London

'Millennium Bridge'

Big Ben

Marching Band at Buckingham Palace

Changing of the guards

The testicle march!?!

Cute Cupcake Kiosk

The tower Bridge

Buckingham PalaceThe military museum with London eye in the background

I (Sharon) arrived in London Wednesday lunch time following another 8 hour bus trip and a very early start, yay for cheap travel! I was picked up by Luke and had my first experience on the London underground, very hot and muggy down there! He took me back to his and his wife Sarah’s apartment where Andrew and I were to stay for a few nights. For the rest of the day I read my book, drank tea and watched all the dodgy people coming and going from a pawn shop across the road… very interesting and can absorb hours of ones time. I will explain their apartment’s neighbourhood as a cultural experience where someone who is white sticks out like a sore thumb. The area has police cars that zoom past every 20mins or so with sirens that keep you awake until late at night. They have a local market a few doors down run everyday with yelling store owners, large throngs of people, rotten meat and vegetable smells, stray dogs and all. Andrew says that at times it smells a lot like Africa here! But all in all a very fun place to hang around and experience new things!
The following day I decided to brave the underground alone and headed for Oxford Circus the shopping area of town. The trip was good and I managed to find my way no problem though did have one incident where I learned that when a young Greek guy asks you for directions he is not actually lost he just wants your phone number, but that one was very easily diverted as I did not even have a phone, haha 1 Sharon, 0 Strange Greek guy! In the city I window shopped, people watched and walked around a huge local park and generally enjoyed a sunny day until it hit four and I finally experienced the ‘little New Zealand vs big London feeling’ and headed back to the safety of the flat, phew. That night I learned how to play Mexican train dominos and found that though it sounds geeky it’s actually fantastic and every one should play!!
The next day, actually early morning I, being a now very experienced underground traveller headed out to pick up Andrew from the bus station. I will admit I did get a little lost, but only when I started walking down London streets. To this day I am proud to say I have never been lost on any London public transport… mainly due to great hosts! We headed back to the apartment with a jet lagged Andrew in rush hour, fun, fun and had another quiet day.
Saturday started our three day walking tour of London, kindly explained by Luke. We hit all the tourist attractions with great vigour and had loads of fun in the city of London. We spent Saturday exploring the London wall, castle and bridge. We tasted many free food tasters at the Borough market and brought ourselves a yummy cheese cake treat. We looked at old pubs under the London bridge, gazed at the amazing works of art in the Tate modern art gallery, walked around the St Pauls cathedral and finished it off with a book market in Waterloo.
Sunday was spent marketing. We looked around Brick lane market, everything that is stolen in London during the week gets sold here, Spitalfields market, more upper class where up and coming designers sell their wares, and other random no named but very interesting markets. We ate some yummy Moroccan food (there was food from all over the world) and wished we were rich as there where so many great things to spend your money on. This was probably our most enjoyable day with loads of people and things to see and do. That night we went to Church with Sarah and Luke a lovely little church which we also very much enjoyed.
On our last day in London (Monday) we finished the last leg of our walking tour. We headed out to Buckingham Palace, saw the end of the changing of the guard (very proper and formal) and where lucky (or not so lucky as there were tonnes of people about) enough to see the royal marching band play. We walked through the royal park reaching Trafalgar square which was overrun by people and as we were soon to discover so was the whole of London! In the square we watched a man conducting some random people all playing their own tune on different instruments which was a part of some art month and then looked around the British art gallery. We also went to see the London eye, parliament buildings, the big Ben and Westminster Chapel. The rest of the day was spent looking at buskers and random stalls.
London in a nut shell was a great city to explore with different sights, smells and experiences around every corner. We enjoyed our hosts Sarah and Luke and our only complaint would be that we wished the police would turn off their sirens earlier so we could sleep!

