Cambridge

We have a list of places in the UK that we want to visit before we leave, and the good news is that it is getting shorter and shorter. Some places we have come to the realization that we wont be making it to, such as another trip to the parts of Cornwall that we missed and the Lakes and Peaks districts up north, simply as we are trying to work as much as we can, and these places require at least 4 days and a car. That said, we did Oxford recently and this weekend we made a day trip to Cambridge.

Saturday morning we were up early and out the door before breakfast was even served. We had train tickets from Liverpool St. After the hour and a bit journey we strolled from the train station toward the centre of town. Along the way we had a brief stop in a nice old church and at Downing College, which is one of the smaller colleges.
Our next stop was at Christs College. This is another nice old college, bit bigger. All of the colleges have nice buildings and gardens. This one had a Charles Darwin garden, as he studied at the college, which Christine enjoyed.

The next hour or so we strolled around the town. There were a number of art stores that Christine had a look in, we found some markets bought some Spanish Meats for dinner. The art shops we were half looking to buy an art work as we have been in the UK for so long. It was also just an excuse to warm up as it was pretty cold. We discovered some nice pieces but they are all so expensive when you are in a tourist town. We stopped in a nice café for lunch.
After lunch we headed out along the river and ‘The Backs’, which is a series of gardens and parks. These were nice, although it was a bit chilly. It would be very nice in the warmer months. We saw lots of bridges, and punts on the river. We decided it was a bit cold to give this a shot.

Christine’s favorite part of our time in Cambridge was Kettle’s Yard house and gallery. This is the house that Jim and Helen Ede lived in during the 1920s and 30s. Jim had been a curator at the Tate Gallery in London and collected lots of art from many of the artists he met there and became friends with. The house has been left as if they were still living in it and people are welcome to explore or sit and enjoy the many rooms. It was full of interesting furniture, ceramics and glass ware not to mention the paintings and sculptures. Some of the most famous artist represented were Miro and Henry Moore.
Partially so we could go to a nice Cathedral and partially so we could go to Kings College, for free, we went to Kings College for the Evensong. This is a Church service with a full choir in the evening. The cathedral is very big, old and very nice. The service was lovely.
With the colleges, galleries and cathedral out of the way, we headed to the pub to finish our day. We spent some time and ate in the Eagle which is an old pub with 5 or 6 cozy rooms. During WWII it was a popular hangout for the air force, and they have preserved graffiti and signatures on the walls and roof from the soldiers. On the way back to the train station we stopped for another beer at the Bear, a really small and a bit dingy pub.

Off to Chicago, for the Night!

After a busy week working, we were happy to see Saturday roll around. We had tickets to see a West End play, 39 Steps. Unlike most of the shows we have been to, this one was not a musical. It was a comedy with a small cast, only 4 actors, but very clever as there were many characters.
The story follows the main character who meets a lady at the theater, who turns out to be a spy. She warns him about the 39 Steps which is a weapon for world domination. The next morning she is found dead in his apartment. He flees from London to Scotland, running from the police, whilst looking for a doctor that the spy had been going to see to pass on her message. The doctor turned out to be helping the people who wanted to use this weapon, so he then had to escape from this doctor. It was very clever and quite funny, in a slapstick sort of way. After the show we headed to a pub for a few pints and then dinner in Soho which was nice.
The following week after a few days back at work we were off to another show. This time it was Chicago, which I had been looking forward to seeing for a while, as we have heard a lot of people enjoyed it. All of the tickets we bought were cheap, £25 for second row seats at Chicago and £15 for the other shows.
Unlike 39 Steps, Chicago is a musical and a big production, 20 odd people in the orchestra and probably 20 odd in the show. It was amazing and had a bit of everything, singing, acrobatics, dancing, comedy. It’s a true story about the 1920’s, in Chicago obviously. Show girls that end up in prison. They get a good lawyer and escape with lenient punishments. But it really is the amazing singing and dancing that makes it so good.
With their yearend still not complete, Damien had to work another weekend. We did manage to get to Jade’s 30th birthday at her place in Angel. Damien worked with Jade in his first contract role, and we see her every now and then. She is really sweet, originally from Mornington way she says (really Frankston). She has been in the UK for over 5 years and is quite settled here. We had a really good night, and met a few new people which was nice.

