THE ADVENTURES OF ELLIE AND BARRY
(AND HENNING THE TROLL)

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Welcome to the final blog of the holiday! Thank you for coming on this journey with us, if you got this far! I write this from the comfort of my bed in Norwich, very jet-lagged, so please excuse anything nonsensical. The main reason for writing these is that I forget what I did yesterday on a normal day, so I can look back at these when I want to reminisce! It was our final day at Disney today and we were determined to make the most of it

This blog is brought to you by Barry Another early start, another Disneyland day! We were settled in to our regular theme park routine by this point, rising with the sun and rousing ourselves with a cup of tea and some of 7/11’s finest cereal. After completing 50% of our intended attractions on Monday our plan for the morning was to tackle things on the remaining ‘left side’ of the park. In comparison to the previous day it was a beautiful Southern California morning and we b

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. We came to California to escape the rain, which naturally means we woke up this morning to a downpour. We’d known this was coming so I’d purchased some rain ponchos yesterday (kindly modelled by Barry on day seven whilst escaping Tiana’s Bayou Adventure). There was no getting around it, we had theme park tickets and we were going to get the most out of them, dang it! We ventured out into the rain. The first stop on our agenda today was Di

‘Nothing can stop us now, I’ll tell you how we’re going to make it happen’ This blog is brought to you by Barry. There’s very few reasons that I’d be happy to be up and awake at 6:15am. Thankfully a day at Disneyland is one of them, so after a shower, an energising cup of tea and bowl of cereal we were bouncing out of the Alpine Inn with a spring in our collective steps. The California location sits on a much smaller site in comparison to the other Disney resorts around the w

“Night blooming Jasmine” This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Folks, I’m sorry to say that our time in Los Angeles has come to an end and we must go Southward. We’ve had the most excellent week here and have seen and achieved so much! My favourite is still the Hollywood sign hike and also, obviously, seeing Brendan Fraser holding a tiny dog. Apologies that we don’t have photo evidence of this, but we were trying to be respectful and were also pretty starstruck! Today we move

Staying out late, X’s on hands. Since when did you like punk rock bands? This blog is brought to you by Barry. In comparison to previous days, the agenda I’d set for poor Ellie’s legs today was far less challenging, almost verging on ‘relaxing’. After whipping up our now traditional breakfast of Trader Joe’s Pumpkin-Os (with added fruit) and a banging cup of tea, we were out of the door at 9am sharp for my longest drive of the holiday so far. The six point turn required to ge

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Hello there, fellow travellers! Welcome to another day in sunny Los Angeles. Today was to be a day of two halves and a quite cultural one too, but first I had to drag my weary bones and muscles out of bed, which sounds easier than it was after the last two days of marching about. After a quick shower and breakfast, we were back out for a short drive down to La Brea Tar Pits. You may have seen the iconic image of the woolly mammoths stuck

This blog is brought to you by Barry. Yesterday featured early morning mountain climbs, heat, jet lag and challenging drives around twisty-turny streets in LA traffic. With all that taken into account, I’m sure it was little comfort to Ellie’s legs to know that when planning this trip, even I looked at our schedule for today and thought ‘this could be a bit ambitious’. Nevertheless, we were taking advantage of the fact that the massive shift in time zones had temporarily turn

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Thanks to a healthy dose of jet lag, we rose bright and early at 05:30 on the first day of this year’s big Barry and Ellie getaway. We started the day with a squidgy apple cinnamon roll and our favourite tea, purchased from Trader Joe’s yesterday. We packed a bag with sandwiches and snacks and headed out for our first full day. The plan today is as follows: Make Ellie hike to the Hollywood sign (an adventure I did not feel I was capable o

Well I’m going out west where I belong… This blog is brought to you by Barry. As the discordant chorus of phone alarms woke me from my slumber in the bland but comfortable surroundings of Premier Inn Terminal 4, I stirred with the knowledge that there would be many hours and many, many miles until I would next be in bed. And yet, an early start for a holiday is better than a regular start for anything else, so with that mantra in our heads we were washed, dressed and on our w

This blog is brought to you by Barry. Some days writing these blogs are easier than others. In the case of the last entry I published, I couldn’t wait to get the words out as it would be a chance to describe the day I’d asked Ellie to marry me. Unsurprisingly for the happiest day of my life, I couldn’t wait to relive it for anyone that cared to read. Other days tend to be a bit more difficult to put together but it’s still a chance for me to try and walk others through our ex

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. I never have had a gift for words like Barry has, and I am still pretty much lost for words, but I have never been so happy in my entire little life. I don’t think I could ever have imagined finding the perfect partner in life and yet there he was yesterday, on one knee in front of me, asking me to marry him on the exact spot I had secretly hoped he would! Naturally, I became a water fountain immediately but managed to choke out an emotio

This blog is brought to you by Barry. The history of cinema contains countless landmarks from visionary auteurs, advances in special effects and storytelling that have captivated audiences worldwide and provided scholars with material to be analysed and scrutinised for generations to come. And of course the pinnacle of these is the 1998 Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, where in the words of Joey Tribbiani, they ‘get mail and stuff’. While this introduction

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Despite a wonderfully jam-packed day yesterday and quite a late night, New York waits for no-one. We were up and about bright and early again this morning, munching on strawberry and rhubarb hand pies and sipping the best tea there is. Today was going to be another scorcher and we had a lot to see! Thank goodness for expensive trainers and ibuprofen gel, that’s what I say. We hopped straight on the Subway outside the hotel and headed down

This blog is brought to you by Barry. “How you doing?” The morning found us in good spirits and feeling well-rested despite the length and duration of our travels yesterday. It was a relatively relaxed start with our first appointment not scheduled until 10am, so we had time for a leisurely breakfast of pastries and tea courtesy of our visit to Trader Joe’s yesterday. If anyone fancies opening a Trader Joe’s franchise in the UK then consider me first in line. And so with a sp

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. START SPREADING THE NEWS!!! We’re leaving today - for New York City! That’s right, dear readers, our employers have let us out again for more escapades and adventures. It’s been a little while since we last saw you in Cologne, so let’s catch up; In May, I climbed Mount Snowdon with some much loved friends - all of us had very little experience and most of us wouldn’t do anything similar again. I thought about blogging about it, but Barry