Sandworm Approaching

House of Lord's

2011-07-30T22:28:00.003+01:00

This afternoon the sun was out and my schedule was clear, so I decided to fulfil a childhood dream and visit Lord's, the home of cricket. Alas, the dream was not quite achieved as I was merely spectating and not in the middle in a black cap, but it was a lovely day nonetheless.

It was day two of the Middlesex v Derbyshire match in Division 2 of the County Championship. The game itself was going through a fairly sedate patch, as my team Middlesex spent all day compiling a large first innings lead, making the most of the conditions against a sun-sapped Derbyshire attack. Our opening bat Sam Robson made 94 for the third time this season, while up-and-comer Dawid Malan hit a career best 143. With the pitch starting to wear we are well placed for a win, which would put us on course for promotion.

Unfortuantely, Jo is away at the moment with our camera, so I had to make do with a couple of snaps on my phone. Here is the view across the ground to the famous old pavillion.

Merry very belated Christmas Post

2011-06-26T01:05:00.008+01:00

Okay, so we are literally six months from Christmas and six months to the next one. Oops. But since I'm playing a bit of catch up with the blog I thought I'd share some photos of our first Christmas both together and in the depths of winter - where at least having a giant roast makes a bit more sense than it does in New Zealand.

Firstly, on Christmas Eve I left work slightly early to go and lose my pavlova virginity. Something about a pav that always frightened me. Add to the fact I've been long regaled with stories about the time my Mum tried to impress my Dad's mum making one and failing miserably.I started with lots of eggs. A tip I learnt from lemon meringue pie, chilled eggs are a lot easier to seperate.Egg whites to soft peaks and the rest of the ingredients are introduced.Glossy and stiff means it's ready to be slow cooked in the oven.Nearly two hours later, my first pavlova ever is done.

I was then faced with what to do with the unused egg yolks and so made lemon tarts along the lemon meringue pie recipe with shortcrust pastry and some artistic flair.I thought they were pretty impressive and delicious I might add.It was then off to bed so I could get up bright and early to prepare our massive leg of lamb. Oren was still recovering from a cold so I let him sleep in while doing strange looking things with herbs.Oren finally arose so we could open presents from under our awesome tree. I skyped with my parents, in particular to point out to my own mother that she did not know my actual name.
Then it was lunch time!

All and all, it was a fairly successful day and with our central heating it was easy to ignore it was about -1 degrees outside all day. I still prefer Christmas in summer, being forced to take leave in the middle of winter and use your own heating doesn't seem fair.

--

In other catch up news - Oren has moved to a new HMV store to work at, which coincidently is even closer to our flat that his previous one...and that was only a twenty minute walk at most. My work's been a bit better too and I'm heading to Milan, Italy next week for a business trip. It's also a year this weekend since we moved into our wee Kiwi flat which now has a token Australian Kim who is lovely.

Now if we could only decide what to do with our summer holidays before it's suddenly winter again.

Beers and Belgium

2011-06-25T23:40:00.005+01:00

So, months ago we hopped on the Eurostar and went to Belgium. A last minute decision after we had to cancel our flights to Japan due to the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

We left on the Friday. The Eurostar gets you into the Gare-du-Bruxelles Midi if you're French and Brussel Zuid if you're Dutch. First things first, we went straight to a living beer museum for Cantillon, a family brewery that specialise in Lambic beers which are then made into Gueuze. They are a very different beer, very sour and very interesting. I'd highly reccommend it, you pay all of 6 euros and get to wander around a historical brewery. I did wonder at times what NZ health and safely laws would think of all this but I loved it and we got to try three different beers at the end.

It was about a 15 minute walk into the centre of Brussels called Grote Markt. There you are surrounded by chocolate shops, beer shops and of course restaurants selling Moules Frites.

Of course, we had to immerse ourselves straight into the culture. For €12 or so we ended up with a 3 course meal including a free beer and a waffle to finish. Mmm. We spent the afternoon drinking a few beers in Delirum, a beer cafe with the world record for stocking the most beers (and you thought the Malthouse menu was overwhelming) before wandering around slightly tipsy pretending to buy chocolate and getting free samples. We then walked it off by heading up to the European Union part of town where our funky hotel was. We had more chips for dinner, the chips in Belgium are definitely as good as you hear.

In the morning we headed back into the city and hopped on a train to Bruges/Brugge. I had decided to spend two nights here as everyone says it's much nicer than Brussels. We went to the chocolate museum before trying to find Du Garre, a beer place I had read about on the internet beforehand. I'm glad I did as this was my favourite place on the whole trip. It was packed being a Saturday and we were sat on two seats by the window which acted as our table. We got free cheese with every beer we ordered which was especially excellent for me since Oren won't eat it. We drunk a lot of beer. The house beer is definitely worth it.

Oren in the small entrance to the Du Garre alley. Bruges is just lovely to wander around and we took a tipsy boatride on the canals which was absolutely lovely.

Walking by the canals lit up at night was very romantic. They call it a mini Venice afterall. There was more waffles to be had too.
In the morning we had a healthy breakfast of Milka mallowpuffs! Milka is an awesome alpine chocolate which is creamy like NZ chocolate.
After that breakfast of champions, we followed it up with a tour of Bruges only remaining brewery Du Halve Maan. It's obviously never too early for beer and I loved their beer that was made only for the US market.

I loved in Bruges that there was the constant sound of horse hooves clopping on the cobblestones. Oren never wants to go on the horseys though. :( Our second day was again spent with a lot of time in Du Garre enjoying lots of beers. What? It's Belgium.
Next morning, we hopped on another train to Antwerp. Unfortunately I should have read that literally most things are closed on a Monday! The station itself on arrival was impressive.
And Antwerp has the most amazing architecture.
We walked down to the river, posed with a castle and then crossed the river through a pedestrian tunnel that is 572 metres long. The thing I loved most about it was that they had the original wooden escalators. I never thought in my life that I would see ones in action and I was mighty impressed. Too bad about all the schoolchildren on the way through that were amplified 100x by the small space.
We followed the night up with some Belgian Italian. Mmm. We had eaten Indian the first night in Bruges and Chinese the second haha.
It was a train back to Brussels for another day on the Tuesday before a 7pm train back to London. We bought chocolates this time, some chocolate ducks for me and some cinnamon and cocoa truffles for the both of us. We headed back to Delirium to add to our beer count (I believe at the end it was 22 different beers we tried), first the underground one then the one on the other side on the square.
I loved Belgium so much I booked trains with three of my close friends for a girlie weekend at the end of July to celebrate turning 27. I imagine there will be more beer, chips and waffles enjoyed. It amazed me how many people were tri-lingual in the city and people were always so happy to speak English to us even if we tried to do otherwise.

Definitely put Belgium on your to do list.

Feeling Brand New

2011-04-08T16:11:00.010+01:00

So it turns out I don't actually have that much to write for New York part 2 and should probably have done it all at once. Oh well.

