Today i had to check out, but left my luggage there so i didn’t have to carry it around all day. It got to about 28 degrees today so it was quite nice to just wander about at my own leisure.  I even saw one of the ferries come into port as well.
After picking up my luggage i went and wandered around some more and then headed to the bus station. About an hour ago the weather turned sour :-/  its cold and raining now. Only half an hour till my bus gets here to take me to St Austell. 

Tomorrow im off to the Eden Project
Tonights accommodation is only a short walk from the bus/train station in St Austell, however when i got here it took a good couple of minutes to find someone so i could check in. Room is very average but im only here for one night.
I went for a bit of a walk into the town but there is nothing really there. I’ve no idea how people actually live in this place. I guess most people only come here for the Eden Project.  It was cold and getting dark by the time i got here so i didnt walk the half hour down to the water front.

This morning im off to the Eden Project. After breakfast i set off down to the bus station and caught the bus out there. Its only about 15 20 mins by bus, but the weather wasnt looking so flash. They say its the tail end of Hurricane Irene hitting the south coast of England. 
Anyways when i got to the Eden Project i took the little train down to the Biomes.  There’s a rather large cafe when you first walk in and when you go upstairs to enter the separate Biomes you can see thru bulk preparing the food for the cafe. 
so i started with the rainforest Biomes.  Omg it was so hot in there. I was glad i had a bottle of water with me that’s for sure.  So i wandered about looking at the different plants from different countries.  There is a lookout which is right at the top of the dome, very high up but they said if you suffer from menieres disease or vertigo then you shouldn’t go up there. As my ears weren’t doing so good from the bus ride yesterday i didnt bother going up. Its not the height that’s the problem, i was more worried that my ears would play up to the point i couldn’t get up the following day.   It just wasnt worth the risk.  
After this i headed out and into the Mediterranean dome which was a lot cooler! I think all up i spent about 4 hours at the Eden project. Walking through the gardens, so many weird looking flowers.  Thankfully the rain held off while i was walking around outside.
Then it was back to St Austell. I walked around looking at the different shops and found a cafe for lunch and more importantly, coffee.
Then it was off to the station to wait for my bus down to Penzance.

Urgh weather has turned completely horrendous. Very very windy and raining.
Got to my hotel at about 9.30 and was pretty knackered so i watched a movie and called it a night.

Weather is still awful today. In fact its worse. Really not feeling it to be honest but im off to St Ives today. I would like to think the weather will be a little bit better but thats just wishful thinking.

Weather was slightly better in St Ives. Still wet and cold but not quite so windy.
St Ives is a cute wee place with its cobblestone roads in the town.  Managed to get a couple of photos of the beach and coastal line but not very good photos thanks to the weather. 
Then it was back to Penzance for Cornish Pasty and coffee for a late lunch/early dinner. Im completely soaked so its now back to the hotel.

Today the weather is looking a bit better. Skies are still grey and its still quite windy but the rain has held off. So today I spent the day walking along the water front and through the town.  I would have gone out to St Michaels Mount but the fog and mist hanging about just made it impossible. I did see it from a foggy/misty distance though haha.
Im exhausted now. In 5 days Ive averaged about 5-6 hours walking a day. No wonder my feet ache

Now Im on the train back into London. Ive been on this train 5 hours so far. Only another 30-40minutes to go and i think its probably straight to bed when i get home haha. Im so glad i have tomorrow off work!

photos will be uploaded tomorrow or something
bye x

First class ticket on the Virgin train and three hours later I was at my destination.  However before we get on to that, after a conversation with someone about what the people of Liverpool look like (or we think they should look) I saw a guy getting on the same train, but not just any old guy, a bohemian/poet looking guy, you know the sort, white shoes, black jeans, white long-sleeved top with a black waistcoat, black beret, black sun glasses sporting a stubbly beard.
Think Funny Face when Audrey Hepburn goes into the club looking for the philosopher!
Anyways, I’m sure someone will appreciate that paragraph of waffle.

