A change of direction for the Blog

Hello!

Welcome back to the 'Is this the way to Bognor Regis?' blog.
This used to be a travel blog for Sarah and I to keep a diary of what we did around the world. But now we are back, and apart from it sucking, have lost all use for the blog, so...

I'm going to change it into a place to harbour quality ideas.

So hopefully more to come from this soon.

Laters
Pricey

Wedding news

Just a quick update to tell you all that their is a almost probable date set... the 13th October.

Laters
Pricey

The NEWS

Well...

We've been home a good week now, needed a bit of time to re-adjust and get back on to English terms. It's frickin cold, it's frickin gloomy and everything is expensive! But it is good to be home, great to see family and great to have Christmas. Things may start to get tricky after the festivus has finished...

And there is good news. In a an act of pure insanity, on Sarah's part, I asked her to marry me after we went ice skating in New York on our final day of the trip, something she has always wanted to do and... she said 'yes'. An amazing end to an unforgettable trip. No more needs to be said...

19th December - Nearing the end

So we have come to our last full day of traveling, well we kind of stopped
traveling when we hit Adelaide, we're more on a vacation now. Anyway, back into the
city again for some Statue of Liberty action, we took the Staten Island ferry that
goes right past Ellis Island. All a touch foggy though.

After we did some more shopping, had some lunch and then hung around the Rockafella
plaza watching the ice skating. We couldn't get on the rink as it was way too busy
unfortunately. All very christmasy around there.

That evening we went back to Scarsdale to have a near perfect roast dinner expertly
cooked by Anne. We were very fortunate to be able to stay with them and we thank them
so much.

On Friday morning we went back into New York one more time, just to pick up a few
things. We also went ice skating in Bryant park, Sarah's dream to skate in New York,
and there is another good story to follow about that, but not now. Stay tuned though.
We had to get back for lunch as we had to get to JFK airport to fly home. Yep home,
the trip is soon to be over.

Laters

Pricey

13th December - More sightseeing

What is with us not being able to get up, the alarm goes off but nothing happens, I bet Friday will come around and then the flight home will mess us up for a week again.

Mid morning/day we hit the Guggenheim museum, noted for its art and for its amazing architecture. We missed the latter as it was totally covered up by scaffolding, but we got the former, Picasso, Dali, Van Gogh, Monet and whole host of other artsy people to boot. Was really good actually.

Then we tried another museum but the queue was just too big, so we went for a beer instead. This was the first time we have actually enjoyed New York city, the rest we have just been seeing it. Chelsea v Newcastle was on the TV live as well which was great to see along with Saturday's goals. How good was Matthew Taylor's goal against Everton? Heh?

Back to the seeing, went to the Rockafella plaza for a quick picture, we are going back again tomorrow. But did go to the NBC studio tour, got asked some questions about the TV channel and had no idea who the people were as we were English, then got heckled. Did volunteer to be a stand in Weathergirl though which was fun, did my bit for the rain!

Grabbed some food in a pub then headed off to Madison Square garden, which oddly isn't square at all, more oval. Sarah saw her first basketball match, the Knicks v Atlanta, and New York won by a mile. There were tones of stereotypical New Yorkers there.

On the way home we saw our first 6ft 6" black transvestite on the train, all the others have struggled around the 5ft 10" mark but this one stood out.

More of the same tomorrow.

Laters

Pricey

12th December - Sightseeing day 1

Monday, this jet lag is wearing thin on the patience, it could just be laziness but we can't pin it down. Luckily got a call from Ma in the UK to wake us up at a measly 9am, then pelted it down to the train and into the city again.

This was another shopping day, a time to use up the American traveler's cheques that we had sensibly kept up until now. Sarah won today easily though we still couldn't find a suit for her and her up and coming interviews... We generally hung around Manhattan mall near Macy's and a load of sport shops too.

We got back to Scarsdale to clean up after ourselves and to wait for Anne and Frank to get back from Mexico. Unfortunately their flight was delayed, but we waited up and had a drink with them when they got in and caught up.

Tuesday saw more morning sleep worries, but made it in for 11:30 ish. This was a sight seeing day, all day. First stop was the Empire State building and the Skyride (which made Sarah feel sick the wuss). The views were great, it wasn't a cold day and you could see for a bout 15 to 20 miles.

Emp

Afterwards we headed to China town to have some lunch with Frank as he was working in the city that day. We had some fantastic Peking duck and were completely stuffed by the afternoon. Thanks to Frank for taking us there.

On a mission to walk off the lunch as we knew there was steak for dinner as well, we walked/got the subway up to Central park for a quick look around and then went to the Central Park zoo. A pretty damn good zoo for $8, and they had a massive snake as well as a polar bear.

