2011, A Walk in the Park!

We started the year with a day at Hampstead Heath. This is another big park, just north of London. It is a bit more hilly than other parts of the city, giving views back over London. It is a wealthy area, back in the day when London had drainage and sewage problems (some of which still exist at Dean Court Hotel!), the wealthy moved to Hampstead, as all the water drained away. It is also supposed to have a clean water spring, which meant that fresh water was available, while the dirty water drained away. The park is mostly unmanicured. It has open spaces, sections of forest and a number of lakes, which are apparently used for bathing in during summer! In the middle of the park is Kenwood House, an old mansion. After a coffee to warm up we visited the house which is full of old furniture, ornaments artwork and has a nice library. In the yards of the house are a couple of sculptures by Henry Moore and Barbra Hepworth. As always around 4pm the sun disappeared and the cold set in, even more so, meaning we had to leave the park and make our way back home to get ready for the week ahead. Luckily I had booked some theater tickets late last year for January, giving us something to look forward to in the short term!
We have also been spending a bit of time thinking about what is next for us, once we leave the UK, which we are looking forward to doing! We have booked some flights and decided that our 2011 travel plans will include Istanbul, Greek Islands, Italy, Germany, Austria, Czech and a stopover in South East Asia on our way back to Melbourne. We’re not sure what we are more excited about, travelling again or finally being back in Melbourne! As always, there are so many more places that we would love to visit, but time has run short, we will just have to come back some day! For the record, I’m planning on going to the Melbourne Cup this year, if anyone wants to join us. Its amazing how many people from outside Australia have heard of this race, I’m sick of having to say I’ve never been!
The week at work turned out to be busy, very busy. In fact the next few weeks have rolled into a January blur. Working late nights and weekends as the company is a bit disorganised and unrealistic with their month end and year end deadlines. Nether the less it is all helping the savings for our travel to come in the next few months!