glastonbury festival 2010

wooh... what 5 days and nights of total carnage that was!

for those of you not too familiar with glastonbury festival, it is an AMAZING music festival that takes place on a huge farm in somerset (england) at the end of each june (apart from when they have a year off).....and this year it was the festivals 40TH BIRTHDAY! YAY!

but it is a festival of SO MUCH MORE than just music and i'm pretty sure that nothing else compares to glastonbury in the whole wide world. it is simply amazing and unique and i love it. i mean, where else can you experience such extremes of meditating and sipping chai tea in the healing fields.... to entering another world through a wardrobe where you get to dress up and have huge pillow fights with complete strangers.... and then seeing gyrating pole dancing robots?!
i had so much fun... but i have to admit i did peak, crash and burn a little too early!! (i think it may have been the 7.5% pear cider?!).

and i think i may be getting a little too old for sleeping in a tent for 5 nights on a hard field and waking up feeling like i need a hip replacement. but seriously, getting bruised and battered and not washing for 5 days is all part of the experience! (and anyway, who needs showers when you can just baby wipe?! ha). and we just won't talk about the toilets....

i took over 400 pictures!!!!! but here is just a selection of some random/cool/great things i snapped around the festival....

(see, i wasn't lying!)

sorry about all the pictures.... but i wanted to put on sooooo many more! hopefully its given you a bit of a feel for the festival..... bring on next year!!!

attack of the mosquitoes!!!

aaaaaahhhh!!!! whilst we have been away in england it appears that vienna has been infested with mosquitoes. we walked out of the airport last night to see lots of people doing what appeared to be a strange dance... only to soon realise they were actually trying to fight off the masses of mosquitoes swarming around everywhere.

when on holiday i always suffer from mosquito bites. they seem to like me and i end up with bites that turn into huge red itchy lumps everywhere. in the time it took us to get from the airport to our apartment i was bitten on my hand, my leg, my back and even my big toe! (i was wearing flip flops). boo.

please tell me that this isn't usual for vienna otherwise i'm slowly going to be eaten alive!!!!

england, oh england....

i'll be having a little blogging 'holiday' as i'm off to england tonight and won't be back for just over a week. sadly, it is my great grandma's funeral tomorrow but then i'm off to glastonbury festival with my boyfriend, brother and two great friends, and i can't wait.

have a great week everyone!

p.s. i took the picture above on brighton beach. i can't wait to see the sea again!

café sperl

we rounded off my grandparents trip to vienna with a visit to café sperl (on gumpendorfer strasse). its a lovely old café which has been open since 1880 (according to my guide book). as my grandad said, it felt like he was in the set of a poirot film.

they ate sachertorte whilst i drank a beer!

cute ducklings!

look what we saw yesterday!!!!

aren't they just the cutest little ducklings all in a row! (ignoring the duckling poo of course!).
we discovered them sitting on the edge of a fountain in the gardens by the hofburg.

schloss schönbrunn palace and gardens

on tuesday we took a trip to schönbrunn! i've been there quite a few times now but i didn't mind going again with my grandparents as i really like it there and i knew it would be the sort of place they would like too.

it also meant that we got to see the lovely roses that kate mentioned on her transatlantic sketches blog. they were beautiful... in fact the whole place was looking lush and green.

we took a trip on the little yellow train that goes around all the grounds (but i forgot to take a picture of it). i didn't think my nan and grandad would make it up to the gloriette by foot! but i really enjoyed the train.... they tell you lots of interesting facts about the place on the way around (ie. there are 80 gardeners in the summer months. there you go - fact of the day!).

we sat on a bench up by the gloriette on the hill and ate our picnic of homemade sandwiches with fizzy orange pop! its so peaceful and relaxing there.... i could sit there all day people watching and looking at the view.

city sights

my grandparents arrived in vienna yesterday. it is so lovely to have them here! i took them to see a few of the city sights and here are some of the snaps i took along the way. (i'm beginning to think that maybe my new profession should be as a tour guide?!).

the belvedere

the fountain in front of the russian soldier monument

karlskirche (church)

stephansdom

inside stephansdom

on the way home we went for dinner at salm bräu and enjoyed one of their lovely beers. i decided to have something i would never normally choose.... and it arrived still in the frying pan!

the meat (pork medallions) were a little over cooked for me.... but the dish was tasty... and i love mushroom rice. we then came home and my nan and grandad had a little nap on the sofa!

fajitas!

on sunday (in keeping with our tortilla themed weekend) we ate chicken fajitas! (with sour cream, homemade guacamole, grated cheddar cheese and jalapenos). they were SO good. oh, and we drank more beer!