sydney harbour

That's why so many people want to live there I suppose!

Classy ozzy furniture

Thought this was funny, just the thing for above the fireplace.

Living the dream

Fellow traveller and millionaire philanthropist Rob Fell surveys his new yacht at St Tropez harbour.

If anyone else has any travel pictures send them over and I'll post them up.

Message from our sponsor: shop at www.hotbunk.com for all your travel needs!

potential drink driver?

Here's Pin in Fiji, trying to endear herself to the locals with a new hat.

I didn't notice at the time but look at the registration of the van behind.

the caves

There are loads of caves around NZ and we went down into the cave system at Waitomo. Some of it has to be done in a boat as a lot of it is flooded. The highlight is probably seeing the gloworms.

They look nice in the dark but in the light you can see the lights are actually created by long strings of snot that are illuminated by a bright light to help the worms catch flies.

Interesting fact: gloworms have no anus. The light they create helps burn up the food they eat. Ironically, once they come out of the cacoon and become flies, they have an anus, but unfortunatly no mouth - so they only live a couple of days.

cats and dogs

At the tiger sanctuary in Thailand.

If the mother dies they use another animal as a substitute mother, usually a dog or bizarely a pig.

It's a wonder they don't tear each other to pieces but as the sign said "see how animal kingdom live together in harmony".

Happy Birthday Pinar!

28 today.

Here she is with the world's biggest bear!

signs

South East Asia is full of strange signs, especuially if they've been translated into English.

One of the funniest ones I saw was a badly-worded warning against falling intop the squating toilets at Bangkok airport toilet, but I wont go there.

These ones were odd enough. No spitting (fair enough) but no sitting - the sign was on a seat.
The other one is for a pig show, of which I also have a video. I actually did see 'pig calculate in 5 language'....and it was very good....but very surreal!

Home

10 hours in the air and 3 more by train.

Even though it's over, I'll try and put a few more of the pictures we couldn't upload while we were away.

just want to be a teddy bear

This is a shop inside ceasars palace that sells cuddly toys. Only problem is, they're just about full size!

They look pretty good but I'm not sure who would want or need a full size wolly mamoth or polar bear - how would you even get it home?

view from our hotel window

Shark Reef

I said in a previous post how big the casinos are. Well, Mandalay Bay is one of the newer ones and is even bigger. As well as all the other stuff I mentioned this one also has a conference centre and a massive reef built inside.

It's weird seeing sharks in a tank full stop, but when they're in the middle of a casino it's even crazier.

We've been to a few shark aquariums on this trip but none had the real big whoppers that this place had. ome of them were bigger than 10 feet apparently.

The animal theme seems to be catching on as the Mirage has a dolphin show (inside) MGM has a glass case with lions in (on the gaming floor) while another which I can remember the name in has those white tigers that ate siegfried or Roy (I can't remember which).

The heat is on

All the talk here at the moment is about the heatwave currently hitting Nevada and Arizona.

Now, it's normally pretty hot here anyway as it's part of the desert but for the last week it's not dipped lower than 104 degrees (40 C).

Yesterday it hit 111 degrees (43 degrees C) and I can honestly say it was the hottest I've ever been. You could literally only walk a few yards and the mteal rims on my sunglasses got so hot that they started burning into my skin and became to warm t0 even touch.

I had a book (inside a bag) but it was so hot that the plastic spine that keeps the pages in completely melted. It's not predicted to get any colder for at least 2 more weeks and meanwhile the roads are melting and water running out.

They've had to shut down the casino waterfalls as you can see from the picture.

Somehow, despite all this, I've caught a cold! The only way we can explain it is the ice-cold air condiioning they use.

1st official photo

We just picked them up but they are so big that I can fit one on the blog.

We also got a custom-made DVD which we've just watched and takes some beating, especially the intorduction they made for us.

"bizim buyuk gun cok mutlu olduk. cok mersi hepsiniz. Merhaba shenay ver hipisin kibrisli" - is that right? bilmem bilmem.

Pinar's Vegas

This is a black and white version of the photo's...

