Bec and John in the UK

Farewell London

2009-11-05T11:04:00.000Z

It would seem the best way we currently have to sum up complex human emotions is to plot them on a four-directional plane - witness the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (INTJ, ESFP and all that) and Marston's DISC Model. Right! Onto the psychiatrist's couch, let's begin!

Johnny:

Will miss about London ALWAYS something new to do Crisp winters, chance of snow Friends and colleagues Europe on the doorstep	Will not miss about London Crazy crowds Expensive cost of living I ♥ LONDON T-Shirts Constant "celebrity" "news"
Looking forward to in Melbourne Seeing old friends and family Having our own place again High coffee standards NOT going anywhere for a while!	Not looking forward to in Melbourne Hot sweaty weather Pathetic public transport Slow internet Cars with loud farty exhausts

Bec:

Will miss about London Friends and colleagues Inexhaustible theatre & concerts Gorgeous green spaces The range of accents you hear	Will not miss about London Hordes of tourists Jam-packed tube rides 5-month-long winters Weekend tube "improvements"
Looking forward to in Melbourne Reconnecting with loved ones "Proper" fish & chips Getting back to real footy Lots of sunshine	Not looking forward to in Melbourne 40+ sweltering days Having to drive everywhere Australian Masterchef Being so far away from Europe

We've had an amazing time in England, and Bec has fallen in love with the place just as much as "native" Johnny, so we know it must be a special place. We'll leave it to Will S (no, not "Men In Black" Will S, the other one) to sign off:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

2009-11-04T18:53:00.000Z

Back in summer, with Johnny raving about how much fun he was having cycle-commuting to work, Bec decided she wanted in on some two-wheeled action. But being a cautious soul, she didn't want to dive in quite as completely as he did. Luckily a perfect easy-option existed in the (decidedly-upright) shape of a hired Dutch bike - readily available in London via t'Internet and delivered to your door with all the necessary accessories by a friendly Polish man. Yay Europe!

Our first London cycling adventure saw us head South-West along the Thames to Richmond Park - a bit of a cycling mecca with the added bonus of roaming wild deer to spot! With the help of the Transport for London cycle route planner, we breezed down to the park with Bec looking every bit the accomplished biker. With only one gear at her disposal, and her Gazelle weighing in more like a baby elephant, she exercised quite a few dormant leg-muscles but was able to make it to the top of the Park with only one "get off and push" - a sterling effort considering some people with 27-speed mountain bikes were pushing their steeds up the same hill!

The park rewarded our efforts with a couple of deer encounters. They really are quite lovely creatures - if a bit cheeky to waiting cars when they decide they want to cross the road!

All in all, our Richmond Park trip racked up about 35km. But Bec wasn't satisfied yet. Hence when our friends Clare and Dan invited us to join in the 50km London to Windsor bike ride, she didn't hesitate! Another call to the Polish man with the Dutch bike and we were all set. C & D are quite keen cyclists, both now riding to work several times a week, and they had all the gear. But despite her huge technology (and weight) handicaps, Bec kept up the pace the entire way, finishing in some style by the Thames in the shadow of Windsor Castle.

It's official - Bec has the bug. So when we get back to Melbourne, don't be surprised if you're passed by a strawberry-blonde blur on what appears to be a bicycle from 1953 - it'll just be Bec out on a training ride!

La Dernière Fois ...

2009-11-02T16:11:00.012Z

Ah Paris. For our very last European excursion, a few days in Paris seemed exactly what the doctor ordered. Johnny had just finished a very brief but successful bit of contracting and Bec was in her final weeks at Star. Could there be a better way to celebrate than slipping onto the brilliant Eurostar, nipping down to ze city of lurve and tipping vast quantities of good stuff into our tummies? Seems unlikely.

