byootaful

So Phill and I just arrived home last week from our EuroTrip. We flew from Australia to London, then Nice, then Paris, then Rome, then Pisa, then Zadar, then Split for our 8-day Croatia Sailing tour, then Prague, then London, then back to Australia. By the end of the holiday we were absolutely exhausted but thrilled and relaxed – we jammed so much stuff in, yet also managed to have time to just sit and enjoy ourselves. I thought I would do a “highlights” post for each country we visited, to sum up some of the most memorable parts of the trip.

Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross Station in London

What? You know I had to, right? It was top of my list and I dragged Phill and a couple friends along to see the famed entrance to Platform 9 3/4, which was, I must admit, not as impressive as I had always imagined. I actually had to stop and ask for directions (silly me thought there would be huge signs everywhere) and when we found it, it was randomly tucked around a little corner next to some construction work. Perhaps when the construction is finished the area won’t seem so random?

Luckily there was nobody there, so we had some time to snap some photos of the wall, plus the obligitory photos of us attempting to push the trolley through. Even Phill seemed to enjoy himself, but stopped short at having his own photo taken, damn. Just as we were leaving, a group of twenty or so students arrived, all giggling and excited, so it looks like we had arrived at just the right time, just avoiding the crowd.

Queueing at Wimbledon 2009

Okay, so I didn’t actually do this – we arrived on the first day of Wimbledon nice and early and were told that the queue was already over 10,500 people and if we started queueing straight away, we *might* get inside in about 5 hours. We said thanks, but no thanks. It was stifling hot and we didn’t have much water or protection from the sun and the thought of queueing for five hours without even the certainty of getting in was not really appealing.

The next day, the boys returned to Wimbledon at some ungodly hour of the morning (I went instead to Camden Markets with the girls) and they proceeded to get thoroughly sunburned to a crisp. Phill couldn’t believe that it was possible to get sunburned in England … it seems that a lot of people just assume England is cloudy and miserable all the time – it actually got quite hot while we were there!

Squirells in Hyde Park, London

Apparently they prefer nuts to pretzels. Just sayin’.

Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, Hyde Park

This was a really pleasant surprise. I was expecting just a plain fountain, but as you can see, it’s very different to that. It’s an oval-shaped water feature that represents the different stages of Princess Diana’s life, with calm water, rapidly-flowing water and rough water. People are welcome to sit and dangle their legs into the (freezing) water. It was a really peaceful place, with a range of people there. There were families with young children playing in the water, people lying on the grass reading books and couples sitting together enjoying the sunshine.

The thing I loved the most about the fountain was how the water flows from the highest point in two directions, coming together in a calm pool at the lowest point. It felt like there should be a point where the water changes direction and therefore separates, but it is so smooth you can’t really pinpoint it. There are three little bridges that go over the water and this leads you to the grassy centre of the fountain, like going to the heart of it all. It was a really beautiful place.

Brighton Pier Beach

THIS IS NOT A BEACH PEOPLE! Where is the sand?! The waves?! That is one thing we really missed in Europe – it was rare that we would find a nice sandy beach. The pebbles drove me nuts trying to walk on them – they tickled my feet and it’s hard to enjoy the surroundings when you’re watching your feet to ensure you don’t fall over and thoroughly embarrass yourself. I must admit though, we thought it was impressive the amount of people in the freezing water – now that is making an effort! We didn’t even consider going in – after all, we’d be sailing Croatia in a couple weeks and there would be plenty of beach there with water that wasn’t in the negatives!

Stonehenge

I was really pleased we managed to drive out to Stonehenge because I’ve always wanted to see it. Before we left for our holiday, I did some research and found that a lot of people who had visited Stonehenge had very negative things to say about it, like “it’s just rocks” or “you’re so far away from them you can hardly see anything” but to be honest, I found it very enjoyable and not at all how I expected. Sure, it is just a bunch of rocks and it’s smaller than you imagine it to be, but it was still breathtaking, especially when listening to the free audio guide which gives information on the history of Stonehenge and talks about the conspiracy theories on how it was made.

There weren’t many people there when we arrived (once again, they all seemed to turn up as we were leaving!) so I managed to get a lot of shots with only a few people in the background and they will be easily removed with photoshop once I figure out how to use it. There were people taking photos through the fence, but honestly? Pay the entrance fee and go inside – it’s worth it in my opinion.

Of course, we did the usual touristy stuff like seeing Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard (which went on and on and on and on!) and Big Ben and London Bridge and Tower Bridge – they were all fabulous too, but if I put photos of absolutely everything we did in this post, your computers would probably explode.

So this is part one of our EuroTrip highlights – part two will be next … France.