Just to say we had great day/night... I got pretty emotional during the ceremony, and cried.. couldnt even say them properly haha but got them out after a little while...

Anyway, cant believe we're married now... still feel all excited and happy... we extended the trip a couple of days more so we could have a little honeymoon..

Thanks for all the texts from everyone, and cant wait to see you all...

Mr & Mrs

Pinar ouside the chapel in the castle and both of us standing next to the moat.

Pinar is wearing her wedding dress, bought from Macey's, while I'm sporting the classic scaramanga/Roger Moore-era 007 safari suit, complete with flower and silk in the top pocket.

Wedding dinner

Here we are having our wedding dinner. Very nice, but VERY expensive...still at least we didn't have to cater for many people!

Thanks to the Rev. Richard Lee Conrad, who did the honours by the powers vested in him, not by God or the magistrates but by the Nevada gaming commission. Sweet.

By way of a footnote, americans in vegas love any excuse, in fact they postively look for one, to put both arms in the air and shout 'woooooooo'. It's hilarious and intensely annoying in equal measure, but they do it for anything....a win on the tables, a good sports result or just cause they feel like it.

As we got married some of the americans around us started wooooing over us, as did a few who saw us standing at the bar or going into the resteraunt. It's a strange way to congratualte us but we'll take it. They were all surprisingly nice and plesant about it.

PS. At one of the tables I heard a guy, who I presume had won some money shouting: "woooooo, woooooooo alright, alright.....that's right, hardball, hardball baby, I told you, I told you baby, that's right woooooooo...wooooooo god dammit....beers up, beers to the sky wooooooo". He was shouting that just about as loud as you could possibly shout it so I'm not sure if he was talking about our wedding or if he had won a dollar at cards.

Annoyingly Pinar has started doing it now at the slightest prompting. I always try to get them started off by doing one little wooo and getting everyone else to start going crazy.

Pinar, with her hair and make up done

Order of the day

1. First we had the ceremony and the legal formalities.

2. Back to the room for champaigne.

3. Pinar had a go in the casino....even on her wedding day?!

4. Had a meal at the camelot restaurant.

5. Went over to Luxor for some drinks.

6. Went to to beautiful Mandalay Bay hotel to see a show and do some dancing.

PS. You're probably not reading this but thanks to all the americans, canadians and brits who congratulated us and bought all our drinks without even knowing us....espacially Russ and Victoria from British Columbia, Canada.

Honeymoon in vegas

Just like that terrible movie starring Sarah jessica Parker and nick cage we're now having 'a honeymoon in vegas'.

As you can see, here I am celebrating in my suit, elvis glasses (with sideburns), cigar and bottle of bubbly right after the legal ceremony. Pinar wouldn't let me wear it during the actual gig.

Thanks for everybodies messages of support and we're both very happy.

As so many of you have got in touch I thought I better answer some of your questions in one go here, rather than send individual texts.

So here's the answers:

Yes, we do have 'official' pictures but they're not ready yet.

No I wasn't really dressed as Elvis, Tommy Lee or any of that....it was a JOKE.

Yes, you can see the wedding, as they made us a DVD which you can all watch, copy etc.

No it wasn't a drive-thru chapel. The hotel has it's own little church called the Canterbury chapel.

No we're not mad or crazy as most of you seemed to suggest via text. This isn't something we take lightly or just fell into overnight. Because of our situation, we couldn't have a traditional English or cypriot wedding anyway, so this had actually been at the back of our minds for a while.

Because of the religious stuff it only left the option of a registry office wedding and (with no disrespect to people who do that) it just wasn't for us and we wanted something a bit more special to us.

We're really sorry that you all couldn't share our day, particulalrly both sets of our parents who we missed dreadfully on the day, but we know you were there in spirit especially when things got a bit emotoional immediatly after the ceremony.

Anyway,we just couldn't see any other way of doing this and all went well and we had a great, fantastic day.

You can see the hotel, casino and wedding chapel here:

http://www.excalibur.com/weddings/

(PS. look at the website and the medievil theme wedding. I suggested thos one to wind her up and she was ACTUALLY CONSIDERING IT!!)