Wardy’s Travel Blog

Cmon summer

The end of the great northern winter is nigh for 2007. Let´s party and celebrate!!!! After a couple of false starts (we regressed to snow a couple times) Spring has sprung. Let’s get really optimistic and put our clocks forward an hour… England and Europe are now officially in Summer time: time wise anyhow.

The most amazing thing about the clocks going forard forward is the smiles that suddenly appear on the faces of the English. And rightfully so… England in summar is lovely. Everything is green (ish) and bright and lush… just like the days growing up when Australia used to get rain. Remember those days???? The daffodils are in bloom. The trees are blossoming and the leaves are shooting back into life…

But the start of summer means more than that… much more!

It means that:
- Rugby league is getting ready for the best exposition on the great game: State Of Origin! C’mon you mighty maroons!!!
- I am gettting closer to anther holiday - Poland next week!
- Le Mans in only 10 weeks away - taking a week off for this one!
- Cricket is coming back this way… OK… after the Aussies and Saffa’s belt each other out of the park in the final of the World Cup.

hmmm…. Summer = Sport

How Aussie is that… no matter where you are in the world… to an Aussie summer always means sport….

Enough ramblings for now… CIAO!!!!

Corfee in New York!

Hi all…

This week I had the pleasure of going to New York with Drew, Liz and Bec for 5 nights and days of sightseeing, shopping, eating expensive steaks and corfee.

NYC is an amazing city! It is stunning actually. Wide city streets, friendly people, nice buildings and last week, some bloody cold weather! Minus 21 at times. Brrrrrr…. Thankfully I had been through similar before (Sweden at xmas) but this was a first for the others and I did feel sorry for them.

The one thing about NYC that amazed me the most was the friendly people. Everyone was willing to help if you looked lost. In London you don’t see that so it was very reassuring to see.

The next highlight was the HUGE T-Bone that I got for dinner one night. Just to put this into perspective… it has been almost 3 years since I have had a decent steak. Anyway… I realised how much the Americans love their food when everywhere we ate there was a guide on the wall on what to do when people were choking. Does this mean that people there love their food so much that they throw it down without chewing????

The rest of the time there was spent:
- Shopping at the world’s largest factory outlets! What a place!!!!
- Seeing Monty Pythons Spamalot on Broadway
- Wandering around Times Square
- Watching the New York Knicks lose by 1 point at an NBA game at Madison Square Garden
- Trying to work out the correct and appropriate tip for everyone for anything
- Gazing over the city from the top of the Empire State Building - chose the coldest and windiest day to do that
- Walked half of Brooklyn Bridge… started heading back when I couldn’t feel my legs anymore
- buying new toys for my camera at the world’s largest camera shop… lurve that place!
- Paying respects at Ground Zero
- Staring at Libby from Battery Park
- Chilling out at Strawberry Fields
- Making sure someone had dollar bills so we could tip someone
- Being sickened (apparently, I was a bit drunk so I was somewhere else) by a stand up comedian (?) at a comedy club - we left during the show and they didn’t get a tip!
- Walked chinatown, Greenwich Village, Wall Street
- Buying stuff so that we got dollars to tip someone

In the end… NYC is a place that I strongly recommend everyone try to get to. I will definitely be going back. but in the meantime check out some of my photos!

Cheers
Ian

Happy Birthdy to me… :)

Wow… another year down the road, a few more grey hairs and I swear a couple more wrinkles to show for it all.  Is starting to get so bad that the card I received at work was for a 40th birthday!  the cheeky sods!

To everyone that has sent me wishes THANK YOU!!!!

Last night about 25 friends from work helped me celebrate till the wee hours of the morning.  A great time had by all and there aer quite a few sore heads this morning!  Thankfully not mine!!!

Some of the less incriminating ones can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/eastr.b/FiveLimeIanSBirthday

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/pantina73/IanSBirthday 

I am waiting to get the others… the flash was going off quite frequently for a couple hours so I am expecting some more to filter through next week…  When I get them I will post them!

