Goodbye Edinburgh ... Hello London!

On Friday the 8th of April, we said goodbye to our friends in Edinburgh. :( it was very sad, even a few tears from mum, but we were excited for the next part of our journey.  Here is a photo of Amelie with her best friends from Royal Mile Primary, Trisha and Jorja.  Amelie will miss them very much.

On the way to London we stayed one night at Stoke on Trent, it was about half way to London.  In London we stayed in the city at a hotel.  We only explored London for about 24 hours, but we saw lots.  Here are some photo's of our first afternoon.

First we walked across the bridge and past big ben, and Westminster.  We even saw the church where Prince William and Kate will get married in.  They were already starting to errect scaffolding for seating along the streets.

Then we got some icecreams and walked past Buckingham Palace.  You can tell that the Queen is at home, because the flag is flying.  Also there were police with big guns there to protect her.  We saw the guards at the palace, they weren't allowed to move unless they were doing their special march.

We then walked through Hyde Park ....

Until we got tired legs and took a London black cab ....

To Trafalgar Square!

Then we walked back past the place where they keep the Queens' horses ....

The horses also had to stand very still.

We also took a picture of Paddington Bear with a Guard!

Then we walked back to our hotel where we had dinner .... Ollie's other front tooth came out at dinner time!

We had our baths, it was a nice hotel, with robes and slippers and all.  Ollie and I thought the robes looked like kung-fu clothes.

In the morning, we went on the London Eye, it is a big ferris wheel in the middle of London.  We were up really high!

From the London Eye, we spotted Darth Vader ... so we got a photo with him

Then Mum saw Captain Jack Sparrow, and got a photo too....

After that, we took the "London Underground" which is the train, to a place in Hyde Park called "Speakers Corner".  Dad loves Speakers Corner and goes there every time he is in London.  It is a place were people can go and talk about what ever they like.  The people who are talking usually stand on something like a ladder or a box.  Lots of people go to listen to the people talking and ask them questions and argue.  Here is a photo of one of the speakers at Speakers Corner, and the people listening and asking questions.  Dad thought the mans pants were funny.

Ollie asked Mum who she believed, the man on the ladder, or the man in the grey shirt who was holding a "can" (aka alcoholic beverage) who was arguing with him.... Mum said she didn't know, but Ollie said he believed the man with the can.   hmmmmmm......

After we left Speakers Corner, we went to our Great Aunt Pat's house.  Pat is our Nanny's Aunty .... she is not that old, but she is great .... we stayed at her house and her lovely husband Steve cooked a magnificent barbeque, especially for a pommy, and we got to meet Lucy, Richard and his wife and two kids ... they were all so nice, it felt just like being at home with family!

Here is a picture of our Great Aunt Pat.....

Pat and Steve gave us some very useful tips about travelling on the eurotunnel and driving in Paris ... lucky!  In the morning we headed off to France!!!

Thanks so much Pat and Steve, so nice to catch up with you, looking forward to seeing you guys in Australia!

Mothers Day in Scotland!

Today it was mothers day in Scotland.  Amelie and Oliver have gone to bed after a big day, so I (Megan) am writing up the blog tonight.

We had a lovely mothers day, the kids made some wonderful mothers day cards for me at school which I was not allowed to see until today.  They gave me my weetabix in bed for breakfast and a glass of water.  Although the kids weren't that keen on going out today, we managed to talk them into coming for a drive to Falkirk to see the famous Falkirk Wheel.  Ollie thought that the Falkirk Wheel was a boat flinger and so did not want to go on the wheel at first.  But then we explained to him what it really is.

A long time ago, before cars and trains, canals were dug in the land and filled with water so people could transport things across Scotland by boat.  Before steam engines were invented, the boats were pulled by horses, that walked alongside the canals.  Now that there are cars and trains, they don't use them to transport things, they use them just for fun.

The Falkirk Wheel is a big mechanical wheel (that doesn't really look like a wheel) which holds two gondola's (or containers) of water.  It moves boats from one water canal to another canal 35 metres higher up.  You drive your boat into a gondola at the bottom of the wheel, then some gates close to hold the boat and water in, and the wheel lifts the water and boat up to the higher canal, and vice versa.

