Our (Mud) Island Adventure: We visit Will and Kate but we are a day late

Woops! Its been a while since out last post, but in our defence I have been settling into work and getting into the swing of things. Its hard to believe that we are only a few days shy of two months over here! Actually its not that hard, because of course we miss all of you dearly, but we have had the most amazing time and experiences so far. A lot of our friends enjoyed my last post, thanks for all the comments and keep them coming. We have a lot of fun putting these blogs together and my little ramblings from the office are equally as fun to put together.

SO, what have we been up to? Well, actually a lot happens each week and we generally go to bed exhausted most nights! We keep on about the weather, but it really has been very, very good. Of course when the weather does go pear shaped, and we are under water and swimming to work, I will be tight lipped and talking about something else!

We have benefited from a number of public holidays recently and made the most of them by running around Mud Island again. As most of you know the big scene here at the end of April was the royal wedding. It was not all that hyped up in SA, which is understandable, but here it was simply HUGE. Sam and I had mentioned on our blog that we planned to go Osborne House to watch the wedding. As it turned out after a really rough three day week, we overslept on the morning and found that once we were up, it was a bit late to get to the venue before the wedding started and the weather seemed to be closing in too. So instead we walked down the road to our local store and bought some really nice Humus and olives, some Italian cold meats (for me of course) and some real french Champagne. The english shops were terribly sporting and had halved the price of some of the better bottles of champers, so we bought a bottle of Piper Heidsieck and it was fabulous. Sky TV had the whole wedding on from about 2 hours before, all in HD, and the coverage was spectacular. I mean it was a wedding, but on a scale I have not seen before, and the coverage was simply brilliant. Sammy and I were very keen on watching every minute of the coverage as we planned to go to London the next day.

We had decided to go into London for a bit to see all the sights, and then to stay over with our friend Keith and have dinner at our favourite Thai restaurant called Yupa's in Chiswick. We parked at the mother ship, (Westfields) and of course that meant another cheeky Snog! It was fabulous as usual. We jumped on the underground from Shepards Bush station. Well I say jumped, but as it turns out of the one million people who were in London for the wedding (no really, I kid you not), exactly 35 had gone home, the rest had stayed. Of those remaining, at least 10 percent were also in the underground that morning. Sardines get more room in a can. No such thing as personal space in this case. By the time we got off the underground I was quite pleased. It was then that we discovered where the other 999 000 people were hiding. Outside Westminster Abbey! I am not sure what Sammy and I were thinking. I mean really I guessed we would arrive, wave at the Queen, and pop inside Westminster Abbey for a tour of the place at our leisure and move on. Clearly I had not thought it through. It was simply so busy that the queue to go inside was still hundreds of metres long just 20 mins before closing time. We managed to take a number of photos posted below, it is a stunning piece of architecture, and it was fairly surreal to be standing on the same ground as ~~Pippa~~ Kate and Wills and the Queen had been the day before.

As an aside, how cool are Prince William and Kate Dutchess of Cambridge! Leaving the palace for a few hours of peace at their hotel in an convertible classic Aston Martin. You just cannot buy style like that!

Saturday night was a great evening, we went to Yupa's and it was up to its usual high standard. Sammy was eating there for the first time, and she loved it. The chef custom made some of the dishes for her, swapping the non vegetarian ingredients for vegetarian options, so she could experience the same flavours as the rest of us. Keith was a great host and we had a good time. One of the conversations revolved around choosing a side in the English Premiership. Well as I might have mentioned in a previous blog, I don't really care, but fence sitting is just not allowed. The problem is no matter what we decide, we will be upsetting one or more of our friends. So in the spirit of fairness (to us), we will remain on the fence a little while longer.

On the way home on Sunday we saw the boys again. We were fairly pensive about the visit but we are pleased to say they were 100% better with us. We just sat quietly and both came and sat on our laps, so we feel much better! Monday was also a public holiday and we made a great roast lunch, which we had with Conan and family. A great ending to the long weekend.

This past weekend was quiet by our standards and we went to Mark and Jo for a braaibraaiStratford for the day, and Stoneleigh Abbey. In Stratford she saw Shakespeare's birth house, Nash House (where Shakespeares grand daughter lived with Thomas Nash), Halls Croft (where his daughter lived with her husband Dr John Hall) and the Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare himself is buried. Stoneleigh Abbey was an abbey built in 1154 for the Cistercian monks, before being destroyed during the Dissolution of King Henry VIII. The Georgian West wing was built in the 1700's. Jane Austin visited in 1806, and based her book Mansfield Park on the Abbey. Sammy loved it so much she has popped down to the library and taken out Mansfield Park to read.

That's all we have for you now, and we promise the next post won't take that long!