On Sunday, our third day there it rained a lot so we made it museum day, and visited the Guggenheim and the Natural History Museum. Is two museums enough to label it museum day? I say yes.

The Guggenheim is a really impressive building, both outside:

and inside:

Hello, Rex

We walked through Central Park to get to the Nat. His. Mus., and posed with bears along the way.

I don't really take photos in museums and galleries, so there isn't really much to show here I'm afraid.

Later in the afternoon we hopped on the subway out to Brooklyn to visit the Brooklyn Brewery and do the mandatory brewery tour for our trip. They have a nice little operation going out there, and afterwards we had a couple of beers in their bar. The IPA is very nice if you ever get the chance to try it.

Yup, it's a cup of beer.

For dinner we went to Public, a Michelin-starred restaurant back in Manhattan. On Sunday evenings there they have a set dinner menu where you are served 5 'experimental' courses, where the chef tries out new ideas. Everything we got was really tasty, and the best thing about menus like that is you are made to try things you wouldn't normally order.

Our final day revolved around a trip on the ferry out to Liberty and Ellis Islands.

Manhattan from the harbour.

Thar she is.

Thar she is, with zoom.

Thar I am.

Quite big when you get up close.

There's an immigration museum on Ellis Island, which isn't that interesting but is in a cool building, where all the immigrants to the US used to go through upon arrival.

We had a pretty relaxed end to the holiday, getting a slice of pizza each for lunch and a few beers at the Heartland Brewery bar in Union Square, before catching the long flight home. Great times!

Concrete Jungle

2011-03-15T11:46:00.012Z

Hi, it's me Oren! Long time no post etc.

So we went to New York last week. Here is the city in all its glory, from up on the Empire State Building.

Northwest - Skyscrapers; Hudson River with Jersey City, NJ on the far shore.

South - Downtown and Financial District

East - East River, Brooklyn on the other side with Long Island stretching to the horizon.

North - More skyscrapers incl. Rockefeller Centre; Central Park; Uptown, Harlem, The Bronx etc. in the distance.

Our trip started with a nice early flight out of Heathrow, by far the most convenient of London's airports, and seven hours later we touched down in JFK. We had no real plan for what to do once we got in, and decided to get the train into Manhattan and make Times Square our first stop. It's a pretty cool place, but that's hard to capture in a picture without seeing all the crazy big video advertising screens in motion and everything.

We then wandered around the midtown area for a while, visiting the Rockefeller Plaza and Grand Central Station, before setting off on the long walk to our hotel on the Upper West Side, some 60 blocks away. It took a long time but it was nice to take in the atmosphere of the city, which you don't get by taking the subway. We looked in a bunch of cool shops along the way and ate hotdogs from one of the many streetside carts.

M&M dispensers, M&M store, Times Square.

Build-A-Bear, a create-your-own stuffed toy store, dinosaur department.

We were fairly exhausted by the time we got to the hotel, and with evening upon us we chose to get dinner somewhere nearby and call it an early night. While searching for somewhere to eat we passed Tom's Restaurant, which we were later informed was the diner which was used for the outside shots of Monk's Cafe in Seinfeld. Even as a fan of the show I would never have recognised it in the dark.

We settled on a Cuban restaurant and, as is the American way, our table was soon buried under a mountain of food - massive pot of paella, three-tier pork selection, black beans and rice, fried plantains and, since we were fortunate enough to be there in happy hour, several mojitos and margaritas. We were also treated to typically amazing American service from our nice waiter - fast, attentive and very friendly, all in the name of getting a big tip at the end of course.

The next morning we made our first visit to the nearby Metro Diner, which would be our breakfast destination every day for the remainder of the trip. They sure know how to do a serious breakfast over there, and I feasted on pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, ham, bacon, eggs and coffee.

I totally covered the whole thing in maple syrup too.

Well-fed, we went back into the city on the subway. An aside: the New York subway is kind of confusing, and we got messed over a couple of times by line closures that weren't very well advertised. Pretty dirty as well. Not as good as the London tube anyway.

Our destination, anyway, was the Empire State Building. There we bought city passes - a handy booklet that gets you entry to most of the city's major tourist attractions while saving money on admissions and skipping the biggest queues. A good investment I reckon.

You've seen the photos of the view from the top, and here we are getting bossed about by the wind (cf: Eiffel Tower photos).

Chrysler Building kind of visible in the background here, Ma!

We then visited the Museum of Modern Art. Didn't take any photos there but it was really good. The biggest name in their collection is Van Gogh's Starry Night, which was cool to see in person. We also went to St Paul's cathedral, the oldest in the city built by the Irish settlers. It's in stark contrast to the buildings around it but a nice piece of architecture.

In the afternoon we wandered around in Chinatown before settling in for dinner at a nice restaurant in Little Italy. We had some pretty great pizza and pesto gnocchi, but both of those were in my opinion overshadowed by the amazing bread and olive oil for appetiser. Incredible.

On the way back to the hotel we decided to stop again in Times Square to see it all lit up. It is a fairly surreal place at night with all the bright lights and screens at full effect and hundreds of people swarming around. Again, photos don't really do it justice, it's definitely something to experience yourself if you can.

We also discovered the huge Toys 'R' Us store there, which didn't actually have many interesting toys (am I growing up?) but did have some cool displays and statues.

Giant animatronic T-Rex

Superman w/ truck

New York's finest, the Spider-Man

More to follow...

Losing our sushi making virginity

2010-12-29T15:36:00.004Z

The other morning I woke up having dreamt about smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels. This resulted in a walk to the local store and a tasty breakfast for Oren and myself. Yesterday however, I woke up having dreamt about sushi and faced a problem that wasn't as easy as walking to the shop.

You see, sushi is terrible in the UK. You cannot find the large sushi rolls, futomaki, anywhere which of course is what you see most in New Zealand. However, the Japanese chain by our work, Wasabi - does do a delicious tofu curry which I usually delight in once a week.

So yesterday I went out and spent about £10 on getting the neccessary ingredients, recruited Oren to get the salmon and used some leftover honey soy marinated chicken for the below results.

Taste wise - it was pretty close, the rice was a bit sticky but it seems that would be quite the art to perfect. The pot is going to need a lot of scrubbing. I can't wait to go to Japan and try all the new and interesting foods when we get there.

We had a lovely Christmas dinner, both our first Christmas together as well as the first one both of us had spent away from our families in the middle of winter. But that is another post for another day.

Snowy SW6

2010-12-23T22:29:00.007Z

I thought the snow on Friday was pretty amazing when it arrived without warning and in five minutes had coated everything. However on Saturday morning, we woke up to this view from our bedroom window:

Of course we had to head straight outside, I have seriously never seen so much urban snow and snow so quickly.

You may remember our entry on the cemetery by our flat which we thought would be pretty amazing to visit and not too far that we would risk freezing or breaking our necks.

Oren wandered off and made a probably slightly inappropriate snow angel.

