Saturday 14 July 2012

Home and Howay

I'm staying at my mum and stepdad's this summer as my flat in the toon is rented out whilst I'm enjoying myself in various locations around the world. This meant I had to call upon some lovely friends to put me up for my recent visit to Newcastle for another friend's wedding. It's strange being a visitor there after having lived very happily on Tyneside for seven years. Apart from the biblical floods on the Thursday night followed by a monster hangover after accidentally enjoying 2-4-1 bottles of wine whilst sheltering from said biblical floods I had a lovely time. The wedding was beautiful, congratulations to Mr and Mrs Munn.

Wedding ladies

I've also been lucky enough to have a few days in beautiful Madrid with my mum. It was my belated 30th birthday present and it was a great way to escape the rain! The little dude from the hotel who picked us up at the airport confidently told us it wont rain until September in Madrid. Nice!

We had a grand old time, enjoying tapas, flamenco and sangria. Ole and all that. There was some cultural stuff and shopping too. Madrid is a fantastic city, yet another place in the world that I could happily live in. We especially liked the dedication to Ham spotting numerous 'ham museums' around the city streets. They are of course a chain of shops (disappointing) selling an impressive array of you guessed it, ham.

A lovely food market

It's not Buckingham Palace but it is pretty good

Very fierce flamenco ladies

Shiny red shoes!





Rain delay

I'm blaming my serious laziness in the blogging department since I've been back on the excessive rain. I can't believe how miserable the weather has been since I got home. Alas there isn't the option of closing the roof here so that play can resume, so we're just bumbling along in the soggy surroundings regardless. Ho hum, Summer will arrive at some point, right?

Thinking back to the last few days of my trip around SE Asia I was gifted with heat and sunshine in Bangkok, there were showers too to be fair. This is third time I've been to Bangkok so I didn't feel the need to see all the sights as I'd basically been there, seen that and got the t-shirt. I did however feel the need to fill every possible nook and cranny of my luggage with additional shopping.

Of course a visit to the MBK centre was necessary but sadly the night market is no more so I made up for it by having repeated visits to Terminal 21, possibly the coolest shopping mall in the world. Every floor is a different city from around the world and the designers have gone all out, on the London level they've used double decker buses and tube trains to hold small boutique shops and there's a smaller version of the Golden Gate Bridge up on the top level that is a popular photo spot. There's also a cinema there where I went to see Prometheus, primarily to enjoy Idris Elba of course. I was caught out at the start when the entire audience had to stand in honour on the King whilst a film of him shown doing various Kingly things like walking around, getting off a plane and waving. Can't imagine that taking off here at the multiplex.



So after a few days of shopping I was homeward bound again, partly sad the adventures were over but also looking forward to seeing everyone. Mistakenly I thought this year I was following Summer around the world, I just hope New Zealand doesn't let me down.