The wheel moved very slowly, so that the water didn't spill out and the boat did not rock, so it wasn't very exciting, but very safe.

Here are some pictures of the wheel and of us on the boat that went on the wheel:

When we got back down to the start the kids saw something totally cool that they wanted to try!  They saw water walkers!  The kids climb into a plastic bubble, which is pumped up and then pushed into the water, where they try to stand up, walk, run, jump etc... apparently it is not as easy as it looks. 

Here is Ollie getting in the bubble:

Amelie and Ollie in their bubbles on the water:

Amelie standing up:

and falling down:

and Ollie getting out, looking very happy:

They had a wonderful time and as usual Ollie said today was "the best day ever" and he had "hundreds of fun".  Only 4 more days of school in Scotland, and I know the kids and their friends over here will be a wee (little) bit sad.  They really love their school in Scotland, although I am told it is not as good as Nillo, because their best friends are at Nillo.

Cheers
Megan

fun things

Last Friday (25th March) after School we went to a fun park called the Meadows in Edinburgh and had lots of fun.  To get into the park we climbed through a little tunnel.  We even made mum climb through it as well.  She wasn't very good at it.  They had lots of things to play on, like a flying fox, and a turn table ride where we spun ourselves around and tried to jump on and off.  Daddy spun mum around in a spinning cup thing and she got very sick.  She was laughing so much but said she didn't really like it.  She felt sick all night.

On Saturday we went to lunch with Dad's work friend called Jin, his wife and two girls.  They gave us a box of really yummy cookies!  We had lunch at a chinese yum cha restaurant and it was very yummy.  I loved the noodles the best.  Ollie liked the prawn dumplings, dad tried the tripe and said it was good, mum tried the chicken feet and said they were ok, but not much meat on them!

On Sunday we went to Edinburgh Zoo!  We saw penguins, leopards, monkeys, seals, flamingos (dad said they only had one leg!), cheeky baboons, lions, and painted wild dogs.  The dogs are not really painted by humans.  We saw penguins that looked like the ones off "Surf's Up", and a Pengcow - here is the picture:

Here are some of the other penguins:

My favourite was the baboons because they were very funny, the baby baboons were wrestling and looked so cute!

There was a big building called living links that had heaps of capuchin monkeys that people study.  All the monkeys had necklaces so that the people could tell them appart.  There was a book that told us what their names were based on the colour of their necklace.  The monkey below had a black and yellow necklace. Her name was Ellie!  She was so cute.

The leopards came up very close to the glass screen.

Then we went home and rested up for school on Monday.

On Tuesday it was parent teacher night.  My teachers said I was very good and that they want me to stay in Edinburgh.  Ollie's teacher, Ms Duncan, really likes him and he doesn't seem to be stressing her out, unlike his effect on Ms Strang and Mrs Tag :) .  He has been trying really hard and gets along well with everyone in his class.  He says that he has NEVER got his name on the board at the Royal Mile Primary School, and now remembers to take off his gym shoes, put his homework in his tray and is putting spaces between his words when writing.  He even finally finished a picture that all the other kids had already started before we got to Scotland, all the class clapped and cheered when he finished ... At the Royal Mile Primary School, all the classes have a teacher and a teachers assistant ... I think this makes their job a lot easier!  Mum and Dad were so proud of us!  We will be very sad to leave our new school, but miss our friends at Nillo very much.

Today (Friday 1st April) mum and dad took us to Queens Park to climb up to Arthurs Seat, which is an old volcano!  We drove up to a loch, which is Scottish for a lake, and then climbed up from there.  It was very hard to climb, so we took turns in getting piggy backs from dad to help us up.  It was so windy up there that we nearly got blown off the mountain!  We had to try to stay close to the ground so the wind didn't get us, you can see how our hair was getting blown around in the photos.  I was very scared of the wind, and we were so high up!  Ollie likes the mountain climbing.  After we got to the top, we walked down the whole way with dad, and mum met us at the bottom near the Palace in the car.  Here are some photo's:

As a reward for being "Pete Persistent's" and getting right up to the top, dad took us to the movies to see "Hop", it was really good.