It was really interesting see the graves, angels and tombstones covered in snow. It's a fairly eerie cemetery anyway but the snow made it even more interesting.

I got to admire both the tree skills of a squirrell and Oren.
Then it was back home to the central heating.

Getting closer to the possibility of a white Christmas

2010-12-17T12:58:00.001Z

Visiting the Leprechauns

2010-11-26T22:09:00.011Z

On fairly short notice, Oren had two days off in a row in early October. Me being me, I jumped straight on Ryanair with a "WHERE CAN WE GO?!" attitude. My sister and I had booked flights like this before in 2007 and had ended up in Milan, Italy. However, Oren and I found ourselves in Dublin, Ireland for a Sunday - Monday jaunt.

We did the typical Irish thing which was to go to the Guinness Factory to experience a part of history and obviously drink a bit of beer. Out of sheer luck, the prepaid ticket machines printed out two tickets each so we got two beers - one which we got to pour ourselves. Obviously it's a life skill to know how to properly pour a Guinness and we even got a certificate for it.

I regret not getting a horse and carriage ride back to our hotel. I always see them everywhere and want to go on one. That night we went on a nearly 2 hour ghost walk around Dublin. We thought for awhile that we would awkwardly be the only two on it but an American couple also joined us. It an off the beaten track sort of ghost walk and we went to parts of Dublin that were scary if only for the fact that there were drunken Irish in tracksuits stumbling around. I'd highly reccommend it. While London is Buckingham stronghold, Oren found Dublin to be on his side.

The next day, we wandered our way around the sights of Dublin. We managed to find both our namesakes in the Dublin castle chapel:

We went to Christchurch Cathedral to see how it compared to home - I've never been inside the one in the Square, and we weren't going to pay ridiculous euros to go inside this one either. Oren managed to steal a sneaky photo of the inside while I gaped at the price.

Due to too much Masterchef we decided to find a nice restaurant for one of the days in Dublin. Thanks to my awesome googling skills, I had come across a Michelin star restaurant in Dublin called Pig's Ear which was near Trinity College. The assumption is that Michelin = overpriced but we got a 3 course lunch for €19.95. As a starter I had Butter Potted Crab with Spiced Mayonnaise & Melba Crisps and Oren tried Fried Hen's Egg with Clonakilty Black Pudding on Toast with Lentil & Mustard Dressing. Both were very delcious. We decided to be prentious only after this course and take photos:

My main: Lemon & Thyme Roast Breast of Chicken with Roast Potato, Crushed Spiced Swede, Toasted Hazelnuts

Oren's main: Silverhill Duck Leg with Butter Beans, Smoked Bacon & Cabbage, Orange & Sweet Garlic

Oren's dessert: A berry fruit crumble thing - complete with pop rocks! Mine was a bitter chocolate tart.

Overall the lunch was amazing and a steal for the price, there was no service charge either!

On the ghost walk our guide had taken us to St Michan's church and we decided to round off the afternoon there. Basically it is a very old church with a Viking foundation and has vaults constructed of limestone which has preserved the bodies that are entombed there. There are three mummies you get to view know as the Nun, The Thief and The Crusader and they are rather creepy. Some kids on the tour with us dropped a chocolate bar wrapper into one of the coffins. The Sheares Brothers are also there.

Then unfortunately it was back to Dublin Airport, Gatwick, a train to Victoria station and a bus back to our flat. I'd love to return to Ireland and hire a car and drive around when we have the time.

Our only planned trip now is Japan in April for 9 days. We both really can't wait and we got a good direct flight deal with British Airways from Heathrow - only a 35 minute tube ride from our flat. Seems such a novelty. It's also a relief to know we will have some proper sushi soon enough as sushi in England is terrible.

Hoping with Christmas approaching and snow forecast, we'll have some festive photos of Christmas lights, trees and some of the markets around London.

When the Road Runs Out

2010-10-08T11:50:00.013+01:00

September 10-12 saw us attend our first UK music festival, End of the Road at the Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset. EOTR is about as far removed, though, from the big summer festivals like Glastonbury and Reading as could be imagined, which was basically what we wanted as we sought the closest experience to our festival of choice in New Zealand, Camp(us) A Low Hum. I must say, this compared very, very favourably to CALH.

The first thing on the agenda was of course to set up our tent. We had bought it a few weeks previously but had not had a chance to have a test run at pitching it yet, and it wasn't until we had almost finished that we really how tiny the thing was. We managed to fit in it though. Just.

Please ignore the flag behind my head.

Some people were clever and hired these darling wagons for their accommodation; possibly something to look into if we go again next year.

"Purveyors of Fairydust"

Here is the central field of the grounds that held most of the food stalls, shops, pubs, activity tents and three of the smaller stages. Hopefully this gives you an idea of the laid-back vibe of the festival.

We enjoyed many fine local ales from the three on-site pubs: The Badger Inn, The Peacock Bar, and The Black Crow. My favourite drop was the Hedge Monkey - a malty, hoppy deep amber ale brewed in Somerton, Dorset.

For non-alcoholic beverages the Tea Stop, operating out of an old double-decker bus with a garden out the front, proved to be an excellent option. Here I am enjoying a milkshake and the view from the upper deck.

This is the main stage from afar. It was a lovely setting with lots of greenery and that cute archway off to the side. This picture was about away as far as you could get from the stage, and it was very easy to get up close for a great view of the performers.

Wandering amongst the mazey paths of Larmer led to many unexpected delights, including the macaws and peacocks that inhabited the site. Unicorns and zebras hid in the trees...

...while this delightful scene popped up in a clearing. It later hosted a lovely ensemble who played Joanna Newsom covers.

We probably spent too much time in the games area playing giant Connect 4. Here is an epic draw that we played out.

Oh yeah, a whole bunch of great bands played as well. As it happens we barely took a single photo of any of them, which probably says something about (a) how engaging the performances were, and (b) how much other fun stuff was going on around the place. If I were to pick two highlights from each day it would be Modest Mouse and Wolf Parade for day one, Iron & Wine and Caribou for day two, Errors and Wilco for day three.

There is a pretty high chance that we will go back next year, and early-bird tickets are already on sale... very tempting! For now we have our sweet t-shirts to remind us of the great time we had. His and hers, respectively:

¡hola España

2010-10-03T15:24:00.008+01:00

I'll let Oren write about the End of the Road festival and I'll discuss Spain.

For the first time since arriving in the UK, Oren and I left these fair shores for a European adventure. I was easily seduced by the idea of Spain at the Spanish festival in Oxford Street. Oren had introduced me to paella at some stage, so Valencia made sense.
I can happily report that there were no transportation hiccups this time around. Begrudgingly we were up to catch a bus a little after 3am to the middle of nowhere aka Stansted Airport. Any claim that is even remotely near London is a lie. You always think the flights are cheap but then you have to factor both the time and cost to travel to god knows where.