So a fairly uneventful train ride up to Liverpool but once I got to my hotel I must admit I was quite impressed with it.  Very modern.  You needed to swipe your key card to do anything – get power in the room, activate the lift, open both your room door and the hotel front door.  And OMG I had the most amazing shower! Haha random I know, but in the 3 years I’ve been here, I’ve stayed in a number of different hotels etc and not once have I had a decent shower in them.  Even when we stayed in Salzburg at the Crowne Plaza our shower was pretty average.  The bathroom is always the make or break of a good hotel.

Anywho, after settling into the hotel I decide to head off for a walk, find out how to get to Albert Dock for my Beatles day and find some food.  Turns out Albert Dock is about a 7 min walk from the hotel so nice and close.  I walked through the streets of shops, its like one street after another of all the clothing franchises, plus all the designer stuff as well.

As I arrived on the Sunday everything closed up early, but I still had a good wander round to get my bearings, then I headed back to the hotel after some dinner.

Monday: I set out about 9.30 and wandered down to Albert Dock.  I had booked the Beatles Story online for fear of huge queues, but I got there and there was only one person in line, so I got in, got my audio guide and started taking lots of photos.  I must have spent about 2 and a half hours in here looking at everything, listening to all the stories.  At the end of it there was a section of what each Beatle did after the Beatles.  I learnt that George Harrison was actually in Monty Pythons The Life of Brian.  So awesome!  I never knew that
All this walking around and learning stuff has made me thirsty so I’m sitting on a nice comfy sofa in Starbucks at the end of the Beatles Story listening to the Beatles play on the radio.  Next stop…..the gift shop :-/  Then its off on a Beatles tour.

Two hours ago I started the Magical Mystery Tour.  It was really awesome, the tour guide was really funny too.  We saw lots of different places like the birth places of Ringo and George, the school Ringo went to, Paul’s last house in Liverpool and then the tour ended at the famous Cavern Club.
So here I am sitting in a dark club (the cavern club for those not keeping up) with a JD and coke listening to a guy play live.  This guy is amazing too, playing all sorts – the Kinks, The Beatles, Elvis and the Rolling Stones.
Who would have thought that 15 years after spending my nights shut in the lounge doing my homework whilst listening to dads Beatles vinyls, I would now be sitting in the Cavern club.  Weird but extremely awesome!

So this morning I tried to sleep in seeing as check out isn’t until 11 but as usual I woke early.  So I pottered about and left at about 10ish.  I left my bag at the hotel as my train isn’t until 7.50pm and then I headed back down to Albert Dock and from there wandered down to Pier head to do the second part of the Beatles Story.  Thankfully this comes as part of the main attraction as it wasnt much.  I did get to see a short 4D film….man that was crazy!  You got special glasses to put on and then you take a seat (big leather comfy seats) and then the movie starts.  The characters are plasticine like and it tells a story of a guy who has to make his way to see a girl and play in a concert and of course he goes on the magical mystery bus, when the bus slams it brakes on the chairs tip back, when we went through strawberry fields the room filled up with the smell of strawberries, water splashed at you and bubbled filled the room all at the appropriate times.  It was kinda cool.

After this I still had about 6 hours to kill before I got my train so I walked around Liverpool for 6 hours.  No seriously I did.  I walked everywhere and went to the Liverpool Cathedral…wow that thing is HUGE!  I didn’t go inside, but I walked around the gardens/cemetery and took lots of photos.
After walking for 6 hours I went in search of food and found myself a lovely wee 1950s American Diner, shame the food wasnt that great, but still the atmosphere was pretty cool.  After that I collected my bag and headed off to the train station.

I think I eventually got back home about 11.30 but I was knackered by that point.

As you can tell I wrote most of this while actually in Liverpool  The fact I’m only just updating it and post it now is irrelevant haha.

Tomorrow I’m off to Cornwall
See you in a week

However, I have been looking at this page for quite some time and the words just do not want to flow….maybe this is a sign that I just shouldnt bother?  However the thought of being asked if I’ve updated my blog and having to admit that once again I have failed in doing so, isn’t really that appealing.  So here I am, waffling like usual.

Maybe I could become a professional waffler?  Not one who makes waffles mmmmm waffles, but a waffler who waffles like I do.

