Australia Day!!!?!?! Saturday 26th January

Josh and I had a lovely Friday night dinner at a place where you pick the steak cut off the chopping board that comes to your table and they cook it for you - it's great. An Argentinean place, we enjoyed a great bottle of wine. On Saturday it was Australia Day so we celebrated! it with them by going around to a colleague of Josh's flat. Everyone was dressed up in their Australian jumpers and other Australian characters, we had a few Kath and Kim's, Chopper's, Tennis and cricket players. It was great fun! We all had a laugh. When we get a photo e-mail through i will put it on the blog. A nice relaxing Sunday was spent at church and catching up with Eva Stringleman - a friend from school!

Weekend Apart: Friday 18th - Sunday 20th January

On our actually anniversary day Josh went to Italy, skiing with a work trip. He had a great time, actually snowboarding. He said it was really beautiful with all the snow on the buildings. Check out the pictures. Lou and I spent a relaxing weekend mostly at home. On Saturday night we went to see the Nutcraker Ballai at Sadlers Well Theatre. The costumes and the stage was amazing! you can see it on the website; http://www.matthewbournesnutcracker.com/ Then on Sunday we went to the movies to see 'P.S. I love You' - very sad, but a good film.

5th Wedding Anniversary

http://www.thedorchester.com/index.html

It is our 5th Wedding Anniversary next weekend on the 18th January, only Josh will be away for the weekend, on a ski trip with work, so he said he would organise something for us for the weekend before. On Saturday morning, I had assumed that Josh had forgotten to organise anything and I went off to the gym. When I got back, we had lunch then when I went into the bedroom to get changed Josh had the suitcase open and a card inside it. I opened up the card and he had organised a night at the Dorchester Hotel! A five star hotel on Park Lane! Check out the website! The place was amazing! When we arrived Josh had booked me into the Spa for a treatment, so off I tottered as he went to check on our room! It was fantastic, the bed was massive and so soft! I actually jumped on it!! Good spring - i might add! The bath was so deep and long that I was too short to lay in it! The for dinner Josh had booked us in at 'The Grill', see the photo above, we sat on one of the grand red chairs that you can see in the photo! They had asked about food allergies and they catered a totally wheat and dairy free meal for me - including bread! We had scallop and frog for appertif then I had sea bass for a mains - it was beautiful and josh had pigeon. The pigeon leg was stuffed into the neck, wrapped and deep fried and stuffed with the pigeon heart and foie gras! It was the most amazing thing ever! The food was totally divine! We finished the meal with these fruit jelly and chocolate sweets they bring around, coffee and whiskey! After dinner and before dinner we made our way around the different bars in the hotel and had a variety of different champagne cocktails and wines! We also went down the road to The Berkley and had a gin and tonic in their Blue Bar! Very fancy! We watched TV and finally went to sleeep about 3am! We woke with Tea served in china teacups in bed, were given the weather forecast as we read the papper in bed, before descending downstairs to 'The Promenade' for breakfast of bacon, eggs, fresh juice and gluten free toast!

Such an excellent surprise! We had a great time!

The Cotswolds - Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th January

Photos from the Cathedral In the gardens The cloisters - they shot the beginning scenes of Harry Potter here St Nicholas church - Norman dated with a leaning spire. Folk museum that houses an 18th century pin factory - it was closed so we couldn't go in!

St Oswald's Priory remains founded in 909. The ruin has been in it's present state since the 1643 bombardment. St Mary's Gateway - the western entrance into the St Peter's Abbey precinct. The houses on either side are on the line of the precinct wall.

View from Hatton Court

Hatton Court - where we stayed

This weekend Josh and I headed out for a relaxing holiday in the Cotswolds, only things did not quite work out as planned. We picked the car up from City Airport at 10am and after driving around London for an hour and realizing we were lost we went back to the airport and hired a GPS system. Eventually by about 11.30 we were on the road. We drove for about 3 hours down to a lovely motel – Hatton Court Motel – check it out on the website! We were both exhausted and had a lovely traditional English dinner in an elegant dining room with excellent service and finished the night off with a nice warm bath. The following day we got up to a cooked breakfast, in the kitchen dining room again totally impeccable! We headed down to Gloucester to have a look around the town. When we got out the car we realized that the central locking of the rental car did not work, so we spent the next 2 hours waiting whilst the AA fixed the car. Finally by mid-day we did some sightseeing. We took a guided tour around Gloucester Cathedral. It was beautiful. We had a personalized guided tour around the crypt, cloisters, nave, ambulatory, Lady Chapel and saw King Edward II’s tomb. The cathedral was built in 1089. It was originally a Benedictine monastery but by 1540 King Edward VIII abolished the monasteries. But because the King Edward was buried here it was turned into a cathedral. Looking around was excellent. We then did a walk around all the old historic buildings in Gloucester, it was really beautiful. By 3pm we left the town drove back. By the time we arrived back home we were totally exhausted! But Gloucester was beautiful!

New Years Eve 2007

Photo's of us at dinner, they aren't very good because I took them on my cell phone!

Number 1 New Years!!! Attempting to enjoy the fireworks! Happy New Years - Louise is attempting to stop her hair from going curly! To no avail, we both came home looking like drowned rats!

It was an interesting NY to say the least. We all started to day off at work!! Only for a half day! Dave was sick, so we went round to their place and ate dinner at a local italian restaurant. Had a few drinks then went to the Thames to watch what was supposed to be the best fireworks display! We crowded around the river along with 750 thousand others, we braved the rain, only to discover that we could see nothing! Absolutly nothing! The rain made so much fog that we couldn't see any fireworks! Number one New Years Ever!