaflets we have accumulated to try and lighten the weight load. Then we headed to Kensington High Street shopping centre to do some shopping. As we didn’t end up buying anything, we then decided to go and look at the Princess Diana Memorial in the Kensington Gardens which was nearby.
We saw the outside of Kensington Palace which was Princess Diana’s home and also where William and Kate stay when they are in London. Kensington Gardens is a huge park with lots of trees and a really lovely place to walk through. We walked over to Hyde Park which is separated from Kensington Gardens by a lake and then came to Princess Diana’s Memorial Fountain. The fountain is amazingly unimpressive!
We continued walking through Hyde Park until we came to the exit near Wellington’s Arch. I got a photo of the Archilles Memorial which is made out of melted down French canons from the Napoleonic War. We wandered over to the impressive Wellington Arch and had a look also at the relatively new Australian War Memorial, which was completed in 2007.
As it was getting late we managed to catch a train (together this time!) back to Earl’s Court. When we arrived there, we bumped into an Australian couple who were on the last tour with us. Who said London was a big place?!!
Last day tomorrow, so hope to have a final look at what London has to offer.
British museum
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 17th, 2011Sunday 16th October
Today we brought the blog up to date. Hooray for that!! It was becoming a hard chore towards the end as we were so far behind, but I’m sure I will appreciate it in years to come.
We had a late start, but we decided to go by tube to Holborn station to visit the British museum. However on the way, I was deciding which train to catch and Jill jumped on the train that was already there with the doors closing and me still on the platform! I signalled to her to go one station and get off, which fortunately she understood. The next train followed two minutes later so I got on this and she was there waiting for me at the next station. She was rather unhappy with me however, as she had absolutely no money with her!!
We eventually found our way to the museum and boy oh boy is it a huge building! We wandered around, but in fact you could spend several days there and Jill wasn’t feeling the best due to the flu bug she got on the final day of the tour. So I will have to place it high on my list for my next visit to London!!???
Several things I did note – there were human skeletons ranging in age from 1,000 to 3,000 years and they all had remarkably good teeth!! Dentistry wouldn’t have been profitable two thousand years ago. We saw a number of Egyptian mummies and other artefacts that had been looted in past centuries, when it was a case of either the museum removed them or coffin thieves raided them and sold them on the black Market. No-one could create a museum such as this now that each country has rights to what is found in its country.
Another thing was the Islamic section which explained the difference between Sunni, which means tradition where followers believe the prophet did not designate an heir on his death in 632 AD. The decision of leader was left to the community. The alternate Shia, meaning party, believed that the prophet’s cousin Ali, who married the prophet’s daughter was the rightful heir. This just goes to show how similar they were to the early British monarchy, as wars have been fought over this just as they did in England.
When we came home we went to go and get some food for our dinner, only to find they don’t work Australian hours and were closed. So I had to walk back to Earls Court Road which was full of life and managed to get our groceries there.
The weather has been quite good and sunny since we returned to London but is about to turn cold tomorrow. I wonder what it is like in Australia, as we have absolutely no news!I??
Crazy for You!
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 16th, 2011Saturday 15th October
Today we decided to do a show, so we headed off to Leicester Square which looked a mess as they are doing major renovations around the area. We had heard there were half price ticket places there. What we hadn’t heard was that there are about 20 of them! We eventually purchased some tickets at TKTS as this was said to be one of the legitimate ones, then we wandered down past Coventry Garden (which has been in existence since 1670 and was started by Charles II issuing a grant to the 4th Earl of Bedford) and in the direction of the Novello Theatre. I was amazed at the number of theatres in the area. We had a directional map that covered probably a square mile of London and there were approximately 50 theatres in this local area, all of which had current shows. We continued to wander through Covent Garden and explore the surrounding streets, then had lunch in a little cafe near the theatre.
