Message Stick

The Google Conference took Mark and his Colleague Gianpi to San Francisco for a week in May so the WAGS, (Me and Ale) tagged along for a holiday. We must have travelled to every corner of the city by foot, bus and Segway (everyone should try these). The best city in USA in our opinion, such friendly people and extremely liberal attitudes, especially in how they choose to dress, (or not) for their annual ‘Bay to Breakers’ fun run.

End-of-season Snowboarding was neatly tied in with a luxury spa break to celebrate our second wedding anniversary.  After a couple of days of hammering down the pistes with Tim & Ray in brilliant sunshine and on surprisingly good snow we headed off to Lyon to sooth our aching muscels and float around the hotel’s outdoor lazy river.

We spent a weekend in the lake district to celebrate Zoe, Fudge and Mark’s 30th birthdays. A brilliant time was had by all with much drinking, eating and chilling out in the jacuzzi. The photos speak for themselves

Pauline & Tom had a long holiday cruising and touring the USA at the start of this year.  When they settled in Florida for a few months us kids, typical freeloaders, descended to destroy their peace and relaxation.  With Auntie Chris, Hunky Paul, Robyne and James following we had a really fantastic family break and celebrated Mark’s 30th in style.  The theme parks were hit hard but we also had time in some of the beautiful national parks and beach resorts.

We spent a beautiful wintry month living in Malmo in January while Mark worked in ustwo’s Swedish office. We wined and dined with the team on several occasions and met the newest edition, baby Ossian. Lynzi Mac also popped over for a break in Malmo and we all had a weekend in Copenhagen together.

If you click on the tab that says ‘Map’ at the top right hand side of the page you can follow our full route around the world.

Thanks for sharing the journey with us.

During our short stay in Chihuahua we unfortunately didn’t find any of its namesake dogs, just some nice buildings and restaurants making it a pleasant last stop in Central America.  The following day we took a bus to the Mexico, USA border and had our most tricky crossing of the whole trip.  We were so delayed that our bus left without us, but a taxi ride later we were in El Paso.  Early the next morning we boarded our 30 hour Amtrak train ride to New Orleans.  Great food, views and loads of leg room made for a fantastic trip.

3 days in New Orleans was a great way to end our honeymoon.  We ate the most amazing southern food: Mark’s favourites were the Poe Boys, subs bulging with meat and gravy.  I loved the jambalaya but I think my favourite had to be the Beignets, square doughnuts covered in icing sugar, ridiculously messy but very moreish . In the evenings we visited loads of live music clubs and heard everything from blue grass, to jazz and traditional blues.  In the daytime, once we could drag ourselves away from our gorgeous hotel room, we explored the French and Garden quarters admiring the beautiful buildings on both street car and foot.

Our last day of the trip was spent driving our hire car to Houston in the worst thunder storm I’ve ever seen, not much fun when you can’t even see the road markings on the very busy freeway. Arriving safely but with a hell of a lot more grey hair then before we settled into our last Denny’s meal of burger, fries and chocolate milkshake.

The flight home in 3 stages was long and boring but it was all forgotten as soon as we saw our welcome party; waiting with balloons, flowers and smiling faces. Despite all of the amazing things we have seen and experienced, there really is no place like home.

Our 13 months of honeymoon has been the trip of a lifetime and a great test for the marriage!  We are blown away with how much we’ve managed to squeeze into the time, 21 countries, 152 different beds,  25 flights, and more hours on trains and buses than we care to remember.

Thank-you so much for everybody (blogchops especially) who has posted comments and made us feel we’re not so far from home. As the next chapter of our life begins keep checking the blog in case we feel the architecture of Nuneaton and our visits to Tesco warrant a post.

We were very sad to leave the beach and pool behind but our next destination was something that we’d been looking forward to for a long while. The Copper Canyon is a series of 20 canyons that together are wider and deeper in places than the Grand Canyon, Arizona. We boarded an 11 hour train that went on a spectacular winding trip through the heart of the landscape. The time flew past as we were kept entertained by the beautiful views and the humorous packaging of our picnic. We stopped off for a couple of nights in Creel to do our long anticipated horse trek. It seemed fitting that the trip started almost 13 months ago with a train to Mongolia and equine adventures and was now concluding in a similar fashion. This time however we hoped that neither of us would be ejected by our trusty steeds.

