In a big nutshell...

It feels like ages since I last posted. I'm having blog withdrawls! Sad I know. Anyhow we're still on the move but I thought I should do a quick update... On a side note the European keyboards are driving me crazy so bear with the erratic punctuation.

We're currently in Tromsø, Norway. I've been lead to believe that this is within the Artic. We're most excited! It's only -6 degrees celcius so it's not too crazy yet. Much warmer than we were expecting so we're happy. We're up here to check out the Northen Lights (coinciding with the festival that's about to start up here).

In short since I last posted...

We made it back to London a few times and visited the Museum of Natural History which was not only an impressive museum collection wise but the building was also pretty spectacular. While we were there Gene & Nick found what they believe to be the only decent cup of coffee in England in a little Italian cafe near the museum. The barista was pretty cute too :)

Other exciting things we did in London included taking Gene's cousin Will and his wife Harika to see their first show in the theatre, The Phantom of the Opera. Nick & I were particularly excited as it was our first theatre show that we'd seen as kids too. Gene got us amazing seats in the Royal Circle and it was every bit as cheesy and wonderful as we remembered although they did change some of the lyrics. Some of the acting choices were interesting too but we still enjoyed it.

After Phantom we headed to the pub where I caught up with Dave briefly before we headed back to Guildford.

Some time after all this we headed back over to France. I had finally let my post-show cold get the better of me and spent three of the four days in France in bed. We went to St Brevin des Pins, to stay with Gene's French family, which is a gorgeous little town on the south west coast of France. It has many bakeries and a yarn shop. I could live in a place like that :)

It was interesting having a fever and having to speak in another language. I found that all my dreams were in French which is really hard work when your entire knowledge of French is based on Year 8 French. I found myself waking up exhausted thinking of sentence structures. When my fever broke my dreams were in English again and the first and only word that I thought of was "ameliorate". Appropriate but more complex than necessary.

After St Brevin we made a last minute decision to head to Barcelona. We took an overnight train there and stayed for one night to see Tap Dogs and catch up with Dave again. There's something surreal about sitting in a theatre and listening to Midnight Oil in the middle of Barcelona. We liked it a lot.

We also discovered that making Gene say "Barcelona" makes him smile for photos. Yay!

Barcelona was amazing. We saw Sagrada Famillia (ignore my spelling) which you simply have to do. It's the cathedral designed by Gaudi that they started building about two hundred years ago... they're still going. The postcards say something about 2010 for finishing... Aside from my wallet getting pinched (it's all good folks, cards are cancelled not much cash lost and my passport is with me). It was a fabulous trip.

We had a little time in Paris where we caught up with Lisa again and finally got to see the Eiffel Tower. Queues to go up were too long so we didn't.

We returned briefly to England where we regrouped, jettisoned excess baggage and saw Wicked. Again with the amazing shows... It just blew me away. Love the music and the set and costumes were visually stunning. I just can't say how much I loved the show.

Then we headed off to Brussels for a few hours where we drank good beer, visited the "world's greatest stage" at the Grand Place (which was pretty special), the boys ate mussels and chips while I had sausages and strøemp. Then it was back on a train to Hamburg.

It rained in Hamburg. It rained a lot. We were soaked but we chose to walk all around the city anyway. Pictures of grey Hamburg and a tour of a couple of churches (one was intact the other destroyed in WWII and left as an anti-war memorial) then it was onto another train to Denmark.

We spent two nights in Copenhagen. During the day we walked from the city hall to the Little Mermaid who was indeed little. It was a lovely walk which took us past the palace. Didn't sight Princess Mary although we were willing to converse about drop bears and Boags draft if it happened. Pity the Tivoli Gardens were closed when we were there. They looked pretty special.

After Copenhagen we headed on a train to Oslo where we spent a night and a couple of hours wandering the city enjoying the snow. After a quick photo taking walk to the Palace and National theatre in Oslo we boarded a plane and here we are now!

In a nutshell that's what we've been doing for the last 18 days. Tomorrow night we're going dog sledding and the night after that we're going on a horse sleigh ride to see the Northern Lights. It's been a big trip and we're starting to feel a little worn out but what a holiday!

Keyboard's driving me nuts so I'll finish here.