Diamond shopping in Antwerp

One of the best things about living in Europe is the breadth of different experiences you are exposed to with a much lower entry barrier than back home. I can't say I grew up dreaming of buying a diamond ring in Antwerp, but if I had, it would have required meticulous planning, a month off work, days of flying, and thousands of dollars of expenditure before you even got to the diamond itself. Here, it was more like, okay so we're going to buy a diamond? Well, obviously we'll drive 45 minutes up the road to a city which has been synonymous with the diamond trade for centuries. I couldn't find a definitive answer on whether it is actually cheaper to get diamonds in Antwerp (and a lot of the online advice was based on people having to travel to and stay in Antwerp for the purchase, thus inflating their budgets), but the amount of diamonds you have to choose from is unparalleled anywhere else. According to Wikipedia, as of 2012, about 84% of the world's rough diamonds passed through Antwerp's tiny "Square Mile" diamond district, with US$16 billion in polished diamonds going through the Antwerp exchanges annually. So whatever you're looking for, chances are you can find it here, and if you can't, they'll make it for you.

What I don't think I've ever heard anyone say about buying a diamond ring is, holy hell it's intimidating. We first went on a bit of a dry run in Brussels, trying to get an idea of what things cost and what our budget should be. (I know that's not the way round you're meant to set a budget, but hey.) I wanted first to go to sort of chain or mall type jewellery shops, as I thought that would be less intimidating. Turns out chain jewellery shops don't really exist in Brussels. We found a few larger places in the middle of Brussels and circled nervously, gathering the courage to go in.

Once inside, the service wasn't great and the selection wasn't great either. They seemed to have only a couple of different models of diamond solitaires, which seemed strange. Plus I asked to see diamond solitaires in French and the woman brought a tray of wedding bands. We looked, confused, for a few minutes wondering if you first chose the metal you wanted, and then they made you choose the setting, and then the stone, but no, she just didn't understand. So we tried again, and she brought out weird dress rings. "Oh no, I just want something plain with one diamond", I said. "Oh, you want a solitaire" she replied. Um, yeah.

The second place we tried was an "Antwerp diamonds" place, which seems to be the Belgian way of indicating a shop that has a lot of different rings and different grade diamonds and you just put two and two together and they set the ring for you. This place had some pretty rings but it was a warm late summer/early autumn day and the shop was tiny and overly hot and I just spent the whole time in there dripping with sweat and feeling like the frumpiest mess on the planet, and so I couldn't meet the jeweller's eye, let alone concentrate on the glamorous business of diamond purchasing when I felt like my face was melting off. I've yet to see a movie where the dashing heroine goes diamond shopping with her foundation dripping, but trust me to make the occasion as unromantic and unaspirational as possible.

We retired defeated from the field of battle, and between the trauma of our first attempt and being busy with other things for a few weeks, it was over a month before we tried again. I did some further research online, locating specific places in Antwerp with a good reputation and drilling myself on haggling techniques and the fact that they're not better than me just because they work in a shop that sells expensive things. (They're not worse than me either, of course, but just trying to buck myself up.)

After a walk up and down Vestingstraat, a drab street currently undergoing roadworks but probably not very fancy at the best of times, we finally felt ready to move from window shopping to going into our first store. We started with Adin, which sells antique and vintage jewellery, partly because I thought it would be kind of cool to end up with a piece with a history and a one-off design, and partly because either you love it or you don't. You're unlikely to end up fussing around for ages trying to find what specific combination of the 4 Cs fit your budget and heart's desire. Luckily for us on our first attempt, the woman who helped us was super sweet and friendly and very patient with showing us everything, and the owner (I think) also came over and explained how diamond cuts were different in antique jewellery. We saw some beautiful pieces, but in the end I decided they weren't quite my style for something I'd be wearing day in and day out. I tend to go for plain jewellery, and was sure I would end up with a classic solitaire. But it was fun to see the vintage pieces just in case.

If I was going to go for something out of left field, this would have been a strong contender

The emerald Art Deco one was pretty, but I couldn't see wearing it every day

You really notice all the little cat scratches when you go ring shopping

These used a sort of illusion setting to make the centre stone look bigger. You could definitely get some decent-value rings if you committed to the vintage route

There was no hard sell and we left with a lot more confidence than we came in with, so I'm glad that was our first port of call. We went a couple of doors down to a place that wasn't on the list, but had some pretty designs in the window, Diamonds on Vesting. Again, there was no hard sell, and there was no problem writing down all the different specifications and prices and taking photos. There was a lovely twisted "coquette" ring, which really highlighted the diamond without being too obviously twisty.