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!

Christmas and New Year

Given that my Christmas markets trip was cancelled I planned a couple of things to keep me entertained. The first item on the agenda was a visit to the Victoria and Albert museum which Brian had been raving about. This was certainly an amazing place. There are just so many artefacts from all over Europe including a room full of casts taken from monuments. There were carved columns from Rome, Celtic crosses from Ireland, Nordic doorways, whole cathedral doorways, it was quite amazing! I was also impressed with the collection of mosaics, some of these looked like oil painting until you got close enough to see the individual pieces of coloured stone inlayed together. There was a huge collection of cloth samples centuries old from all corners of the Earth. A display following the history of jewellery design and much more. It is a place you could visit many times and find something new and amazing again and again.

I also planned a day trip to Hampton Court Palace with Angela, one of our housemates. This is where Henry the VII spent most of his time. There was still snow and ice around so we were unable to visit the gardens and the hedge maze which was disappointing. The buildings were very interesting and gave a bit of an insight to how the monarchy must have lived centuries ago. I loved the star studded ceiling of the church and the grandeur of the formal rooms.

Christmas was spent at Deans Court with all the other ‘London orphans’. The owner supplies masses of food which is always appreciated. We had turkey, pork and heaps of veggies followed by fruit mince tarts and Christmas pudding. Much of the food had to be thrown out as it was not cooked properly by the managers, meaning a week’s worth of leftovers was nonexistent. The managers had organised a ‘Secret Santa’ which added to the fun. We got Casey a beer helmet which reduced her to tears of joy, she really likes her cinder. Damien received a cool beanie and I got some stuff from the body shop. The day began very civilised but due to the crowd, everyone was pretty drunk by about 6pm. Casey had to got to bed after enjoying her new helmet too much and Chris was subjected to nail painting after falling asleep on the couch. It was a fun day but we are both looking forward to next Christmas back in Melbourne with our families.

On Boxing Day we avoided the shops and instead headed to a couple of galleries. The first was for an exhibit called ‘the art of the Album’ which Damien had wanted to see for a while. It was a retrospective on the album covers made by one photographer and was quite interesting. Next stop was the National Portrait Gallery for the ‘National Gallery Photo Portrait Prize’. This was a wonderful, diverse collection of portrait photography from posed dramatic compositions to very informal candid shots.

Damien spent New Years eve back at work but met me and a few of the girls in the city. Us girls were late so Damien spent some time in a pub waiting for us. We headed to ‘Jamie Oliver’s Italian’ restaurant for dinner then planned to watch the firework display on the Thames. Dinner was ok but not as good as when we last went. The city was very crowded, in fact too crowded and the Police had started to block off streets so there would not be too many people on the river banks. It was all a bit confusing and eventually we were all separated. I had an Ok view of the fireworks but it never is the same when you’re alone. I think next year it will be a quiet house party without all the fuss.

So it is now 2011, the year we head home to Melbourne. We are both defiantly looking forward to seeing everyone and settling down to grown up lives with clean kitchens and bathrooms. New Years day was spent in our room. Damien wasn’t feeling very well for some reason and I wasn’t very impressed with the mud he bought home from Hyde Park on his shoes, which ended up in our bed. The 2nd of January was more active with us catching a train to Hampstead Heath and having a long walk. This is a lovely area where the rich people lived back in the days before effective sewage as it is on a hill above the once festering London and has it’s own water source. There are a couple of nice view points in the park that give views of the city, but again we were more impressed with all the dogs out and about. Getting a dog when we get home is defiantly a priority for both of us. We had coffee to warm up then headed into the Manor House. This was nice and warm so it was a bit of a shock to the system when we emerged from the house and felt like the temperature had dropped about 5 degrees. This made the decision to go home very easy.

The Snow Arrives!!!