Even better, our Dutch buddies Jen and Erwin had arranged to stay in Paris at the same time. And as Paris-veterans themselves, there was no need to tick off all the "must-dos" - we could just spend some quality Paris-time, soaking it all up and trying to be as French as possible. (The fact that we ended up standing in front of most of the "must-dos" was pure luck ... )

Unfortunately, J & E had made a rookie error: driving into Paris is never easy but on a Friday evening it's tantamount to suicide. Thus we had several hours to kill while they crawled towards our hotel, just around the corner from the Gare Du Nord, so we set off for the Place des Vosges, looking great in the evening light:

Some considerable time later, the exhausted motorists arrived, and we celebrated with a top-notch meal at a nearby internet-recommended restaurant (free WiFi to the rescue yet again).
The main aim of the following day was the flea-markets (or "puces") near the Porte de Clignancourt. Although mostly of dubious quality, selling fake American sportswear brands and shonky shoes, there were pockets of excellence - the antiques sections were brilliant, and Erwin was in 1950s Grand-Prix poster/model car/vintage pocket-watch heaven.

The logical choice after being at the north end of town was to ease our way back down south to our hotel via Montmartre and its obvious attractions, the Sacre Coeur, Place du Tertre (for another delicious meal) and the dodgy red-light area around Pigalle.

We headed out for one more loop, this time towards a certain metal tower that Bec is literally powerless to resist. However knowing that we already have literally hundreds of "regular" Eiffel Tower pictures to choose from, Johnny got a little "creative" - or as creative as you can be with a point-and-shoot camera:

Out last day together saw us heading for the Parc Vert Galant, also known as the pointy bit on the front of the Île de la Cité. Paris had turned on a stunning Sunday, evident from the moment we surfaced from Cité Metro station.

Soon after we had to say goodbye to Jenny and Erwin, as they had a long and undoubtedly-exhausting drive ahead of them. We still had another glorious Parisian evening, and all the photo-opportunities that entails. Ah Paris ...

A Run In The Park

2009-11-01T08:49:00.009Z

As some of you may know, Johnny has been running a couple of times a week for about 18 months now - this was brought on by returning from Turkey full of kebab and technically overweight* at 87 kilos for his 182cm.

Although not a natural runner, he's stuck at it, gradually increasing from a slow and out-of-breath 4km jog to a fairly comfortable and fast 8k loop of Hyde Park. Putting this together with riding to work whenever possible (and self-motivating by monitoring progress on MapMyRun.com) has brought him back into the "normal" zone - now he hovers around 74kg.

After a chance encounter with a poster on the Tube (and some encouragement from Bec and his Dad who was also there at the time), Johnny decided to enter the Royal Parks Half Marathon, being held in Central London in mid-October. It would be a most fitting farewell to this great city, as the route takes in some great London icons: Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and finishing with an extended tour of Hyde Park.

A few weeks later, Johnny's old mate James drunkenly agreed to sign up too; in one of the many strange parallels their lives have taken, James had also started running for fitness quite recently. And so the stage was set. Slightly-competitive distance training began, race plans were hatched, and James brought his entire family down to London to cheer us on.

The big day dawned dry, clear and cold - perfect for running, not good for our loyal spectators! Bec kept warm by whizzing around the course trying to catch action shots of the boys as they went around. Here they are, still looking cheerful at the 5-mile (8k) mark, on The Mall before turning at Buckingham Palace:

At the 6-mile (9.5k) mark Johnny had to unfortunately resort to Drugs In Sport. Yes, he took a paracetamol tablet. Afflicted by ITB Syndrome, (as is James, you are probably now unsurprised to hear) his knees tend to become more and more excruciatingly-painful as distance increases. Fortunately the second half of the run was within the confines of Hyde Park, giving plenty of opportunity to ease the pain by running on grass rather than asphalt paths.

A big cheer from the girls at the 10-mile marker gave them a big boost, and they (naturally) finished with identical times - 1:49:46 - well inside their target 2 hours! Here they are with their wooden medals, and James receiving the adulation of his littlest fan, daughter Millie:

Johnny was barely able to walk for the next week, so this might have to be his first and last long-distance event, but it was a great day and fantastic to see James and his family one last time.

