I'm Feeling Great

I'm feeling great. Ellie and I are on a really good trip, and we are having a great time!

Before we left, I had a little bit of trouble getting leave from work. I remember saying that I really wanted to go because our last trip was such a life changing experience and I couldn't pass up the opportunity - I wanted more life changing experiences!

Well, this trip has been incredible, and life changing, but not in the way I imagined it. It's very difficult to explain in writing, so next time you see me make sure to ask.

It's 6AM here in London right now. I'm on our couch watching the "Dance of the Airplanes" out the window. There is a constant stream of planes dancing in and out of my view through the window - it looks like they are performing ballet. Quite beautiful.

It is not long now until we return to the Sun Burnt Country and I'm really looking forward to seeing you all again. It looks like we are off to France for our final week of holiday, to stay at a dairy farm in the country side. (Not quite a shearing shed Dad, but it's the best I could do!)

See you all soon!
Mark

Edit - PS: Weather here in London has been great the last few days. It even hit 30 degrees on Sunday!

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Kent

We spent a great weekend in Kent with Jody and Daniel this weekend. They were housesitting and had a car, so we caught a train down there and went for a beautiful drive around the gorgeous Kent countryside, with a long chilled-out picnic for lunch, a cream tea outside a pub, and a bbq for dinner! It was so brilliant to get out of London and see some green for a while. We had our picnic at Knole House, which had a huge deer park surrounding it, so there were deer coming up to see if we had any food for them while we were eating. They were just lying down sleeping all around us (despite all the chavs with their shirts off...).

And cream teas are so good! It's basically a devonshire tea, but I suppose since you get them all over and not just in Devon, they call them cream teas instead. And the clotted cream that comes with them is so good - so thick it's like spreading butter on your scones and jam. Like King Island cream but thicker... And yes, I do still reserve the right to bitch about the Heathrow Injection when I get home... :D

But... we didn't get any photos of the weekend at all cos the batteries in the camera died! So no pics of deer or hedgerows, but instead here's another cheezcat:

Skeptical cat...

Nothing much, just the cutest kitty... skeptical cat:

Actually this fellow reminds us of our mate Ben...

Reiki

I had an awesome weekend - I did a reiki course! It was quite trippy in a way, just a little glimpse at a whole different world, but it was a really fun thing to do and just a fascinating concept. So in theory I can now do reiki on people. In practice of course I probably should have a bit more practice... that's what Mark's for luckily ;)

We had a cool night with Jody and Daniel the other night. They've just gotten back from volunteering in South America, and had so many awesome stories to tell and photos to see. So exciting! We're going to hang out on Saturday too and wander around some castles and stuff out in Kent.

We've also been continuing our culinary tour of London - we've had some awesome little wanders to work in the sunshine lately, followed by yummo coffee and croissants in Exmouth Market. There's this awesome little patisserie there that makes the best croissants... so good, and not bad coffee either.

We also went to see the Transformers movie last night. I have to admit I wasn't expecting a lot at all, so I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't really watch the cartoons when I was a kid though, so didn't really know what to expect. I thought it was pretty good - awesome CGI stuff with the transformer robots, although some of the scale model scenes where buildings were wrecked etc were a bit dodgy. Mark wasn't too impressed though - he didn't think they did justice to Optimus Prime...

Oh, and I didn't have any new pics to put up, so here are a couple that we took on the way back from Norway - a beautiful sunny shot over the sea, and a pic of the little patchwork fields coming down in England.

Plymouth!

Trip to Plymouth!

Due to the floods, it took us six hours to get to Plymouth on the train. We had to go through Bristol and then down to Plymouth. The direct train only takes three hours!!

Plymouth was a a really interesting place. We Ellie's first house (when she was a baby!), had an Oggy (a devonshire pasty) together, walked around and saw the lighthouse and the waterfront.

We stayed at a really nice B&B. It was great. The port and waterfront was nice, but really polluted!! It was really disgusting, and the English were fishing in it!! Right in the polution!

We had an awesome dinner and evening at a really cool restaurant bar. The best service we've had in England! Just great!

On Sunday we cruised around the town (away from the touristy bits) and saw where Ellie's Dad lived when he was a kid. We happened across a really cool cafe with great coffee, where we sat for a while and Ellie called her Dad to get his old address. It was there that Ellie realised (while speaking with her Dad on the phone) that we were right across the road from where he went to school as a kid.

Here's Ellie eating a pasty!!

Plymouth tomorrow

Yay - we're finally off to Plymouth tomorrow. 3 hrs on the train tomorrow morning, then we're staying at a B&B a block down the road from the terrace house where I spent the first 3 yrs of my life - how cool is that?? Otherwise we'll just wander around Plymouth and check stuff out, and get a pastie from Ivor Dewdney's, which is evidently a famous local landmark now, but where Mum and Dad used to get their pastie fix when we lived there 25 years ago, and whose pastie recipe Mum patiently and faithfully ripped off. When I get back home, I'm making a batch of pasties! Yummo!

And as an added gift for today's post, here is one of today's kitties from I Can Has Cheezburger:

Stick a fork in me Jerry ...

... I'm done!

After claiming earlier in the trip that I was sick of museums etc. I've spent over 10 hours in the last two days in two museums. On Wednesday I went to the Imperial War Museum and today I spent six and a half hours at the British Museum.

