Lancing, England - Nana!

This post is late in the making, but as of post time, the countries between Laos and Amsterdam have already been visted: Laos, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, (back to) Thailand, India, and so the story picks up on the plane from New Delhi. We are now in Amsterdam.. will be up to realtime, and fill in the missing countries asap...

Having finally made it aboard a flight to London, we sat back and played with the new planes media screens in front of us. The plane had an index of 50 odd movies that you could look thru and watch, pause, ff and rewind as you pleased!. Very cool, and lots of new releases: The Simpsons movie, Transformers, Ratatoullie. Apparently the plane was only a few weeks old, so it was all new and shiny. Very nice.

As we were getting closer to London, Toolman mentioned to the indian guy he was sitting next that we were going to Lancing, and he offered us a lift from the airport out to Crawley, which is quite close. Saved us lots on public transport, as well as time. We have been up for about 30 hours, so navigating unknown public transport can be hard work. It was also incredibly cold, so it was nice to be able to sit in a nice warm car with the heater going.

So thank you Gerdeep from Gatwick airport Engineering division, your lift was very useful :)

After arriving late to nana Wins house, we slept in the next day to recover, and emerged around time for the sunset - gosh its early in London! It starts getting dark around 4.30pm, even earlier some days.



We managed to catch this sunset, which was beautiful. I think Nana got a picture on her camera too. We also headed down to the local supermarket to get some groceries...



...only to find that they sell V! Couldn't be found anywhere in Asia that we saw, but we have been missing it. Just look at Princess' excitement!

We also spent some time with Catherine and Keith, who took us out shopping down a high street with lots of charity shops. We managed to score some cheap clothing, and we needed it because it is soo cold here! We both got winter coats made in Vietnam, but posted them to Marksy in London, so we haven't picked them up yet! The shopping was really useful (Thanks). We might have frozen otherwise!

Nana asked us to get down the decorations from the attic and decorate the lounge, so we set to work preparing and decorating the tree and walls. Streamers were hung, lights were strung and the tree was tinseled, baubled and set!



And here is Toolman and Nana surveying the result!



The whole family had an (early) xmas dinner feast, including roast, chops, pies, veges lots of roast potatoes (for Toolman and Keith) and we rounded it off with a flaming xmas pudding and custard.... mmmm!



We passed around a couple of presents, and took the obligatory group photo: say cheese everyone!



Catherine and Keith also brought over a computer so that we could watch the pictures and videos we have taken on holiday so far. We spent lots of time looking at the pictures available on the blog (and flickr), and other videos yet to be put online.

The 5 days we spent in Lancing were really welcome after the madness of India. The simple joys like making your own food exactly how you want, and not having to move rooms is a welcome change! It was also really nice to spend time with Toolman's Nana, as well as getting time to spend with Catherine and Keith.