(*) Yes, BMI calculations are fundamentally flawed because they can't tell (heavy) muscle from (light) fat. In this case though, there was a solid 5kg of muffin-top that most definitely wasn't muscle!

Italian Lakes 2: Molto Bella Varenna

2009-10-31T22:09:00.016Z

We'd deliberately not booked a hotel for the second half of our holiday to give us maximum flexibility - we could stay put or move on to somewhere new - and after a couple of days in Bellagio we felt like a change of scenery. Not having a hire car had turned out to be a godsend; it would have cost us a fortune to park it in Bellagio and it massively shortened the list of places we could consider staying at - to be considered now, any hotel had to be straightforward to get to with public transport.

At times like these, hotels with free WiFi really do shine - out came the MacBook, and soon after we'd hit on a perfect solution. The small town of Varenna that we'd admired from afar had quite a lot to offer, including a railway station with regular trains back to Milan - quite rare on the lakes! We easily found a hotel that could accomodate us, a short walk from the ferry pier. Job done! A short ferry-chug later and we were checked in and ready to explore.

Varenna was almost impossibly lovely. Where Bellagio had bustle, an exclusive air and touristy shops cheek-by-jowl, Varenna kept it very simple. Walking along a path hewn into a rock face brought you to the "city centre", which consisted of 4 restaurants and one souvenir shop, all nestled around a tiny harbour where ducks and swans bobbed around seemingly soaking in the tranquil atmosphere.

After a two-hour-lunch we attempted to burn off some pizza with some more exploration, and Varenna just kept getting better and better. Firstly, amongst the steps and quiet passages we found two friendly cats, always a good sign to ailurophiles such as ourselves!

We found a "beach" of sorts that had a lovely aspect towards the setting sun. To the right was a crude pier which featured an actor, presumably hired by the Italian Tourist Board to pose as a fisherman each evening close to sunset. Their cunning plan worked and we snapped many megabytes-worth of this "simple Italian peasant catching his dinner". We're onto you ITB, we're onto you ...

The next day we checked out Varenna's stunning Monastery Gardens - well worth a visit even if you're staying elsewhere on the lakes:

Our wonderful stay in Varenna was capped off with our last evening meal, an unexpectedly-brilliant take on the local lake-fish and pasta specialties. We reluctantly left the next morning, but we will surely return. Or as Bec loves to say: Certo!

Italian Lakes 1: Bellisimo Bellagio

2009-10-30T11:20:00.001Z

An experiment that you can try at home: Say to a friend that you're about to go to the Italian Lakes. I hereby predict the following reactions:

Jaw will drop
Mouth will form perfect round 'O'
Involuntary gasp/outlet of breath
"Can I come too?"

It just seems to be one of those places that can do no wrong, blending stunning natural beauty with charming architecture and of course the addictive "La Dolce Vita" luxurious Italian lifestyle. We hit the Lakes for 5 days in late September - our last major holiday in Europe!

After flying in to Milan we trundled in the inimitable Italian-railway style up to Como, where we switched to a small bus which jostled, beeped and wiggled along the treacherous lakeside road to Bellagio, one of the lakes' most well-known towns. Packed with hideously-expensive designer boutiques, Bellagio seemed particularly popular with wealthy older Americans. But as usual for Italy, the food was delicious, never overpriced, and the ambience was warm and friendly.

Like so many of our favourite places, Bellagio is virtually car-free; most of the "streets" are actually stepped alleyways leading up from the edge of Lake Como. It makes for lovely views, particularly as the sun sets.