It was kind of frustrating that many of the rings didn't fit on my fingers, but oh well.

We went to one more place on Vestingstraat, where they didn't let us take photos, but where I tried on a blue diamond (kinda cool), and then went to Diamondland, which has the biggest diamond showroom in Antwerp. A lot of reviews online said they took the time to really explain all the different diamond information to you, and so this was a good place to start. We actually went here first but they were too busy to see us, and I'm glad they were. They didn't do a hard sell, exactly, but this was the only place that made me feel uncomfortable out of all the places we visited. Rather than an aggressive approach, they took the buddy buddy "what's your name? wow, that name's so popular in my country! where do you come from? you look so much like my daughter it's amazing!" tactic. I did like that when she "swore", she said "corpus Christi!" though, which gave an agreeably medieval flavour to proceedings.

She took us to an upstairs room and started pulling out little envelopes full of different diamonds, from tiny .15 carat up to a carat. It was kind of cool to see the sparkly little beggars rolling around (and I actually managed to drop a one-carat diamond (supposedly) worth about 10,000€ which she had put loosely into a setting for us to look at), but it didn't take long for us both to (silently) be quite sure we wouldn't be buying here.

The sales technique was also not cool. She took a diamond which, according to the envelope it came in, was worth around 4,200€, and put it together with a ring that apparently she didn't know the price of, but guessed was worth around 300€. Put those figures together in the calculator and magically came up with 5000€. I didn't bother pointing out that you didn't need to be a maths genius to see that didn't add up, but she next assured us that she would go and talk to her boss and see if she could get a good discount for us. Normally they could give around 8-10% and she wasn't sure she could get that much, but she would really try hard for us. We had barely time to stifle our eye rolls before her boss "accidentally" came in, found a price tag of 200€ on the ring (yay! it's already cheaper!) and did some sums on the calculator, which ended up reading 3955€, although she said 3900€ out loud. Our original saleswoman cooed over what an amazing deal it was, and once her boss had left, wrote down the price of 3950€ for us, pointing out that she was even taking an extra 5€ off. In the store, we both politely said thank you very much, we'll have to think about it, yes, 5000€ down to 3950€, that is quite the discount, we'll sleep on it. But once outside, we were both like "geez, trying to take us for a couple of country rubes?!?"

So, drum roll... What did we end up getting? As I said, I was always sure that I would go for a plain solitaire - timeless, elegant, classic. But the more I researched and thought about it, the less sure I got. Maybe it would be better to go for something with a slightly less icky reputation than diamonds, both in the blood diamond sense and in the monopoly cartel sense (although apparently the monopoly has been broken/weakened in recent times)? I'm certainly not going to start accusing people of being sheeple falling for the slick marketing of Big Diamond, but I started to think more about the possibility of getting a coloured stone, even in the diamond capital of the world. Our reason for going into the aforementioned Diamonds on Vesting was actually some "sapphires" in the window (turns out they were tanzanites). Tanzanites are a rare gemstone (much rarer than diamonds) only found in a small part of Tanzania, with a blue-violet hue which can change depending on the angle. They are also one of the birthstones for December, which is a fun coincidence. Jules made me sleep on it - for longer than I would have liked, since the jeweller went away to China in the meantime - but we finally decided on something that I would not have imagined but I absolutely love!

Two tanzanite and diamond rings to choose between

Final choice! Thought I'd better get a manicure for when we actually got to bring this baby home

Transformed to a vivid blue in the early morning light

And, you guys, guess what??? I bargained! Me! Who's scared of everything! The ring was in platinum, and on our first visit the guy mentioned that it would be cheaper in white gold. So Jules and I fixed some numbers between ourselves that we would be willing to go to for the white gold or the platinum setting, and then I said to the guy, "our budget was X" (about 2500€ cheaper than the sticker price), "how close could we get to that figure with the white gold setting?" He didn't want to go quite that low for the white gold, but he offered us the platinum setting for basically the secret price we had agreed beforehand we wanted to pay for it, which saved almost 1500€! Possibly we could have haggled harder and got more off, but I was pretty damn proud of myself and pleased we got to the price we wanted, so I'll take that as a big win :)