We saw the show Crazy for You, which featured many of George Gershwin’s songs and we thoroughly enjoyed it as we knew them all. This was probably not to Shaun’s taste, but old folks like us enjoy musicals like these!! When we came out we were amazed at how busy the streets were. They were far worse than Christmas time in Melbourne. This is when you realise you are in a BIG city. The tube station was jam packed and it was a bit claustrophobic, but we were soon on the tube and in no time were back in Earls Court again. I’m glad however that we saw a matinee rather than an evening show as I’m sure we would have not enjoyed being out so late in surroundings we did not know.
The changing of the guards …..
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 16th, 2011Friday 14th October
Well last night was an early night for us and this morning was a sleep-in – we got up at 7 am instead the usual 6 am or earlier!!
As we weren’t able to see the changing of the guards when we visited Buckingham Palace with Shaun, we decided to go there again today. We set off in the tube and got out at St James Park and walked through the gardens which are really beautiful. There were squirrels running around everywhere. Some of them were tame and came right up to us looking for food, striking all sorts of poses, so we managed to take a couple of photos of them. There were also a large number of ducks and birds as we walked along the paths. Eventually we came to Buckingham Palace and asked a bobby where is the best place to see everything. He said, right here! So we were behind the statue of Queen Victoria at the traffic lights that lead down to the Mall. The guards came close enough to us that I could almost pat the horses, so we got a good view of the guards going in and the guards going out. The whole procedure took well over an hour and was very colourful.
While we were waiting for the guards to come past, we saw a big maroon Rolls Royce go into the Palace and about 15 minutes later it came out with the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in it and they headed down the Mall right in front of us!! The Queen waved as she went past, but it all happened too quickly for me to get a photo of her! Jill was delighted that she had actually got to see the Queen!! (I was too, but wouldn’t admit that to her!).
It was now lunchtime, so we called into a nearby cafe and of all the places to call into in London we found a group from our tour, also lunching there. London isn’t so big after all!!
This afternoon we came back to the apartment to start on the blog before we forget too many details.
London bound!
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 16th, 2011Thursday 13th October
Left Plymouth at 8 am and retraced our steps back to Exeter, then continued up the freeway up to Taunton, then turning east along the A30. We stopped off for a quick coffee break along the way, passed through a variety of different landscapes and then arrived at Stonehenge where we stopped. Jill says the area has been heavily commercialised since her last visit 40 odd years ago, but at least there is lots of information now available, so you can understand what is known about the place. It is estimated Stonehenge was built around 2000 BC. The rocks came from North Wales, some 400 miles away and weigh up to 10 ton each! The mind boggles as to how they were carved out and transported. The original purpose has long been forgotten, but many different people have used it over the years, the Druids being the last. When the Romans came, around 40 AD this was a very old site. The rocks currently are situated in cleared farmland, but apparently the area was covered in forest at the time it was built. Another mystery is the large mounds of earth that surround the area. It is believed that these were burial sites where people were originally buried, then as customs changed, the ashes of others were buried there. These mounds are quite prominent even today. I can understand if you just came upon this, it would not interest some, but when you have an audio guide and get to know its origins and significance, it becomes far more interesting.
We resumed our journey and took a quick detour south to the town of Salisbury, to see the well known cathedral where one of the only copies of the historic Magna Carta is situated. We saw the original which was written in Latin but still of great interest, as this document impacts everyone of us even today. This document took away the absolute power of the king and also gave rights to the individual. It is strange that King John petitioned the current Pope of the time to have the document annulled and the Pope attempted to do so in the belief that a king was given his authority by God. Just goes to show how fallible any of us can be.
After lunch we left Salisbury and headed back onto the A30 which then joined the M3 freeway right into London. We were the first to be dropped off at a hotel in Kensington around 3.30 pm, so had a quick goodbye to everyone on the bus and then we got a taxi back to Earls Court, sharing it with another Australian couple who were also staying in an apartment in Earls Court.