We had no real agenda for our first few days in Bellagio, mainly the plan was to soak up as much relaxed Italian goodness as possible. This proved very easy to achieve! Here's the view across to the village of Varenna:

We had planned to pick up a hire car and use it to explore the area a bit more, but upon arrival at the car hire place we discovered our printed opening hours didn't actually match up with reality, and it being Saturday midday, we'd not be able to pick up the car for almost 48 hours! Although we had been looking forward to scooting our little Cinquecento around, we were not too dismayed - we'd be able to get a full refund due to the hire company's mistake, and our brief experience of the roads around the lakes had shown them to be hugely stressful, requiring the absolute attention of the driver. Hardly ideal for sightseeing. Instead we would rely on the frequent ferries that service all the towns - oh and Bec managed to find a Cinquecento in Bellagio anyway!

YAGGAGC

2009-10-29T14:06:00.000Z

Londoners, bless 'em, are very savvy about many things. Most, for example, know that bicycle-rickshaws, Harrods, and Madame Tussauds are London's biggest rip-offs and are to be avoided at all costs. But you could guess that. Some have the Central London Tube Map etched into their cerebrum, allowing instant journey planning and trouble-avoidance:

Not bad. Unfortunately though, very few Londoners would know a good cup of coffee from a bucket of tar. (This does put them ahead of most Americans though, whose drink of choice is a bucket of burnt tar).

As such, finding a really good coffee when you're away from your known-good haunts can be really tough. So Johnny, programmer-nerd, coffee-snob, and soon-to-be-ex-Londoner, has come up with a ready-reckoning system to give you the best possible chance of finding something passable. If any of the following conditions is TRUE, You Ain't Gonna Get A Good Coffee. Sorry. As a consolation, the further you get down the list, the better it will probably be:

The establishment lists "Coffee" on the same line as "Tea" on the menu
The particular style of coffee (e.g. Cappuccino) is spelt wrongly
After taking your order for your Cappuccino/Latte/Whatever, your server turns and punches a button on a machine, and turns back to you
You can't see the milk that's going into your coffee
The café does not have a big, chromey, Italian coffee machine sitting prominently on the front counter
The café does not have a freshly topped-up bean-grinder next to the big Italian coffee machine
You have to add your own sugar at the end of the process
The coffee machine does not have a human servant tending to its every whim and foible, meticulously wiping it down between shots, whispering sweet nothings in its openings, and generally treating it like the deity it is
Your coffee-preparer does not bash the living hell out of the groupheads between cups to make sure there's no old grounds left in there
Your coffee-preparer does not watch the milk as they froth it (despite having done it a million times before)

So there you have it. Good luck, intrepid coffee-connoisseurs, and May The Froth Be With You ...

Brighton - Ticking all the boxes

2009-10-28T16:28:00.017Z

Brighton, on England's south coast, could well be said to be "London's beach getaway town" - in just 50 minutes by fast train, you can swap pigeons and pie-and-mash for seagulls and scampi-and-chips. Way back in June we decided to pounce on a particularly nicely-forecasted Saturday and see what Brighton had to offer.

In order to truly understand the appeal of Brighton, you must first grasp the fundamentals of the English seaside:

The weather will most likely make actually going in the water extremely unappealing
Thus, there must be plenty of amusements on hand
The more (knowingly or not) outdated and/or tackier the amusements, the better
There must be deckchairs
There should be a seafront promenade, which all visitors must tour up and down
There must be {fish/scampi/burger}-and-chip outlets all along the sea front
No matter what the weather, thou shalt have an ice-cream
If thou art a small child, thou shalt drop thy ice-cream and cry

In this regard, Brighton delivers on all fronts. But it goes even further, adding to the mix:

A genuinely unique maze of lovely, quirky shop-filled lanes just behind the sea front
A completely bonkers Royal Pavilion built by the Prince Regent in the early 1800s
A whopping-great pier with an amusement-park on the end (not just a few dodgem cars either)
A thriving local culture embracing two universities, a gay scene and live music

We were perhaps fortunate to visit Brighton on a sparkling summer day, but it was an absolute delight. After wandering though the eclectic and interesting independent shops of The Lanes, we arrived at the seafront promenade to this vista:

As per English Seaside requirements, we promenaded in both westerly and easterly directions, before stopping for refreshments, and plenty of 'em. It was seriously warm!