Prague
So the school holiday arrived, I rushed home to get sorted before a very early morning the next day. Brain, another teacher, and I had planned and amazing Christmas markets tour that began with Prague, a day in Vienna then a few days in Budapest. We were both pretty excited to be heading off the next day until Damien got a text message from Easy jet. As it was snowing, and nothing works in London when it is snowing, our 6am flight from Luton was cancelled. We took this in our stride and rebooked for a later flight from Stansted. Ever optimistic, I packed my bag whilst watching the heaviest snow I have ever seen fall outside my window. We checked the flight status online one last time, it was still scheduled. Brian and I headed off to Liverpool St Station where we caught the Stansted Express. This turned out to be a longer wait than we anticipated and we were glad we had allowed extra time to get to the airport due to the weather. We should have taken this as a warning for what was to come but we were still both feeling optimistic about our trip as we froze on the platform watching the snow melt from the stationary trains.

Finally, after a couple of confusing announcements and platform changes, we were on our way. The train was quite full but it was nice to be out of the cold. We admired the winter landscape of frozen lakes, white fields and families building snowmen from the warmth of the carriage. Then the train had arrived at the airport, had just checked the flight status again on Brian’s I phone and were reassured by the website claiming our flight was still scheduled. This relief was short lived as we discovered soon after that our flight, along with all Easy jet flights had actually been cancelled! It is a strange thing to look at the website which states the flight is scheduled alongside the information screen which told us otherwise. By this point we were both a little annoyed as there were no Easy jet staff in site, in fact the airport terminal looked deserted of staff. There were hundreds of people milling around trying to work out what to do next but not anyone to give information. Brian and I did what any disappointed person would do, we headed for the nearest bar.

Whilst this was a good idea at the time, we were both feeling irritated, disappointed and hungry it may not have been the best idea in retrospect. We did have an ok time but when we got back to the train platform a couple of hours later there was mayhem! All the people who had come out to the airport for cancelled flights, along with all the people who had their flights grounded at Stansted which was the last London airport to close, were trying to get back into central London. What made matters worse was the fact that the trains were not working very well due to the weather, remember nothing works in London when it snows. We spent the next couple of hours chatting to strangers on the platform whilst we waited for a train. We met a German girl who had been trying to get home for three days and a family from Florida who had a connecting flight from a different airport. We didn’t feel so bad about missing our holiday considering we intended to be in London for Christmas anyway. After a couple of hours on the freezing platform, and again with confusing announcements directing people to other platforms, we finally made it onto a very crowded train. We were relieved again to be out of the cold but soon became frustrated as the train broke down twice! We did finally make it back to London and are still waiting for a reply to Brian’s very stern letter about the lack of staff and organisation at the Stansted train platforms.

Meanwhile, Damien being Damien decided he wasn’t going to waste a day off by waiting for me to leave on my holiday. He headed out into the country to go walking in the blizzard! I was very relieved when he arrived home in one piece and very jealous that he had a lovely day out when mine was quite frankly lousy.


Damien Walk, Pluckley

Despite the weather and Christine leaving for Prague today, I got myself moving. The night before I had checked out a really handy hiking England website and decided on my plan of attack. After breakfast, saying bye to Christine, visiting the internet cafe to print the walking instructions and catching the train to London Bridge, I was ready to take the train out of London, a bit later than I had planned. The guy at the ticket window warned unless travel was essential he advised against it, they weren’t certain the trains would run all day due to the snow. But some times you just need to ‘take a gamble on the weather’ so I bought a ticket, jumped on the first train and hoped for the best.
Well I am happy to say that today has changed my opinion on English people, somewhat. Maybe it was my mood, or maybe it was the individuals I met, but today I met the nicest English people I have ever met!

As the train rolled out of London Town, the snow continued to fall, if anything it got heavier and heavier. Unusually, for the first part of the journey I had a carriage to myself, which was nice, I enjoyed my coffee and read the printout of the walk I had bought with me.
The train ride was only supposed to take an hour but took well over this, due to the weather. In uncharacteristic fashion, this did not annoy me! After about an hour the train pulled into Tonbridge, a place I had never heard of, but was quite busy. I had finished my reading and the next part of the journey took another hour, but again this did not upset me. After Tonbridge I got chatting to someone who had just got on the train. Turns out she had been in London for the week with exams, then had a work party somewhere near Tonbridge the night before and was gradually making her way home to Canterbury. She was lovely and we chatted most of the way until finally the train arrived at Pluckley, and I made my way off the train.

