What I did on my Summer Vacation Blogfest

Michael over at In Time... is hosting the What I did on my Summer Vacation Blogfest! Remember that essay you always had to write when you returned to school after the summer holidays? Well, this is it! (Except now it's not homework, it's something we want to do because we like writing!).

My Essay

This year I get a double summer holiday! That’s because while it was winter here I went off to England where it was summer, and now that I’ve been back a little while, we’re entering South African summer (which, just so you know, is far more of a summer than the English summer!).

I don’t handle sleep deprivation very well, so by the time I reached my friend’s home in London I was an exhausted, dizzy, smelly wreck. Fortunately, seeing sister + seeing friend + having a shower = a near cure for exhaustion.

We spent three days dashing around London seeing things like Big Ben, the London Eye, the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, The Tate Modern and Oxford Street (shopping! The window kind, mainly, considering that the Rand to the Pound was over eleven to one!).

After that I stayed a few nights in Oakley (Hampshire) with my grandparents, who unfortunately only have one spare room – inconveniently occupied by my parents at the time. So my sister and I shared a blow-up mattress in a study so small that the mattress filled the entire room... Imagine climbing off your bed and already being out of the door!

After the cramped mattress experience we spent some wonderfully restful time in Haytor (Devon) at my aunt’s large and comfortable country home. Here I visited a craftsmen’s guild, the Eden Project (amazing. You should go.), the Riverford Field Kitchen and even the beach!

And even though it was a wonderful holiday, by the time the plane coasted onto the runway in Durban I was thinking, It’s good to be home (and then we got to passport control and there was only ONE desk open for all of us South Africans to go through, and all I could think was, Typical...).

~ ~ ~

Sun 25 Sept: A photo on someone else's blog reminded me of something that happened just as we arrived at the Eden Project...

Back from Holiday :-)

For those of you in the northern hemisphere your summer holiday is probably just beginning. I, however, returned to a wintry southern hemisphere last night and have to get back to school tomorrow :-(

For the last three weeks (yup, THREE WHOLE WEEKS for those of you who are scratching your heads and thinking, she was away? I didn't even miss her...) I was in the UK! Some of it was FANTASTIC and some of it was, um, not so fantastic... (like floating around Dubai airport in an exhausted, dizzy, only semi-conscious state for EIGHT hours waiting for my connecting flight...).

My sister and I spent a whirlwind four days in London, then some time taking care of grandparents in Hampshire, and then a few days living it up in what we affectionately called Chateau Haytor (aka my aunt's country house) in Devon.

Some of the things I loved:

The major landmarks of London.

The lovely old houses.

The gorgeous flowers blooming just about everywhere!

(That's me, top right, frolicking in the corn flowers ;-))

Hampton Court Palace

(I don't have a wide angle lens so I had to do the photo stitch thing,

hence the reason the palace looks slightly, uh, wonky!)

Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon

(click to enlarge)

Since I've been out of the blogosphere-loop for about a month now, please feel free to tell me what you've been up to recently!