Newcastle

So Rachael and I got back this weekend after a long weekend visiting elmyra and baloonworld in Newcastle. With Rachael being off for half term, I decided to take the Tuesday off work, as Newcastle would be a long way to go for effectively only one useful day. Splitting the driving between us swapping over each of the two times we stopped meant the journey was pleasant and not too tiring on either of us. Took about 6 hours up, and about 7 back with a slight wrong turn, and more traffic.

There we saw quite how big chilli-cat really is, ventured out to a very large second hand book store and went to an aquarium so elmyra and baloonworld could see my shark face, so I could see sharks. While at the aquarium the largest of the hermit crabs decided to give us a personal performance of it moving home, and the seals took advantage of the murky algae blooming water to give people a demonstrating of effortless upside down swimming.

Much lovely food was had, some cooked by elmyra and some at places out. Though we all got a rather unfortunate taste of poor customer service at a pub near the book shop, as they proceeded to forget out mains, get our drink orders wrong three times, and then almost forget to give us the bill. Suitable application of elmyra in bad cop mode meant we eventually got to leave.

There was also watching of videos where we realised that Shaun Tan's art style is rather similar to Dave McKean's (through watching Mirror Mask and The Lost Thing), and discovering that apparently when making the Game of Thrones as a TV series all narrative must now be handled by explaining it to whores engaging in sexual acts...

Overall a lovely weekend, so thanks muchly to our hosts for our little northern holiday.