The snow is so pretty, especially from the warmth and comfort of the train. As I stepped off the train it was blizzard like (or as close to a blizzard as you will find in England). I started my 4 hour hike, knowing I only had about 4.5 hours of daylight left. The first part was hard going, because of the snow. The instructions talk about gravel roads and crossing fields, which is made difficult by snow covered ground and 10-15m visability. At point 3 of my 45 point hiking guide I very nearly turned around, having no idea where I was or which direction I was supposed to be headed (standing in a field, not seeing a fence in any direction). It was at this point that I was cold too, I had all the right gear, thermals, snow socks and ski jacket, but after being on the warm train the first 30-40 minutes was cold.
I kept going, for a while I had didn’t know where I was but figured I was going in the right ‘general’ direction. After skipping a few points, I made my way back onto the hiking guide instructions which was re assuring, and about 30 minutes later the snow calmed down and eventually stopped. This meant I was able to see and walk faster, warming me up so I was no longer cold.

For the next 3 hours I enjoyed walking through fields, paddocks small towns and small country roads. There was orchids that the walk went through, views over snow covered valleys and forrest with snow covered trees. The small towns were lovely, small churches and not much else. Part of my plan was to turn the walk into a bit of a pub crawl, but this didn’t eventuate. The first pub ‘The Swan’ I skipped and kept walking, as I had left a bit late I wanted to get at least a bit of the way into the walk, then the pub about ¾ of the way through I got to a bit late. Instead I grabbed some cans of beer and kept walking. Just down the track I found a seat with a great view of the valley and fields all covered in snow. I sat ate a banana, bag of chips, drank my beers and enjoyed the winter sunset, at 4pm!
From this point I had to head down in to the valley and back up the otherside. This was made difficult by a slight wrong turn, then back tracking I found myself in the middle of the fog which dropped into the valley quite quickly after sunset. So I was back where I started, in the middle of a field with no visability. I continued through the fog, and made it to the other side of the valley, from here the walk was along country roads back to the train. For the first time since I got of the train, I actually saw other people. As I walked I chatted to a couple of guys, both out walking their dogs, heading in the same direction. My last stop was going to be the local pub in Pluckley, ‘Dering Arms’, but would you believe, on a Saturday afternoon it was closed! Instead I headed back to the train station and waited on the platform, hoping the trains were still running!
I had to wait about half an hour, but the trains were running which was good. Instead of running all the way back to London, the train was terminating at Tonbridge, about half way. At Tonbridge there was a train on a different platform about to head to London, but instead I decided to have a wonder around town.

It was nice yet the same as every other town in some ways. For a start it was covered in snow and ice, had a small river running through the town. There was an old castle and cathedral which I walked around before finding a small pub on a side street. I got a seat by the open fire, a pint of Guinness and dried out for an hour or so. Sadly the pub didn’t do food, so I still didn’t get to eat.
I headed back to the train station, past the high st shops and chain restaurants. The staff at the station had no idea. There was no information on the screens, and the guy in the information booth would look at his screen every time someone asked him something, only to reply ‘I’m not sure when the next train will be’ or he would say things like ‘we just need to wait for a train to arrive and ask the driver where he is going!’.
After waiting about half hour I headed back over to the ‘information’ guy. The girl in front of me asked about London, so I didn’t have to, he still had no idea. We got chatting, her name was Rachel and she was lovely. A school teacher at Tunbridge Wells, a nearby town, she was trying to get to London to see her sister for dinner. She had driven to the station, and was about to head out to the car to drive to London instead of wait for the train. She had offered me a lift which was very generous. Moments later two trains rolled into the station, and we were advised to take one of them to another small town, which would then have a connecting train to London. I didn’t know any different, so hesitantly, we got onboard, not knowing if there would actually be a connecting train or not.
Luckily there were connecting trains and we did end up back in London reasonably quickly. Rachel had invited me to dinner, since I hadn’t eaten still, but I thought I should get home and out of my wet clothes. We said goodbye and headed off from Victoria Station.