A visit to the Pavilion is an absolute must. Truly breathtaking in scale and ornate detail, both inside and out:

Finally we crunched our way out onto the beach itself and enjoyed the simple pleasures of England's gentle, non-threatening sunshine:

Off To Nether-Netherlands

2009-10-27T17:55:00.001Z

Right children, we begin with a geography lesson. The Netherlands is the low-slung nation with the dykes and the windmills. Holland is one of its regions (actually two provinces, North and South) that sits right next to the North Sea. People use them interchangeably because the most-visited things in The Netherlands also happen to be in Holland - namely Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Delft.

But what about the other bits? Well as our friend Jenny has recently moved from Australia to the eastern side of the Netherlands, we are able to report, following a lightning visit in June. As usual with these things, there is of course a member of the opposite sex involved, and Erwin is a charming and highly-intelligent Dutchman - fluent in English and German too! They were truly excellent hosts, and went out of their way to give us a genuine Dutch weekend.

Let's start with the food. The Dutch apparently do! Breakfast was a lavish affair with numerous courses, ranging from savoury (eggs, salmon, meat, white asparagus) through to the uniquely-dutch chocolate sprinkles ("hagelslag") which are enjoyed on bread, or in Erwin's case, on everything.

First destination was a national park that draws Dutch people from miles around. Why? Because it actually has a few decent hills! The roads were busy with serious cyclists actually having to use their gears, but we were more interested in the friendly wild ponies (which by the way is now the THIRD time we've come across lovely wild mini-horses in Europe; Dartmoor and Iceland being the others)

We cruised around the area, going to a number of interesting small towns whose names we sadly can't remember, but including the home of Grolsch beer, and a place with a star-shaped network of defensive canals, with cannon still in position. Just in case those nearby Germans get any ideas....

No visit to The Netherlands could be complete without a bicycle-riding session; this is a nation where bicycles outnumber people, after all. We took a delightful spin around J & E's home town, enjoying the quite astonishing flatness (it makes London look Himalayan) - particularly Erwin, who affixed Jenny to his rear rack so that the rest of us could have a bike each!

Lost energy was replaced by visiting a traditional pannenkoekenhuis (dutch-pancake house) where we enjoyed pannekoek in both savoury (bacon and local forest mushroom) and sweet (delicious apple with stroop syrup) varieties:

Huge thanks to J & E for their excellent hospitality and for showing us that there's much more to Dutch life than Amsterdam's seedy charms...

Baltic Boating Part 8: Days At Sea

2009-10-26T23:08:00.000Z

Pardon our horribly-slack blogging, we're packing up to go home! We're going to make it up to you by finishing off like we started - a blog a day! Yes, if you can remember almost three years ago, unemployed Johnny was cranking out a new blog post every day on average. Now those idle days are back again, so for the sake of symmetry (and catching up on a lot of adventures) he'll attempt to roll them out like he used to until it's time to head to Heathrow...

We just had a few more things to say about our cruise experience through Scandinavia, or more specifically about one of our new all-time favourite things: Days At Sea.

As cruise virgins, we'd been slightly worried about being bored on our four "Days At Sea". We'd supposed that only mad-keen Bridge or Bingo players would enjoy what the ship had to offer on these days. But we were so wrong. The Jewel Of The Seas was like a 5-star hotel dropped onto a Whitsunday Island, decorated with everything from the Weight Watchers Forbidden List. Our typical Day At Sea would see us shuffle into the all-day buffet at around 10.30 (just in time to catch the omelette-making-guy before he knocked off) and gorge ourselves before attempting to burn off the calories with EPIC table-tennis matches - rallies lasting hundreds of shots were not unheard-of. We'd then swing past the library to pick up the day's cerebral activities - fresh trivia, crossword and sudoku puzzles were provided each day - and settle down somewhere, possibly with a coffee from the (hideously-named) Latte-tudes Café. After swinging back past the buffet for another bout of eating, we'd often adjourn to the games room for some Scrabble, take our books to one of the pool areas, or do something a bit more active like Mini Golf, Rock Climbing or hitting the gym. And then all too quickly it would be time to eat again, this time in the Tides dining room with our regular dinner companions.

