Notting hill carnival

We met up with a couple of our friends to head to the Notting Hill carnival together which is only about 15 minutes from where we live in Shepherds Bush. The carnival is big and has food stalls and music to entertain everyone. We had a nice lunch of jerk chicken and rice. After lunch we managed to find the parade after nearly being injured from pushing through the crowds! We watched the parade as well as the people there. Very interesting! I believe the day we went someone got stabbed... scarey.

All the people!

Some of the parade

One of the many ladies dressed up for the parade

Homelanz 2011

On Saturday we headed to the Homelanz concert which featured Lady Six, Katcha Fire and Sneaky Sound System. It was an Australian and New Zealand targeted concert as the bands were from Oz and NZ. Needless to say we had a great time!!

Roger and Paul preparing for sore heads the next day

Cath and Ash before they headed to the dance floor

London riots

As everyone would have heard about on the news, in August London went through a bit of turmoil with riots affecting a number of locations in London. Where Paul worked he saw the smoke coming from the sony building that was affected by the riots and Westfield put barricades at the entrances/exits of the shopping mall.

Smoke from Sony uk distribution centre near Pauls work

The barricades

Barricades by the esclators

Italy summer trip - Bologna

Last destination was Bolonga. We made our way into the city, we didnt feel like there was a lot to see so we only spent a couple of hours looking around the city before we made our way back to the campsite to pack and head home :(

Water fountain



Copper art work in town

Ash being apart of the display

Paul with the ladies...

Just a snap from the city



Italy summer trip - Cinque terre

Today we headed to the five villages, Cinque Terre where we were going to spend the next three days relaxing, sunbathing swimming and eating. We drove around for quite a while looking for a place to stay however all the places had been booked. So we decided to make our way to Levanto where we finally managed to find a cute little apartment to stay in. While here we wanted to complete the walk between the five villages as we heard it was an awesome experience. I think we managed to pick the perfect day as it was overcast so it wasnt as hot as it could have been. Unfortunately some of the walkway was closed due to slips so we had to tramp up the hillside through the old walkway which I think was better as we got to go right into where the olive groves are and walk through the lovely scenery.

Ash at the start of our journey on the walk through the villages



A view down from one point of our walk

How they farm their olives...

View from our walk

Another view...

One of the small villages

Paul in front of one of the villages

Ash on a little foot bridge (way up high in the hills)

Ash leading the way on our trail.

Another view from our walk

We are at the end of our walk!!

Ash enjoying a cold beer after a big day

The rest of our time in Levanto was spent relaxing and it was fantastic!! We hired a paddleboat and took that for a spin, see video below! All and all we had a great time in Levanto as we wound down from the last week or so on the road and sightseeing.

Our local for food and gelato..YUMMY

Cinque terre paddle boat from Paul Collins on Vimeo.



Italy summer trip - Pisa

Its PISA! Very excited to head to Pisa and see the tower, its was awesome! We had a lovely and extremely hot day to explore the little town of Pisa. We booked to go up the tower as well, this was scarey!! Well for me it was Paul didnt seem to mind the height and the fact that it was leaning so much!! You could feel the lean of the tower as you made your way up the stairs.

Leaning tower of Pisa (with some cool kids in front)



Another picture of the tower

Battistero by the tower

Duomo di Pisa

Paul lifting up the tower

Ash trying to stay away from the edge of the tower

View from the top





Florence and Chianti region

After dropping our gear off at the camp site, we headed into the city to have a look around. We had booked to see David at the Galleria Dell Academia in the evening. After getting lost we made our way to the gallery and prepared ourselves to see the magnificent sculpture that is David. Sneaky Paul managed to take a photo as you arent allowed to take any inside, thankfully he didnt get caught!! Apart from seeing David in the gallery we were a little underwhelmed with the rest of the gallery pieces especially for the price you pay to get in! 

Ponte Vecchio (old bridge...)



Santa croce



Michelangelo's David ( Hidden camera)

Just a little street (Ash exploring ahead)

From exploring the streets of Florenece yesterday today we decided to go to the Uffizi gallery as we had originally booked for the day after. It was awesome! I recognised quite a few paintings from the textbooks I had seen them in in school so it was really special to see them hanging in front of me. We bought a book which described the paintings and as we walked around I read from the book which helped in learning more about the paintings. We spent a good three hours looking around the place and Im sure we could have spent more.

Outside the uffizi gallery

A close up of Ponte Vecchio

On Ponte Vecchio

Looking down on Florence

Duomo Florence

After two days in Florence Paul and I had seen everything we wanted to see so we thought we would take a little trip out to the Chianti region where the vineyards and olive groves are, also the scenery is beautiful. We got a list of all the wineries and made our way out into the countryside where we went to La Croce for some wine tasting and olive oil tasting. This is where Paul feel in love with Olive oil and bread! We headed back into the little town (cant remember the name) and ate a scrumptious lunch and finished off with a delicious gelato mmmm.

Nice little town where we stopped for lunch in Chianti region

 

Paul with an old olive oil press at La Croce

 

Views around Chianti region

Ash enjoying some gelato (Italian ice cream)