Ah finally... the home of the danish

Hi everyone from sunny Copenhagen! it is absolutely beautiful here and having a great time, albeit a broke time. Scandinavia does not come cheap - my lonely planet was right!!!

Anyway - am pleased to report that brave Clare came to Copenhagen.. I managed to negotiate the train from the airport to the station next to my hostel... and yep, am staying in a hostel. I spent all day yesterday adventuring around the central city and just people watching and admiring all the buildings and things and just generally acted like a tourist! The Copenhagen jazz festival is on at the moment so there are full on jazz quartets on every street corner playing away which is very cool. last night I was eating strawberries by a fountain in one of the traditional squares with two different jazz bands on either side and I felt quite European!!! Then tired Clare overtook brave Clare and we went home to bed :-)

The people here are all gorgeous and very, very tanned. I am quite conscious of my uberwhite legs! They also all appear to ride around recklessly on bikes - bikes are absolutely everywhere and they even have little slides on steps so people can wheel their bikes up.

Anyway - better go - today i am going to do a bit more wandering as my quest for the perfect pastry begins and then this afternoon I meet up with my tour group to check into our hostel (yep... there's that word again!) and have a dinner.

I hope you are all well!
C
PS big congrats to my cousin Marie on the arrival of her twins yesterday!

Hi from Frankfurt!

Hi everyone - currently in Frankfurt airport for the first of my eight hundred stops here so thought I would do a quick update for you all. Is taking quite a long time for a quick update though cos the keyboard is German and some of the letters are around the wrong way!

Since I last wrote I had a really enjoyable day at Sentosa - far and away my favourite part of Singapore and I wish I had had more time over there really. Diana and I took the cable car over and explored some of the forest walks, as well as visiting underwater world, dolphin lagoon and lazing on the beach for a bit. We stuck around for the light show over the musical fountain and then caught the cable car back with great views of the lights of singapore - really excellent! Yesterday I had a lazy morning by the pool before meeting up with Diana again for a trip around the harbour on a bum boat and eating some Singapore special's like chilli crab and this weird ice cream in sweet bread stuff (weird but not necessarily bad I might add)! Then we went adventuring around little india and chinatown.

There was a bit of a drama with my airport transfers last night so ended up checking in late and getting possibly the worst seat on the plane - such is life I guess but can't say that lufthansa have impressed me much - food, service, entertainment and leg room all terrible but am currently in their lounge waiting for my flight to copenhagen with free internet and very tasty breakfast so will give them points for that! I wish it was a bit later in the day really (its 6am) because there are even gummy bears and cheese. I did indulge in a rice bubble crackle to go with my fruit salad and juice though :) Oh and the other thing - self cleaning toilet seats - quite a thing to behold!

Anyway - going to head off to explore the airport a bit now before heading to denmark so I hope you are all well and I will catch you soon!

Oh and I forgot to say...

its hot as hell here - its great! That's all... just thought you would like to know :-)

Where the hell am I??? Oh yeah... Singapore...

Hi everyone! I am pleased to report that I am alive and well and in Singapore... I have been utterly lost since I arrived and have ABSOLUTELY no idea where I am currently located on the island of Singapore but so far that doesn't seem to have caused me any undue difficulties!

I had a really good flight over - whole row to myself and in the row behind the bulkhead so heaps of leg room. I watched Ice Age 2 before the sound on my side of the plane conked out so then I had to amuse myself by making up my own dialogue for movies about ballroom dancing starring Antonio Bandares... to be honest the novelty of that wore off quite fast so then I had to get some practice in on the electronic yahtzee. The air hostesses were fascinated by this game and all wanted to know how it worked and have a go... this was odd but definitely helped fill in the time!!!

Yesterday I went on a city tour (again - not sure how this happened or where anything was in relation to each other but apparently that doesn't matter). We checked out the national orchid garden, visited a temple in Little India, went to Raffles (where our driver got told off for bringing such shabby looking specimans into the hotel!), saw the Merlion, held a python (OK - I just watched the other people on my tour hold a python) and had lunch in Chinatown. It was really interesting and a good way to see some of Singapore's highlights. Last night I went on the Night Safari with some people from my hotel (from Hataitai in Wellington - small world) and checked out all the animals and saw some fire dancing. It was a fantastic evening so thank you to everyone who recommended that one! I buddied up with an Aussie called Diana who I am heading over to Sentosa with today so hopefully should be able to get some photos of me in front of things just to prove to you all that I am actually here (except you Zoe - clearly I am just having a week in Christchurch and am lying to everyone else).

This morning I went on the hunt for a local breakfast - I ended up having a sort of roast chicken and rice thing which was really tasty, albeit a little bizarre at 8am! It described itself as chicken licking good - I have never licked a chicken so can't really confirm the validity of this claim but it was certainly tasty. The food here has been totally fantastic everywhere I have been actually, and my hotel is a little bit out of the city which is forcing me to be a bit more adventurous than I probably would be otherwise!

Well I had better go and figure out where the heck I am but I hope you are all well and happy - see you soon!

Telephones, Yahtzee and the Arrival of Spring

Hi all,

Here goes my last post from New Zealand soil (seriously? I am leaving? huh). As those of you who have tried to call or text over the last day or so may have realised - my cellphone has died. This is particularly irritating timing but I guess it almost made it. Anyway - thanks for your kind thoughts, and to those of you who have emailed and put comments up on the blog. I am definitely getting excited - even if it doesn't seem very real yet!!!

My mother and I have been having a bit of an ongoing yahtzee battle today - at this point she is winning but I am totally demanding a rematch - and will keep doing so until I either win or have to get on the plane. And if I haven't won by the time I leave I will play my little electronic yahtzee game all the way to Singapore and report back my scores until I beat her... or I will lie and say I bet her when I didn't... I take my yahtzee VERY seriously, and she is not a very gracious winner.

The other big news (and damn I wish I could get my camera and Mum's computer to co-operate so you could see it for yourselves) is that Spring has arrived at Stoneybrook. Three lambs arrived overnight - one lot of twins and a single. They are very cute and enjoying some Canterbury sunshine today... I think I will go outside and join them actually.

I hope you are all well and have a great few days until my next post - bring on Singapore!!!!