I had had a long and enjoyable day, the snow was so nice and being out of London is always great. I had met some great people and for once, delays with trains had not even annoyed me! Sadly as Christine had the camera to take to Prague, I did not get any photos of the countryside covered in snow.

A Busy Lead up to Christmas!

We have both been very busy with work the last couple of weeks. Damien’s job has been very time demanding so he isn’t getting home until 8pm some nights. This means we are both pretty tired but the show must go on and we have to make the most of our now limited time in London. In an effort to get out and about a bit more, Damien has started booking things left right and centre. There has also been some Christmas parties to keep us busy, Thursday night was the Axcis Christmas party, Friday night was Damien’s work party and then Saturday was an early morning for our Bath and Stonehenge tour.

This weekend we had a day trip to Bath and Stonehenge. We had already had a weekend in Bath and visited Stonehenge for my birthday earlier in the year but Damien won a magazine competition so it didn’t cost us a cent. We were up early after a long week and headed to Kensington, where we were getting picked up. It was then 2hours on the bus straight down to Stonehenge. It was cool to see it again, but still it’s hard to be overly impressed by Stonehenge, it really is just a few rocks in a paddock!
An hour later we arrived in Bath, for a very brief guided tour, basically the bus driving around town with us straining our necks to look out the windows. Once off the bus we headed to the Roman Baths, which we didn’t visit on our last trip. This was really nice, part museum, part roman ruins and part roman baths. Sadly we weren’t allowed to go swimming!
The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the Christmas Markets which were scattered all over town. Bath is a really nice city, lovely old buildings, but once again way too busy! The markets were good, we didn’t buy much more than food and drinks but the stalls did have nicer things than the London Christmas Markets, handmade wooden carvings and decorations etc. Sadly all too soon it was time to join the heard back on the bus and head back to London, about a 3 hour trip.
We arrived home at about 7pm, to a pleasant surprise. The 4 Spanish girls we have been living with were organising a big Spanish feast as a farewell dinner. They have been studying in London for a semester. They wouldn’t even let us help with the cooking, which drove Christine mad! Later that night we enjoyed a great feed of Spanish Tortilla, cured meats and salads. Thanks girls, we would love to come and visit in Barcelona some day!

Henley Walk

We received an email from one of the girls we met on our sail Croatia tour to come for a walk in the country side and jumped at the chance of doing something cool without having to organise it. Petria has apparently organised a few walks during her time in London but this was the first one since the Croatia trip. We met at Paddington station then caught the train out to Hanley on Thames. This area was beautiful! The walk began along a river where we watched the rowers training, apparently there is a huge regatta there during summer. We couldn’t understand how anyone would willingly climb into a row boat as it was bloody cold. Everyone was wearing thermals and Damien had decided it was cold enough to wear his snow jacket.

It was cold, very cold! There was frost on the grass and puddles had frozen over. We walked over a loch, through sheep paddocks, cow paddocks, along muddy tracks and through sparse forests. Finally after 5 miles, we reached our half way lunch stop, The Stag and Huntsman. The food here was really good, so good in fact that we couldn’t even bear to look at the dessert menu after finishing our main. This was a good thing too as after lunch the path began to climb.