I went to the Imperial War Museum to see a few movies I'd seen scheduled the last time we were there. Saw an old film (news reel) describing how airfields were built in the English country-side to launch bombing raids on German positions in Europe. Then a short film produced by the British School of Infantry in 1943 on camouflage and field craft (if any one knows, it's soldiers in the middle of a war!). The second film was great (really great!!!) with some awesome stuff on the use of camouflage and field craft, using shade and terrain, range cards and the selection of fire positions, movement across country and section formations. Really cool stuff! (To me anyway!)

Then I went upstairs and saw a 30 minute film titled Crimes Against Humanity. It was not a pleasant film, but I do feel that it is a very important one. The film is "A specially-commissioned 30-minute film is the central element of this exhibition which examines the theme of genocide and ethnic conflict". More people need to see this film, and more importantly understand what is going on in the world around them. Once you know what is really going on you can take action. So stop watching Today Tonight and switch on SBS World News. Then write to your local politicians and tell them to do something about it. Don't let fear and mass media rule your life.

Enough ranting. And I haven't even got to Collingwood yet.

After the Crimes Against Humanity film I went to the Holocaust exhibition. It was an incredible exhibition. Phenomenal. Like a normal museum exhibit it has lots of physical exhibits you can look at and read about, but in addition to this, complementing and enhancing these pieces are images, diorama's, audio and video from Nazi propaganda films and Jewish holocaust survivors. I spent over two and half hours going through the exhibition. At one point I was almost cried reading letters, watching videos and listening to the stories of the few survivors as they were shipped off to Auswitch like cattle as part of the Nazi's "Final Solution". I could not believe the horrors these people were forced to endure because of a belief system. And worse still is that it has been not only Nazi's but Christians and Muslims who have perpetrated and advanced anti-Semite beliefs for centuries.

But worse still, and worst of all, is that we have learnt nothing. The parallels between Nazi Germany and the conflicts of today, portrayed in the Crimes Against Humnaity films were the most disturbing thing of all.

Cambodia. Yugoslavia. Rwanda. Darfur.

I'm sorry for such a negative post. Well, negative or positive? It all depends on your point of view and what you choose to do with the knowledge you've obtained (or been reminded of) by reading this Blog today.

On to Thursday!! I have to make this part of the post upbeat; Ellie is insistent that the Mark and Ellie's Adventures Blog be entertaining so all our friends and family come back and read it and leave good comments! Ellie loves comments!! (If you can't read between the lines, leave some good comments, this means you! ;)(Hey Baby! xox)

So Thursday, Ellie and I did what is becoming a bit of a morning habit. Headed down to the Italian Coffee Company (which is actually an Italian pizza restaurant) for a coffee and a croissant. If you buy a large coffee there (and they make pretty good coffee) before 12pm you get a free croissant (pretty good croissant's too, baked on the premises!). So we had a coffee and a croissant, and then I walked Ellie to work, which takes a little under 30 minutes.

After dropping Ellie off, I wasn't sure what to do. I thought I might check out the British Museum which happens to be on the way, directly between our place and Ellie's work. I was keen to do an audio tour (self guided headphones type thing) of the Enlightenment Room. When I got there the exhibits were closed (they don't open before 10am, I've been to the museum a number of times after walking Ellie to work, so I knew this already) so I got a cappuccino and sat in the Great Court (see link for picture). The Great Court is amazing. The whole museum is worth looking at even if there was nothing in it. Amazing building. It's just awesome to sit in the Great Court and be in it. Sometimes I have a coffee there before everything opens to do just that.

(Going early, before the exhibits open is awesome because everything is just slowly building up to speed. Staff are cleaning and preparing. Early birds are planning their days and preparing. It's like getting up really early and watching a town wake up, and slowly come to life, except you don't have to be there till 9.30am. Perfect really! (All of you who know me well enough, I know you've been missing my stories so that was a little bit of MarkWorld for you. Otherwise known as a delightful detour through the mind of a genius.))

Onwards! So, the Enlightenment tour. I went to pick up the audio tour and decided to change my mind at the last moment and to the British Museum Self-Guided Highlights Audio Tour! This is a self guided audio tour of the highlights of the British Museum. Much like it sounds really.

So. Six-and-a-half-hours later!!! I finished the tour. I've come pretty darn close to seeing everything in the British Museum. Please note: Seeing. Not appreciating! I was traveling pretty fast through a lot of the museum, and about 3-4 rooms were closed for renovation. And keep in mind that I've been there a number of times previously so I've seen a lot of it before (I didn't even stop to breath at the huge Parthenon room).

At the end of it all: Wow! Amazing museum. Amazing!! I saw so much that I hadn't even contemplated before today. The four major cultures of Central America throughout the last three thousand years. The migration of Greeks to southern Italy and their influence on the Etruscans (early native Italians). The different forms and development of money throughout the centuries. The enormity and grandeur of Persepolis (capital of the ancient Persian empire). The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (a wonder of the ancient world). The native Americans of British Columbia. I can't even think of what else. African bronze working. Korean artworks and the influence of Confucius. Buddhist statues. Ancient palace gates. Winged bulls. Stuff I can't even remember the name of. I can't keep it all in my head.

I'm trying to think of more, but I just can't. So I'll name a tonne of other stuff that I saw that I did know about: The Rosetta Stone. Ramases II. Anglo-Saxon warriors. Greek mythology. Mummies. Swords. Scrolls. Pots. Pans. Spoons. Rocks. Ah, bugger I don't know. It's about 5 minutes to 1am. I can't think.

I hardly looked at the Asian and Eastern stuff. A quick run through, that was it. I'm keen to go back and look at it in more detail, and Ellie said she was too, so we'll probably go together. Should be good. The run free 30 minute short tours as well, so I plan to go back and join a few of those to see those things that I was interested in again. You'd think I was sick of the place, but it is really amazing. And free entry. Did I mention that?

