Monday 17 March 2008

Whirlwind Weekends

We did four countries this weekend.  The Netherlands, Belgium, France, England.  Then England, France, Belgium, The Netherlands on the way back.  Andrew and I hired a car and drove over to Kent, England to visit his mum.  It was such a great trip.  We drove down to Calais and got the ferry across. This is the ferry leaving the port, or at least me leaving the port!
I loved the ferry ride to Dover.  It reminded me of when I last took the ferry across the channel about 10 years ago.  I bought my first grown-up perfume on the ferry.  I'd forgotten all about it until I wandered past the duty free shop.  It was Elizabeth Arden's Sunflowers.  I felt so sophisticated buying perfume, and duty free as well!

We spent a lovely Saturday with Liz, Andrew's mum, making marmalade, visiting old bookshops, buying far too many cookbooks (although I'm not sure that one can ever have enough cookbooks), eating red-cooked chicken (a delicious speciality of Liz's), going through boxes and boxes of stuff, looking at old photos and just generally having a really nice time.  

I had a nosey through the photo albums and clicked a few snaps with the digital camera.  Andrew's 'global' childhood is so different from my Australian childhood, but both were filled with family and memory-making times.  This is Andrew's dedication in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.  Don't you just love the pastor's hair, both head and facial?  Perhaps this is where Andrew's mustache-fetish comes from, it rubbed off on him at an impressionable stage of life!
We visited Rochester, a sweet little town referred to by Dickens in his novels.  This was a plaque above a building on the main street.  I wonder if they now take inflation into account?  Four pence wouldn't get you far these days.
Liz lives on the River Medway.  This is the view out her bedroom window, beautiful if a little gray and overcast.  It was so nice to be out of the city and feel the wind on our faces.
We left early Sunday morning and re-traced our steps back home.  Well, we didn't retrace the part where we'd gotten lost in Antwerp, that really didn't need doing a second time.

So we're home now.  And unpacking.  Liz was amazingly generous and we've come home laden with bed sheets, Andrew's Omani door, marmalade, board games, clothes, books and many, many other things including the world's largest oranges.

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