Of course we got to know our fellow diners very well. But with this cruise being an American-run enterprise, all of the service staff were hyper-attentive in that "Really want a good tip" way. Luckily our Peruvian waiter Juan and his Turkish assistant Mehmet were genuinely nice guys and had quite a Laurel-and-Hardy routine going - often unintentionally! Mehmet had more than a touch of Manuel from Fawlty Towers about him, while Juan was ever the consummate professional.

Our "stateroom attendant" Sori was a towel-folding magician - each time we came back from dinner we'd have a new sculpture awaiting us. It turns out that all stateroom attendants get taught how to do this, which slightly diminished the special feeling, but it was still impressive:

There were characters among our fellow passengers as well, some of whom achieved notoriety through participating in the various game shows run by our cruise director Joff (aka John Cleese - exceedingly witty and entertaining, even if his endless quips had a slightly well-practised feel to them). One couple in particular will forever remain in our memories. During a "Love and Marriage" show, the wife was asked who (aside from her, of course) her husband would most like to have with him on a desert island. She replied that he would choose his brother. When they swapped over, the husband (they'd been married for a year) simply could not think of an answer. Under intense pressure from Joff, his wife, and the crowd, he blurted out "My secretary?!?!?" at which point both the crowd and the wife exploded, but in rather different ways. For the remainder of the cruise that couple looked somewhat strained.

Johnny has already expressed his displeasure at violators of the dinner dress code - the passenger who most incurred his wrath was a Hispanic diner on the next-door table who consistently flouted not only the dress code but also basic rules of table manners and politeness. Thus he acquired the unenviable nickname of "Stupid Latino Ugly Guy", or SLUG for short. Sadly we have no picture of the Slug, but just imagine Jabba The Hut from Star Wars but with fewer interpersonal skills and you've got him nailed.

On the subject of famous likenesses, Johnny thinks that our cruise line may in fact be the forbidden lovechild of the Transformers' Autobots and Decepticons:

+ =

At 90,000 tons, if the Jewel ever does transform into a robot, JUST RUN!

Good and Bad News

2009-10-06T21:32:00.002+01:00

Let's begin with the bad news - Johnny's reverse-Midas touch with employers continues. After 15 months at ICOM, the company has been declared insolvent and all employees made redundant on Wednesday (September 30).

This follows more than 9 months of late and partial payrolls, and we are all still owed for August AND September. Officially the company has NO assets so the chances of getting anything out of them are very remote. (In classic dodgy-business style, the bankrupt company that employed us is a separate entity to the one that owns all of the stuff like computers that could be sold off)

There is some chance of getting some compensation from the UK government's "National Insurance" arrangement that all companies have to pay into. It's exactly the kind of situation that NI is meant to cater for. It won't fully cover what is owed - not even close - but it will help.

Luckily, it's not too big a problem. John was in the process of resigning anyway, because, drum roll please...

We're heading back to Melbourne, for good, in November!

That's the "good news" bit if you were wondering. Yes, it will have been 3 years almost to the day - we've absolutely loved our time in the UK and gallivanting around Europe, and we always wanted to leave at the point where we felt we'd really got to know it well, but before it all became too familiar. We've averaged one international trip a month for the last 35 months, and have seen some fantastic stuff, but we can safely say we're "over" budget airlines now! And it really will be nice to spend some quality time with family and friends back home after relying on phone calls, emails and Facebook for so long.

So we're Melbourne bound at last!! See you soon!!

Baltic Boating Part 7: Oslo

2009-09-13T14:38:00.002+01:00

After another delicious Day At Sea we steamed up the Oslofjord to Norway's capital. By sea is definitely the best way to approach Oslo; virtually every passenger on our boat was glued to the stunning views of the lush green valley-sides dotted with impossibly-cute wooden cottages. If there had been a Norwegian estate agent on board he would have done very well out of our boat that morning!