(NB: You can do a virtual tour of the British Museum, just click here.)

So, when I left it was about time for Ellie to finish work. I was dead set exhausted. I walked to meet El at her work, and had a quick macchiato while I waited for her. After Ellie showed up, I suggested we go out for dinner. To Strada (see Ellie's post below).

Ellie and I went to Strada in Wimbledon Village last time we were here. It was awesome! This time, we had the exact same meal. The garlic bread was awesome, but I have to say the rest of the food was average. I'm writing it up as unimaginative and lacking soul.

Then we cruised on home and watched "Welcome to the Jungle" with The Rock (GO THE ROCK!!!). Heh heh. The British Museum followed by the Rock! What a combination.

NB I: This post is full of links to more information. Move your mouse over the text or click randomly for more information.

NB II: As we were cruising home (like most other times really) Ellie and I had so much fun, laughing and playing around. Ellie is so awesome, we have so much fun together.

"All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

- Edmund Burke

PPS. If you didn't know about Wikipedia, you sure as hell do now.

PPPS. I really hope you enjoy this post. It's now 10 minutes to 2am. As I said, Stick A Fork In Me ...

Strada

We had dinner at Strada tonight, for the first time since we've been back in London. That place is great. It's another chain of course, but they do some great food. We had the exact same thing as one of our last meals over here last time - some fantastic garlic and rosemary bread to start with, which was like pizza bread really but had some olive oil and sea salt on it too - so good!!! Then we had an appetiser of carpaccio, which is thin cured beef slices, with rocket, parmesan and olive oil. Also brilliant. Then we had a buffalo mozzarella pizza with tomato for the main course. I love buffalo mozzarella, it's the best thing ever. Such a good pizza... All washed down with a couple of glasses of Italian wine and beer for Mark. Oh yeah baby!

the world's zaniest cafe stuff

The place we had our big breakfast at on Sunday had the most entertaining stuff ever. There were zany little signs everywhere (the 'closed' sign on the door said "shut happens"!), including on the saucers under the coffee cups - this is a pic of what it said.


And here is their napkin and biscuit. Sorry, their Stupid Little Biscuit!


OK, that's all, just thought these were cool...

Brighton

Ducked down to Brighton on the weekend. We'd had very mixed reports of it beforehand - varying from 'super-cool' to 'super-tacky'. We got off the train there on Saturday morning and wandered down to the "beach". The "beach" was freezing cold, blusterily wind-swept, and made up of small boulders. There was a crazy old rusted metal ruin just off the beach - very picturesque - and the promenade thingy had a distinctly faded old-school tourist air about it.

But then after lunch when we had a tiny bit of sunshine, we got the hell away from that crap "beach" and went back from the coast a bit into these cool old little windy streets which actually had a bit of atmosphere and were pretty funky. We also checked out the Brighton Pier, which was just a big amusement park thingy that went way out to sea (and had one of the scariest evil take-you-up-into-the-air-and-drop-you-down-and-spin-you-around rides ever - made scarier by the fact that it's effectively out in the ocean...!), so that was kind of cool, but also a huge rip-off with all the total junk that you have to pay lots of money for. We also had a laugh at British surfing, which is apparently done in a 5 metre space between the pier and the jetty - here's a pic.

The we went to check in at the ugliest hotel ever built - a huge concrete block with ugly dribbly stains going down the outside, which also seemed to have the rudest hotel staff ever. We sure know how to pick em! And of course it costs 2.4 times as much for the rude concrete block over here as it does back home...

But after all this doom and gloom, we turned it around. It was a tough morning, so we had a fantastic nap for an hour or so. Yes, we do party hard. And then, we had a brilliant dinner and some drinks at Cafe Rouge (another restaurant chain, but pretty cool - cute little French vibe. The first pic above is from here.), and then we went to see Damien Rice, which was the whole point of coming to Brighton in the first place. And he was brilliant. I didn't take any photos, because (1) photography was banned, (2) stacks of other people were taking photos, despite (1), so I assume I will soon be able to find all their photos on flickr, and lastly (3) it was too good a gig and I couldn't be bothered stuffing around with the camera. Then we had some more drinks on the way home, which was also brilliant, for itself but also because we confirmed that we're addicted to travelling.

Then the next day we slept in (yes, we do party hard), went out for a long cruisy breakfast to read the paper delivered to our room that morning (note, NOT free despite the hefty price tag of the room!), which was pretty decent. Then we wandered around all the funky little shopping streets for a bit, revisited the "beach", which was actually a bit nicer in the sunshine and on a slightly warmer day (pics are from then, not yukky Saturday), and bummed around in a pub for a while. All of which was lovely and left us with much fuzzier feelings towards Brighton than the day before.

Black google - Blackle!

Check this out, it's cool! Some dude had an idea recently that because it takes (relatively) heaps more energy to display a white screen than it does a black screen, if Google had a black background instead of a white one it would save a fair whack of energy worldwide just because so many people use Google. So someone created Blackle - a custom search powered by Google but with a black background. Check it out - click here. There's a little link at the bottom called 'About Blackle' that explains it all too. The funny thing is that evidently someone's started the verb 'blackling' in the same way that there's a verb 'googling' already - eg "I'll blackle it and find out". Love it!! :)

Hilarious Bergen street signs

Mark swears that he's going to post about Norway tonight, so I'll leave the serious post to him and put a zany post on - all the crazy street signs in Bergen!! Part of it is just bodgy translations (Norweglish??), and the rest is just that things are slightly different cos it's a different culture..

