Author: dapperdaveanddinkydi

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Shakespeare, Pissarro & Monet!

A great day today!  We absolutely loved our tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. We reckon our guide was a retired actor & he made the history interesting & fun. One of the tit-bits which fascinated us was the number of our sayings which began life in his plays as you can see in the chart attached.


Then it was off to The National Gallery where we headed for the Impressionists which are our favourites. Even though a couple of the relevant rooms were closed for refurbishment, we saw plenty of Monet & Pissarro. A couple of our favourites are here for you to share.

We had a good British lunch at the Sherlock Holmes Pub near the gallery: fish, chips, mushy peas & a pint!  It was a beautiful day & we sat out in the sun. What could be better?

No senior moments today thankfully!

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Today we once again became familiar with the London public transport system & if you have a map & a tube map, it’s pretty easy to get around What’s more people are very ready to help if you’re in trouble which is great. After a cold day yesterday, today was sunny & warm so much so that as I write this at 6:25pm, I’m sitting out in our little garden in

the sunshine.  Very pleasant!

David wanted to go back to the British Museum today, a place he really enjoys. When we got there, he decided he’d already seen the things he wanted to see & didn’t want to see them again. I giggled to myself. We wandered around for a few hours and were amazed at the huge numbers of people that were there.

Being big fans of the TV program, Selfridges, we wanted to visit Harry’s store. Of course, it’s nothing like it used to be now, being very similar to DJs back home with all the brand names occupying their own individual areas. The major difference is that it’s much much larger. I found some sandals I liked but they didn’t have any large enough for my ‘plates of meat’. There are 11 restaurants in the store & we decided to have a Sunday roast lunch. David had beef with Yorkshire pudding & I had the chicken. They were massive serves but very tasty – no way we could clean our plates.

We easily found our way back to Waterloo & the train to Wimbledon Station & jumped on the 93 bus to bring us home. Nothing looked familiar! You guessed it! We were heading away from home instead of towards home. But we did get home! There’s a great deal of construction happening in London, cranes tower over the skyline everywhere you look. It’s certainly a happening city!

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No Womble Sightings Yet!

Some 29 hours after leaving home, we arrived at our lovely little studio apartment, Roundacre 13, in Wimbledon, London where the tennis crowd is expected as soon as the French Open finishes. Our lovely landlady Elaine collected us from Heathrow which is an amazing service & very welcome, I can tell you.

We had quite a good flight with Singapore Airlines & it began with a sumptuous lunch shortly after take-off. Fresh crab & mango salad for entree, mains of lamb for David & crispy skinned salad for me ( neither of which will be a surprise to anyone who knows us well), strawberry icecream with fresh berries for dessert, followed by an assortment of cheeses & concluding with coffee & chcolates. Yum. I must say I enjoyed the Tattingers as well!

The flight to Singapore was on a A330 which was not nearly as comfortable as the Boeing 777-300 which we had for the longer leg. We both agree that we found it to be the most comfortable plane we’ve ever experienced – even better than the A380 as the bed is so roomy & we both had really sound sleeps.) We gave dinner a miss after such a large lunch & we had just a light nibble in the lounge in Singapore.. The thing we have enjoyed most when we have flown the A380 is the opportunity to leave your seat & go to the bar to meet our fellow travellers. On one trip we met a couple from Mozambique & it was great to chat to them & learn about their country & culture.

Breakfast this morning before we touched down was another delcious feast: juice, fresh fruit, granola, dim sum for me & an omelette for David.

The food on Singapore Airlines is definitely a plus! As is their staff. The attendants on the flights were friendly & helpful & you couldn’t have asked for more.

After we unpacked, we caught the bus to Wimbledon village which is a delightful place – it was very difficult to choose an eatery to have lunch but we managed- Cafe Rouge offered French Onion Soup so how could you go past that on a cool overcast afternoon?  It wasn’t as special as the real stuff I loved in France in 2013 but it still was pretty damn good

First though it was time for a coffee & we were very happy to find a flat white at Nero Coffee which was as good as those we have at home! Our first funny moment of the trip came when we were on the bus back home & we realised that we hadn’t noticed what stop we caught the bus at, so we didn’t know when to get off. We did get off at the right stop but turned the wrong way & had to call Elaine to get directions. We’re obviously a bit jet-lagged. That’s my excuse anyway!

We’re taking it easy this afternoon in preparation for a few full days exploring London.

 

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It’s time to go

We’re enjoying the new Singapore Airlines lounge at the Brisbane Airport. It’s quite small but very comfortable. The food is quite delicious although the choice is restricted. A great way to begin a trip! We’ve been saving the 6th book in Jeffrey Archer’s latest saga on the Clifton family so we have some good reading for the next 24 hours or so. Can’t believe it’s finally here

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Preparations underway for our next trip!

