Penhaven at play!

Tuesday 12 July 2022 We finally arrived at Heathrow Tuesday evening to be greeted by one very excited daughter ( but think mum just as excited), and her bemused partner, Sam. Wednesday we enjoyed an afternoon at Jade's school, meeting her colleagues and watching Jade teach, plus helping Jade take her afternoon sessions of tennis - a rather hot afternoon on asphalt BUT great to see Jade in action - a natural patient positive teacher! Thursday we had a wonderful catch up with Yumin,  and her boyfriend, they live in Singapore. Yumin, we first met at our place- she was a farmstay guest, three years ago. We clicked and have been friends ever since. She was in London for 2 days after attending a friend's wedding in France. We spent the day together at Spitalfields Market. Will see her again in Singapore.😍 We headed to our first house sitting position  for 8 days on Friday 15 July in a wee village called Sherrington, near Newport Pagnell/Milton Keynes (about 100km North West of Londo

 We took a day trip to Abu Dhabi, mainly to see Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque - the largest mosque in the country. Took just over ten years to build costing about NZ$880 million  to build, with over 3,000 workers. Materials used- marble stone, gold, semi precious crystals.and ceramics.. It can hold over 41,000 worshippers.   Also in Abu Dhabi there were interesting buildings, including the one where they jumped from a car from building to another in the movie Fast and Furious. We also saw a driverless car driving on the road! In the evening we went to The Dubai Fountain to watch the sound and light show. It was impressive.    

Desert Safari  We bravely booked an evening desert Safari, hoping to survive the heat. We were picked up from the hotel with four others in a Toyota Land Cruiser, four wheel drive. We drove for an hour inland to just short of the border with Oman. We went for the tourist camel ride. That's us - lost in the desert somewhere with the sun bearing down on us!  And yes, there were others hooning around on four wheel motorbikes!  Meanwhile, our driver had let his tyres down to 13psi, ready for the dune bashing! As far as he was concerned, the more sand he could throw up, the better.  I did try to add a video but was unsuccessful, so you just get a picture of the desert. I will post it later if I learn how to do it. But we did get a beautiful photo of us jumping in the sunset:  We then went to a 'camp' where we were treated to a concert of belly dancer, fire dancer, spinning around man doing an Egyptian dance and at a side show, Marie got a henna tattoo.

Dubai (9 to 12 July 2022) Long 14 hour flight to Dubai via 3 hour flight to Sydney. Arrived in Dubai at 6am in the morning and did our best to stay awake all day by doing a bus tour of the city to gather our bearings. Oh my gosh, this city is huge, both spread outwards and upwards - and out to sea! Not that they need to go out to sea, as there is a sea of desert inland, but because they can!! The buildings seem to defy gravity. You get the feeling that a kid has made a structure out of Lego and then their dad (or mum!!) has made that shape into a full sized multistory building! And let's just put some mirrors on the outside, because we can! Oh, make sure it is taller than the neighbours! Very few buildings do not have a twist or a strange angle or a curve - no building wants to be plain! Sorry just learning how to operate and  format blog! We will get better!!  

 Hi! We won't be posting regularly so if want notification of when we have a new post up on our blog you will need to become a "follower" To do this you need to:- Go to the blog using link we sent you.  On this page you will see a back arrow in the  top left hand corner by the words saying "Penhaven at play!" This will take you to our homepage.  Next, push the three horizontal bars on the top left hand corner, to take you to "Followers". Click on "Follow" and then on the next page click on "Follow" again.  All done, now you will hopefully receive a notification when we put up a new post