However the good thing about early morning flights was that we arrived in Spain just after 11am and caught the metro into the city. Valencia airport is probably one of the few airports that Ryanair flies into that is actually near the place it claims to be so it was only a 20 minute Metro ride into the city. I instantly loved Valencia. It reminded me of a sunnier, friendlier Paris without any worry that you will be hassled by people trying to sell you Eiffel towers or tie "friendship" bracelets around your wrists.

We ended up wandering around the marble streets in the rising heat just having a look with no real idea of where we were going. We found this Cathedral:

I had found out that Valencia had a large aquarium that housed Belugas and desperately wanted to go so, full of paella from a local cafe, we walked down to the City of Science and Arts which is basically an architectural wet dream. Myself, I found it slightly tacky. However the walk through the gardens in a now dry riverbed was lovely.

By this time it was unbelievably hot. Having come from a rainy wet London to a very dry sunny Valencia at nearly 30 degrees, we were both melting. I though the aquarium was indoors but a lot of it was outside as you walked between the mostly underground enclosures.

The belugas were amazing but also a bit sad. One spent several hours floating at a gate wishing to get through and the other was doing a constant repetitive pacing through its tank. At one point the one at the gate started making the most screeching whale sound that echoed through the underground viewing area. It's sad that these majestic creatures have to be in aquariums so people can understand why we need to conserve our environments.

Our hotel was only about 10 minutes walk across a large bridge after the aquarium where we could delight in the air conditioning. I'm becoming a pro at booking hotels and we had a lovely place I had scored a 45% off. It was very fancy.
Our hotel was also in a good location, between the beach and the city and right beside two shopping centres. We ended up getting some bread, chorizo, duck pate, juice, beer and crisps and settling in for most of the night before wandering the other shopping centre and watching a man fail at selling corn outside our hotel window.

We woke up late due to a well deserved sleep in and were welcomed for a cooler day. It was mid 20s for most of the day. We decided to walk down to the beach via the America's Cup village. I guess the unfortunate thing is that because it's been in court so long, the village is dead but we took photos of the NZ building.
We walked right around to the beach and found ourselves a nice spot to rest. I decided to have a swim which was very refreshing in the heat. I liked that no one on the beach had any qualms about their bodies, no one was perfect, it was hot, they worn what they wanted. It didn't feel like a fashion or beauty competition like I had expected.
We both had been working hard so were happy to have a quiet day. We eventually made back to the shopping centre by our hotel and went to a Spanish place that sells montaditos which are a sort of tapas. It took us our first order to realise they were just baby rolls and were served with crisps! I really liked it, it was a lot of fun and with every order we got giant glasses of Spanish beer for only a euro! This of course lead to us napping in our hotel room later before going to another tapas restaurant for dinner that served lots and lots of meat. Oren did very well in proving that money spent on Spanish language papers at Canterbury Uni wasn't entirely wasted. I was very proud of him as I spoke no Spanish at all!

Unfortunately the next day we had a 11am flight back to Stansted. We took the metro and said goodbye to the heat and the sun to return to rainy London.

Next weekend we head to Dublin for which will probably be the last trip for a couple months as Oren can't have leave over the Christmas period from work.

A Weekend Tour, Part 2 - Sunday Driver, Yeah

2010-09-02T09:44:00.008+01:00

We had had vague intentions of spending our whole weekend exploring the eastern counties, but after deciding to go back to London on Saturday night we made the call to head out west on Sunday. Our first destination was the inevitable visit to Stonehenge, but unfortunately we were left pretty disappointed with it. Overpriced and you can't get near the site without paying more to go on a guided tour, we found the whole experence a bit sterile. But here it is anyway, to prove we were there:

Luckily, though, Stonehenge is not the only ancient stone circle in the area, so we headed next for the lesser known monuments at Avebury a few miles north. This proved a fine choice that quickly washed away the disappointment of Stonehenge. Avebury's stones are in a much larger formation with an outer circle that skirts around the edge of a small village. With free and unrestricted access to the stones, in a pretty location with a nice atmosphere, I would recommend a visit to Avebury ahead of the more popular alternative.

At this point our Sunday was decidedly lacking in cathedrals, so we drove to Salisbury to get our fix.

Our final stop turned out to be my favourite of the whole weekend. While in Avebury, Jo had picked up a brochure for a nearby ruins, Old Wardour Castle. Neither of us had heard of it before but it looked lovely from the brochure so we decided to have a look. It was not easy to find, with no signage on the main roads, but after making our way through narrow country roads and thatched-roof villages we came to this wonderful place.

If we learnt one lesson that day, it was that the best attractions are often these lesser-known, off-the-beaten-track types.

A Weekend Tour, Part 1 - Cathedrals and Roundabouts

2010-08-19T13:07:00.011+01:00

Last weekend was my first full weekend off since I started work (usually I work on Saturdays), so we decided to make the most of it by hiring a car and seeing some more of our new home country. We didn't have many concrete plans when we set out, and we ended up covering more ground than we expected, in all passing through 10 counties over the two days.

Our first (and more-or-less only) settled destination was the small town of Brandon in Suffolk, the home of Jo's great-aunt Dora. But first we had a journey of 2-3 hours ahead of us, and it wasn't long until we had developed an intense frustration at the British motorways. There is one particularly awful feature that you may well have heard of or experienced yourself: the roundabouts. Every bad thing that people say about them is completely right. The British road system is littered with hundreds of the buggers, and they serve no practical purpose other than to annoy. Often after you successfully negotiate your way through a three-lane monster complete with traffic lights and many exits, it is only 20 seconds further down the road until you encounter another. Sometimes there are even two or more roundabouts placed adjacent to one another, so you exit your roundabout... into another roundabout! Just in case you couldn't wait for the next one! Many of them have poor (or non-existant) signage, instructing you to get into one lane before making you swerve violently across others lest you miss your exit. Other countries have perfectly functional highways without these monstrosities, and I cannot figure out the need for them. I know I have been ranting about roundabouts for a while now but I just hate them so much! And I wasn't even driving!

*Deep breath*

Shortly into our journey, our rental car started beeping at us and flashing symbols on the dashboard, which we eventually figured out was it telling us we were low on fuel. We checked the map for nearby towns to refill, and I saw we were near St Albans, which my friend Elizabeth had recommended to me a while back. It turned out to be an fine decision, providing us with the first of many excellent cathedral visits for the weekend.

Our other port of call in St Albans was to stop for lunch at the local waffle house at the recommendation of our Lonely Planet Great Britain guidebook. It seemed that a lot of other people had also read this, as the restaurant was very busy, though we were lucky to arrive at a time when we were able to be seated within five minutes before watching the queue extend to around five times that length while we ate. The restaurant serves a large variety of waffle dishes, including exotic-sounding savoury ones (eg: Mediterranean vegetable waffle, waffles with curry). In the end we went for the more familiar sweet waffles: Dutch apple waffle with loads of maple syrup for me and banoffee waffle with vanilla ice cream for Jo; both incredibly good.

