Nice people thread part 6 - thrice by twice as nice :)

misskool

Doozergirl wrote: »

Or economical car hire? I'd spend £62.50 to have the car for the weekend too. Would have to be a cheap deal with the price of diesel. With the moneysaving hat on, can you still get a free weekend test drive

Which bit of Birmingham are you going to? We need to know if it's worth coming at all!?

Is that splitting the journey? Would she like to come to London or Oxford or even Brighton? I'd rather do my dress shopping in Brighton! Buy her champagne and save the money yourself

No idea which bit of Brum, she lives in Northfield :eek: so definitely not there :rotfl:

She'd want the dress in a shop in Brum as the wedding will be there. And she's losing a lot of weight (properly) so will need to be nearby to adjustments.

I will be buying champagne I need it

PasturesNew

I have margarine because that's what I was brought up on. Mum'd buy hard 8oz packs of Stork margarine and it was used for everything: frying chips, frying eggs, sandwiches, baking, toast, roast potatoes, fat for Yorkshires .... we might have had butter at some early point (but I don't really recall) ... but I definitely know that once the butter shortage of the 70s started, we only ever had Stork ever after... and if anything is the taste you are used to, you don't tend to change... although I have moved onto soft margarines and the various "Can't Believe, Utterly, Somewhat Like, Really Like ...." styled margs in recent years.

I have bought a couple of packs of butter in recent years, to try to make some cake things... but then I realised that once I'd made them I had to eat them - so stopped buying butter for that because I can't make cakes because I have to eat them all ... and I'd be the size of a planet.

misskool

i'm such a wimp. i spent £60 as it was the quickest journey.

lostinrates

misskool wrote: »

i'm such a wimp. i spent £60 as it was the quickest journey.

Haha, rounding it down, classic sign of spend justification. Dh does that too.

PasturesNew

misskool wrote: »

i'm such a wimp. i spent £60 as it was the quickest journey.

(Other people's) weddings are VERY expensive..... all these things add up ... and add up ....

Nikkster

misskool wrote: »

i'm such a wimp. i spent £60 as it was the quickest journey.

There was really no chance of the megabus was there?

michaels

Piano fixed

Tired now and guest room with en-suite which is for the Spanish students not at all painted yet (which was this weekends plan )

In fact very little of 100 item list achieved. Need to start ordering stuff asap. I find mattresses very difficult, there is such a range of prices and discounts with no objective info and the same company seems to have different names for the same mattress at each different store so you can not compare prices.

misskool

Nikkster wrote: »

There was really no chance of the megabus was there?

I was tempted But the pain of 6 hours on a coach with no toilet was just too much

PasturesNew

misskool wrote: »

I was tempted But the pain of 6 hours on a coach with no toilet was just too much

I could easily hold that .... the trouble is the other 50 bugg4hs and their kids on the same bus who couldn't

GDB2222

An update from our son in Egypt, complaining about the lack of tourists!

"Hi Mum and Dad,

Just to give you a quick update on the last week...

Arrived in Cairo on Monday afternoon...it's actually only one hour ahead of the UK not two which was kind of weird but hey ho. Had to fend off an army of taxi drivers and walk half a mile between the terminals to get a bus to Central Cairo.

A Sudanese student who spoke English helped me out on the bus and then said he would help me find the hostel. When we started crossing the bridge across the Nile (ie going away from the hostel) I split with him. To be fair, I think he actually wasn't trying to scam me....he didn't try asking for money or anything like that. I think I just confused him - he thought I was staying at the Semiramis (a very expensive up-market five star hotel) which was across the Nile - rather than the Meramees hostel.

Anyway, eventually I got to the hostel where the guys working there did scam me...they told me the dorm was full and I had to stay in a single room. On the bright side I got air con. On the other hand the hostel was almost completely empty. To be fair, it only cost ten egyptian pounds more a night so I didn't really care (that's slightly more than a pound). Regardless, after two nights I moved to a six-bed dorm which was almost completely empty (one other person).

Cairo is....interesting. The sights are amazing - I had a great time walking to Islamic Cairo and then up to the Citadel, the Egyptian Museum is astounding and Coptic Cairo is also brilliant. The Pyramids are full of touts but are also truly amazing.

But the negative is people on almost every street corner trying to sell you stuff and the hassle is the worst I've ever experienced. People say Istanbul is bad but it's 1000 times worse than Istanbul. People just won't take no for an answer. It wasn't *as* bad when I went out on my own but I went out with an Aussie girl who looks Western a couple of times and it was just horrendous. Every ten seconds 'hello my friend, want to have tea'.

Even just for me, it was bad. It's a shame because it has so much to see. I was almost mugged in Tahrir Square and basically had to pay to get away...

I get the impression that if there were more tourists Cairo would be okay but because nobody is here, there's a similar amount of pests as there used to be but they're far more persistent. It's tiring...you have to be very alert the whole time to not get scammed. And that's not even mentioning the noise which is something else...they hoot the whole time - not some of the time - the whole time. Their roads have no markings and hardly and traffic lights so it's their method of communication.

Anyway, I took the train to Alexandria last night which took about three hours. There's also no travellers here but the difference is amazing. It's actually a sensible city, I've eaten two great meals, had an amazing mango juice and it's a lot cooler. I really like it here. Apparently the place I had lunch does the best fu'ul in the country...it was very good - I had a massive meal and it cost about one pound twenty (English money). I'm pretty sure I've spent more on drinks - and I haven't had a single alcoholic drink - than on food. That's the other interesting thing...all the bars in Alex seemed to be shut, presumably because there are no tourists and Egyptians don't really drink.

I'm going to the Siwa Oasis tonight which is a nine hour bus ride. I'm not sure how long I'll stay - I expect there'll also be no backpackers there but I don't think I can justify the overnight bus ride without staying four days. I'm not sure how much internet there'll be but I'll probably come back on Friday morning and then stick around in Alexandria for a couple of days more. If you want to contact me, text me although as I say, I'm unsure how much internet I will have.

I'm looking into Couchsurfing in a couple of weeks to try and actually meet some people. Obviously the lack of tourists has good points - lack of crowds at sites, ability to haggle over hostel rates - but it's still kind of surreal: I went to the Museum of Modern Art in Cairo which is a massive museum arranged over three floors and there were two other people there.

Anyhow...enough about me, hope you're well.

Speak soon!"