Here's the sign for our local Bergen Now Age Shop - except by the time we got into the shop it wouldn't be Now anymore, so what's the point?

This is the pedestrian crossing sign in Norway. I love it cos the little dude looks so shifty - like an old school spy with his trench coat and fedora. Mark was going to pose underneath the sign in the same shifty pose, but there were too many people around all the time...

And here's our local Netty Undertoy store - this is an underwear store, in case you can't see through the reflections on the window, that's why Mark's looking so happy standing in front of it...




This is technically not a crazy Bergen street sign, but it's still pretty funny - a travel agency ad.






And the last one is just for Ray...










And lastly, Mark's news of the moment is that he is anti-everything-i, except ipaqs. QED.

Tons of photos

Oh, and here is a link to my flickr site, where I'm putting all these photos up too. There are tons more photos up there from Norway, although we'll put more posts up on the blog to explain them all soon.

Here's the link: click here.

Bergen!

Well that was a fantastic weekend!! Despite us both having colds at various times over the weekend, my hearing disappearing in one ear after the flight over, me twisting my ankle, me booking $300 worth of tours for the wrong week, Sunday raining cats and dogs, Norway being so expensive that a bowl of wedges costs $40 AUD, and Mark nearly getting stuck in no-mans-land because customs wouldn't let him back into the country, we ended up having a brilliant holiday.

The fjords were amazing. Here are a couple of photos, but as usual they don't come anywhere near to capturing how stunning the place was when you're actually there.

And happy birthday to gorgeous Mark!! :) Although his birthday is on hold today until he's feeling better, then we're going out to celebrate :) Love you tons beautiful! :)

United Grand Lodge of England

Woke up this morning. Ellie was feeling sick. She said she was feeling ill last night, thought she might be coming down with the flu or a cold.

I went down to the super-market to buy Ellie some orange juice, and then past the chemist for some cold and flu tablets.

Ellie went back to bed, so I had a few cups of coffee, checked the papers (they are still trying to crucify Didak - tall poppy syndrome still at the forefront of the Australian psyche) and watched some tennis on the TV. I might do a poor-mans Wimbledon next week if it's still going. I don't know when it's supposed to finish.

After some lunch, I went out to visit the United Grand Lodge of England (the Freemasons Grand Lodge in England). Went into the museum and library. The building is quite spectacular, but there was lot of ... ah, decorative type stuff in the museum. As luch would have it I was just in time for the free guided tour. It was really good. The Grand Temple is AMAZING! It is massive inside. The entrance to the Grand Temple inside the lodge is through two one-and-a-half tonne bronze doors. The guide said they have not moved a mil since they were hung 70 years ago. Really amazing. And they open with just the push of a finger. Really amazing.

Inside the temple is full of all kinds of symbols and designs, all with allegorical meaning (hope that's proper english). So the temple/lodge was a big surprise. I just happened across it the other day, noticed it was free and thought I'd check it out. It was really good. I'm hoping I can take Ellie along for the tour soon.

After that, wandered down to the gym. Did some stuff. And wandered home.
Cooked dinner. And that's about all she wrote for today.

Tomorrow, if Ellie goes to work, I might go see Die Hard 4.0 and get a burger for lunch in a pre-birthday celebration. Then tomorrow night, We Fly To Bergen!!

Sick :P

Well somehow I've managed to get a cold - that's the second one since I left Australia less than 2 months ago - what's going on?? I'm blaming (1) the dodgy unhealthy food options over here, that force me to eat curry, pizza and burgers at the pub every night so my vitamin intake isn't up to scratch, and (2) crowded public transport in London, combined with (3) the appalling personal hygiene of Londoners, where they think covering their faces when they cough or sneeze is optional. And of course it happens right before we're flying over to Norway tomorrow, so I'll be nice and stuffed up when the plane goes up and comes down :P

Great food, coffee... and chain stores

We had the best dinner last night. There's this Italian restaurant near our place called Zizzi, and we've eaten there a few times now. They do the best garlic pizza bread - it comes with just a bit of olive oil brushed over the top, and fresh rosemary leaves scattered over it. It is so good. Then I had this brilliant goat's cheese crostini with caremelised onion on top - it was such a strong taste, almost blue-cheese strong, but so good. Admittedly it did come with a lame, overdressed little salad thing, but I can overlook that. All washed down with some yummy Trebbiano, which I've never really had before but which isn't bad. Then for desert, I had vanilla bean and pistachio ice cream (shouldn't that be gelato at an Italian restaurant?). And Mark had an affogatto, although I had to tell them how to make it?! They did do a brilliant job in the end though - I love affogatto...

So that was great. But then when I just looked it up online to put a link to it above, I found out that it's a huge chain... not surprising really, everything that's good in London turns out to be a chain. I don't know why that takes some of the gloss off, but it does. It just seems less authentic and less loved somehow, like the owners don't really give a poo about the food but are just out to make a buck. But I guess if they make good food then nothing changes that - enjoy it for what it is right...

Like this great coffee place I went to yesterday morning near my work, that I'd read about online. It was called Benugo, and they made me a great coffee to start the morning with. Lucky, cos it also made me 15 minutes late to work. But then this evening I saw another one a few blocks away from our place! Bloody chain stores...

One place that kicks bum and that I know is not a chain store is this little place near work called Brill. It's a funny little blend of CD shop and cafe, and it prides itself on being independent. There was this guy who opened up on Monday morning, and he made me, without exaggeration, the best coffee I've had in London ever. So I had another one. The owner, who normally works there, makes an OK coffee but not as good as this other dude. He's good value though - he very clearly absolutely loves his music and talks loudly and enthusiastically to anyone who goes into the shop about whatever CD is playing or whatever type of music they happen to be looking for.