With both our car and our stomachs refuelled, we set out again for Brandon. It rained.

We did make it eventually though, where Jo and Dora had a very touching reunion after three years had passed since their last meeting. Dora, still very lively at 92 years old, was obviously delighted to see us, and kept saying how she often thought of her relatives in New Zealand but never thought she would see them again. She was the perfect host, having made us ham sandwiches and cheese scones and it was lovely to sit down and chat with her for a couple of hours over our food and tea. Possibly our biggest mistake of the trip was not taking any photos with Dora, but we will make up for that next time we visit her.

After saying our goodbyes we headed for nearby tiny Lakenheath station, where Jo's grandfather and grandmother (Dora's sister) had met during the war, and later lived when her grandfather was the station master there.

Our next stop was the small town of Ely in Cambridgeshire to check out another famous cathedral. We didn't go inside this one as we were there later than the 7pm closing time, but it was a spectacular enough building from the exterior.

Finally, we headed for the town of Bury St Edmunds as our last destination for the evening, where we enjoyed a lovely dinner and wandered amongst the evening streets of the village for a while. We realised it was not going to be practical to find a room to stay the night out there, so we returned to London for the night (eventually, even in the middle of the night London cannot be quickly crossed from the northeast to our home in the southwest). We were pretty knackered by the time we got home well after midnight, and we had a full day ahead of us for sunday too.

Stay tuned for the second part of our weekend trip report, including Stonehenge, Avebury, Salisbury and Old Wardour Castle.

Escaping to the Seaside

2010-08-05T23:26:00.007+01:00

A few Sundays ago, the only day we now both have off together, I decided to book some train tickets to Brighton and take Oren to some English seaside. I had never been to Brighton either, just heard all the stories, so was quite excited about it.

However the day before, walking off a large waffle, my friend Silvia and I wandered down to Tower Bridge and found it open. Strangely enough I had packed my camera and could capture the exciting moment and now want to share it with you:

Our trip to Brighton did not start well. Why do my posts always start like this? It's almost like it's always my fault. I blame whoever runs London Bridge station and TFL (I could also blame my company for selling their stake in the tube). When we got to the station after waiting 8 minutes for a Northern Line train, we had minutes to get our prepaid tickets out of the machine. The machines had signs stating that you couldn't get prepaid tickets for Brighton. Our train was gone.

Somewhat luckily, it turned out our tickets were open off peak so we could take another one and had to wait. In the waiting we got tempted by a lolly stand.

Giant Haribo coke bottles!

We arrived at Brighton without further incident. When we first arrived it was very windy and overcast and didn't look like it would make much of a day but we decided we had to at least sit on the beach and enjoy fish n chips.

Then of course, we do what you do at Brighton which is brave the Pier. We made the mistake of walking through the arcade when we first walked down it with the horrible clang of lots of gaming machines, but managed to figure out to walk around it. We didn't take any rides but we admired a few of them from a distance. We walked around the side on the way back and I made faces for no reason.

Don't let my face fool you however, as it was very lovely in Brighton. The English talk down their coast so I thought it wouldn't be that nice but I really enjoyed it -- other than for the sunburn I endured for the next few days. We had some delicious milkshakes on the pier and a beer in the pub before heading back to the station and falling asleep on the train back.

Grand Old York

2010-07-29T14:23:00.010+01:00

Earlier this month we made a long-overdue weekend trip to Yorkshire for a spot of tourism, and to visit Jo's friend Shel. York is a couple of hours by train from London, and we got some cheap tickets that got us in late on Friday night. Jo and Shel were delighted to see each other again after 3 years, while for me it was lovely to finally meet someone I had heard so much about.

While York is of course known for its heritage and its long and rich history (more on that soon), we spent most of the Saturday at a slightly less traditional tourist spot : Flamingo Land, a theme park/zoo hybrid. Shel had spent many childhood holidays there and highly recommended it to us, and it was an excellent choice, as we all had a great time. I had previously never been to a theme park or ridden a rollercoaster, so now I can cross those off the list.

The highlight for me was riding the Mumbo Jumbo, which holds the record for the world's steepest rollercoaster with its 112 degrees drop.

And here is Jo and Shel, thoroughly soaked after the Lost River Ride, a boat ride that goes through the animal enclosures before taking a 60 foot drop at the end.

Sunday was spent taking in York's historical sites, wandering around the city walls and the old streets of the town before having a delightful picnic amongst the ruins in the museum gardens.

Shel and I survey the invading armies from the ramparts.

This history lover is clearly delighted to be amongst the ruins.

A glorious day for a glorious picnic in a glorious location.

We also spent some time in one of the best pubs I've come across in the UK, thanks to another excellent tip from Shel, and had some wonderful beers. All too soon though, it was time for us to go home. We had a fabulous time in York, and we will be looking to get back there as soon as possible. Shel was the perfect host and we are very excited that she will be down in London again soon.

Finally, here is a bonus silly picture of us on the train home.

Fulham Palace Cemetery

2010-07-09T11:07:00.014+01:00

As Jo mentioned in the last post, we now live next to a cemetery, just behind the houses on the other side of our street. Fulham Palace Cemetery is sometimes aptly known as 'Fulham Old', as it is the oldest cemetery in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, opening in 1865. Last weekend we went there for some wandering.

There are two major features of the cemetery. Firstly, the layout isn't very structured and for the most part the graves tend to be scattered around, strewn around the fields and amongst the trees rather than in any kind of rows. I think it is quite a nice way of having it.

The other notable thing is how old and run-down most of the place is. The cemetery has been closed to new burials for a long time, and most of the graves were around a hundred years old. Parts of the cemetery are badly neglected and overgrown, and many of the headstones are falling apart. In some places there are piles of ruined headstones that have had all their details worn away.

Also, the place is full of holes in the ground everywhere. Rabbits, foxes, badgers, or something more mysterious?

There are some some really lovely parts of the cemetery too, like some of the statues.

And there is one section that is well-kept, with a few rows of clean, looked-after World War II memorials.

P.S. Sorry for the lack of updates lately, one of us will write about York soon, I promise.

Fulham Folk

2010-06-30T20:54:00.006+01:00

The boy and I successfully moved into a proper flat in the weekend. Having gained a job in West London, it opened a new part of London to us to flathunt in and it has worked out perfectly. Yes, we forgo the North and have gone South West.

We had our first taste of the South West by staying in Putney for 10 days with Tania, a lovely kiwi we found thanks to the wonders of the internet and then on Sunday, the hottest day of the year we moved to Fulham.

I cheated and the front view is from google streetview as I couldn't be bothered going outside. We're the orange brick place, the 1st floor window is our lounge.