So…..where to begin?
Its been almost a year since I updated my blog and as much as I would love to say I have done so many exciting things, I havent really.  I’ve done a few but not many.

I guess like most things I should start at the beginning.
October – I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything exciting in October.  If I did it can’t have been that exciting because I sure don’t remember!

November – Oh I went to Edinburgh in November, froze my bum off the entire time.  But this wasnt just a trip to Edinburgh, no, this was a trip to the Rugby, and not just any old rugby game but an All Blacks game!
Picture this:  Amanda and I sitting in Murryfield Stadium, its freezing cold, surrounded by as many Scottish people you can possibly imagine.  Dressed in our black and white, our All Blacks scarves and our New Zealand flag and we sat there and watch the Scots get absolutely slaughtered.  I think that’s probably about as exciting as it got in November.

December – Snow.  OMG did it snow.  I was meant to go to Spain at the start of December but it snowed and closed Gatwick airport and Spain had an airstrike so even if it hadn’t snowed, I still wouldn’t have gotten there.
However on the  18th of December (a Saturday) we had a whole lot of snow fall in a very short time – in fact I was stupid enough to go out in it and take some photos which are HERE.  Why do I remember the exact date?  Because only 3 days later I was due to board a plane at Heathrow and go home for the first time in 2 and a half years.  Luckily, I was on one of the first Air NZ flights out of London …. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  and 28 hours later…i finally arrived back in Christchurch.

It was nice to be back home, even after the big EQ in September, it was still nice to be there.  Plus it was really hot the entire time I was there  I got to see some of my friends, Dan, Simon, Snail, William etc and I got to spend time with family.

Jess, Hayley and I went to Hanmer for the weekend which was AWESOME!  We stayed at the Braemar Lodge in Hanmer which was really nice, we had our own spa pool on our balcony looking out over the gardens which was really nice.  We did a bit of a tiki tour on the way home, stopped off to see Hayley grandparents and saw the largest hare I think I’ve ever seen.  OMG it was massive.
Had a lot of aftershocks while I was there, nothing major though.  I think the biggest one was the boxing day one which was a 4.4 but very shallow and Mom, Aunty Desy and I were in Glassons in South City.  That was not fun at all.
Mom and Dad and I did a wee trip to Lyttleton to see all the damage that was done out there from the Sept EQ and then we went out to Akaroa which is gorgeous but it was really hot.  It was over 30 degrees while we were out there – however it was cold, snowing and miserable in London so I was totally loving it!  We stopped at Barry’s Bay on the way back and bought cheese which the dog ate.  Bad dog!   I’m sure there are lots more that I did but it seems like so long ago that I can’t really remember.  Photos from when I was in Chch are here.  I stayed in Chch till the middle of Jan which was a nice wee break from miserable, cold London.  Oh and mom and dad bought a dog.  Little baby Mack or Mack-a-doodle or Mac n Cheese or…well he has a number of names but he’s so cute and not so little now.

Feb/Mar: nothing of interest there, move along.

April:  April I did an Easter tour to Valkenburg, Cologne, Amsterdam and Bruges.  This was really cool.
As it was a really early start I called and booked a cab the night before so I was all ready to go.  4am my alarm goes off, yeah not cool at all.  Eight minutes before my cab was due to arrive I get a call to say they were still trying to allocate a cab to me.  How the hell does that work?  I booked this cab almost 12 hours prior.  Was not impressed at all.  However 10 minutes later the cab arrived and off I went to the coach pick up spot.  I must admit that it was really badly organised.  There were 3 coaches due to leave from the same spot and all three of them went to at least one place that the rest did and the tour guides didn’t really seem to know what was going on.  Finally they worked it out and we all set off for our next destination.  For me, it was Valkenburg in the Netherlands.  A quaint wee town, Valkenburg, but not a lot to do.  Driving there though you notice that all the houses look the same.  Square box houses with large square windows and a triangle roof.  However, once at the hotel and our rooms are allocated I took off with my camera and did some sightseeing.
Later we all met up for a group dinner which was fun.  I sat with a girl from New York whose name escapes me but she was very obnoxious; two sisters from Toronto and an older lady in her 40′s from Australia.  So a very mixed group with people of all ages