Brussels: it's not so bad

Obviously, the terror attacks were awful, and I don't want to minimise the pain and suffering of anyone who went through them, particularly those directly affected. They have certainly disrupted everyday life even for those of us lucky enough not to be personally involved - the metro and bus/tram network has only just opened fully up again this last week (other than Maelbeek station), and it has become not all that unusual to hear of roads blocked off and areas "locked down" due to police activity. One night a couple of weeks ago, there were three or four police cars parked outside our apartment, doing some sort of search of the houses opposite us. There seemed to be far too much chatting and eating of chips for it to be a terror raid, but it came just a few days after they shot a guy where I often take the tram (I've never heard what came of that?) so we were a bit on edge seeing so many cops right outside.

But life goes on, and as far as I can tell, other than for those whose lives were tragically cut short or forever changed by the attacks, it's back to normal for most people. It's really not possible to go on every day worrying about something which, in reality, is very unlikely to affect you anyway. No offence to anyone, but the sentiment that we've got to keep on as usual "or the terrorists win" makes me roll my eyes a little. I take a more pragmatic view of the situation: there's really not much of an alternative to carrying on as usual, because what else are you going to do?

It helps that spring is busy springing, the birds are singing in annoying fashion outside my window early in the morning, the sun has been shining most days, except today since it's a Saturday and that would be too convenient, and life in Brussels is really not as bad as sensationalist headlines would have you believe. Last weekend, we discovered a whole new (to us) area of Brussels, which I'm kicking myself at never having visited before. The Marolles district is surrounded by areas we have visited plenty of times, like Sablon, Louise, and the Mont des Arts, yet for some reason we had never strayed in to it before. But, googling good places in Brussels to go antiquing, we came across it. It was described as full of antique shops, in the process of gentrification, and less chichi (and expensive) than the neighbouring Sablon area. This pretty much nails it, and it turns out to be a really cool place to browse through antique and design shops, visit a huge flea market on the Place de Jeu de Balle, and visit a café or two.

The creatively named Chapel Church, on the edge of the Marolles

Inside one of the area's huge antiques shops

A beautiful shopfront 

One of the more interesting items for sale

Me and a sculpture of Brueghel, who apparently lived/worked around here in the Middle Ages

Sadly, our budget didn't stretch to any new acquisitions (half the time was spent going, *how* much?!?, half reflecting that you can actually pick up a lot of chunky old antique furniture for about the same price as something from IKEA, but that's because it's dated and impractical), other than a new handbag for me. But I think we will definitely be back. It's a fun part of town with a great vibe, and when the weather gets warmer there are plenty of nice cafés on the main square where you could sit quite happily and watch the world go by. We felt kind of dumb not having been there before, but that means we had the fun of discovery, so it evens out.

Our other "discovery" was actually somewhere we'd known about for a long time, but never been to. There's a Friday night food market in the neighbourhood that we've talked about going to for ages, but when Jules was living in Luxembourg, he wouldn't get here until around 9pm, and then he moved here right at the start of winter last year, so we were not so motivated to be out hitting the open-air market. But last night, we finally went, on a sunny spring evening, and found a place with a really nice atmosphere: a mix of young families using the playground facilities and young professionals unwinding after work. There's a great selection of food from around the world (we shared a Cornish pasty and dim sum), and you can grab a wine or beer and stand around drinking it, which would probably be banned back home. 

Other than that, I am in an organisado (organisation tornado) because we will be moving house next month. We gave our notice before going to New Zealand, which was a bit scary, but we were pretty confident of finding something new. In the end, we're moving only one street away, into a duplex apartment which is more than three times the size of the present place. Particularly looking forward to not having a freakishly clodhopping toddler running around on our ceiling (we will have the top two floors), having a full-sized refrigerator instead of the tiny one we have now, and having a south-facing terrace. Exciting! It's maybe not quite as elegant as my current place, but the rent is not so much more expensive (and less between two than I used to pay by myself, of course), that we can sacrifice a wee bit of style for much more space. Farewell, old flat!

One last (?) photo from here. A souvenir from NZ - vase with stylised pohutakawa flowers

The pearl of the Balkans

A few more observations to finish up our time in Macedonia. We didn't do too much, a bit of wandering around, eating, shopping and visiting a couple of key sites.