Welcome to our lounge and the view out the bay window. It's your typical sort of Victorian (I assume) terrace lined street. The lounge isn't that typical of London really, most flats these days seem to prefer changing the lounge into a bedroom to make a flat cheaper/earn the landlord more money (Tufnell Park was like this). Our lounge gets plenty of sun and as you can see, is quite large. We've got Sky TV for all those pointless shows you find yourself watching for no reason although Oren has mostly been watching the neverending football. The large blue couch out of view and the six seater table are my favourite features - I guess after 2 years without a table, it's still a novelty to me. I have visions of dinner parties.

Speaking of dinner, our kitchen is just as large as our lounge too. It is at the opposite end of the same floor. In between is the bathroom then our bedroom beside the lounge. Fritha and Erinae have "loft" rooms upstairs.

Our room at the moment is really hot, it's been two weeks of high 20s which has been quite the difference to my 2007 Summer of the worst flooding in history. In a way, it's probably good I've been at work being paid to sit in the airconditioning. Note the purple valance and headboard came with the flat, and yes we know it doesn't match.

One of the best parts of course is that the my work in Hammersmith is about 20-25 minute walk and if I want a change of scenery, I can walk to work through the cemetery just behind the terraces on the other side of the road. I'm hoping to have a proper wander in there at the weekend and take photos as it's quite unusual! We're also about 10 minutes from Fulham Broadway station and shopping centre, so we're well connected whilst feeling like we're in the 'burbs. (it just happens also that Hell Pizza is about 5 minutes further down the road from there too!)

Everything is working out quite nicely, it's great to finally have somewhere to call home and settle in. I've even booked a trip to Valencia for the end of September so we have something to look forward to as the cooler days start arriving - although it's very hard to believe at the moment!

We Went Down to Oxford Town

2010-06-18T15:22:00.013+01:00

Recently (well it was two weeks ago, I've been slow to update), we took a day-trip by train to Oxford, which is where Jo lived when she was here in 2007. It was nice to see Jo's old haunts and it gave us chance to use our shiny new railcards.

Greeted by the Ox of Oxford

Posing with the Ox

Oxford is basically known for two things: being really old, and having one of the best universities in the world, and we pretty much spent the day walking around looking at those old buildings, like this one:

And this one:

And these ones:

Aaaaaand this one:

In the afternoon we stretched out and relaxed in the sun on the banks of the River Isis, which is actually just the River Thames on either side of Oxford, for some reason they call it Isis where it flows through the city. There were loads of rowers practising on the river, which is a pretty stereotypically Oxford-ish thing to do.

I was having a nice time, until a tough-guy goose came to show his authority.

"Hey, that goose is getting awfully close."

"GERROFF MY LAWN!"

I don't like geese, they're aggressive and they hiss at you.

To finish the day we took a bus out to nearby Abingdon, which is where Jo actually was living. It is a very nice little town.

Homecoming.

Euro-Visions

2010-06-01T22:21:00.005+01:00

I'd like to talk about the Eurovision song contest which was on last weekend. In New Zealand we sometimes see and hear brief snippets of Eurovision, but never really more than a few seconds' footage of the winner, so this was my first chance to see the whole thing (the finals at least), not really knowing what I was getting myself into. Now, I knew that the contest is celebrated for its fairly cringeworthy songs and general cheese factor, but I really was not prepared for just how extreme that was. However, it didn't take long for me to realise that it was much more fun to embrace it and get behind those crazy Euros.

Your typical Eurovision song entry falls into one of two main groups: the hyper-dramatic power ballad and the high-energy dance-pop number. Personally, I prefer the latter, as they are usually more fun and most of the ballads take the whole thing a bit too seriously.

One of the main things I did not realise about the contest was just how political it gets. No one is allowed to vote for their own country, so everyone tends to give lots of points their neighbours and political friends, even if they are completely terrible songs. Fascinating really.

The pre-final favourites were Azerbaijan, Greece and Belgium, but this year's winner was Germany with a song called 'Satellite' sung by a girl called Lena who had a bizarre accent that sounded almost Australian. It doesn't really fit into either of the categories I described above, but maybe that is what set it apart on the night. Check it out:

It wasn't the worst song of the night, but I don't really like it. My personal favourites were the really weird and tacky ones like Moldova's neo-fusion rave-up, featuring a sax solo that will gnaw at your brain. Also it has some classic badly-translated lyrics:

There's no other time to make
In happiness you have mistaken
We have no progressive future
I know your lying nature.

Serbia also had an impressively crazy entry called Ovo je Balkan (English: This is the Balkans). I think they may possibly have been angling for the vote from the other Balkan countries. Sample lyrics: "Balkans, Balkans, Balkans! This is the Balkans! Come on!" Their song at least actually had a bit of an Eastern European flavour to it, and the music was apparently written by the same guy who did the score for the film Borat.

For the record, the UK came dead last, behind even Iceland who everyone hates at the moment. It was fair enough though, the British entry was just awful.

Domestic Goddess?

2010-05-30T22:24:00.010+01:00

I've decided to hijack the blog to post about one of my favourite pastimes - cooking and baking! My mother probably thought she would have never lived to hear me say that. Look Mummy - I'm all grown up! I can't knit or sew, but this is a start right?

Thankfully I have a more than willing subject to try out my cooking whims on. About 8 months ago I decided I was sick of being scared of vegetarian food as being boring/plain/tasteless/somehow difficult to cook and started experimenting. Experimenting really meaning - making stuff off this useful website: Healthy Food Guide. We've got some tried and true favourites such as Bean Burgers (which I can't make at the moment until I can justify buying an Argos food processor) and Bean Chilli which are now staples, but I wanted some new. So I searched for inspiration and found Carrot and Lentil Patties and tonight I made them.

I tend to alter recipes a little, if I'm a bit too unadventurous or unsure of an ingredient, or it's out of season or I just don't know what the hell it even is so I'll write out how I did the recipe as we go along.

So firstly - the mix! (not looking particularly appetising at this point!)

In here we have:

400g can of brown lentils drained and rinsed

2 grated carrots (around about, I nibbled on about 1/4 of each one).

3 spring onions chopped as finely as blunt knives allow

About a handful of fresh coriander leaves torn up (again, the knives here are terrible...the recipe originally called for parsley but we had to rely on our Sainsbury's Local, which only had coriander but it's okay cos we love the stuff)

Rind of half a lemon (we used the other half for our salmon treat the other night)

The recipe tells you to mash it with a proper masher, but I made a mess attempting that and decided if I was going to do that - I might as well just get my hands in there. So proved to be a much better solution, although I still managed to get this mix all over the kitchen anyway.