Then just to cap off the day we stopped at Madame Tussauds as we could get in on our day pass. Saw a bunch of celebrities made of wax and Tom Green who wasn't as was filming outside. There was a cool haunted house section with live actors of Jason and Freddie Kruger, Sarah screamed like the girl she is and ran!

Making our way back to Scarsdale, we fell asleep and missed our stop, so had to get on the next train back the other way. Eventually getting back, Anne cooked us the best steak we've had on this trip and we have had a LOT of steak, this even beat the Chateau briande we had in Vegas.

Looking like footballs we went to bed.

Laters

Pricey

11th December - New Yawk

The final stop in our huge journey is New York. We are lucky enough to be staying with Anne and Frank Manning, Anne is THE Godmother! Though we haven't seen them yet as they are on holiday until monday, Eva, their friend has let us in and is staying with us too.

We have been pretty busy already these past two days, both times we ventured into Manhattan. Saturday we thought we had recovered from our jetlag but the sudden wake up at 11:30 am proved us wrong, but we headed in for the rest of the day anyways, Macys had a one day sale and we needed to get information and stuff too. Strangely I found some stuff to wear but all Sarah came away with were presents despite finding the largest 'petite' section she has ever seen, oh well.

Sunday saw us get up reasonably and we launched into a day of sightseeing and shopping. Firstly we headed down the bottom of the island to see the Statue of Liberty from the shore line at Battery park, we will probably get closer another time. Then we walked up Broadway, passing Wall Street where I cupped a bulls balls.

Then we went to ground zero. After we stopped at Century 21 for some cheap shopping, again we picked up some stuff and I did better than Sarah, she's got a problem there. After we subwayed to Times square and got some food.

To finish off the night we caught an early show at the Ha! Comedy club. Finally some good comedy from the 'mercans! Oh how we chuckled and had beer. On the street, which was full of tourists and people, we saw another spiderman but we weren't sure it was the real one as this one was tubby and had a polaroid camera with him, sell out. Sarah didn't even bother telling this one she hated him...

More of the same to come, laters.

Pricey

8th December - Deja LA vu

We left Australia and after 14 hours of being trapped on a plane we landed in LA for our second visit. We both managed 4 and a 1/2 films each.

We went to the Travelodge at LAX, slept and left early at 4am.

It was nice.

Laters

Pricey

7th December - Laters Australia!

Tuesday we got up early and headed down to the beach, Glenelg. The beach was really cool, the water was as still as anything like a lake. That made it quite eerie, we didn't go in the water as a 5m white pointer shark ate some surfers leg the day before. As luck would have it it actually turned up at the next beach along, Brighton beach, that morning too, we found out on the news that night.

Then about lunch time we went back to Carolyn's place to watch the end of the cricket, it was a freaking hot day and we needed the fan and cold beers, 36 degrees. We then watched the most dismal display of batting and a poor attempt of a comeback from England, the Aussies won and they rubbed our noses in it.

That evening we took Carolyn out for a meal to say thank you for having us. She was wonderful and very good to us. We stayed far longer than anywhere else on the trip and she was fantastic, thank you so much!

Wednesday was just spent packing and posting some stuff back home, an early night for the early flight tomorrow. We stopped around Reuben and Linda's place again to say goodbye and to have some pizza and some wine. Thank you to those two and we hope their vegas style christmas tree lights on the house win them the neighbourhood prize.

We say goodbye to Oz tomorrow, it's been awesome, hot and sunny, there has been surf and cold beer. A quality experience we will never forget.

Laters

Pricey

P.S. All the best to Geordie Andy and Geordie Kate for their wedding day on the 9th, we hope all goes well and we are sorry we can't be there, good luck.

4th December - The Ashes 2

Saturday saw us go into Adelaide itself to have a look around and to get some culture. So after finding a truly English pub, we sat down for a pint of Stella each and some pub food whilst watching the cricket. Not a bad days worth of doing nothing much at all, oh and we picked up some more Ashes tickets for monday.

In the evening Carolyn and the two of us went around to Reuben and Linda's new house. Reuben is Carolyn's son and their new house is huge, massive in fact. They have two sons who are pretty cool, Kaleb 5 and little Asher who is just 1. We had a great time, with a shed load of whiskey, wine and beer along with some card games as well. Suffice to say the English cleaned house with those!

Sunday saw some sore heads, and none sorer than mine. I also ran a bit of a fever and didn't get up till 4pm, so I can't report much on the day but apparently there was a fantastic roast dinner and nice wine, cooked by our lovely host.

Monday, we went to the Ashes again. We didn't get as good seats this time but we weren't complaining. We were right down the front by the fence behind mid-on or thirdman. There wasn't any shade which made it a bit difficult seeing as it was 33 degrees. Sarah melted next to me.

The day was awesome again, and we left England in a great position.

Laters

Pricey