We spent one afternoon on a beach about 15 minutes' drive out of the city. It's called Sveti Stefan, which means Saint Stefan, but since it sounds like 'Sweaty Stefan' in a slight German accent, we were amused. Since it was pretty hot, there were not a few Sweaty Stefans to be found on the beach. The beach itself was not as nice as those on the Albanian coast, which is to be expected. A bit crowded, full of kids, and with only a small strip of gritty sand. But, you know, not exactly a hell-hole, so can't complain.

I forgot to say earlier, Lake Ohrid's claim to fame is that it's one of the oldest lakes in Europe, dating back up to 5 million years ago. I was surprised to learn that most lakes only have a lifespan of around 100,000 years before they fill up completely with sediment. So Ohrid is kicking most lakes' arses! In honour of this, a lake on Saturn's moon Titan is named Ohrid, and both the lake and city of Ohrid are UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Talking of heritage, they are clearly proud of their wines in Macedonia. They were a big wine producer in Yugoslavia, and local wines still feature prominently on Macedonian menus, many produced from local grape varieties such as Vranec. We picked up some bottles of red and rosé from the Bovin and Stobi wineries (the latter has a bottle with a cute peacock mosaic on it) to bring home with us. Not bad at all.

A stroll along the lake front

We dropped in to a couple more painted churches. One was completely covered with scaffolding, and had a team of people working to restore its frescoes. It was a shame not to be able to see all of the frescoes properly - as with many of the other churches we saw, they were literally covering the entire interior - but it was pretty cool to see the restorers meticulously working away on one tiny patch of paint at a time. I'm not sure I approve 100% though - some of the restored bits looked way too bright and fresh for my tastes. It is great to be able to see the colours and patterns as they would have been, but restore too much and you lose the authenticity.

We also visited Saint Sophia, the largest church in Ohrid, with frescoes which date to the 11th-13th centuries. These retain more of the authentic "faded" look. Photos a bit blurry since I wasn't meant to be taking any!

Ceiling of St Sophia's

Interior St Sophia's

Night in Ohrid

Dinner on the lake (literally, on a sort of jetty)

Lastly, we spent our final morning in Ohrid in pursuit of icecream (gelato-style, much better than the insipid stuff we got in Albania) and pearls. Ohrid is known for the imaginatively-named "Ohrid pearls", which are on sale in approximately one billion shops in the city, despite authentic Ohrid pearls only being made by two families. Yes, made, not harvested. For these pearls do not come from oysters, but are crafted from the scales of fish! The very same lake fish that you might find on your plate in one of the city's restaurants. The secret of how to make the pearls was supposedly learnt from a Russian immigrant who knew how to make pearls from similar fish in Lake Baikal, and it has been scrupulously guarded by the two pearl-making families (not sure how family #2 got in on the act) ever since.

I bought a single black pearl pendant, which was fairly cheap, and the three-string necklace below, which was really not all that cheap. And the clasp on it broke as soon as I got it home, boohoo! But I think it's a pretty cool souvenir that I can keep for years (once I fix the clasp) to remind me of my holiday in Macedonia and Albania.

My Ohrid pearl necklace

Holiday hijinks in Bath and London

Hello neglecterinos, yes I've been slack again lately and fallen a bit behind with blogging. So, quick wrap-up of what I got up to over the festive period.

First off, it was a three-train trip across to South-West England: train to Paris, Eurostar (for the first time in many years - very pleasant and it was surprisingly half-empty on Christmas Eve), then train to Bath. I had planned a lot of time between trains, mostly expecting chaos on the Eurostar, since it seems every Christmas brings its share of pictures of unhappy crowds at Gare du Nord or St Pancras, unable to get home for Christmas due to 'fluffy snow' or something. This part, however, went off without a hitch. It was only at Liverpool Street where it was confirmed that things were going quite wrong due to the floods that had hit England. I was *so* early (about three hours) for my train that it wasn't even showing up yet, but the raft of cancellations were not a good sign. Basically, there were trains every half an hour, and all the trains on the hour (of which mine was one) were cancelled. So when, two hours before, my train popped up as cancelled as well, it was no big surprise. I was at that time enjoying my first pint of cider on English soil (drinking vast quantities of cider being one of my very favourite activities on the other side of the Channel) but I decided to take a snap decision, abandon three-quarters of my poor pint and rush down to take the next train going, figuring that a train on the tracks were worth two hypothetical trains in the sidings.