The next step would be obvious to most people (not me when I was 19 years old in my first flat and calling my Mum around six o'clock every night going "HELP! HOW DO I MASH POTATOES?") - you add one egg and really as much breadcrumbs as you need to make a mix that you can manipulate into patties. We needed breadcrumbs the other week and had to also go to the Sainsbury's Local for that (think Four Square but better, much much better) and all they had was coloured breadcrumbs. Yes they dye them like orange so they'll make your food look cripsy if you're using the crumbs to coat something. It's another reason I need a food processor. I assume a normal supermarket might have normal breadcrumbs? I hope so, England, I hope so.
And then, as I already alluded - we shape them into their namesake:

Then, the hardest part of all really - cooking them and hoping they don't stick or fall apart on you as normal with any homemade patties. You're supposed to spray them with cooking oil, and I'd recommend that from bean burger experience, but we just had normal oil. We went to borrow our flatmates can but it expired in 2008 and looked like a spray you'd use to clean your glasses with. Medium heat pan, make sure it's hot, spray those patties or throw in some oil and put them in. Now you're not really cooking them that much, just heating them through and giving them a golden touch.

I followed the serving suggestion which was a side salad and some tzatziki (guess where we got that from...). The salad just slightly cheats on the "vegetarian" meal as we stuck anchioves in there but our excuse is that a) we had a huge pot of them to use up before their best before and b) they're so delicious. Our salad was your typical sort of thing: cherry tomatoes, red and orange peppers, spring onions, iceberg lettuce and those fishies. This was the finished product:

By the way Oren ate it and his happiness at the end, I think he liked it. I did too but he didn't agree with my visions of salmon or spicy versions in the future. Can't improve on perfection...?

It's the good thing about not working I guess, having the time to sit down and think about new meals to have as it's always good to try something different even if it doesn't turn out good and you make Oren promise "never to speak of this meal again." I'm hoping that the next flat we move onto we'll have a bigger cupboard and I can start building up my baking collection again as I'm still yet to try make a cheesecake and feel that's one thing really holding me back from becoming a domestic godness.

One last thing - we picked up a Maggi mix in Germany for currywurst (yes it's in Germany!) and a few days after we were back tried to recreate Berlin. It wasn't too bad I thought! Just missing the curry powder. One day our herb and spice rack will be up to it's former Winchester St glory.

Big Kids

2010-05-28T14:13:00.014+01:00

A couple of days ago we headed down to Regent street to visit the famous toy store Hamleys, who this year are celebrating their 250th birthday (yes, the store was started way back in 1760!) The Regent street location isn't the original building but is the flagship store nowadays, and it is apparently the biggest toy store in the world.

Big spinning logo disc thing from the fifth floor.

Hamleys is pretty amazing, although admittedly a lot of the newer generation of toys didn't mean anything to me (what is this whole Ben 10 thing? And apparently there are like 500 pokémon now, madness). Still, there were plenty of timeless and nostalgia-inducing things too, such as a huge jigsaw puzzle section (£150 for an 18,000 piece puzzle - tempting!) and masses of Playmobil, which I hadn't seen for years.

They even had construction-themed stuff like we had as kids.

When it comes to good, clean fun, you can't beat marbles, and there sure were a lot of them, though none of the kids running around the place seemed too interested in them.

What a marble-ous place.

There were also sections dedicated to Lego and soft toys, both of which were excellent.

We found a Jo-sized Lego Buzz Lightyear...

...And a bigger-than-Oren-sized camel, only £1,500.

Phillip the giant polar bear, a steal at £600.

Bobby Bears, complete with badge and ID card.

Cousins of Rex.

My favourite toy was this awesome R2D2 Play-Doh cutter, as it combines two of my favourite things - Star Wars and colourful putty - and because it is something of a throwback to a simpler kind of toy that you don't see much now. If it didn't say 'Clone Wars' on it I could probably have mistaken it for a toy from the '80s (man, I really sound like an old nerd, don't I?) For some reason it was in the "girls' toys" department, though it is clearly a toy for MEN.

Just look at how much fun this kid is having.

In a somewhat related trip, after Hamleys we walked to Trafalgar Square to see the new installation on the Fourth Plinth:

It's a giant, four-tonne ship-in-a-bottle of Lord Nelson's flagship from the battle of Trafalgar, the awesomely named HMS Victory. Pretty much puts all the models at Hamleys to shame.

Tufnell Parksters

2010-05-21T16:22:00.008+01:00

In the last update we mentioned moving into a new flat, and now we can prove it, with pictures! It is a lovely place in Tufnell Park, North London, which is a very nice area; quiet and somewhat suburby but also not too far from some quite happening places (Camden Town is pretty close, and the big transport hubs of King's Cross and Euston are not far beyond that).

If I were to hazard a guess I'd say that our building is Victorian-style, but I'm really no expert on that sort of thing.

Our house (our room is in the open bay window on the first floor).

Our street.

Our room gets lots of light and it already feels very homely, possibly because we've already covered the floor with piles of our junk. Seriously, I don't know how we can make so much mess when we only own 20kg of stuff each!

Our room.

We don't have a washing line at the flat, and rather than buying a cumbersome drying rack we made our own out of string. Take that MacGyver!

Clean again.

The flat also has a small garden out the back. It is slightly overgrown at the moment, though there is a cleared patch with a barbecue that you can't see in the picture below. Beyond the garden there is a bit of greenery and a few trees, which makes for a pretty nice view from the kitchen, especially if my friends the squirrels are out and about.

Our garden (the middle section between the two fences belongs to our flat).

I really like it out here, it is a nice place in a nice area with very two very nice flatmates. Unfortunately we are only here until the middle of June, because it would be pretty ideal to stay on here. We think we'd like to stay in North London anyway, as it has made a positive impression on us both.

In other London news, we have now had three very warm days in a row. The sun has been shining and there is a distinct smell of spring in the air. Wonderful.

Living it up in Berlin

2010-05-13T23:59:00.016+01:00

Sunday was our second adventure to Europe. We nearly didn't make it due to some very poor navigation skills on my behalf. London at the best of times can be impossible to find yourself in, but combined with it being 3.15am and operating on 3 hours sleep it was even worse. But by sheer luck, we were just able to get to Stansted and make our flight to Berlin.

After an uncomfortable nap on the plane, we both awoke in Berlin and decided to head straight to the zoo. I don't know if it was just us being useless or if it's intentional, but you don't get given maps when you get in and the zoo is deceptively large. So it was a case of us wandering around and stumbling upon various animals. We managed to waste most of the camera freshly charged battery in the zoo just because there was so much we wanted to take photos of.

Knut had his Italian girlfriend Gianna there (on loan from Munich) so we were spoilt by two polar bears. It was great to see elephants and these crazy penguins (where most of the battery went). All the zoo signs were in German and sometimes I don't think the translation to English was particularly correct or what we know them as in New Zealand so a lot of it was a guessing game but we saw heaps of animals and creatures we had never seen before and probably never would again. For lunch we had chips and shared a beer, it would be typical of Germany that beer was cheaper than buying a cola.

Late afternoon we headed to our hotel to check in. I had found this hotel online by random google searching and the use of a travel review site, and it was good as people said it was. Seriously, usually I have nothing nice to stay about hotels other than it's a place to sleep, but this place was part of the experience in itself. If you're ever in Berlin, come to the Michelberger.