The following day we set off for Cologne.  Lou, that was the obnoxious girls name, and I headed off on a sightseeing bus to see all the sights of Cologne and then realised that what we really want to do is go to the Chocolate factory.   It was very hot in Cologne and we did a lot of walking around.  We spent so long in the chocolate factory.  For only 7euros it was a bargain!  We got to see how they made the chocolate (there are 2 videos in the Nexus S folder on Smug, link at the bottom of the post) and we even got to sample some of it.  They had a wee museum of all things chocolate related.  Then we went to the gift shop….big mistake.  Okay, a big mistake for my wallet, not such a mistake for my parents and sisters and a few friends who got some chocolate too.  After this we thought it was about time to stop for a drink.  So we sat down at a wee pub and had a beer, yes I had beer.  It wasnt too bad either haha.  After wandering around Cologne, doing some shopping we stopped for some Schnitzel, it was good but not as good as the Schnitzel I had in Vienna haha.  Then it was back to the coach to head back to Valkenburg.

Amsterdam.  This is where we headed to next.  However our first stop was Keukenhof gardens which is a complete waste of time.  Dont get me wrong, the gardens are lovely, but you can’t get close enough to the large fields of tulips that the gardens are famous for.  I was highly disappointed.  But there were some gorgeous tulips in the gardens.  After this it was off to Amsterdam.
After a lot of faffing about by the tour guide we eventually headed off and went to the Anne Frank house.  If there was only one thing I got to do in Amsterdam, this was it.  Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos inside the house and there were too many people to try to sneak photos, but it had a very sad atmosphere being in there.  Having read the book as a teenager, to actually be in the house was a weird feeling.   Annoyingly I was with Lou who wanted to move on as quickly as possible and she was starting to get annoyed with me because I was trailing behind looking at everything.  How they managed to live in that place I’ll never be able to understand that.  The rooms were so small and the stairs, they were horrendous to climb.  At the end of the tour of the house there was a room with a video playing; it was Otto Frank, Anne’s father, explaining how he felt having read Anne’s diary after promising her he would never read it.  It was a very emotional video, i think even Lou felt a bit sad after watching it.
We didn’t have a lot of time in Amsterdam and because we had to wait half an hour in line to get into the Anne Frank house, we didn’t get to do much else because we then had to meet up for a tour of the red light district.  This is hilarious.  Honestly if you ever get to Amsterdam, go check it out.  There are women of all shapes and sizes wearing very little.  Some make you want to vomit just looking at them.  Although we did see a couple of classier ladies towards the end of the tour in their pretty corsets.  Such an odd concept.
After this is was back on the coach to head back to Valkenburg.

Today we head back to London, but not without a stop In Bruges (<– watch that video, makes me laugh every time) along the way.  Unfortunately due to an issue with the coach before we even left we had all of an hour in Bruges which was highly disappointing.
It seems like such a pretty town.  Once again I stopped off to buy yet more chocolate – strangely I didn’t get any of it haha.  Before I knew it we were back on the coach headed to London.  It was a good weekend and not a bad price for what we saw.  Id definitely like to go back to Bruges though and maybe Amsterdam.
Photos of this trip are here.