With the trains either side cancelled, everyone toting suitcases and backpacks, and possibly other chancers like me hopping on far in advance, the train was predictably rammed. I spent the first hour standing in the corridor by the toilets, very uncomfortably jammed in alongside dozens of other passengers. Despite this, everyone seemed in pretty good spirits. The only slight sign of bad-temperedness I saw was one woman trying to board the already-packed train at Liverpool Street, pleading "please let me on, I'm desperate to get home for Christmas", which earned the obvious riposte of "what do you think everyone else is doing?" Other than that, not too bad and I even got to Bath early!

Christmas was quiet, just me, Liz and her parents. We started out with church at a lovely old Anglican village church. It's been a long time since I've been to church and I'd forgotten quite how much standing up is required, so I spent most of the service regretting wearing heels and wondering when we would get to sit down again. It was conducted by a Lady Priest, which was a bit of a novelty for this former Catholic girl (she was quite good, as priests go), and of course I was pleased to get some carol singing in!

Liz and me at church on Christmas Day

By about 3 pm, after lunch, the champagne and red wine were taking their effect and I was pretty sleepy! Safe to say there were no ragers for the whole trip: I basically stayed on France time, and since I go to bed every night at 10, thus 9 pm in the UK, most evenings were spent with Liz and I fighting to stay awake to a decent hour.

This was all for the good though, as it meant the next day we were up bright and early for the Boxing Day sales. Ahhhhh, England, how I love your sales! We spent about 3 hours just in Debenhams, and I think by the end of the trip I'd spent up to the tune of around 500€, oh dear. Good things were bought though! Along with my usual pretty dress fetish, I managed to pick up sensible flat boots (the first I've had in my life, but I must say I'm now a convert! Comfortable Boots Are Comfortable: hold the front page), a new trench coat, a black triangle skirt (so versatile), and the one I'm proudest of: a suit for £30! Bargain!

The suit in question

If I'm honest, the following days were also largely spent shopping & having pints of cider in pubs, but we did manage a little bit of sight-seeing too. I dragged Liz into Bath Abbey for the first time ever, if you can believe it. Her parents have lived nearby since she was a teenager, but she's not really big on that sort of thing and spent quite a bit of time sitting quietly waiting for me to finish looking around. It's gorgeous though! (I've been to Bath before but I don't think I went in the Abbey - it was just a daytrip and we saw the Roman Baths and Jane Austen's house.)

The outside of Bath Abbey

Inside Bath Abbey

The gorgeous fan-vaulted ceiling

A pretty chapel inside the Abbey

Best name ever! The Abbey was full of memorial plaques, with a high number of military men and people with connections to the West Indies (slave trade I suppose)

I found this interesting: the English calendar was reformed in 1750, changing to the Gregorian calendar and changing the beginning of the year from 25 March to January. Hence this lady's birth year needed adjustment!

An unspectacular picture of the Royal Crescent

The Bath weir

We also made a trip to the village of Bradford-on-Avon, not to be confused with Bradford not on Avon. The pub behind Liz in the photo below may be old and pretty but featured such incompetent service that we ended up leaving. I think we waited about half an hour and enquired three times, no pints were served. By the way, the South-West is cider country, and I found my new favourite, Thatchers Dry cider! Unfortunately, the supermarket we visited had none in stock, so I came back to France hauling the medium-dry variety with me, which is not the same at all :( 

It wouldn't be England without a little bit of rain

We also visited Bristol, to have dinner with Liz's brother, but not much to report from there. We saw a pretty church but we had to leave to buy Liz some phone credit after she received a text from her Dad reading "At hospital. Your mum had an accident. Getting plastered". Turned out she just broke her arm (well, that's bad enough) but the plastering involved was of the arts-and-craft variety, not the "something awful has happened, I'm getting blind drunk to cope" kind, which is a bit better! And then we went to a pub and had some more cider and checked out a lovely indoor market, where as luck would have it, there was an entire stall selling about 50 different masks, perfect for our New Years masked ball!

So that was the South-West, next stop was London for a few days. I stayed with my uni friend Amber, caught up with Rick and Kiwi Liz, visited Borough and Camden markets, popped into Tate Modern (so nice that it's free), got my hair cut and paid my respects to my main man John Gower in Southwark Cathedral. I like to think he was pleased to have a visitor who's read (some of) his stuff.

