We’ve just returned to Sydney from a trip through Europe and the US and haven’t had the time to write the trip up yet, but this picture is important.

It’s the chair along the Via dell’Amore (“Lovers Walk”) in Cinque Terre, Italy where we got engaged in June. Padlocks adorn the rails behind the chair. The idea is for couples to lock theirs and throw the key away. Our lock is directly behind the chair.

Last Monday we rented a car and headed south-west with Lawrence and Minjoo.  We left well after morning peak hour traffic but the traffic in London was still insane.  Thanks to the entertaining conversations and Minjoo feeding us with her homemade cookies, our five-and-a-half-hour journey went by very quickly and we eventually made it to Padstow in the afternoon.  Padstow is a small fishing town, made famous by the celebrity chef Rick Stein. This became even more apparent as we drove around the town.  There’s a Rick Stein’s Cafe, Stein’s Deli, Stein’s Patisserie, Stein’s Gift Shop, Stein’s Fish & Chips, you name it…oh and there’s also The Seafood Restaurant, St Petroc’s Bistro and a pub called The Cornish Arms.  He owns the town!

We stumbled upon Stein’s Fish & Chips shop just as it was about to open for dinner service.  Feeling peckish but not wanting to spoil our appetite for dinner, we went in and ordered 2 servings of their winter specials – cod & chips, bread & butter and a cup of tea.  Yes, tea.  The cosy restaurant was quickly filled with hungry guests and the smell of fried oil.  For £6.50 a serving, the food was amazing – the cod was so fresh with its crispy batter.  Mmm…  Even the English breakfast tea went well with the fried fish which was surprising, guess tea helped cut through the grease.

Dinner at Rick Stein’s The Seafood Restaurant was fantastic.  Ian and Lawrence both had the Seafood Bouillabaisse.  Minjoo and I had the Singapore chilli crab which was gloriously messy but very satisfying!  The boys had finished their dishes when we were barely halfway through ours and by the time we finished, it was already 10pm!

We got back onto the A30 on Tuesday morning and drove further south towards Mullion, stopping by Helston for a 2-hour session of horse-riding in the country-side.  We then spent the rest of the afternoon at Lizard Point, the most southern point of mainland UK.

Next morning, we headed west across to Penzance. The view was just stunning as we drove into Marazion.  We parked the car at the beach car park.  We were so wind-blown but managed to walk along the white-sanded beach towards St Michael’s Mount, an island with a 12th century castle which is accessible at low tide by a cobble-stoned causeway.

We made a stopover at St Just where we had cream tea and tried clotted cream ice cream. By late afternoon we drove through some seriously circuitous small lanes before we made it to Land’s End, the most westerly point of mainland UK.

On Thurday morning we went for another horse-riding session in Helston, this time we did a beach hack which was fun.  We bought some piping-hot Cornish pasties from a local shop and drove to the Kynance Cove nearby to have the pasties for lunch.  Cornish pasties used to be the lunchtime staple food for Cornish tin miners and the idea was that they could have meat and vegetables in one end and some say something sweet in the other. The pastry case was supposed to be tough enough to survive being dropped down a mine shaft or at least to withstand being carried to work and to last until break time.  The thick edge where the pastry edges joined could be held with dirty hands and thrown away afterwards. Cornish pasties nowadays have a more edible and buttery short-crust pastry on the outside.  After lunch, we drove to Cape Cornwall for a short walk.

We left Cornwall on Friday and turned inland to the Eden Project.  It is an environmental theme park with 2 massive greenhouse domes, one emulates a tropical environment and the other a temperate Mediterranean environment.  After a quick lunch, we drove through Dorset along the Jurassic Coast to Bournemouth and stayed there for a night.  We checked out the Cerne Abbas giant near Dorchester which was just disturbing, Bournemouth Beach with the multi-colour beach huts and the Durdle Door near Weymouth which was beautiful.

We’ve had no shortage of problems with our Internet service provider Orange here in London. I’ve complained about it in the past here and here. There have been many times where they’ve given us grief and I didn’t bother to write anything because they’re not worth the effort. In short, they are just crap and don’t seem to care. It also doesn’t help that for the past 6 months, our Internet has been dropping out for a few minutes every hour or so. We know that it’s about to happen when our router “clicks”.

I had a chuckle today when I went to their website because I needed to call them and this is what I got when I clicked on “contact us” link.

It sums up their customer service nicely.