House of Lord's

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.

Big Kids

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

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.

Shameless Tourists

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.

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.