NoGo Moto

Didn't go up to the MotoGP. Went down the to train station to buy a ticket. 95 pounds return. "Cheers mate. No thanks." That's almost $250 before I'm even in the door. Oh well. Watched it on TV, the start of the race was good. Wet day though. We had a pretty good weekend in London as well. Just doing not that much.

We went to see Oceans 13 at the movies last night. That was pretty good! We are big fans of the previous two movies, and this one was good. We both enjoyed it, although we don't get a lot of the jokes! (I think you have to be American to understand some of them). They've left the door open for a fourth movie, but I don't think it will ever happen.

Bergen, here we come...

We just booked Mark's birthday weekend away - on the west coast of Norway in the midst of the fjords!! It looks absolutely stunning! Here's us when we get there (and die our hair blonde...):

We're going to this little (??) place called Bergen, which has direct flights from London and is apparently a great place to go to check out the fjords. I did also read somewhere that they do these crazy viking tours, where at the end they dress everyone up like a viking and you go out on a viking ship. That just sold it for Mark, so off we go... :)

This is Bergen:

Land of odd shop signs...

We seem to be in the midst of a whole stack of crazy zany shop signs here. Not only do we have a local BoConcept store, but a local Mr Topper's hair salon, a cryptic farting dog store, and also a local Spearmint Rhino gentleman's club. How have I ever lived without these??

BoConcept store

This one's just for Ray - our local BoConcept store on Tottenham Court Road. Now we've at least got proof for one of our Bo's...

Cloud Gate Dance

We went to see the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre from Taiwan the other night at Sadlers Wells, to see a performance of their Wild Cursive piece. I thought it was stunning. It was based on Chinese calligraphy, so the dancers were representing the calligraphy brushes and the ink, and their costumes and movements were based on this. The dance was the most amazing thing - a kind of alternating between these beautiful fluid movements and quite strong, harsh martial arts-style stances. It was really like tai chi turned into a dance. Here's a picture from one of the reviews of the performance over here, at Sadlers Wells in Islington, which is just up the road from where I'm working. Funnily enough, they were also doing this performance in Sydney at the end of May, which obviously I missed, so I'm really glad I had the chance to see this over here, it was amazing.

We just went for a wander around London today, cos Mark had to watch the Moto-GP thing on this afternoon. I had a good old shop at Covent Garden, got a few cool pits and pieces and a present for someone... you'll have to wait until we get back to find out who though... ;)

We're having a night in tonight, with some cheese and biscuits, red wine and steak and mushroom pie later for dinner, and then I think a nice long hot bath is in order... with some more red wine of course... :)

Slapstick and carnie boats!

Here's something else for a bit of a laugh - a bit of slapstick to bring a grin to your face :) This is a couple of pics from when we went up to Oxford and went for a wander along the river. I loved it - all this hilarious stuff just kept presenting itself, and boating on the river just seemed like a laugh a minute. For starters you've got all these rowers practicing their rowing up and down the river. It's funny enough watching them go by when they've got their instructor sitting way down in the front of the boat talking on a loudspeaker thing to them. But it's hilarious when the instructor is riding a bicycle along the path by the side of the river and yelling out at them as he rides. It just seems inevitable that there's a rock on the path or someone steps out in front of him and he goes head-over-heels into the river!!! :D

And lo and behold, just up from the crazy rowing trainers were these stunning little beauties - carnie boats! What a sight hey? I was just imagining dodgy-looking, squinty people who hadn't bathed in 6 months and who ate kippers for breakfast while their scrawny bratty kids ran round screaming at each other peering through the windows suspiciously at us. Disappointingly we didn't really see anyone around the carnie boats though, except for the bicycling rower trainers, although they did seem to try to get past the carnie boats as fast as they could. Probably scared of being tripped over by one of the screaming kids and being pitched into the river...

London Mk2

It's been different visiting London the second time around.

I've seen all the big tourist attractions, and I haven't been that keen to go back and see them all again. I'm over museums and art galleries. So this trip has a very different feel to the last one.

Last time I'd head out in the morning and see London, all the sights and sounds, and it was great! This time, I'm not really sure what to do with myself. I've been on holiday so far. I haven't started my study for the CISA exam I'll be taking in December. I've just been doing whatever. I had planned to do some Krav Maga and some boxing while I was here, but that's not really worked out. I didn't like the teaching method or sylabus of the Krav Maga, and the boxing is really expensive. Also, with the boxing, I'm so unfit right now due to a few months of drinking, eating and not much else. I'm going to get fit while I'm here. I've gone on a few jogs, and I've joined a gym, which has also given me some things to do. I've also signed up for a rock climbing course, so I can do some indoor rock climbing while Ellie is at work.

Ellie and I have been going to a few pubs which has been good. We have a great local pub which has Fruli (strawberry cider which tastes like daiquiri) and a nice wine on tap for Ellie, and beer for me. Good pub, and they have good food too.

Things coming up: I'm off to Donnington on Friday to watch the MotoGP practice sessions ahead of Sunday's race. Just going up for the day. Then at the start of August I'm going to go to all three days of practice / qualifying / racing of the World Superbike round at Brands Hatch. That will be awesome!

I might also see some movies during the day. I'm keen to see Zodiac, and Ellie isn't, so I'll head down while she's at work.

I will have to start studying soon too!

Pub Walk

What pub walk?

Greenwich pub "walk"...

