Day Two - Carlos Bakery Visit!

After a good night sleep, I got up and had a shower, to say it was powerful is an understatement !! It felt like a power washer! Very invigorating!!

We headed off to take a train on the underground Path line. We were heading for Hoboken. It wasn't a difficult journey and we arrived early - the benefit of swapping time zones!! We took a walk up to the bakery and ordered an assortment of Canoli's  for breakfast!

The program is called Cake Boss and is on Cable TV. Its a great show so it was on our list of things to see. The last time Carl went it was packed and he had to queue to get in, this time we were there so early that we were able to walk in without any problems!!

The shop was opposite the City Hall, it all felt a bit Disney like!!

We walked down to a park by the water to eat our breakfast, we walked past this amazing alleyway!!

I couldn't believe the wiring!!

The sun was up over the water and the buildings were rising from the mist! We were able to get some lovely photos of the skyline. 

On the way back we used our return ticket to visit Ground Zero. We bought tickets for the museum and returned around an hour later to go in. It was a very moving display a horrible horrible day for all of the people involved. We were able to hear the stories of people who had been affected in all sorts of ways. While walking around the monument we spotted a chap with our surname, he had been a fire fighter, with all the thousands of people mentioned we were very surprised when we came across him again and again through the museum. 

I was particularly interested in the roles that the Police Officers and Fire fighters played that day, so it was good to see that our name sake was one of the fire fighters. The whole museum and the reflection pools were stunning, the whole place is well worth a visit.

We rounded off the day with a trip on the Staten Island Ferry, it was stuffed with tourists all trying to get their free view of the Statue of Liberty! 

We ended the day with a beautiful sunset!

It was a wonderful busy day and by the end we were exhausted!! We had walked miles and miles !!

A Packed Christmas Week.

Well here we are in 2015, Its amazing that we have a huge build up for what is in essence one day!! We had a different Christmas this year. We started off with a visit from The Reeves, followed by a candle lit carol service and mass at church. 

Christmas day was  a rag tag bunch, all of us, Tina and a last minute visit by Stuart, who had been cruelly abandoned by his family!!!

We had a lovely day, good food and great company! Even more exciting was that on Boxing day we were heading off to New York!!!!

We left at 5.15am heading for Heathrow and for Purple Parking in Bath Road. Luckily the roads were clear although it was really frosty and it took a while to defrost the car. 

We arrived with a reasonable amount of time to spare and had chance to look around the shops. We were on a Virgin Atlantic flight, its been a while since I have travelled on anything but a bargain basement airline. It was good not to have to pay for drinks and food. We had two seats behind each other so it was quite spacious with loads of leg room. The flight was quite bumpy but once we had arrived at JFK we got a cab directly to our hotel.

The hotel was quite an experience, there was a huge queue at reception which took about an hour to get through. Once we were being seen we then had trouble getting the room sorted out, they were totally disorganised and wildly understaffed, but we stuck with it and were eventually allocated a room on the 8th floor. It was a strange hotel, poor reviews but good prices so we knew it was a gamble, it had 1700 rooms!! Once we got to the room it was clean enough but very dated and not in a retro good way!! We dropped our luggage and headed out for something to eat. We went to The Heartland Brewery which was close to the hotel. Afterwards we had a walk around, there were huge queues for everything. We called into Macy's who were having a one day sale, it was terrible you simply couldn't move, very unpleasant shopping experience!!

We decided to visit the Empire State building that evening both Carl and I had been up during the day before so we were keen to see how it was at night. Again we were faced with huge queues but we eventually got through and after Beth had her new selfie stick impounded we headed for the top!!

 It was freezing cold at the top and quite crowded, we had a good look around and the views were really out of this world. Its odd how it doesn't feel that high up, it was however very blustery!!

We finally got to bed after a really long day, planning for the following mornings activities!!

I wish you all a very happy New Year .

Its nearly here!!!