After several hours navigating the fjord, we docked directly opposite Oslo's 14th-century Akershus Fortress - the most picturesque large-boat mooring of our trip, if not the entire world?

Oslo, like almost all of the Scandinavian cities we visited on this tour, is a compact city, and after an enjoyable hour or so, even the attraction of riding giant bronze tigers though the town square was starting to wane.

Luckily, a short tram-ride away was Vigeland Park, the astonishing sculpture park of Gustav Vigeland. He personally sculpted 212 human figures, in varying positions and phases of life, which are now set out impressively throughout the park.

Back at the harbour, we treated ourselves to a taste of Norwegian fare: a small bowl of delicious fish soup (that's one bowl, shared between us), washed down with a local beer (again, just the one). 160 kroner (16 pounds) later... and we returned to the Jewel with a full appreciation of just how Oslo got its reputation for being one of the most expensive cities to visit. At least the sculpture park was free!

Baltic Boating Part 6: Tallinn

2009-09-10T21:58:00.000+01:00

Teeny, tiny Tallinn - the town that 300,000* term theirs. Tourist-thronged, true, though totally typical throughout. Though this, the third* town that these tired travellers took to traversing, tellingly touched them thus:

Phew! Terribly taxing that! Tallinn was a charming little place, compact and quaint, making a pleasant contrast to St Petersburg's ornate grandeur. The capital of Estonia, it boasts a beautifully preserved medieval old town, complete with cobbled streets, walls, towers and a bustling Town Hall square. A traditional market was in full swing during our visit, selling handmade woollen and wooden goods, among other things.

We were mostly content to just wander aimlessly and absorb the atmosphere (it was certainly nice to leave the tour-group-sheep feeling behind), and indeed there wasn't a great deal else to do. Naturally, we made time to sample some of the local food and drink - an interesting fried cheese concoction, sausages, black bread and a local honey beer (quite sweet, funnily enough!)

* Some poetic licence was taken here in order to maintain the ambitious and potentially ill-advised alliteration. Hence, these figures are not, in the truest sense of the word, accurate.

Baltic Boating Part 5: More St Petersburg

2009-08-25T12:30:00.037+01:00

Despite feeling slightly weary from the previous day's activities, we were both looking forward to our second day in St Petersburg. We'd signed up for two more excursions - a morning walking tour and a 'panoramic' bus tour in the afternoon - in the hope that these would give us ample time to explore the beautiful city centre, having only glimpsed it briefly the day before.

Once we'd been processed through the port border control rigmarole (Russia was the only country that required this and they certainly weren't friendly about it, not even once cracking a smile), we met our guide for the walking tour, Polina. Another native St Petersburgian, she was pleasant and spoke excellent English, but lacked the enthusiasm of our previous guide. In fact, she seemed to us to be rather bored and just going through the motions. But, nevertheless, we hung on her every word as she marched us along past monument after impressive monument.

Highlights were the iconic Bronze Horseman statue of Peter the Great, the vast and imposing Palace Square, St Isaac's Cathedral with its gleaming golden dome and the fascinating Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. Notable for being the only building in St Pete's designed in the traditional Russian style, complete with onion domes and mosaics, it was built as a memorial to Tsar Alexander II who was assassinated on that spot. Hence the slightly gruesome name.

Polina let us loose in the conveniently situated souvenir market across the road from the church. The explosion of crapinski was surely a sight to behold. Thousands of painted Matryoshka dolls of all shapes and sizes stared back at us, making Johnny very nervous on a number of levels. Thankfully, Bec satisfied herself with just a few small purchases, and took only 43 of our allotted 45 minutes to make her selections from the vast choice available.