On the weekend, we went on a pub "walk". I think this may well just be an attempt to dress up a pub crawl and make it sound mildly legitimate. The theory was that there are a stack of pubs around London that are brilliantly historic and that all kinds of culturally significant things happened in. So if you wander around all day from one pub to the next, and pause every so often to admire the history of the place, then drinking lots and idling away the time is completely justified. So, our pub walk around Greenwich was a roaring success. Here are some of the pubs we "examined" (although I have to admit that the value of admiring the historical significance decreases as the number of pints consumed increases, so I can't really tell you what cool stuff happened in these...):

• Admiral Hardy Tavern
• The Yacht
• The Trafalgar Tavern
• The Cutty Sark Tavern
• Mitre pub
  
• Richard I Tavern
• Ashburnham Arms

Wow, now that I've listed them all out like that I'm pretty impressed we managed to stay vertical all day... although Mark did have a couple of "incidents" on the way home and at home. I think he managed to well and truly convince everyone that Aussies are loud and passionate about their sport anyway... Fortunately, we didn't get any pictures from the day so you only have to be subjected to stories rather than images. It was a great day though - we certainly absorbed a lot of history and culture (you get it by osmosis with the drinking, right?).

On the morning before the pub walk, we went back to check out Portobello Rd markets again, which was great - I don't remember the antique-y things being as interesting last time, we checked out all these cool old prints and maps and stuff (original prints of Tintin and Axterix comics, and hundreds-years-old maps), and all this cool old jewellery - hat pins and brooches and stuff as well as necklaces and watches.

Then Sunday we (read Mark) needed to recuperate after the pub walk, so we did nothing. Or tried to - we went to get a cooked English brekkie to combat the hangover, but ended up finding out that the Marylebone festival (which we'd heard about a few weeks back when we were living in Marylebone) was on that day. So we checked it out, but the best thing was this brilliant group of buskers we saw. There was a dude playing a box (literally, a wooden box he was sitting on) and with a shaker tucked into his shoe-laces so it rattled when he tapped his foot, and another dude playing a cello, and then another guy doing, of all things, tap-dancing. It sounds like a pretty unlikely combination right, but it was actually fantastic. They were these 3 young guys (Ray, just picture your idea of a beatnik) who were basically just playing around with all these rhythms and busking while they were doing it, and they were having a ball. I think it's the best busking I've ever seen. And sorry, no pic of them either.

Then for lunch we had a picnic in Regent's park, with some fantastic rosemary bread we bought at the market, some vintage cheddar and beautiful ripe tomatoes. Couldn't be better! This I do have a photo of - here's Mark watching some of the locals play an impromptu game of soccer, and another macro one of our fantastic bread, cheese and tomato, just cos I can. And then, hangover successfully banished, we stumbled on a brilliant little Italian cafe that actually does great coffee, right in the next block to our apartment. Yay! :) It was a very "authentic" cafe though, which means that they had the soccer on the TV and all the Italian guys in the place (including the guys who owned it) were glued to the TV. Despite his supposed hatred of soccer, Mark's love of sport generally was stronger and so he joined in and glued himself to the TV too. Lucky the great coffee made up for it... :)

Phew! How's that for a novel? I think that pretty much brings us up to date, with the exception of a few bits and pieces that will find their way into the blog at some point or other.

Better and better...

Oh yeah baby! We've now moved to a different apartment, that will hopefully be our permanent home for the rest of our stay over here. It is brilliant. For starters, it's got more than 1 room. We do actually have separate living and bedrooms now - woohoo! So when Mark wants to stay up watching Talented Mr Ripley and I want to go to bed, it's not a problem. yay :)

Not to mention, we're in a great area with stacks of good restaurants and cafes, we've already found our local pub, and it's actually quicker to walk to work from where I am now than it was before. Plus, now we've got a dishwasher and clothes dryer, and hopefully won't have any mice peeking their noses around the corners unlike the other place. Here's some dodgy pics of the inside of our place, and here's where it is on the map. Our local's just on the opposite corner to the right of the screen from our place - love it! Actually the most annoying thing about it is that it has NZ sauvingnon blanc on tap, which is absolutely delicious. I've been drinking Chilean or South African wine over here, but they don't have any of these at this place so I gave the draught wine a try, mainly for novelty value, and it turned out to be great. How annoying! lol :) it's OK, I'll get over it...

Just a couple of punters...

Well OK, only one punter - Mark. I took the easy option and allowed myself to be punted around for a while. That doesn't sound very good does it? We went up to Oxford today, and indulged in the quintessential Oxford passtime (other than drinking in one of the many pubs) of punting along the river. And I should say "river" in diddits, because they're really more like very slowly moving, very long and skinny lakes. They're the most ridiculously manicured, cultured, still rivers you've ever seen, nothing like the Murrumbidgee or the Murray, with snags and high banks and overhanging trees and even a current. Anyway once we got into the punting we were actually pretty glad of this.

After forcing our business and money onto the bored, spoilt little Oxford boy who was obviously suffering the degradation of having to work for his crust on a Sunday morning, Mark had the briefest ever lesson on how to handle a boat, and we were pushed off into the stream. Kind of, except that the bored little Oxford boys couldn't be bothered helping us with that so we really ended up pushing ourselves off into the stream. Having never punted before, and having only had 3 words of guidance from the spoint little Oxford boy, Mark picked up the knack miraculously (albeit after running us through some rose bushes and stinging nettles first). It was a beautifully serene, tranquil ride. For me anyway, I'm sure Mark's got another perspective he can post about. The only hiccup, after gliding smoothly through tunnels and having to duck down under low-lying bridges (there's a pic above - very surfie hey?), was briefly losing our punting pole when it stuck into the bottom of the river. But, some quick paddling by Mark with the back-up oar somehow managed to get us back upstream to the pole and all was well again, not to mention still dry! Here's a pic of the moment of truth just before he lunges for the stranded post.