This month seems to be flying by. I have finally finished the shopping and everything is wrapped and ready to go. Tom and I took a trip into St Albans and had a look around the Christmas Market in the grounds of the Cathedral. It was very pretty, lots of little stalls and lots of nice little shops to look around. It made for a very pleasant Sunday morning trip.

The market in the town centre was a general farmers market with the added bonus of a stall selling mulled Cider. It was very nice and warming!! 

Tomorrow will be the last one at work until next year, I must say I am looking forward to having a break. I suspect that it won't be too relaxed! The plan for tomorrow is to have our 'old' friends around for nibbles and alcohol. I like to go to Mass on Christmas eve, so rather than waiting for Midnight we are aiming to get to the 8.30 carol concert followed by mass, we should be home for 10pm!! I don't want to miss Father Christmas!!

I have had a great night out recently, I went to see the lovely Paul Hollywood, He of the Great British Bake off!!! My friend Karen, (in charge of all ticketed events!!) managed to get us tickets, we were expecting a 'restricted' view but it was in fact a perfect view!! Paul was quite an entertainer, kept a whole bunch of mainly women enthralled for the evening!! I think we were all so taken with his performance that it wasn't until afterwards that we realised that he only actually cooked one thing!! The rest of the show was Blue Peter Style...... here's one I made earlier!!!! That said it was a great evening and I actually managed to try a bit of his roulade Oooo errr Missus!!!!

The month of December is filled with nights out. I have had a fair few of them with friends. Our girls night was at The Crooked Chimney again. The pub is quite nice but the food is hit and miss. I went on line before we arrived and found a couple of vouchers, one offering free mulled cider and one offering £10 off the bill!! Our favourite waitress was there and looked after us well. A few years ago when we booked our annual Christmas dinner they were at pains to tell us that they would not be providing any table decorations or crackers, so that started our annual tradition of decorating our own table!! This year was not different, although we were provided with crackers!!

This month I decided to upgrade my phone, a foolish thing to do. It was the lure of a new iphone as the current one was doing what all iphones seem to do,that is reach the grand age of two and start to slowly die. The battery stopped holding the charge and I found that I was having to charge it overnight and during the day just to keep it going!! So stupidly I decided to swap service providers from O2 to Vodafone. I have been with O2 for years but they couldn't match the voda deal. I had really hoped that the transfer of my old number would go easily but  that was wishful thinking!!!

After speaking to half the people in India the swap finally happened today a full 10 days after they promised to transfer the number. Of course expecting that to go to plan was optimistic in the extreme!! Tonight by way of a change I ended up speaking to a chap in South Africa who finally sorted out the voice mail issue. The whole experience is not one I want to repeat in a hurry!!

I wish you all a happy and safe Christmas. May New Year bring you all health and happiness.

The Decs are UP!!!!

Well it seems an absolute age since we were in Hamburg, where does the time go at this time of the year?? Last time I was stood in this spot the pavement was terrible covered in snow and ice. This time we managed to get away with it weather wise.

The markets were wonderful with lots of great stalls. Sadly a lot of the stuff we couldn't get in our suitcases, like the bunches of mistletoe on the above stall!.

We were lucky enough to have quite a spacious room, after a couple of drinks it seemed to grow big enough for us to stage our own 'strictly come dancing' contest. There wasn't really any competition, Sandra and Sue won hands down with their very expert version of the Argentine Tango!!!! 

Just look at the expert footwork and the wonderful line of their arms, I would have given them a 10!!!

All of the city was beautifully decorated with Christmas decorations and trees everywhere. On the last day we found the very best place to buy mulled wine, a small stall on the market which looked as if it was a permanent fixture year round. The lady sold polystyrene cup of piping hot mulled wine. We were a little peckish so we had some chips with mayonnaise and sat out in the freezing cold waiting for Santa to arrive!!

Last Sunday was the first anniversary of Mums passing, Tom and I went to Mass with Dad at 8am, where they remembered both Mum and my sister Val. We then went a laid some flowers on her grave. It was a strange day, a time to remember the good times and try to forget the sad times at the end. 

