After the excitement (and eating) of our time in Cyrpus, life once again became a bit uneventful! But I did have something to look forward to, as we were going to have our Pink Pig team day out! But first – I had to actually get back to the UK.
I was planning to fly back to join the team day and to finally sort my visa, until we received a phone call that changed those plans (more on that later!) As it turned out, we would be leaving Poland for the foreseeable future, and so we bundled all of our stuff back into the van and headed back across Europe, but this time to the port in the Hook of Holland. The ferry from there goes to Harwich, saving us to 2 hour drive back up that we would otherwise have from Dover. Also – this ferry was going to be overnight.
With the price of your ticket, you also get your own cabin, with beds (bunk beds, which is extra fun actually!) and a private bathroom. We set sail around 10pm, and would arrive at Harwich 6am, meaning that you can actually get a solid night’s sleep and be ready to continue your journey nice and fresh in the morning.
I was wondering how it would work if someone’s alarm didn’t go off or something … but they had that covered! There’s a little speaker fitted in each cabin, and half an hour before docking, they play some soft birdsong, and then a song, which I cannot for the life of me remember, but it was really cute!
Anyway, onto the exciting bit – PPF team day out!!
If you’ve read any of my blogs, it’s probably no secret that I am a bit of a foodie – not a snobby one, I just love trying different things! So, I suggested that our first stop be a trip to Spitalfields Market and ‘Humble Crumble’! Check them out on the ‘gram (Disclaimer: we have no affiliation with them, their crumbles just tasted amazing and we think you’ll love them too!!) – you can choose your fruit base, usually apple and another seasonal option, your crumble (I think there’s a GF option, and sometimes seasonal ones too), and then a topping of warm of frozen custard, and extras such as merengue, chocolate sauce, nuts etc … Anyone who says they don’t want dessert for lunch cannot be a Piglet!
Next came the day’s main activity – seeing The Lion King! Honestly, this show does not disappoint! The costumes are incredible – I loved seeing how they had interpreted even the ways certain animals move and incorporated that. Of course, the singing is amazing, and overall you just cannot not come out of it just wishing you were on a safari in Africa!
Obviously no pics from the performance, but onto the show after the show – dinner! Look up Sarastro, and you’ll see what I mean! We sat in a booth that I guess felt like a box at the theatre, but there are also tables up on little balconies, and the whole place is decorated like old style theatres (you may also wish to Google the bathroom, I’ll say no more…)
And the day wasn’t over there! To finish off, we headed over to The Lost Alpaca for some cheeky cocktails before heading home.
So, why did we bring everything back from Poland…? Well, backstory for you here – I met my husband back in 2018 when we were both volunteering on a building project. That was before I was working for PPF and I was able to be on site 5 days a week a lot of the time. I loved learning how to use metal stud and plasterboard, among other skills, and we always knew that we’d love to continue with this kind of work, especially since we know there’s a lot of construction volunteering to be done abroad – win win!
But as we all know only too well, then came the pandemic blah blah blah, and here we are 3 years later, and we had received a call from the same project asking if we’d like to come back temporarily to help with some maintenance work that they had fallen behind on due to lockdowns etc. Of course, our immediate answer was yes, we’d love to, and I am fortunate enough to work for a company where I already knew that when I spoke to Cheryl about it, she would be super supportive.
So, you may have noticed if you emailed me in February, that Cheryl was very kindly allowing me to work reduced hours, so that we could work on site throughout the day.
We were joking that maybe they wanted us back to fix the bits we hadn’t done right the first time…! Well, it wasn’t exactly that, but considering that we had helped build the walls, and were not back filling the cracks in them, it did feel like a nice full circle!
Disclaimer; the walls weren’t cracked due to being badly built, but the buildings are full concrete pours, and so as the building settled over 2 years of so, it was inevitable that some cracks would appear and need re-doing.
I was super fun getting to work with some old friends from the first project, make some new ones, and of course, learn some new skills! I had never really done anything that was going to be the finished product, on display in someone’s home, before, so it was a little scary but in the end, I came to have a wonderful relationship with a tub of poly-filler and a roller!
Although we hope to be back on similar projects in the future, this one came to an end all too quickly …
Come back next week to see what we’ve decided to do next!
Check out our previous travel blogs here!
