During our week in London, we stayed at ‘The Leonard Hotel’. It’s a boutique hotel located in Marble Arch, near major department stores and restaurants, within easy walking distance to Oxford Street, Mayfair and Park Lane. It was the perfect location for our time in the awesome city that is London and we made full use of the bar for a nightcap after our night out in the West End seeing the sensational ‘Jersey Boys’ at the Trafalgar Theatre.
Hamley’s is the world’s biggest and oldest toy store. Set over 7 floors, with more than 50,000 lines of toys on sale. It receives around five million visitors each year. Founded in 1760, it moved to its current site on Regent Street in London’s West End in 1881. There are no photos of Louise at Hamley’s because she was too busy chasing her excited children around the 7 floors.
Our first night in London, we had dinner at the original (and the best) Hard Rock Café. It’s located on Old Park Lane and is the site where it all started back in 1971. Two American guys, Peter Morton and Isaac Tigret, who lived in London decided to open an authentic USA style burger restaurant. It became popular with musicians as a hang out and the occasional live performance. In 1979, Eric Clapton donated one of his guitars, so it could be hung over his favourite seating spot within the restaurant. The story goes that Pete Townsend (The WHO) was incensed that Clapton had a guitar hanging up, so he went home and came back with one of his guitars, demanding it be hung over the bar also. According to Townsend he was so drunk that he accidentally donated his most treasured and favourite guitar, his black Les Paul. Next thing, Debbie Harry donated her signed sweatshirt and this is how the Hard Rock Café music memorabilia collection started. It wasn’t until 1982 that the first Hard Rock opened in the USA, in Los Angeles. The Hard Rock Café chain now houses the greatest collection of Rock Music Memorabilia with more than 82,000 pieces across the globe. A trip to the Hard Rock Café is a trip to a museum with food and the original one at Old Park Lane also has ‘The Vaults’ across the road. This is the only Hard Rock Café Museum in the world with extra hidden treasures from Aerosmith, KISS, Madonna, Lennon, Elton, Bowie and many others.
We’ve just returned from an amazing week up in London. We love London. It is without doubt one of the greatest cities in the world. It is simply impossible to see and do everything in a week. The iconic sights, the shopping, the Rock n’ Roll landmarks, it’s overwhelming – in a good way. I hope that we managed to at least give the kids an introduction to this magnificent city. I’m way behind on the Blogs, so please standby over the next day or 2 as I play catch up.
Sally & Adam welcomed everyone to their home for the official come and meet baby Alfie party. It was a fantastic day and so great to catch up with family.
Thanks to Sally, we had the opportunity to experience 1,000 years of history at this incredible castle, situated in magnificent grounds overlooking the River Arun in West Sussex. Built at the end of the 11th century by Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Arundel. Our timing was perfect (once again thanks to Sal) to be here for the International Medieval Jousting Tournament. I’m struggling to express in words just how awesome this experience was!
As we were planning our trek back ‘home’ from Liverpool to Emsworth, Travers mentioned that Wrexham was on the way home. Albeit via a slight deviation through Wales. Our question was: “Why”? Those who are familiar with the sports documentary series Welcome to Wrexham will of course know the answer. Wrexham is a Welsh professional association football club based in the Racecourse Ground in Wrexham, North East Wales. The documentary series is based on Hollywood actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds attempts to revive the third-oldest professional association football team in the world. Founded in 1864, the club had been mismanaged to the point of near collapse. McElhenney & Reynolds had no known experience in managing a sports team, but with Hollywood money, a love of sport and a desire to bring positive change to the local Wrexham community, the pair purchased Wrexham AFC via a £2 million takeover. The local pub ‘The Turf’ is the spiritual home and gathering place for Wrexham’s long suffering, die-hard supporters. The 2021 buyout catapulted the club to global attention, and Wrexham’s fairytale story reached a crucial step in the final weeks of the 2022/23 season as they sealed promotion back into the English Football League (EFL). Promotion to the English Football League will unlock millions of dollars in funding, as well as higher TV revenues. The fairytale continues…
Josh was very interested in visiting a major stadium on our global trek. He didn’t mind when or where, but when I mentioned that we were heading to Liverpool, his eyes lit up:”Anfield”. As Port supporters, I feel that we do have a ‘spiritual’ connection to Anfield. Since 2014, and our move back to Adelaide Oval, Port Adelaide has used the INXS song “Never Tear Us Apart” as our unofficial anthem. The song is a reference to the various and unique difficulties our club faced when trying to enter the AFL, primarily in regard to the forced separation by the spiteful and malicious SANFL from our AFL operations. Port Adelaide’s use of the song stemmed from a trip the club took to Anfield in November 2012 while in England to play an AFL exhibition match. Seeing the Anfield crowd’s rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, the idea of an anthem for Port games at Adelaide Oval was raised; various songs were suggested, but “Never Tear Us Apart” was ‘organically’ accepted by the supporters, as it resonated with the Power’s history. Both Port Adelaide and Liverpool are blue collar, working class, port cities. The clubs share a similar ethos in terms of success, and a philosophy built on existing to win. Anfield stadium is incredible and located in a residential area, surrounded by beautiful parklands. Please enjoy these photos of our visit to Anfield and also interesting to note that every Liverpudlian I met, agreed with me on the matter of the SANFL being a shit outfit.
It’s hard to comprehend just how omnipotent the Beatles are in Liverpool, until you are here. The Beatles presence within their hometown, with tours, statues, bars, restaurants and museums catering to the thousands of fans who visit the city from all over the world is simply overwhelming. However, it wasn’t until the death of John Lennon in December 1980 that any semblance of Beatles tourism began to take root in Liverpool. Beatles tourism is now the key component of the new Liverpool economy, but that has not always been the case. During the 1960s and 70s, many residents and community leaders felt that the Beatles had abandoned the city after they conquered England, America and the rest of the world, and were thus not worthy of remembrance or accolades. The city even demolished the original Cavern Club! An injustice to the boys, when we consider how they connected themselves to Liverpool and were arguably the first rock band to make their local origins a part of their commercial success. They wrote nostalgic songs about their city, and emphasized their Liverpool origins and identity in media interviews, and their local ‘Liverpudlian’ dialect was a feature of their singing style as well as their speech. We did the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, we spent 2 nights in the Cavern Club, we did the ‘Beatles Story’. The Beatles relationship with Liverpool and the importance of Liverpool’s Beatles heritage for the city, simply can’t be understated and the real fifth Beatle is the city of Liverpool. Bailey summed it up perfectly as we were departing: “I feel like I’ve just spent 48 hours in an alternate Beatles Universe”. She was not wrong, but oh what a magical musical universe to be immersed in.
World travel is not just about visiting Queens, Castles, historic pubs & tourist monuments. There is a practical side as well. Particularly when you are living in one place for a length of time. The weekly shop becomes a necessary part of the experience. Tesco Extra shops are large hypermarkets that stock all of Tesco’s grocery products, but also offer an in-store travel money bureau, you can refuel your car, pick up your prescription from the pharmacy, buy clothes, and most importantly, you can stock up on the essentials – Fosters and ice cream. This is our local one in Havant. From the look on Blake’s face, I doubt this will continue to be a shared family experience when we return to Adelaide.
The Keeler's 