During the week we had a pre Christmas meet up, Madeline, Sandra and Sue, we tend to have our Christmas dinner at a local pub, where we know the waitress very well, so before we headed off I checked out the Internet and found a selection of vouchers which she applied to our order, so we ended up with a nice three course meal, a bottle of wine and four mulled ciders, only we managed not to pay for the cider and we had £10 knocked off the bill!! Result !!

Hamburg at Christmas.

After what seems like a few hectic weeks we finally arrived at Thursday and out weekend break to Hamburg. This time we were prepared having been there before. We had a plan of action!!

Tom dropped us off at the airport around 11.30 am, we had asked for special assistance because walking the huge airport distances is difficult for one of the party. As usual Luton can up to scratch and just inside the main doors we registered with the special assistance counter and our bags were whisked away . We went through security, two of us set off the alarms with our metal hips (we are so edgy, no drugs or guns for us just good old NHS replacement hip joints!!!)

Once on the other side we could relax and start our holiday!

Well, it would have been rude not to have had a quick Christmassy drink or two!!

We returned to the pre-arranged place and were loaded onto our special assistance 'truck' or as Gracie likes to call it 'The Pussy Wagon' in honour of the great show 'Come Fly with Me' 

The flight was a quick 75 minutes with just enough time for a drink and a pop to the loo, before we arrived in Hamburg. We were met at the other end by a very fit 'Red Cross; man with a wheelchair who loaded Madeline in and then set off at a heck of a pace while the three of us run along behind!! We retrieved our luggage and went outside to find a taxi. Sandra this time won the prize for the lightest suitcase, weighing in at a very skinny 9 kgms. She wanted to leave room for all her shopping!!

We arrived at our hotel and checked in. Sandra and Sue had exactly the same room as before, we had one around the corner!

We decided to drop our bags and head straight to the supermarket and stock up on essentials for the next few days (mainly wine and amaretto!!)

We went out for dinner at a nearby restaurant and had a warming mulled wine to protect us from the cold ! We planned the following day, we decided to head for the markets around 10am after breakfast and make a day of it. We also decided to take things as easy as possible so that we didn't over do things. We planned to build in lots of Mulled wine breaks!!!

Hamburg main square.

One of the many beautiful stalls

At one point we were so cold that we had to give in and go inside for a mulled wine, it was bitter. Most of the weekend the temperature was 0 on in the minus, if you added the wind in it was freezing. 

We had a fabulous time, I will share a few more photos and stories tomorrow.

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!!

This year is really flying by, its nearly December already! I haven't written my cards yet so I was very surprised to receive a card from the Royal household, I have gone up in the world, I hope she is not expecting one in return!!!

This week has seen Beth reach a milestone birthday, it seems minutes since she was born after a long night in labour.

She weighed in at 7 lbs 13 ozs at 5.50am on a cold Sunday morning in November.

As she was our third child we were more experienced, she was quite laid back and easy. She slept well and fed well. She had a big brother and sister who both ran around after her from the word go! Carl used to love to give her a bottle which was a great help .

Now she is a young adult.

This year she was lucky to have two birthday cakes, both made by friends! She likes Stitch so Nicky made her a Stitch cake.

Barb made her a beautiful purple 18 cake.

On the evening of her birthday we went out for a Chinese meal with some friends and family.

Beth was excited to come of age, she got some beautiful presents and lots of money! Thank you to everyone who was so generous, letters are being crafted this weekend, but I know a lot of you this blog!! We managed to keep her surprise present a surprise right up until she opened it. I had wrapped a bag of little gifts, some of them were a clue to the surprise present, the penny didn't drop at all!! so she was shocked when she opened tickets to a long weekend away in Amsterdam (she knows it as well as I do!!) with her friend Hannah. (Thanks Wendy xxx)

Happy Days!!!

I have packed and I am ready to jet off on my winter trip to the Christmas markets. We fly from Luton (International Airport!!!) at lunchtime tomorrow. I think we will get there early enough to have a festive cider in the bar before flying to Hamburg. I can't wait!!

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas.......

Take care

xxx