We then met up with my friends from Düsseldorf who were also staying at the hotel, Tina and Kate who were the main reason we had decided to go to Berlin. We were happy to see them as well due to our very limited German (read: none). They made sure to take us to experience Berlin the proper German way by having currywurst, the local delicacy and Berliner Kindl Weisse, the local drink. Basically the currywurst was a sausage in a spicy tomato sauce topped with curry powder and served with chips, and the Berliner Weisse is an unusual beer drink which tastes nothing of beer and in this case was flavoured with a cherry syrup. It reminded me of those little flavoured ice packets we used to suck on as kids. Afterwards we found our way to a cafe which had a huge menu and did lots of different...well, everything. On the coffee front they claimed to do a flat white but disappointingly for Oren, it was mostly milky foam on the top. Which is the way they do coffee in Germany anyway. That night Oren and I had a gig just down the road for the American band The National which was absolutely fantastic before we finally got into the most comfortable bed ever (c'mon, just check out that photo!) for some well earned sleep.

In the morning we headed towards the city centre to Hackescher Markt where we had a big breakfast that meant we didn't even require lunch later on. Both times I've been in Germany I've had the most amazing large breakfasts, I love the importance they place on it. Kate navigated us through the various tourist traps in our next two days in Berlin and we took touristy photos. The bonus of having them there meant we could get the token couple ones in.

As you can tell, the weather was not kind to us. I'm starting to wonder if the hemispheres have mixed up their seasons. But weather aside, I just loved the feel of Berlin, it wasn't as overwhelming as Paris and felt more welcoming in a sense. It amazed me that all the graffiti everywhere just felt a part of Berlin, like art, where is everywhere else it's seen as something that must be eradicated as soon as it's been completed.

Dinner that night was at an Indian place near our hotel, which was pretty delicious. In our first week in London we went out for Indian which was quite a different experience to New Zealand Indian, and this was different again. The onion bhaji was very different visually but deliciously familiar. Tina and Kate had already told us German's don't do spicy so we knew the dishes would be fairly mild for their tastes.

That night was the reason our Berlin trip happened as Tina and I must be able the only Third Eye Blind fans still left since 1997 and once we heard they were playing, thought we MUST go. We were not disappointed, I don't know if it was just the nostalgia value or having Tina with me, but it was absolutely awesome. Seriously I felt like I was a teenager again. Now I understand why all those middle aged people go see these bands that had one single 30 years ago.

Sunday was another delicious breakfast and touristy wanderings, and pizza at our last dinner together before departing our seperate ways. The pizza was massive but so delicious.

With hugs to Tina and Kate, and promises of meeting up soon, it was back to London (well nearly, we spent a miserable night in Stansted first). On our return we moved into a temporary flat in Tufnell Green yesterday, one tube stop from where we've been staying with friends. We're here for a month and hopefully in that time will try sort ourselves out! At this stage, I'm already planning our return trip to Berlin what with it's International Beer Festival in August...

Paris Pix

2010-05-07T20:29:00.018+01:00

A pictorial/roughly chronological account of our time in Paris.

Basilique du Sacré-Coeur.

Arc de Triomphe from underneath (have you always wondered what that looked like?)

We went to le Tour Eiffel, both of us.

A view from the first level of the tower...

...And one from the second level (you can see La Défense in the distance).

Glorious steel and rivets, all the way to the top (we didn't go up there).

It was hella windy.

Louvre baby.

Notre Dame (no zombies to be found anywhere).

Rex liked the Meijer de Haan exhibition at le Musée d'Orsay...

...And hung out at this Université de Paris building (you can see the tip of Le Tour Eiffel in the distance - Oh la la!)

On the steps of Le Panthéon (I wasn't bored, just resting).

Le Jardin et Palais du Luxembourg.

Arènes de Lutèce, formerly a Roman arena, now used by French kids for football (foreground) and French grown-ups for pétanque (background).

Shameless Tourists

2010-05-01T13:33:00.015+01:00

At the moment we are staying fairly close to Hyde Park, so most days we have been walking in and around it. It is a truly lovely park, and it is fantastic to have that huge green space in the middle of such a big city.

Tulips in many a colour.

By far my favourite thing about Hyde Park is the SQUIRRELS. They are all over the place and they are super tame, not afraid at all to come right up to your feet and investigate:

These guys were from a group of about five or so squirrels that were competing with a gang of pigeons over some discarded food.

Frolicking.

Snacking.

This morning we decided to walk through the park and check out some of the touristy things on the other side. The southeast corner has all the war memorials, including New Zealand's and Australia's (which I actually thought was nicer). The best one of all was the Animals of War memorial, which was quite moving:

Beyond the war memorials are a lot of the places to do your sightseeing in London, and this weekend being a Bank Holiday weekend meant we had plenty of company. First was Buckingham Palace, which we happened to arrive at a half hour before the changing of the guards, so the place was pretty crowded.

Jo's house (still looking for Talbot Palace).

We decided we didn't want hang around and moved on to some other big-name stops: Westminster Abbey, Big Ben/Houses of Parliament, and Trafalgar Square, and passed under the truly horrendous London Eye(sore).

Big Ben and Big Oren.

Nelson atop his needlessly tall pedestal (note the mostly clear English sky).

So, we can cross a few places our 'things to see' list.

Introductions, etc.

2010-04-28T18:08:00.004+01:00

Hello.

This blog regards my travels in Europe and life in London, which is my new home after having spent my whole life to date in Christchurch, New Zealand. With me is my lovely girlfriend, Jo, who will also be updating this blog from time to time.

Of course, the first part of our adventure was the trip itself from Christchurch to London, a mammoth longhaul effort that clocked in at around 36 hours. There's not much you can say about a trip like that except it was pretty uncomfortable, basically. I watched some excellent films (Moon, Fantastic Mr Fox) and some awful ones (Armored). Our first stop after the relatively nice first leg was in Sydney, where we had intended to venture into the city during the 6 hours we had there, but decided against it after seeing the AU$48 price tag to get us both there and back. We then flew a gruelling 15 hours (ugh) to Abu Dhabi, before a comparatively delightful 8 hours to Heathrow. We managed a few winks on the final leg, but were obviously pretty knackered once we got to the end.

Our buddy Rex enjoyed the breakfast service.

Completely ragged on the final leg, yet still managing to rule at Lego Batman.

But we did manage to get here eventually, which is the main thing! For the first few days we are staying in Paddington, basically because it was easy to get to from Heathrow with all our luggage.

Rex surveys the Sussex Gardens foliage from our window.

The first couple of days have included some exploration of the surrounding area, attempting to walk to Bayswater to get to the Vodafone shop (then taking the tube instead after realising we went in the wrong direction), and today a trip to Piccadilly and Marble Arch so I could sort out some bureaucratic stuff while Jo shopped.

Stay tuned for more updates soon, including more London stuff and a couple of trips to the European mainland coming up.