May:  This time I’m headed to sunny Italy!  Michelle, Penny and I are headed to Sorrento for a long weekend.  The weather there was amazing.  We got in late and headed out for dinner when we got there.  Pasta and wine all round.  We had an early start the next morning where we caught a bus that took us around the Amalfi Coast.  This was beautiful.  I’ve never seen scenery quite like it.  Blue waters, cute wee building with red/orange roofs.  We did a short stop in Positano and took some photos, then back on the bus to Amalfi.  We stayed in Amalfi for morning tea and took in the sights and took a lot of photos.  We did a boat tour while we were here.  Best 10 euro I’ve ever spent.  It was beautiful being out on the boat and seeing the Amalfi coast from the sea, although I got terribly sunburnt.  Then we got back on the bus and headed to Ravello and had a lovely lunch of fish and vegetables and wine.  It would have been nice to have had the time and money to do the boat ride out to Capri, but you can’t do everything I guess.
The following day we headed out to Pompeii.  We caught the train from Sorrento to Pompeii and it was excruciatingly hot there.  Pompeii was nothing like I expected it to be.  I expected it to be more like the Roman Forums in Rome where you can see the front of the building despite the fact the rest of the building no longer exists.  In Pompeii, it’s just bits of stone sticking out in the ground and you have to try to work out what on earth it was.  In some places it was a bit easier to see what it was you were looking at.  Again I took so many photos while we were here.
The last day of our trip was spent in Sorrento itself.  Sorrento is a lovely place but there isn’t a whole lot to do there.  Thankfully though we had some amazing weather while we were away.
Photos from this trip can be found here, here and here (Jess did you say that in that voice? haha)

I did finally get around to going to Kew Gardens.  Even though I’ve been here 3 years in Sept I still hadn’t done it.  I can honestly say I have now ticked that box.  The weather was a bit funny while I was there, one minute it was really hot, the next it was cold.  But there are some lovely flowers here and I took a lot of photos as usual.

Anyways not  a hell of a lot happening now.  I’m trying to find work in the States so I can get a Green Card.  I’m learning new things at work, sort of.  I’ve got a weekend booked in Liverpool at the end of August so I can do the Beatles stuff.  I’ve got time booked off at the beginning of September so I’m hoping to get down to Cornwall.  Other than that its just the same old, plodding along.

All photos found at www.sarahlmoore.smugmug.com

Who knows I might even get better at updating this blog haha!
Over and out.
S.

Flathead by the Fratellis

American Pie – Don McLean

Mr Jones – Counting Crows

Like a rolling stone – Bob Dylan

Little Wing – Jimi Hendrix (or the Stevie Ray Vaughan version)

Bathwater – No Doubt

Mowgli’s Road – Marina and the Diamonds

I’ve learned that I have a great imagination, but I’m a terrible writer and I really struggle to get out what is in my head (although in all honesty, it’s probably safer that its kept in my head!)

I’ve learned that small ideas can make for great stories… in fact, sometimes all it takes is one word and im off on some weird tangent about something completely irrelevant but somehow ends up being quite relevant to the topic.

I’ve learned that it is really hard to update a blog every single day.  There is no way I could continue to do so once this has finished.

I have probably learned more than just this, but I’m too tired to think now … so until tomorrow <3

How have I changed since then?  I’ve lost weight that’s for sure!  I’ve lightened my hair and cut it a bit shorter and finally done something with the front of it so it doesn’t just hang there looking rank.  These are the most noticeable changes you will see.

I think I’ve grown more confident in myself and become more independent (not like I had a choice, that kind of just happens when you move to the other side of the world on your own)  Other than that, I’m still the same old me …

2009

2010

So there you have it.  There is no real interesting reason why I decided to do this other than to keep up with the cool crowd on twitter (yeah that was me being a smartass!!)

Having now been in the UK for 2 years, I have learnt who my friends really are.

There are those who only contact you when they want something.  There are those who havent contacted me since I left.  There are those who I hear from sporadically.  So I really learnt who my real friends are.

However I now have some of the best friends I could ask for.  I’m not going to name names, but they know who they are.  There is one who is always there, and I am for him, he has me crying with laughter and I love him to pieces.  He really is a true friend.  Then there’s the girls who make me laugh and send me photos of Ryan Reynolds.

I don’t have many friends, and I like it this way, because the friends that I do have are awesomesauce and I love them all and wouldn’t change them for anything

I’m also craving Jelly.  Strawberry/Raspberry and/or Lime for anyone who wants to bring me jelly

I don’t really know what it is that I crave a lot for … I guess I crave the ability to explore my world.  The possibilities that are thrown at me.  I crave how I will leave my mark on the world, knowing how I have had an impact on someone or something.  I crave travelling.  I love travelling and exploring new places.

I’m sure there are other things I crave, but this seems like such a silly post to me and I can’t think of anything better to write so this is it till tomorrow…