Tonight will be spent with Drew and Liz, Lou and Gabby in London for a Thai dinner and a couple of vino blanca or vino tintos or some Rum and Cokes at their place… A quite one HONEST!!!

*** UPDATE ***

More incrimination photos are found at: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/pantina73/IanSBirthday

A great weekend was had in London with Drew, Liz, Lou, Gabby and Meg.  Lou made a lovely cake for my birthday as well!  (Luvs ya Lou!!)

New photos…

I noticed that I have been really poor in putting my new photos up on this site. Expect that to change soon… Depends on whether I get any time to do it!!!!

The challenge should I choose to accept it…

… 10 countries in 12 months

Now for a traveller that is not such a big event, but when you are working fulltime and have no holidays.

So where am i planning to go?
1 - New Jersey - Work - February (Possible)
2 - New York, New York - Pleasure - March (Definate)
3 - Poland - Warsaw and Krakow - Easter (Definate)
4 - Le Mans - France - June (Definate)
5 - Spain - Cartagena - June (Possible)
6 - Sweden - Stockholm - July (Possible)
7 - France - Lyon - Septermber - Rugby World Cup (Definate)
8 - Wales - Cardiff - Rugby World Cup (Definate)
9 - Germany - is bound to happen for work (Definate)

Need to think some more about how to crack the 10!!!

A Peachie Parrot Xmas

I know it is a bit late but…

My first xmas in the old dart was spent with a mate from work (Gary Pcach) and his wonderful and adorable kids (Jemma and Ashley Parrott). We spent the day relaxing, eating too much chocolate, opening presents and playing games on the PS2. A great day was had by everyone and I felt honoured to be included into this very family affair.

What I do think is very funny is that we had a nice pleasant day with blue skies and the south of Oz got snowfall!!!!

To top it all off I got to speak to Mum, Dad and some friends as well. Did make me miss home very much!

Oh yeah, for boxing day, we had a wonderful roast goose and veggies… Very nice!

And before I forget… It was Gary’s birthday on the 25th: HAPPY BIRTHDAY GARY!!!!!!

Drunken night out with welsh lesbians

Well… the title says it all. A georgeous woman walks into the bar and sits next to me. I am thinking ” woohoo my luck is in!” only to find out that she is interested in women. But these girls are amazing!!! I had a wonderful night with a tonne of laughs and ended up being promised a big night out in Cardiff next year for the World Cup (oh yeah, i have tickets to see Japan and Wales in the rugby world cup next year). To ensure I keep in touch I got their business card and email and phone number. What a wonderful night!!! oh yeah… they paid for the evening as well!!!

The worst curse is ok but blasphemy is out

The other night I was watching tv about agrophobics and one of the people said “oh my f*cking beep”. I couldn’t believe it!!!! When did society believe that fu*k is better on tv than the word god? What is happening to this world????

Ooops… forgot to transfer that money…Damn banks

I am not generally the most diligent person when it comes to checking bank statements etc… But when I was bored today I thought I would do an audit of my HSBC accounts. To my absolute horror I noticed my credit card account was somewhat higher than I had expected. About 700 pounds higher actually.

The money that was removed from my HSBC Savings account 2 weeks ago has apparently not yet been given to HSBC Credit Cards. Oh yeah… believe me here… It takes 3 days to transfer money between HSBC savings and credit departments…

So I got an apology and a promise that within the next 10 days I should receive a phone call explaining to me why they didn’t transfer my money through.

I shall pay a bit more attention to this in the future….

Bond …. Brilliant!

Tonight I went to see the latest edition in the Bond franchise: Casino Royale. As a die hard fan I found it difficult to think of Daniel Craig as 007, but I have been gladly proven wrong. He plays this dark side of the man in a brilliant way and for once I have walked away from a Bond film mesmerised by the character instead of the gadgets.

It is not my favourite Bond film though. Over time it may become that but I still see Bond as: gadgets, Q, toys, Q… you get the picture…