KLM

We've just come back from a week away in Australia, visiting Amy's Nana and Grandma as well as her parents. More of that in another post. I wanted first to have a rant about KLM, our chosen operator for our journey from Warsaw-Adelaide.

KLM's literature suggests that flying with them offers 'A unique experience'. I guess it's true, but not really a 'unique' experience I want to repeat for a while.

All of the stewardesses had serious attitude problems, they were curt and abrupt. This was comblined with small and hard seats and a laughable inflight 'entertainment' system.

Things started to go wrong just before the stewardess on the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur leg of our journey, woke me up by spilling a whole plastic cup of orange juice on me in the middle of the night.

At another point a stewardess told me that the vegetarian option was fish (hmmm)....After that things went from the sublime to the ridiculous, missing out the sublime altogether....

The inflight entertainment system was a joke. It consisted of overhead TV screens spread very sparingly throughout the plane. On our return journey the TV was at such an acute vertical angle above our heads that you had to seriously crick your neck to see anything on it. Not that we seemed to be missing much as it looked like it was airing mostly Disney classics and series 2 Simpson episodes.

The standards reminded me of a budget 'no-frills' flight - but on a long-haul flight and with none of the advantages of the cheap airline ticket.

Luckily we had a 7 month old baby to entertain us throughout the flight - I think everyone else enjoyed her singing as well (he he) Actually she managed the flight really well and probably coped better than either her Mum or Dad.

Australia Bound

This might be the last post on this blog for a couple of weeks as we're off to Australia for a short trip (short in time if not distance!) returning on the 27th.

Garry and Kath come to visit

Garry and Kath arrived from Newbury to visit us this weekend. It was really nice to see them, and the rain that greeted them on Friday gave way to lovely sunshine today on Monday. It was as if they had arrived in winter and left in summer!

We tripped round the Old Town and Lazienki Park and then paid a visit to Wilanow Palace, which was really beautiful in the sunshine. On Sunday the five of us went swimming and Garry and I spent a few exciting minutes whizzing down the slides in the pool while the girls (Amy, Kath and Audrey) relaxed in the spa!

Garry brought a toy chicken as a present for Audrey with him and the chucking noise it produced frightened the life out of her at first! The toy definitely grew on her during the next couple of days though and she ended up laughing when she heard the noise rather than greeting it with screams as had first happened. Garry left with the rather un-flattering nickname of 'The Chicken Man!'

Sweetcorn

Shop assistants at our local supermarket, 'Top Market', used to be about as welcoming towards us as group of Tibetans greeting an Olympic torch relay.

Fortunately a new supermarket, 'Super Sam' has opened right on our doorstep and the folks who work there are much more gracious towards us. As a result, we've switched our allegiance and custom to their store.

I also take the odd trip to Tesco (to remind me of home!) which is at one end of the metro line.

Whichever supermarket we choose though, one thing that always amazes me is the abundance of sweetcorn on the shelves! Every store seems to have mountains of the stuff. On a visit to Tesco yesterday I counted 14 different brands. That's brands - not tin sizes- if you include tin/jar variances you ended up with over 20 different options when choosing your corn!

It's not really a foodstuff that I've particularly searched out, nor come to think of it one that I can devise a wide range of uses for. If anyone does have a list of sweetcorn recipes then please send it to us as we'll have no problem getting hold of the ingredients!

Buskers in Metro Centrum

I took this short clip of some buskers yesterday in Metro Centrum. I thought they played a nice tune. Apologies for the dodgy camera work but I was holding a pushchair with my other hand!

Swimming and the Zoo

Amy had a day's leave on Friday, so the three of us went along to the Bumps and Babies group. Audrey was a bit tired and so wasn't in the greatest of form, but was grateful to have both parents there to dote on her every need!

On Friday afternoon we headed down to Wodny Park for another swim. We're going to try and make it a regular trip. Audrey had delighted in her first trip to the pool last week, and seemed to enjoy her second trip even more - she found she could lie back in the water and wet her head. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon, especially as the pool was pretty empty on a Friday.

Saturday was a sunny day and so we headed off on the no.4 tram to the zoo. We'd last visited the place in February, when the cold weather meant we were probably one of the few visitors to the zoo on that day, but the sunnier weather on this visit had brought scores more people out.

Warsaw zoo is huge - one of the largest in Europe and being springtime there were lots of baby animals on view - monkeys, zebras and kangaroos. We spent a long time in the aquarium where Audrey chased fish around their tank with her inquisitive fingers pressed to the glass.

We caught the tram home with Audrey asleep in her pushchair.

Sunday was spent drinking tea and wishing we could get Sunday newspapers!

Remarkable!

Audrey said her first word this morning. Well actually she said three. She woke up as usual around 6.15am, but instead of her usual gurgling she clearly said 'Sub-prime mortgages'. I'm not sure where she got it from, but after breakfast she said it a couple of times more - clear as a bell.

We also practiced with her crayons just before Amy left for work and she drew the picture below, which seems to show the FTSE 100 12 month index. As she's only 7 months old, I'm not sure how she knew the figures for the 5 months before she was born, but it seems a remarkable co-incidence I'm sure you'll agree....Do you think we should tell anyone?