Bedtime

I'm back! I'm a little concerned that I'm about to embark on a whinge, but here goes anyway. Back blipping.... When I left on Friday I was actually quite looking forward to back blipping. I naively assumed this would mean I would rush back on Sunday night and spend a happy few hours before bed scrutinising my awesome holiday pics for the cream of the crop to upload, along with some witty comments and voila... wait for the stars and comments to roll in. This has not been my experience to date. Now, don't get me wrong I've had a lovely break in many ways (not least that I lay in bed until the heady heights of 8.15 on Saturday) and this is absolutely and fully appreciated, but.... it rained the ENTIRE time we were in Berlin. Not just a smattering here, a smattering there, but all the blipping time. I took, what I thought were, very sensible low wedge leather boots to wear and every day my socks got so wet that they rubbed unbearably and made walking a serious issue. This was coupled with something like 40,000 people running a marathon in the city. Now, I love a good whinge but even I know I haven't got a leg to stand on (so to speak) when my husband and 2 mates are hobbling around having run 26.2 miles and in one case raised 3000 for a Childhood leukemia charity. I'm pretty chilled usually, but this, it turns out, makes me cranky (the lip biting not raising money for charity)
But of course my main gripe has to be the lighting. I have just taken rubbish photographs, the light is non existent and the rain made my lens all smudgy and of course I spent barely any time framing a shot because I was limping and wanting to get dry. So anyway, look back and see what I got (I'll upload them straight after this!).

We did actually have lots of fun. We laughed a lot and enjoyed each other's company. Here are some of the highlights: 1. arriving at the hotel at 10.00pm to find out they were expecting us at 11.00am and had given our room away - this turned out not to be true but just a mix up due to his (and possibly my) bad English.
2. Waking up in the morning to a text from a friend who said his car had been parked on the marathon route, so had been towed. 300 euro bill. This also turned out to be a fabrication, in fact he had been parked on the marathon route so the obliging Berlin Police Department had lifted his car, with the help of some sort of winch and relocated it to a safe and marathon-free street, about 2 blocks away. It made us far less respectful of parking restrictions during our stay, safe in the knowledge that if you park illegally you will simply be conveniently relocated to a nearby alternative, free of charge.
3. Getting so wet that we all went into H&M and bought matching girly black and white spotty umbrellas - see pics on flickr!
4. Lovely, clever husband completing marathon in 3 hours, 9 mins! He is now eligible to apply for the Boston elite race (yay!)
5. Leaving the hotel only 2.5 hours before my flight was due to depart and then having changed a couple of times, really to the point of no return, discovering that the main train I wanted had been cancelled. Arrived at airport 35 mins before flight due to depart.. just made it..phew.
6. Read 'Room' by Emma Donoghue, very disturbing, but compelling and an excellent read
7. Can't believe I haven't whinged about the delay on the outbound flight yet - suffice it to say - lengthy.

OK, I did whinge. I'm sorry. And worst of all I lazy blipped for today because I was so demoralised about being so behind.. Please accept my sincere apologies - however, this is quite a representive shot of bedtime in our house. No.1 is desperate for the stories and No.2 is desperate for the milk! If you want to see how grey and miserable everything was, check out the back blips or my flickr :-) Happier tomorrow...almost certainly...