~ ANNE! ~

Monday... blah. Already this morning we ran out of milk and I forgot my key card to get into work. Both petty annoyances, but they're making me wonder what the rest of the day will look like.

In other news - I get to go home in a week!!!! Quite excited, in case you couldn't tell. Sadly I can't go for the full two weeks as I only get 9.5 days leave from work - so I will leave Tuesday the 14th and return Saturday the 25th. The cost is going to be tremendous but I am really, really happy to be getting home for a few days.

I had a pretty good weekend. Brandon and I took a trip doon south to the north of England to check out Newcastle-upon-Tyne and see Hadrian's Wall. It's only about an hour and a half by train and not very expensive to get there. It was raining in Newcastle but we had a wander around to look at the famous bridges and see what the city was like. To be honest, it's not much to see by day. Newcastle is very much a nightlife city and I will have to go down there sometime and sample the famous "party atmosphere". Although we did get a pretty good sample on the bus, as there was a hen party sitting down the aisle from us. They ranged in age from 25 - about 60 (what a strange country - people bringing their grandmas to their hen nights!) and were eating strawberries and drinking champagne on the train at 9 am. They were also wearing badges that said "Sex Kitten" and "Hot Stuff" and blowing noisemakers all the way down to Newcastle. (Including the 60-year-old).

There are buses that go to Hadrian's Wall from Newcastle, but they only run every few hours. So instead we took the train to Hexham and caught the bus from there. Hexham was a lovely little place - a cathedral town, built around a priory. It was very medieval in layout and a pretty charming place.

Somewhat to my disappointment, we didn't get to see the most intact bit of the wall. We went out to Chester, an almost complete Roman fort, instead. The Wall was built such that every Roman mile there was a fort, with towers between the forts. So I did get to see the actual Wall, since it butted right up to the fort. However, it was pretty much in ruins and only the foundations were really visible. Sadly, because of the timing, it wasn't really possible to go see any other bits of the Wall, but now that I have got all the schedules I am hoping to go down for a weekend sometime and stay at the hostel (weather, time and money permitting).