All up, it was great fun! And yes, I pretty much did nothing the entire hour we had the punt. Except offer moral support and probably incorrect advice on which side to paddle on to make the boat turn left or right. That's important right?

In amongst all of the hundreds-of-years-old sandstone architecture, which was all very beautiful and historic, we also saw some hilarious statue heads that we concluded must have been the rough draft for The Simpsons. Either that, or there were some stone-masons carving statues that had a great little joke on whoever was employing them, as they're not exactly the most dignified-looking statues you've ever seen. Here's a pic.

Smoked salmon bagel!

Yummo! I just got a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel for lunch from the little market downstairs, with fresh black pepper and lemon - so good! I can see myself getting addicted to these things... and to top it off I've got one of their famous brownies for dessert too, if I've got room for it...

Heathrow injection, here I come!

Fight Club

I'm reading Fight Club. I went to a cafe this afternoon - a restaurant actually - to sit down and read for a while. I got the impression when I ordered that they don't usually get people coming in and ordering just coffee.


I sat outside in the "sun". It was Illy coffee, and really pretty good. We've found a few places with good coffee here in London, with a few more to try yet. So I've got good coffee at a nice restaurant. But something is missing. There's just something not quite right about drinking coffee in London. It's like drinking beer in Italy. You have all the right ingredients, but it just doesn't feel right.

We've been out for Spanish the last two nights, and we had Spanish last week with some of Ellie's friends. None of it has been as good as we had in Spain, or Legends in Canberra. As Ellie mentioned, I had some local ale on the weekend. That was the first and last time I'll be doing that. We have had some good food here though - you can get some great pies and pasties.

Might head down to Bath on the weekend, or perhaps Plymouth. Really looking forward to seeing some of the English country-side.

People and grass

Here's some more trippy stuff we saw on the wkend - there's this crazy installation art thing set up around Southbank in London at the moment, where the artist has made heaps of life-size casts of himself and they've been put on buildings all around London. So you'll just be walking around and see out of the corner of your eye this silhouette of a person standing on the corner of a roof on a sky-scraper - it's a bit disturbing! You can just see 4 of them on the tops of the buildings in this pic - it's around the Haywood Gallery building, which is where the rest of the exhibition is being held.

The other disturbing thing is what seems to be becoming London fascination with grass. A few weeks ago it was the grass that they'd laid on Trafalgar Square, and now it seems to be that they've covered an entire building with grass!! The crazy grass building is also over on Southbank (funnily enough same as the kooky Tate Modern, home of glasses-of-water-that-are-really-oak-trees). Mark saw them watering the building the other day - imagine being paid to do that?! The best thing about it is that they've put one of the person-statues on top of the crazy-grass-building, so there's this surreal enormous cube of grass topped by a person standing on the top corner looking like he's about to fall off. Love it! Here's a pic - you should be able to click on these to enlarge them and see the people.

Basingstoke

Went down to Basingtoke for work today - here's a map of whereabouts it is compared to London. It was about 45 mins on the train, and reasonably uneventful - just a biggish town in the countryside. I don't think I'm too keen to spend 5 hrs on the train going down to Plymouth, it's kind of nice to sit there and watch the world go by, but there's not that much variance in what does go by, so I think it'd be heaps more fun to get a car and drive ourselves. Not to mention cheaper - it's about £70 each for a train ride return - that's over $330 for the two of us!!

Here's some more pics from the wkend - we went into a Wether- spoon's (chain of pubs - everything in London is a chain!) to get a pear cider, which I got hooked on last time over here. Mark tried some bodgy local beer - Seahawk ale or something or other - and it was so warm and watery he could barely finish it. And for Mark, that's gotta be pretty bad. hehe :) Anyway, here are our respective verdicts for our beverages.

Reality TV in the family!

I nearly forgot! I spoke to Dad today and told him that the TV show "The Lost Tribes" currently showing in Aus, with a family called the Poveys, which has a father called Tony who's about 50, whose eyes look remarkably like Dad's eyes, and who's from Western Sydney, could in fact be featuring his son from his first marriage. That makes him my half-brother. He said that he had been a fireman in Sydney, and, at least from the few bits and pieces that you get about them on the TV show's website, Tony Povey is also a firefighter. So I'd say given there are only a handful of Poveys around in Australia, it's pretty certain that my half-brother and his wife and 2 kids are on reality TV... how bizarre hey? In the website above, he's the dude with little black marks on his face gazing off into the distance on the main title banner. Crazy!

Bludgy London day

After canning our plans for Plymouth this weekend because the weather looked like it was going to be nasty, we wound up with the most stunning summer day on Saturday (although apparently it was still horrible down in the south-west where Plymouth is so it's all good). Mark and I basically drank our way around London. We started with the most miraculous of all things - good coffee in London. Kudos to Mark for finding the place - this great tiny little place at Neal's Yard near Covent Garden. There were only 3 booths up the back of the place, but it had the best vibe - coffee sacks and pastries everywhere, and funnily enough it seemed to be run by Aussies! Don't you love that - the only good coffee we can find over here is made by Aussies... Here's a pic of me pretending to drink coffee and not laugh while Mark takes a photo of the place. :)

Then we kept on wandering, and after getting our first pastie this London trip (so amazingly good, although still not as good as yours Mum. Although the chain you buy them from is called "The Cornish Bakehouse", which Dad would be disgusted at.), we did a quick visit to Temple Church. This was the church they visited in The Da Vinci Code, when they were looking for "a knight interred" (it was a red herring - they should actually have been at Westminster Abbey). It was kind of funny - there were these amazing stained glass windows at one end, but the stone effigies that they look at in the Da Vinci Code are at the other end, so all of the tourists go to the other end and take photos of them. Here's a pic of what I thought was actually worth seeing - one of the windows. You can't see it properly because the camera (and potentially my photography) aren't good enough, but most windows seem to have quite big chunks of glass, whereas this one has so many little pieces it's almost a mosaic - the effect when you're there is amazing.

