Rachel's Next Adventure

Avengers | Infinity War The movie everybody has been waiting for — a movie which promised so much — was always going to disappoint, however, no matter what the disappointments, the high points of the movie are extremely high and extremely well done. This movie moves forward at a frantic pace, tearing from scene to scene and jumping between groups of hero’s so fast that sometimes it feels like they’re trying to cram too much in which could have easily moved over two or three movies. So at the end of the movie, we find The Avengers completely defeated. Mission failed. Thanos has succeeded… although did you expect anything else? If they beat Thanos here, how will there be an Avengers 4? There are some quite touching parts, humorous parts, plenty of action, and questions of morality. Thanos believes that he is doing something for the good of the universe in killing 1/2 of the living beings in it, at random. He even says that the success of his plan so far has backed him up,...

Just another quick Japan trip planning update, on Tuesday we booked our hotel for Osaka! We've booked the Granvia Osaka, we've previously stayed at the Granvia Hiroshima and the place was great, the best thing about the Granvia hotels is that they're located within the JR Stations, so early trains out are easy to catch and you have to get that extra little bit of sleep and late trains in bring to practically straight to your room so you're ready to crash. We've not actually booked our JR Passes yet! But, I received an email from Expedia offering the Granvia Osaka at a great rate with only one room left so I just snatched it up, it has free cancellation until a couple of days before the arrival date so i'm not worrying too much about that. It's sadly not Granvia floor, but it has a city view so it'll do! The other reason we've chosen the Granvia hotels for our travels this time is it means we wont need to worry about getting a luggag...

To follow on from our January Home Update  it's about time I update you with what else we've managed to do so far this year. Not going to lie, February, we didn't really get anything done. We spent most of the time going back and forth between Wilko's buying storage boxes, filling them up, labelling them and sticking them in the loft. Our back room is pretty much empty now except for a few wardrobes, POP figures and boxes and boxes of photography props. With the bad weather - aka the beast from the east - coming in March we spent the time stripping the wall paper ready for when we get the plastering all done.  We took a trip to Maplin before it closes down to pick up some USB sockets ready to have the living room sockets changed over, we still need some single sockets for the bedroom though because Maplin didn't have any. We took advantage of the snow problems - our bins couldn't be collected so the council announced that on the ne...

I've finally had a day off with a little bit of free time to get the planning started for our upcoming trip to Japan. It's in no way officially set at the minute, I think we're going to change the JR pass dates we've put in at the minute to try and move Hiroshima and Kyoto to week days. Today I finally managed to get our hotel booked for our final night - we'll be staying at the Hotel Sunny in Nippori again. We were going to book a hotel by the airport but taking the shuttle bus with three cases seemed a bit difficult so we decided just to stick with Hotel Sunny and the Keisei Skyliner, even if it does mean getting up ridiculously early in the morning. We're looking at booking the Granvia Hiroshima, Kyoto and Osaka for our JR days, last time we got the pass we just booked the Hiroshima hotel and travelled to/from there every day - because to be honest I hadn't realised there was a Granvia in Kyoto and Osaka station too! So I think it'd make...

We didn't manage to visit the Skytree until our second trip and don't really have any plans to return - even though the cornflakes topped with milk icecream they sold within the tower was absolutely amazing. We aim to visit Tokyo Tower this time round, which is another that has been on our list since our first trip but we've not managed to get to yet! I definitely felt bad for the locals here, as a visitor we got special fast entry tickets, the standard queue looked insane!

Another attraction close to our hotel, Sunshine Aquarium is located within Sunshine City shopping centre. The queue to get in here was so so so long! I don't think we'll go back here unless we have a day of really bad and rainy weather but it was an interesting way to spend a few hours in Ikebukuro.

The single most cutest place on the planet. Sanrio Puroland! We spent a day here on our second trip to Japan, even the train station - Tama-Center - is all decorated with Hello Kitty and her friends. The station's name reminds me of TamaTown, the old Tamagotchi website. I want to visit this place again, everything was super cute, right down to the themed foods. And the Halloween shows were adorable so i'd love to see some summer shows!