We continued up hills through forests carpeted with autumn leaves. Through meadows, where the grass was still frosty even though it was getting quite late in the day. Eventually, as the sun was beginning to set, say around 4pm, we arrived back in town ready to catch the train back to Paddington. We were all very tired and cold so a hot chocolate was well deserved. It was a great day and it was lovely to meet some of Petria’s friends. We hope to do it again soon. Sunday I was having trouble sleeping so I got up early to avoid waking Damien and so I could ring mum. It sounds like everyone is falling apart at home. She is very restricted at the moment after an arthroscopy on her knee whilst Andrew is in a moon boot after breaking his foot in Cairns. Once Damien appeared we made plans to head to the Tate Modern to see the new installation in the turbine hall.
The sky was blue so we walked through Hyde Park. It looks so different every week at the moment with all the leaves falling. The grass is still green but otherwise it has become quite stark. It is always nice seeing all the people using the space to walk their dogs or exercise. From Hyde park corner we caught the bus to Waterloo then walked along Southbank towards to Tate. We stopped for lunch at the Real Greek (another chain) then headed into the gallery.

The current installation in the turbine hall is by a Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who worked with people from the traditional porcelain making region to create hundreds of thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds. Each piece was made in a mould, fired, hand painted, re-fired and then polished. When the installation first opened people were actually able to walk through and interact with the art work but this was stopped due to fears that the ceramic dust would cause health problems. I think that fencing the work off has sucked some of the life out of it as it is now very static, but it is still pretty cool. After the turbine hall we headed had a look around some of the permanent collections then decided it was time to go home. We crossed the Thames on the millennium bridge and just about froze! I think winter has come a little bit early. As I write this it is snowing outside. I think I’ll head to Hyde Park a bit later to see if there is enough snow to make a snow angel.

Oxford and Harry!

Pay Day is always exciting but so much more so when you have been living off tinned soup and discounted bags of potatoes. It is amazing how cheaply you can live in London when you have too, but it is so much nicer to buy things like olives and fresh bread.

This week was our second wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that we have been married for two years now. The time has flown, but I guess we should have expected as much considering that a year and a half of our marriage has been spent abroad.

As it was a special occasion and we finally had some cash we decided to have a day in the university town, Oxford. It was a slow start to the day so we didn’t make it to Oxford until around 1pm. Our first stop was to the undercover market where we visited a cafe for a coffee. Once we had defrosted, we rugged up again and headed to Christchurch College primarily to see the Great Hall which features in the first couple of Harry Potter movies. The hall itself is very nice, way over crowded with tourists, but fun to be in the middle of Hogwarts! The grounds of the college were beautifully manicured and the building very ornate. Wandering down the street we dropped into a couple of the other colleges, smaller, but just as nice and no crowds. Our last stop was the bridge of sighs, which is a replica of the big bridge in Venice. We had planned to do a bit more but it was getting cold and dark. The whole town is full of historical buildings including some very cool pubs. As it was so cold we probably spent more time in the pubs than exploring. To escape the cold we headed down some little lane ways to the Turf Tavern. It was busy, but we managed to get a table pretty quickly. It was an old, low ceilinged pub that used to host fencing duels in the 1700’s. We ate a massive share platter and tried the local stout which wasn’t half bad. Ready to move on the friendly staff told us about The Bear, another nice old pub. We were impressed, it was small, two rooms each seating 10-15 people, we got a seat by the open fire. The walls had collections ties from army officers, politicians and academics that had visited over the years (strange but interesting). Not done yet we went for a bit more of a wander, visited a contemporary sculpture gallery that happened to be open late on a Saturday and then found the Eagle and Child pub (baby and bird as the locals know it). This was another nice looking pub, bigger but also had that ‘British chain pub’ feel about it. After another pint we headed back through town to the bus terminal.
Oxford is a very nice town, nice old buildings, gardens and cobbled lanes. We ran short of daylight (damn UK sunset at 4pm), and never made it down to the river, which is also meant to be nice.
Sunday is pancake day and it is always hard to get moving, especially when you know how cold it is going to be outside. The weather reports have been saying there has been snow all over the UK and we should expect it in London soon. We had had grand notions of going for a walk through the park, but only managed to go to the supermarket to buy cheap Baileys and cereal.
By the time we got moving it was almost time to head to Westfield to see ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. The movie was great for those who haven’t seen it yet. It was very dark and actually made me jump in one part, we are both looking forward to the next instalment, whenever that may be. We particularly liked the scenes in London, as these are places we see quite regularly. We walked home but stopped off at the Churchill Arms for dinner. This is a very cool old pub with a Thai restaurant at the back. We found a table ordered Thai and admired the collection of Chamber Pots hanging from the ceiling. It has been a pretty good couple of days.