Then we wandered along the Thames and went to the Waterloo Bridge second-hand book market (I can't stay away from books - it's useless to try), and then went into a couple of the big old boats moored along the river, which are now restaurants and bars. We sat around and drank wine for a while floating up and down on the tide, then pub-crawled our way home - 'twas great! Edie, you'd be proud of us ;) And then just to top it off we went out for more drinks with some friends in Islington that night - that's a lot of drinking for one day!

Round up for the week

That's week #3 out of the way now - only 11 to go then it's back to the Sydney bumming life :)

We also went to see Pirates of the Caribbean #3 this week. It was a surprisingly crap movie experience, but a better than expected movie somehow. I have to admit I wasn't expecting much, so I was pleasantly surprised by this at-times-random, very light-hearted, romp-y kind of movie. It looked like they were all having an absolute ball making the movie, and there were some great special effects. However, the cinemas here at crappo. For starters, you have your seat allocated when you buy your ticket (figure that out, especially when there are no seats allocated on plane flights so you have to race to get a good seat there - they've sure got their priorities sorted out there...). There are also "extra special good" seats, in the middle of the cinema, which cost a few pounds more each just so you don't have to turn your head that extra degree or two. Then apparently it's necessary to have an intermission between the ads/trailers and the actual movie!! So in reality you can turn up a half hr after the movie start time, and you could walk in during the "intermission", with the lights bright enough to find your pre-allocated seat, and sit down for the actual movie. All very wierd... So seeing this one movie ended up costing us about Au$50!! What a joke hey...

Anyway that's enough whinging for now, on to something nice - Chilean wine (that's wine from Chile). It's surprisingly good! In a desparate bid to try some wine over here that's not Australian (which has got to make up at least half of the supermarket wine stocks, not to mention restaurants wine lists...), we're trying all these wierd and wonderful locations. Chile's been the best so far, for sauvignon blanc and also some good merlot and cab sav, and I had some good South African red too surprisingly. Argentinian white has been no good when we tried it. The first bottle I bought over here was just some M&S-brand bottle, which I realised when I got home was good old South Australian red!!

I just booked tickets to see Damien Rice in Brighton in July. It's on a Saturday night so we'll take the train down there and spend the weekend there and check it out - it's only an hour on the train apparently.

Since we're not going down south for the weekend, we're going to pack a lot into the weekend - Mark's got a plan for tomorrow to go drinking on a boat on the Thames and check out some other stuff, then on Sunday we'll catch a train up to Oxford or somewhere and check it out just for the day.

Oh, and it's now officially summer - yay! Now if only someone would tell the weather to improve...

Plymouth?

Well we were going to go to Plymouth this weekend, but it looks like it's going to be crap weather so we think now we'll wait for a better weekend later down the track.

For Mum to check that we're going to the right place (the house we lived in until we came out to Australia), here's a link to a satellite map of the street. There should be an arrow pointing out the front of the house. Leave me a comment if it's the right spot! You can zoom the map in or out and also move around by dragging the mouse on the map - it's pretty good actually, I love google maps. Once you've zoomed out a bit, you can also get it to overlay the street names on the satellite map - use the little 'Hybrid' button at the top right.

V&A

We went back to the Victoria & Albert museum today, as an antidote to another nasty London spring day. It's a brilliant place, and I think after today it ties with the British museum as my favourite place in London. There are so many cool little collections of stuff - islamic art, wrought iron, stained glass windows, sculpture, casts of european architecture, medieval carvings, contemporary fashion exhibitions, it's just a cool place. Unfortunately today, on the Monday of spring bank holiday, it was also a very crowded place... And like anywhere else in London when it's crowded you always cop plenty of elbows and shoulders. So we didn't stay there too long - we'll have to visit again another day before we leave. Here's a pic of one of the stained glass cathedral windows. And here's one of Mark on one of the staircases.


We went out in Islington yesterday at one of what's apparently 3 very similar Turkish restaurants all called Gallipolli, to have lunch and some drinks for the birthday of a friend's mate. It was pretty cool, then we went out to this bar afterwards, where I had a coconut Fruli. Fruli's this great beer made with strawberries, which I haven't had since I was in London last time. This bar we were at had a coconut version advertised, so since I love coconut and Fruli, it made sense to give this a try. It was too much of a good thing though - way too sweet and rich somehow. What a shame. There was also a banana version though, which someone else tried and judging by the smell if it that would have been way too much. Think the flavour of lots of those fake banana lollies, not actual banana flavour. All in a beer too mind you. Now I just need to track down some pear cider that I was hooked on last time and my alcohol experience here will be complete...

We also did some cooking the other night, or at least Mark did. He made some absolutely fantastic semi-smoked salmon, with rocket and balsamic salad, with a starter of bread with olive oil and balsamic - so yummo!! To capture Mark cooking for posterity, here's a pic.