Introductions, etc.

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.