We only have one week to go before we leave Edinburgh, then we go to London for a few days, then Paris for a week, where we will go to Disneyland for Ollie's 6th birthday, and then we will go to Germany to live for 2 months.  Mum and dad said we are going through an underwater tunnel on a train to get to France!

From Amelie

Happy Days!

On Friday it was red nose day.  Ollie and I got our hair sprayed red, and we wore our red clothes!

 This is me ...

and this is Ollie ...

We look pretty funny!

After school we went and fed the ducks and swans in Holyrood Park ... a place where the king and queen, princesses and princes used to go hunting and ride their horses.

One of the swans bit Ollie on the finger when he was feeding it, but it didn't really hurt.  There was also one very rude swan that kept chasing and biting the others.  It was funny.

When we ran out of bread, we went exploring on the hill.  There was an old ruined church on the hill, and we could see lots of the city from up there.

Ruined church ...

It was very windy and cold ....

In this photo you can see Edinburgh Castle (far left), Holyrood Palace (under Amelie's bum), the Walter Scott monument on Princes Street and Calton Hill.  We were freezing!



On Saturday we went to the movies to see Gnomeo and Juliet.  We also took Ollies buddy Kristian and his mum.  Kristian and his mum are from Latvia.  They also came out to dinner with us at the Mexican restaurant.  We had a good time.

On Sunday we went to Emma's dads place at Dalgety Bay, just across Forth Bridge.  We had a lovely lunch and played a new game that Emma taught us called "Grab a Nana", it was awesome!  We also met Emma's friend from London, her name was Alice.  Emma and Alice were really nice and lots of fun.

After lunch we went to Emma's mum's farm.  We got to make friends with their dog (Tia), their 2 pussycats (Comet and Zues) and their 2 ponies (Doran and Merlin).  Ollie and I even got to go for a ride.   I rode Doran (the big white one) and Ollie rode Merlin.  We rode through the fields and near the woods.  Ollie was looking for foxes to wrestle, but they were too scared, and stayed in the woods.  Ollie says he can wrestle foxes because Pa wrestles foxes.  Emma's mum thought Ollie was a bit crazy to want to wrestle the Scottish foxes!  She said it is "probably not a very good idea".

I showed Emma what I can do on the horse.  I can turn it, stop it and make it go.

When we got back home, I also had a turn on Merlin.

After the ride was finished, I helped brush Merlin and got him some food.

We had a lovely dinner with Emma and her Mum and then it was time to go home because we had school in the morning.

It was a wonderful weekend!

From Amelie

Meeting the local wild life...

We've had a great week at school.  I've been learning about dinosaurs in my class, and Ollie says he has been doing lots of writing.  This week I got 8 points for my "House" and Ollie got another 5.  Our house is called "The Holyrood Royals".

On Saturday, something really exciting happened... it snowed in Edinburgh!  Here is a picture of Ollie with a doona wrapped around him in front of our window.

The church and cemetry next door and the Craigs were covered in snow.

Pretty soon the snow started to melt and got all slushy.  It was still fun to throw at each other though.

In the afternoon we went to "Our Dynamic Earth", which is a museum all about where the earth came from and how all the animals evolved.  One of the men that worked there gave me a really nice rock to have a look at, and then told me it was fossilised dinosaur poo!  Yuck!  He also gave me a little piece of metal to look at.  He said it was a metorite that landed on Antartica, and it was even older than the Earth.

Today we went on a bus trip around Edinburgh.  The top of the bus didn't have a roof and it was really cold!

We got off the bus at the botanical gardens to have lunch and a run around.  In this photo we are pointing at the Castle;

Dad told us that he would give 1 Pound to the first one of us that showed him a squirrel.  We saw heaps of them!

At first we chased them around but they didn't like that very much.  Mum and Dad told us to be quieter and they might come closer.  A lady gave us some seeds to give them and then they started comming really close.

Eventually they were taking seeds and nuts from our hands.  One of them even let me pat him gently.  His fur was really soft and his body was really small.

We wondered what would happen if Wookie was here to see all these squirrels?

Now it's time to rest up for another big week at school.

Bye!