Theres no place like London!

Hello everyone - at least the sun is shining and here we are in June!

As threatened promised last week, I'm back with some photos of my wonderful day out in London last week with my DH.  Some of the photos I wanted to share were taken in the incredibly expensive but oh so lovely Fortnum and Mason, but my phone (which I was using to take sneaky pics) has packed up :( got very wet on a sponsored walk with my students.  We did however raise over £150 for our chosen charity so that was very good.  And my students don't usually walk much further than the nearest corner shop to get ciggies and energy drinks so 15 mile walk, in torrential rain with no moaning was an incredible achievement.  We were very proud of them all.

You might want to grab a cuppa and even a cheeky biscuit as quite a lot of photos will follow....

Anyways, back to London!  Back in January I booked tickets for us to visit The View from the Shard as part of our Silver Wedding Anniversary celebrations.  I thought "if the Queen can have a year of celebrations so can we!!".  So last Saturday saw us staring up at this astonishing building

Currently the tallest building in western Europe

 

It takes seconds to get up to the 72nd floor

 

 



And once up there, wow what a view....

So here we go, some of the most famous sights in London, seen from a birds eye view....

Canary Wharf

The Tower of London

The BT Tower

Wembley Stadium, the Champions League final was happening the day we were there.  Both teams were from Germany, and the fans were so well behaved.  Great atmosphere!

St Pauls Cathedral

Southwark Cathedral.  The line of green marks Borough Market, which we visited when we got our feet back on the ground.  Yummy food - we had falafel sandwiches, always a great favourite of ours!

River Thames, rolling away towards Westminster

River Thames, rolling away towards the East End

The Olympic Stadium and the Orbit

Greenwich

Sun sparkling on the 30 St Mary Axe, more popularly known as the Gherkin

The Monument, marking the site where the Great Fire of London started in 1666.  We visited the Monument last August, when the Shard had just been finished.

The London Eye, with Buckingham Palace in the Background

Tower Bridge - I had to wait a while to get a red London Bus passing over the bridge, but I was happy with the result!

With our feet firmly back on the ground, we took a river cruise back to Westminster and then walked around to take in a few more of the sights

 

  The Houses of Parliament

 Horse Guards Parade, getting all ready for the Trooping of the Colour

London Eye

Buckingham Palace - and look, the flag is flying so Her Majesty was at home!

Guard at Buckingham Palace.

Then, after a slap up meal the sun started to set and we decided to go on a leisurely stroll along the Thames



An absolutely wonderful day out with my DH.  I love visiting London, I love the sights, the sounds, the smells, the sound of all the different languages from visitors from all over the world...I don't know if I could cope with the pace of actually living there...but I would love to be able to go down to visit every month - if only I could afford it!!

I think you deserve another cuppa (and possibly even another cheeky biscuit!) for sticking with me to the end of this quite lengthy post.  But I hope you enjoyed joining me looking back at my visit to "the Smoke".

Enjoy your weekend, hope the sun is shining wherever you are!

Helenxx

PS I don't know if any of you are Sweeney Todd fans, if so you will know which song the title of my post comes from :)

 

 

When the Moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie....

That's Amore!

Good afternoon everyone - hope you are all well and having a great weekend.

Last night I was absolutely Moonstruck - in London with my DH.  It was all part of our Silver Wedding Anniversary celebrations.  The actual day was in February, we were in Granada in Spain, all organised by the lovely DH.

My gift to him was a day in London yesterday - all organised back in January. 

I will share more photos soon, as I saw a view of London usually reserved for folks on route in or out of Heathrow on a plane....

But last night, standing on the Millenium Bridge over the Thames I was indeed Moonstruck

What a view!

Back soon hopefully with more photos of a wonderful day out with a wonderful man.

Helenxx

This made me smile....

....well actually it made me collapse in fits of hysterics!!!!!

For those cat lovers out there, enjoy!

Helenxx

Into the Valley....

...betrothed and divine...oh for the heady days of 1977!!  I'm sure those of you of a "certain age" will remember a band called The Skids who came up with those lines.

But the Valley I went into on my holidays was the Jordan Valley.  I had never been there before and was amazed to see how wonderfully green it all was

After driving on for a little while we came upon the ruins of the Roman city of Pella.  It was one of the 10 Cities of the Decapolis.  Such a stunning location, tucked into the hillside...

Just had to take a photo of this sign, it made me smile.... reminds me of my days as a graphic design student when, after hours of painting 8pt lettering by hand a spelling mistake was spotted....

I loved these gates, they marked the entrance to an ancient mosque and graveyard

And just as we were about to bid farewell and head off back to base we were treated to this wonderful sunset

I so loved my time in Jordan, and just can't wait to visit again.  One of my relatives flew out there this week, wish I could have hitched a ride!!

Have a great weekend. Helenxx

A country of many contrasts

Hi everyone, Friday at last!

My last two posts have probably done quite a lot to promote Jordan as a desert kingdom - and indeed, it is.  Over 3/4 of the country is desert or desert-type steppe.  BUT it is a country of many contrasts, many colours, many terrains.  All of them beautiful.

The day after the Khamsin the morning dawned bright and clear.  Beautiful skies, a light breeze and bright sunshine.  Everything felt refreshed.  So we headed north up to Ajloun, where this amazing sight greeted us:

This is Ajloun Castle, another fortress built during the Crusades, but this time by a relative of Saladin.  I have visited this castle twice before, it is very impressive.  On this particular day we sat outside and had a picnic, but didn't go inside as the place was awash with school kids on trips - you may be able to spot on of their buses in the photo.  And as a teacher I didn't really relish the idea of 1,000 young girls on a school jolly sharing my relaxing holiday time!  All the young visitors were school girls.  The air rang out with the teachers shouting "Banat!!  Yalla!!"  ("Girls!  Lets Go!").  It was rather nice not to be the teacher on duty that day!  And anyway, we had set our heart on visiting the Ajloun Nature reserve.  The countryside around Ajloun is green and lush during the spring.  The north of Jordan gets the most rain and even snow in the winter.

This cheeky fellow greeted us as we drew up in the car park

I had never been to the nature reserve before, it was beautiful

This is one of the trails we followed

And this tree fascinated me, I don't know the species though

And just to round things off I found these flowers - stunning:

After we got back to the car we read a sign that said there are actually wolves and hyenas wild in the reserve - fortunately we didn't come across any!!

Back soon with photos of our visit to the Jordan Valley and a Roman City.

Helenxx