Our Tour guide was Mhairi MacLaren, (pronounced Varry) a tiny little Scottish lass, who started life as an actress and was in a number of TV shows. Some 28 years ago, during a ‘down’ period she was asked to fill in as a Tour Guide through Scotland and she managed to bluff her way, but enjoyed the experience and has been at it ever since. She was extremely knowledgable about the history of all the countries we visited in Great Britain and had a very good knowledge of the Royal Family. She was really entertaining and had us in stitches with her different accents and the songs she sang along the way. Our driver Davey was also Scottish and was very adept at driving a 40ft bus through the amazingly narrow streets and roadways. He could back that bus up the most crowded street you could ever imagine.
Plymouth Harbour and Cornwall
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 16th, 2011Wednesday 12th October
Started the wet, rainy, foggy day with a boat trip around the massive harbour. This isn’t a very big commercial harbour, as it is the main naval defence harbour normally full of warships, but there was an exercise just off the coast with Spain which meant there were less warships in the harbour. The perimeter of the harbour is full of defensive forts, the main one built by Charles II in 1640. It was from this harbour that the Mayflower left for America and many immigrants left for Australia. Just around the bend from where we started on the Ho (high ground), Sir Francis Drake played bowls and we could see the view he had of the Spanish Armada gathering, getting ready to attack. The Spanish had very big ships set high in the water. Drake had small warships, set low in the water. When the Spanish had gathered into a tight group to sail into the harbour and set amongst them, the Spanish cannons fired over them while Drake fired into them and in a short time decimated them. So presumably there are a number of Spanish warships sitting beneath the waves in the mouth of the Plymouth harbour. We also saw some navy warships in for maintenance and about eight de-commissioned submarines. There were three functioning subs that are capable of sailing under water around the world at a speed of 30 knots without surfacing. When we boarded our boat, we were in Devon, but we landed at Saltash which is in Cornwall.
The River Tamar is the river that separates Cornwall, which was once regarded as a separate country and they had their own language. Even now, when they cross the Tamar, locals say they are visiting England. We travelled down to Penzance in the coach, through a mixture of fog, rain and sunshine. We didn’t see any pirates, but we saw St Michaels Mount, an abbey built on an island several hundred metres offshore. Very impressive, sitting on top of a hill. The sun shone briefly for us while we were there!
From here we crossed from the south shore to the north shore and on to St Ives. In doing so we travelled on very narrow country roads, where two large vehicles upon meeting, had to negotiate who would reverse back to a passing point. Whilst reversing once, we hit something and blew a back tyre, so we had to limp into St Ives, phoning ahead for a mechanic. This gave us more time to explore St Ives, which is a normal Cornwall seaside village. Those of you who watch Doc Martin on TV would recognise what this village was like. We had a dinkum Cornish Pasty and it was delicious and then we walked all around the village, up and down the narrow streets and alleyways each with all sorts of little shops. The terrain is very hilly and if you weren’t walking up a hill, it was because you were walking down a hill! It was a very picturesque village with the tide well out and the fishing boats sitting on the sand in the harbour.
With the tyre replaced we moved on, travelling over the Bodmin moors. We then came to the Jamaica Inn, which was covered in a heavy fog and was built of a grey stone giving off a very eerie atmosphere. You could just see the many smugglers that plied their trade in this area. Daphne Du Maurier wrote a book based on the inn and this is on our reading list on our return now we have seen the area she based the book on. A feature of Cornwall is that the hedgerows, especially on the roadways, are left to grow tall and are up to twelve feet tall, so when driving you have the image of driving continuously through a tunnel. We were to meander over some more country roads, but heavy fog closed in and this seemed worthless, so we headed back to Plymouth on the main road, ready for our goodbye dinner tonight.
Devon and Cornwall are quite correctly described as very pretty. Sunshine or fog this is very true. I am very glad we got down to this part of England. Jill visited this area some forty years ago, but also really enjoyed this visit.
Tonight we had a farewell dinner at our hotel. It’s hard to believe that this trip is almost over. We are all exhausted, but would probably turn around and do it all again as it was packed full of such interesting places.