Our wedding anniversary fell on the Monday which made the weekend feel longer. I met Damien in town after he finished work and we headed to Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant. We had a drink in a pub beforehand then headed to the restaurant only to discover there was a wait. You can only book tables for 6 people or more so everyone else has to walk in and get a buzzer. We headed back to the pub to wait half an hour or so, but happily it was only a 10 minute wait, not even long enough to finish our drink. The food was lovely and the service was great. I could happily recommend it to anyone who comes to London for a few days.

Full Time Work!

For the first time in a while, Monday morning I was up, putting on my suit and heading off to work. Not so much excited, just happy to have some work lined up. I’m working at Lebara Mobile for 3 months, they are a small telecommunications company offering cheaper call rates than the bigger companies. The week went well, a bit slow and lots of IT problems, their IT department is useless, takes 3-4 days to get simple things fixed like access to printers and a phone!
Other than work the week was very quiet. Were both just settling into being stuck in London again, not a nice thought after our summer of travel. The Dean Court Hotel is dirtier than it has ever been, and some of our good friends have left to go home to Australia or find nicer places to live in London. It was a week of birthdays back home with Nan, Leia and Mums birthdays all this week, we made some phone calls which was nice, but will also be nice to be home this time next year!
We had another quiet weekend, Friday night after work I met Christine at the British Museum. This is open late on Friday nights. We had a bit of a look around, it was nice, no school kids and many of the tourists leaving as it was dinner time.
November in the UK has a big rugby union tournament. This involved 8-10 of the best nations in the world playing off, meaning once again there was some quality sport on the TV. There was also the final race of the F1 season, but sadly Webber, after a great season couldn’t get the points in the final race and finished 3rd overall for the year.

Back in London for Winter

We arrived back around lunch time on the Monday. I did my Obsessive Compulsive cleaning of our room and located all our winter clothes as Damien went to the Laundry Matt. We got settled in ready to head back to work on Tuesday. I have been requested back at a school that I worked earlier in the year and Damien has picked up a couple of days as a Teacher’s Assistant. Hopefully our bank account will begin to look healthier after all our travelling. We don’t have any more travel booked until we can fund it.
Despite being offered teaching work for Thursday and Friday, Damien declined these to start looking for a more permanent accounting role. This paid off. His agency ran 3 roles past him on Wednesday evening and Thursday, an interview on Thursday evening and by Friday afternoon he was offered 3 months as a Project Accountant role, starting Monday!

Friday morning Damien visited the British Museum. This was good and not too busy, given it was a weekday, although plenty of school kids. It was very interesting looking through the Egyptian collection less than a week since being in Egypt. The main item in the gallery is the Rosetta Stone, which is the stone that enabled the ancient Egyptian language to be translated. The stone itself has the same thing written in 3 languages, ancient Egyptian, another form of Egyptian and Greek. The rest of the gallery had all sorts of stones, statues and coffins. The museum also offers free half hour guided tours of particular areas of the gallery. I joined one of these that discussed some of the Ancient Greek collection. This was quite interesting discussing different pots, plates and statues. The museum also has a lot of works from the Parthenon in Greece, that are displayed around the walls of a big gallery. Maybe we will have to visit Greece!
Friday night was Guy Forks night. This was one of first weekends we had in London last year. We have been living in London for a year! Sadly this year the bon fire night was a very cold and wet night, so we never ventured out. Saturday was a more sunny day. We went for a walk in Hyde Park, enjoying the colourful Autumn. We continued walking through Mayfair and over to Regent St. This weekend is the London to Brighton Vintage Car Rally. Regent street is closed so that the cars could be displayed, all of the cars are over 100 years old.
Sunday morning Damien got up early and headed to Hyde Park for the rally which started at 7am. It was cold but fun to see the old cars driving into the London traffic. Some were breaking down 200m after the start line. The afternoon was spent relaxing watching the rugby and F1 on TV.