Lusts in Oxford: Hookers, Hippies and Halloween

The past month has seen the departure of (Bebbe) Rhona and the arrival of (Booba) Sally and (Zaida) Mikki. During Booba and Zaida's month we headed abroad, first to sunny Barcelona were we shared an authentic but grotty city apartment. We experienced our fair share of Gaudi, visiting Parc Guell, La Pedrera and Sagrada Familia. We took the obligatory stroll down the disappointingly touristy (and somewhat feral) La Rambla and wandered through Barri Gotic and El Raval. The cable car ride (or 'fly box' as Noah called them) to the top of Montjuic enabled us to enjoy the beautiful gardens and amazing views over Barcelona. Our highlight was an evening at the local tapas bar (without kids!) where we were the only foreigners and had to point to the various tapas behind the bar - all washed down with the biggest gin and tonic and bucket of beer ever seen!

From 30 degrees in Spain to 15 degrees in Holland..... next stop was Amsterdam where we all stayed with a friend of Sally and Mikki's, Benny. Thanks to Benny we were able to sample some authentic - delicious, carb rich and calorie laden - Dutch cuisine (see photo of Ethan woofing down the herring!) We enjoyed wandering the streets (and trying to pronounce their names), along the canals and the kids made it their mission to have a photograph with each of the hundreds of elephants scattered throughout the city. Ann Frank's house was an educational experience, as too was the red light district but obviously for very different reasons (see photo of Meaghan and Sally 'window shopping'). Thankfully Noah was able to reassure us that the ladies were just there to 'advertise bras and undies'.

Back in Oxford we played tour guides to Sally and Mikki visiting places such as London, Cambridge, Bath and the Cotswolds. They chose a good time to leave as 'British summer time' (did we have a summer??) has just ended (meaning it's dark by 5pm) and the weather has turned cold and wet as we prepare for winter.

We headed up to Woodstock (the UK version) last week to celebrate our friend, Marie's 40th b'day and 10 year wedding anniversary. Given that it was also the 40th anniversary of Woodstock (the Woodstock), the theme was 'hippie' which made for a good laugh (see Meaghan 'party like it's 1969').

And finally the day Noah has been counting down for the last 90 + sleeps - Halloween. Halloween is huge in the UK. We were required to 'decorate' the house with ghosts and spiders and had to make our own jack-o-lantern. Noah dressed up as Ben 10 for nursery and then donned his 'scream' mask to go trick or treating with his friends.