We arranged a meeting with a possible tour guide and when he walked in he looked like the real deal, Wranglers, Stetson, boots and that cool slightly lopsided walk you expect after being on a horse everyday. Norberto, turned out to be a great guy and invited us to join his family outing the next day to the city of Cuauhtemoc. Here we were on the hunt for Mennonites; a religious sect originally from Europe who settled here in 1920s. On the way there we stopped off for breakfast tacos at a place where their speciality filling was ‘Politico’ - a lot of tongue and a little bit of brain! While Norberto did his shopping we followed him around staring at the people that ran all the businesses. They were all fair, blue eyed and in uniforms of dungarees and conservative dresses. It was the strangest thing after seeing nothing but people with dark hair and eyes for 4 months. We got some confused looks from them, perhaps they thought we’d left the flock. We thought it a little inappropriate to photograph them but we did visit their interesting museum and ate a delicious pizza, topped with their famous cheese, in a Mennonite restaurant.

Our horse ride the next day was wonderful, just the 3 of us, spectacular scenery, happy horses and no falls. We rode through indigenous Raramuri land and it was lovely to see their women in traditional dress of full colourful skirts. Norberto made us climb to the edge of some ridiculously high and scary rocks but the view down was worth it. He also made us canter and gallop a lot and although Mark was originally sceptical he was like a natural cowboy by the end, kicking his horse on to go faster, particularly when some wild dogs started to chase us. We could hardly walk the next few days but it was worth every aching muscle and I wish we could go back and do it again.

Leaving Mexico City we arrived in the colonial town of Morelia just in time for their independence day preparations. In the main park the fiesta was already well underway with traditional dance displays and concerts in the bandstand, while in the plazas troupes of drummers and bugle players belted out patriotic anthems. We guessed that the visiting Mexican tourists didn’t see that many foreigners, all the stares we received made us feel like we were back in China.

The architecture was stunning, one of the most beautiful cities we’ve encountered on our trip, every corner revealing yet more plazas, cathedrals and long stretches of the aqueduct. Morelia is also well known for its sweets and a visit to the sweet market was obligatory. The stalls were incredible but after a few tastes we needed to balance all the sweetness with some sour lime, naturally wedged in the top of a beer bottle.

We spent the eve of independence in Guadalajara, arriving to a huge storm that flooded the streets and brought down nearby electricity cables. We escaped the rain by heading out to Tequila to tour the Jose Cuervo factory. Six shots and a Margarita later we were both well educated in all aspects of Tequila, especially the side effects. Needless to say the bus ride back to Guadalajara passed far quicker than the one out. Unfortunately the eight hour bus to the beach town of Mazatlan didn’t pass quite so quickly with a hangover but the three relaxing days spent there were worth the discomfort.

Rather than spend another 26 hours on a bus we flew direct from Cancun to Mexico City for three days in the capital. With around 20 million people living there, Mexico City is one of most heavily populated places in the world. Flying in to heavy rain and smog we felt a long way from the peaceful beach we were lying beside only a few hours earlier. Despite the initial city-shock we were soon zipping around on the metro to visit Diego Rivera’s murals, Freda Khalo’s old house and scores of historical buildings. The Centro Histórico area had a great vibe and unlike other parts of Mexico City it was considered safe to walk around at night, the time when we experienced Mexico’s finest cultural offerings.

The first evening was spent cheering on the Luchadores in Mexico Arena at the Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling. This version of wrestling has more in common with the WWF than the type Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks practiced. Nearly all of the wrestlers are masked and each struts out to the ring along with their own entrance music to loud cheers or boos, whichever is appropriate. The bouts were normally three on three tag-team but with sketchy rules most of the time it was complete chaos.

Our favourite wrestler was ‘Maximo‘, a super-camp exotico wrestler who taunted his opponents with blown kisses and bum pinches. The crowd went wild every time he entered the ring. If Maximo was Queen of the evening, ‘Kemonito’ was King.  Around three feet high and dressed in a blue monkey suit, seeing this furry midget jump out of the ring from the top rope onto a fallen opponent was almost too great a spectical even in Mexico.

We spent the last evening in one of Mexico City’s many famous Mariachi bars around Plaza Garibaldi. Hordes of ageing musicians decked out in black with silver trimmings gather to play songs on demand or to rent their out services for the evening at private parties. The food as we’d come to expect in Mexico was fantastic and watching the Mariachis perform seemed a fitting way to end our time in the capital.