It’s only 4 weeks until we head off on our next amazing overseas journey & we’re becoming excited.

First stop will be England to walk where our ancestors walked. Then we will be off to Norway to cruise from Bergen up to the Arctic circle & back again on Hurtigruren’s Trollfjiord. This promises to be an amazing experience. I really can’t wait!

Then we’ll travel from Bergen to Oslo via Flam on train, bus & ferry. My daughter Kylie has promised that we will love this adventure.

We then fly to Stockholm to board the Oceania’s Marina for a cruise around the Baltic & then we’ll explore Copenhagen for a few days before coming home.

Can you see why we’re excited?  It promises to be a fabulous adventure.

I’ll keep you posted!

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Delicious lunch at Mrs Jones Restaurant in Devonport Tasmania

Today is a beautiful sunny day in Devonport and the family took me to Mrs Jones for lunch. The spectacular view across Bass Strait and the great company set the scene for our lunch and the wait staff were very friendly and helpful.

That’s all very well, I can hear you say, but what did we eat? For entree we shared a delicious plate of tempura soft shell crab rice paper rolls. I could certainly have made a meal of these. We had four different mains, all of which were very tasty and extremely well presented:
Beef and reef
Slow braised lamb shoulder in cinnamon & allspice
Wild barramundi curry and
Aromatic coconut red duck curry

We were given a complimentary side of beans. The meals were neither too big nor too small – they were just right.

Two of us managed to have enough room to share the “sticky mother of a pudding” with figs, dates, white & dark chocolate. It looked & tasted wonderful. I’d definitely recommend sharing though unless you have just visited Mrs Jones for dessert. Another tried the raw salted caramel ice cream which was also yummy.

The wine list included many local Tasmanian wines by the glass and I enjoyed a couple of glasses of Goaty Hill Riesling whilst one of my daughters had a glass of a local sparkling and a mojito. The Tarkine Tiger sparkling mineral water was a pleasant non-alcoholic choice.

Coffees, hot chocolate, mocha & chai latté all came as ordered & were hot and a great finalé to our meal.

We decided we would all recommend Mrs Jones to our friends as we really enjoyed our experience. We could find no fault so I’ll give it a score of 9 out of 10.

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The Charming Squire in South Brisbane

4 of us went to The Charming Squire across from QPAC in South Brisbane last Wednesday before going to the Lion King. It’s a new place & we’d been looking forward to trying it. We ordered drinks and then a main course. Our Drinks arrived promptly but it took an hour for our meals to arrive . When they did, they were very disappointing. Three of us had the roast pork which tasted nothing like roast pork – more like steamed pork. Our friend’s sausages were cold. It was a very large serve of three fat sausages & we had seen it sitting on the servery waiting for delivery for quite a few minutes. The kitchen seemed to be in a state of chaos & serving staff appeared to be standing around looking for something to do. We don’t recommend the charming squire. We will probably give it another try but if there’s no improvement, we won’t be going back. We’d give it 5/10.

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Lion King Brisbane

On Wednesday night we went to the Lyric Theatre at QPAC to see The Lion King with one of my daughters & my friend. We all agreed that the animal puppets are absolutely incredible. They are brilliant. I especially loved the giraffes which seemed to move just as a real giraffe moves & the elephants. You have to really admire the clever people who designed these puppets.

The African singing & the dancing was also brilliant but where some of the narrative depended on the words of the songs, it was disappointing as all of us had difficulty hearing the words. The orchestra appeared to overpower the voices. We have noticed this problem at the Lyric before so are wondering if the problem is actually the acoustics of the building. I found the singing of both the young & the older Simba particularly difficult to understand.

I really enjoyed the way the sets involved using the dancers to create the scene. The grass was depicted by dancers moving gracefully across the stage whilst carrying what appeared to be boards with tall grass stems coming out of them on their heads. It was great.

The Lion King wasn’t my favourite musical of all time but I did really enjoy it & would recommend it if only to experience those wonderful animals coming down the aisles beside you! I’d rate it 7 out of 10.

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Walking tour of the Albayzin

When in Granada in May this year, we went on a walking tour of the Albayzin, the old Arab district.

We’d booked the tour through Viatour & were lucky to have the guide to ourselves. We met him at 6pm for the tour which included a drink & a tapas at 4 different bars as we toured the Albayzin.

It’s a very steep area so you need to be fairly active to do the tour but it was well & truly worthwhile.

The highlight of the tour and the moment that made it so worthwhile was turning a corner to see, in all its glory, the Alhambra illuminated. It was definitely a WOW moment. We enjoyed the tapas & the drinks but the Alhambra was the standout.

We rated this 8.1/10

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