"Memories..."

."..light the corners of my mind...misty water coloured memories, of the way we were..."

time for some nostalgia - this time a year ago my DH and I were flying off to Spain, to see the amazing sights of Granada.  We were celebrating our Silver Wedding Anniversary, and we had always dreamed of going to see the Alhambra.  Oh my goodness, how we fell in love with Granada, the Alhambra, and Spain itself.  We enthused so much about it that my dearest friend went over last April, and felt the same.

She has just returned from another trip to Spain, this time she visited the beautiful city of Cordoba - somewhere DH and I are hoping to visit fairly soon.  And, being the wonderful friend that she is, she bought me this:

it is a lovingly hand made tealight holder

decorated with crescent moon and stars, so evocative of the Islamic architecture in Spain that we love so much.

I love the way the candle light glows from the cut out shapes, and love the colour of the glaze.

She also bought this back for me, will help a lot with our planning, a big full colour map of Cordoba

Thank you so, so much Sue for these lovely treats, very much appreciated!

So, for now, I will have to make do with gazing at the photo on my desktop....

"if we had the chance to do it all again, tell me - would we?  Could we?"*  Oh most certainly, yes!!

Helenxx

* Songwriters: Hamlisch, Marvin, "The Way We Were" sung by Barbara Streisand

Theres no place like London!

Hello everyone - at least the sun is shining and here we are in June!

As threatened promised last week, I'm back with some photos of my wonderful day out in London last week with my DH.  Some of the photos I wanted to share were taken in the incredibly expensive but oh so lovely Fortnum and Mason, but my phone (which I was using to take sneaky pics) has packed up :( got very wet on a sponsored walk with my students.  We did however raise over £150 for our chosen charity so that was very good.  And my students don't usually walk much further than the nearest corner shop to get ciggies and energy drinks so 15 mile walk, in torrential rain with no moaning was an incredible achievement.  We were very proud of them all.

You might want to grab a cuppa and even a cheeky biscuit as quite a lot of photos will follow....

Anyways, back to London!  Back in January I booked tickets for us to visit The View from the Shard as part of our Silver Wedding Anniversary celebrations.  I thought "if the Queen can have a year of celebrations so can we!!".  So last Saturday saw us staring up at this astonishing building

Currently the tallest building in western Europe

 

It takes seconds to get up to the 72nd floor

 

 



And once up there, wow what a view....

So here we go, some of the most famous sights in London, seen from a birds eye view....

Canary Wharf

The Tower of London

The BT Tower

Wembley Stadium, the Champions League final was happening the day we were there.  Both teams were from Germany, and the fans were so well behaved.  Great atmosphere!

St Pauls Cathedral

Southwark Cathedral.  The line of green marks Borough Market, which we visited when we got our feet back on the ground.  Yummy food - we had falafel sandwiches, always a great favourite of ours!

River Thames, rolling away towards Westminster

River Thames, rolling away towards the East End

The Olympic Stadium and the Orbit

Greenwich

Sun sparkling on the 30 St Mary Axe, more popularly known as the Gherkin

The Monument, marking the site where the Great Fire of London started in 1666.  We visited the Monument last August, when the Shard had just been finished.

The London Eye, with Buckingham Palace in the Background

Tower Bridge - I had to wait a while to get a red London Bus passing over the bridge, but I was happy with the result!

With our feet firmly back on the ground, we took a river cruise back to Westminster and then walked around to take in a few more of the sights

 

  The Houses of Parliament

 Horse Guards Parade, getting all ready for the Trooping of the Colour

London Eye

Buckingham Palace - and look, the flag is flying so Her Majesty was at home!

Guard at Buckingham Palace.

Then, after a slap up meal the sun started to set and we decided to go on a leisurely stroll along the Thames



An absolutely wonderful day out with my DH.  I love visiting London, I love the sights, the sounds, the smells, the sound of all the different languages from visitors from all over the world...I don't know if I could cope with the pace of actually living there...but I would love to be able to go down to visit every month - if only I could afford it!!

I think you deserve another cuppa (and possibly even another cheeky biscuit!) for sticking with me to the end of this quite lengthy post.  But I hope you enjoyed joining me looking back at my visit to "the Smoke".

Enjoy your weekend, hope the sun is shining wherever you are!

Helenxx

PS I don't know if any of you are Sweeney Todd fans, if so you will know which song the title of my post comes from :)

 

 

Granada Grandeur

Hi everyone

Well, Im beginning to surface again...darling mum is much better thankfully and getting back to her usual awesome self.

I finally picked up a pair of knitting needles for the first time in weeks a few days ago.

The sun is shining.

So I thought I would share some precious memories of one of the most beautiful places I have been fortunate enough to visit - Granada in
 Al-Andalus, Spain.  My darling husband organised our trip to celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary.

To say the Alhambra is breathtaking is the silliest understatement ever....

...although it is said that a picture says a thousand words.  So I thought I would put a montage of some of the photos I took and put some music to them. 

Enjoy!

 

Helenxx