Sharons trip to Cornwall

Rachel, Beth and Sharon going out dancing in Cornwall

So as Andrew flew off into another country I headed down the south of England to a little town called Falmouth in the province of Cornwall. It took me a whole 8 hours and 4 different busses to get all the way there with most of the way being too foggy to see anything! I was however lucky enough to find friendly old ladies on two of the four busses who took me under their wing and made sure that I was fed thinking I was a 'poor starving and lonely girl, travelling all alone'... Great for me!
Cornwall turned out to be in a world of its own, which by the way is not an insult as they like to think of themselves as a separate identity. This includes having their own flag and particular way of speaking among other things. I was lucky enough to be housed by three fantastic Girls (none of which originated in Cornwall) and was shown the true Cornish experience. I was taken to the beach a few times, was cold but pretty. While at the beach I experienced a Cornish Ice Cream. Firstly I must explain to you that Cornish people love ‘clotted cream’ this cream is best described as the consistency of mayonnaise and a stronger ‘fatty’ taste then other creams. Now picture a nice vanilla Ice Cream, good yes? Now cover the Ice Cream in clotted cream as you would chocolate dip but much thinker. As you munch your way through the fat sticks to the top of your mouth and as you cannot eat it fast it then drips all down your clothes. All the while Cornish people look on and laugh. Ice Cream anyone? I was also able to eat a Cornish pasty (said in an English accent otherwise no one understands exactly what you are after) which is like a pie but using only one piece of pastry rather then two. Traditionally this dish was used for the miners and had half sweet and half meat so it was a whole meal in one, though now they separate the two thank goodness! This was a much more pleasant experience as was Cream tea. Cream tea is another Cornish tradition which consists of tea, scone, jam and of coarse clotted cream! I was a little worried but found that the scone’s dryness actually worked well with this cream, a very nice surprise. I was also warned that you must put cream on the scone first and then the jam prior to doing so. Doing it the other way apparently offends the Cornish people as their rivalry neighbours do it the opposite way…ooooo.
I also had some fun ‘none traditional’ Cornish times including Dancing the night away, helping out at a local school, seeing a Castle (this was traditional I guess), shopping, visiting friends, playing games, going to church, having a bbq, all done with wonderful hosts so all in all a great Cornwall experience!

How do you spell Canada?...

Leaving Sharon behind in England Philip and I flew to Halifax in Canada for a week for brother James' wedding. We broke out of the low cloud above Halifax and as far as the eye could see it was trees and lakes and more trees.

This white tail had twin fawns and made short work of James' germinating sweet corn. James and Robin just out of a small town called Antigonish about 2 1/2 hour drive north west of Halifax. They have a small 12acre block mostly of scrubby elders and a few maple and conifer trees and a wee 2 bedroom house.

Wood peckers

James and Robbins house.


A good kiwi bbq... ...we dont think the rocks will explode....
After the wedding a few people were coming back to the house for dinner and a party. Dad and i constructed this bbq from rocks pulled up from around the house and in the stream. It ended up pouring with rain so the bbq wasnt used till the following day, but it was a dam fine bbq.
The very happy couple.
The wedding was at 4pm on saturday the 4th of July at the local Presbytarian church. About 50 people attended and it was in James' words "a perfect day". The sevice was great and the church lovely.
We found this little guy on a walk to th etop of their property and beyond he had behavioral problems and bit James a few times, lucky he wasn't poisonous but he sure did stink!
Mahone Bay with its three churches side by side. Dad and i passed through this town on our way to our fishing charter out of Lunenburg with Bill Flowers, a very comical guy. The fishing trip was great and we caught a few cod and mackeral. The cod put up little fight and were full of worms so not altogether satisying to catch. I did at one stage get 1 cod and two mackeral on the same line but the mackeral were too small to put up much of a fight.


I saw quite a few bald eagles, this photo doesnt show it but they are a huge bird with a "body length of 70–102 centimeters, and a wingspan of 180–234 centimeters" (Wikipedia, 2009). They were really neat to see soaring around.

I spent my last day in Halifax and checked out a museum and had a locally guided tour of the supermarket... my highlight by far... hahaha. Well it was interesting, Kate Broadbent a great family friend was my guide and we checked how dificult it was to avoid high-fructose corn syrup. The museum was about Pier 21, a Pier where 1 million migrants arrived in Canada from 1930 to 1970, it was well laid out and really interesting, i would recomend if you are ever in Halifax. Halifax was also the place that the survivors of the Titanic disaster came back to, and it also had huge explosion in 1917 from the collision of two ships one loaded with amunition.
The following is from Wikipedia.
At 9:04:35 AM, the cargo of Mont-Blanc exploded with more force than any man-made explosion before it, equivalent to roughly 3 kilotons of TNT. (Compare to atomic bomb Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima, which had an estimated power of 15 kilotons TNT equivalent.).^[8] The ship was instantly destroyed in the giant fireball that rose over 1.9 kilometres (1.2 mi) into the air, forming a large mushroom cloud. Shards of hot metal rained down across Halifax and Dartmouth. The force of the blast triggered a tsunami, which rose up as high as 18 metres (60 ft) above the harbour's high-water mark on the Halifax side. It destroyed an area of about 350 acres and killed roughly 2000 people.

well i found it intersting anyway.

Oh and you spell Canada: c A n A d A