Scary church in East London. Have these people not heard of Heaven's Gate?

Gower's fancypants tomb

And then it was time to get our glad rags on for NYE. We were going, as mentioned, to a Masked Ball at the Paradise, somewhere around Kensal Green I think. I don't have particularly high hopes for NYE, but I must say it was a fun night. Not amazing or particularly different from any other night out, but fun for my first London NYE. I've got to say the highlight of the evening was probably the greasy, greasy delicious fried chicken we got on the way back (only something ridiculous like £3 or something like that). Amber and Jen were busy getting chatted up by some drunken lads and I was there just like "omnomnom CHICKEN you guys!" It made me realise that I don't think there are any fried chicken joints in France (probably Paris) other than the odd KFC. Oh my god, you are missing a trick, it was the best thing ever!

Anyway, here are a few snaps from the evening to close out the holiday report. I struggled back to France on the 2nd with an insanely heavy suitcase AND a giant sports bag I had to borrow from Liz's parents because of all the shopping! Worth it though!

Me, Amber and Jen before heading out for the evening (I don't have my shoes on yet if you're wondering)

And a little NYE selfie

Drinking cider on the tube on the way out. Pure class

Group shot at the Paradise, once the other girls finally arrived (and Charlie on the left made it over from France too!)

I have my eyes closed, but it's not quiiiiite so bad with a mask on. My mask spent most of the night on top of my head, but Amber loved hers! I think she'd wear it full-time if she could

Me, Liz and Charlie. Horrible photo, but the only one I got!

Liz loves the old "finger in the mouth" pose when she's had a few

Three countries in two days

As I said last time out, I was super pleased to get home and have a couple of days to relax, do laundry, clean the house, give poor lonely Bob lots of cuddles, and rest my weary feet. But there is very little rest for the wicked, and after two days/four nights back home, I was off again.

First up, a relatively early flight to Manchester. RyanAir have just started direct Tours-Manchester flights this year, which is great news for me, because formerly I had to take a train to Paris and get a flight to either Manchester or Liverpool. Much easier just rocking up to Tours' tiny airport (which they're in the process of renovating - they now tell you whether to go to "Gate 1" or "Gate 2", fancy!).

I arrived in Manchester a little bit early, but I was soon reunited with Mum and Dad, whom I haven't seen since Christmas. Happy times. We got a wee bit lost in the process of finding the airport north, and ended up in the suburbs of Manchester. Since we were in the neighbourhood, this turned into a diversion to the Trafford Centre, the massive mall in Manchester. Shopping? How triste! I wasn't expecting any big ticket purchases, but ended up with an advance birthday present - an iPad! I had no idea really what one does with an iPad, since I am stuck in the 20th century and have never even used the internet on a phone, let alone an iPhone, but having played with it for the last couple of days, I think I'm on my way to being hooked! So far, it's woken me up in the morning, navigated us around Oslo, and provided me with some banging tunes on the move. Well played, Apple.

The afternoon and evening was spent at my Granddad's place in the small and unremarkable town of Carnforth, before an early night at the hotel in Lancaster. This was much needed, because I had to get up again at 4 am for our flight to Oslo from Liverpool! This was perhaps a little less painful for me, still on France time, but still. Ouch!

The flight went smoothly, but we flew into a ridiculous RyanAir airport miles away from the city, so by the time we took a 1 3/4 hour bus trip in, had an astoundingly expensive lunch at the bus station (the rumours are true!), checked into our hotel and got our fix of the internet, it was getting on for about 3 pm.

We finished off a tranquille day with a stroll into the city centre, a trip to the beautiful harbourside opera house (tip courtesy of the Jo Nesbo thriller mum's reading at the moment) and relaxing at our lovely sunny apartment. The weather reports seem to be a bit mixed, but let's hope it stays like this for our trip, because right now it's mild-warm, sunny and perfect!

Grandparents' houses = a treasure-trove of kitsch from years gone by. I was tickled pink to enjoy my precious cider from a vintage glass celebrating Charles and Di's wedding. Worked out so well and everything.

Moosey moosey

Mum and me and a deer in Oslo

Oslo's stunning opera house

You can climb all over the sloping roof as well - be careful, the marble bits are slippery!

Mehm and Daddoo

The opera house roof is a great place to pose

This beautiful glass ship sculpture in the harbour complemented the opera house's architecture