We returned to the ship for a well deserved buffet lunch, before heading out again (more grumpy passport scrutinising) for our afternoon bus tour. We were slightly disappointed to discover that our guide was again the disinterested Polina, and even more disappointed when it quickly became clear that this was basically the same tour. Same monuments, same stories told with the same tone of voice, same crapinski market. We consoled ourselves by spending as much time as possible away from the group, exploring this lovely city on our own, and even managing to sample a local brewski.

Baltic Boating Part 4: St. Petersburg

2009-08-16T03:57:00.000+01:00

We are the first to admit we are not great scholars of history. Johnny's head for dates only works for the 20th century and while Bec loves stories of Ann Boleyn and Mary Queen of Scots, she couldn't tell you which century they lived in. As such we were fully expecting Russia's "most European" city, St. Petersburg, to be a mind-melting series of Tsars, invasions and revolutions. While it certainly delivered on that front, despite its relatively youthful 300 years, it was also stunningly beautiful and grand - as long as you ignored the grey communist-era ugliness that surrounds the town centre.

As mentioned in a previous post, it's impossible to visit Russia without a tourist visa, and getting one requires levels of diplomatic back-scratching that we weren't willing to try. The loophole, such as it is, is to arrive as part of an organised tour group run by a suitably-approved company, such as a cruise line. As such, we had to sign up for wall-to-wall "shore excursions" - our only ones for the whole cruise - in order to see the best of the city in the two days we had available.

We kicked off with a gruelling full day tour: The Peterhof palace and gardens, a traditional Russian lunch, and then the mighty Hermitage museum in the afternoon. The Peterhof was created by Alexander I as a rival to Versailles - it certainly aroused all of the "expensive, opulent, dunno-if-I'd-actually-like-living-there" feelings we remembered from that particular über-château. The gardens and fountains were if anything even more exquisite though - so well played, Big Al.

The lunch (at "one of the city's finest restaurants" - located at the base of one of the aforementioned grey communist-era tower blocks) was a decent mushroom soup, followed by the obligatory beef stroganoff and finally an unidentifiable tiramisu-like dessert. Most interesting was the shot of genuine local-style Russian vodka given pride-of-place above each person's plate. Johnny was keen to try - one of only three on our wimpy table of 10 - and pronounced it a winner. Almost completely lacking in taste, it was instead pure heat; clearly designed to stave off those cold winter nights. Try a shot next time you find yourself about to turn up your heater! Perhaps not your car's heater though ...

Finally we arrived at the Hermitage, whose 1000+ rooms simply cannot all be explored in a mere afternoon. Luckily our brilliant guide Elizabeta was an absolute guru, having studied art history in these very environs. She steered us expertly to all the big-name artists (so to speak), giving all the information we could hope for in her delightful lilting accent, which was just how the Russkies always spoke in Cold War films, but much, much friendlier: "O-kay all my love-ly people, you're wel-come to be moo-ving with me to the next ex-hibit". The buildings that house the collection (one of the largest in the world) are so grand they almost outshine the art itself, the most impressive being the Winter Palace. Once home to the Tsars, it was famously stormed during the Russian Revolution, and so has seen its fair share of history.

Baltic Boating Part 3: Helsinki

2009-08-08T11:29:00.000+01:00

Helsinki was always going to struggle to make a big impression on us; its population is a tiny fraction of the previous cities', it has far fewer obvious must-see attractions, and the Finns have a reputation for being rather cold and detached. Or at least their racing-car drivers do - are there any other famous Finns?

Add to this the fact that in contrast to our previous stops, the weather was overcast and drizzly, things weren't really looking good for "The Sink". We kicked off our exploration by walking over to The Rock Church. Sadly, there was no sign of Jack Black or indeed any loud music at all, just a rather interesting church carved out of a natural stone crag. We had to generate our own rock:

Continuing our Scandi-coffee research tour, we headed through the middle of town, and noticed that Helsinki has trams very reminiscent of Melbourne's. We passed over the coffee made by Bec's dad, and instead went to the imposing Senate Square, Helsinki's finest. Perhaps in an attempt to give the town a grand meeting-point, the Government Palace, Cathedral, University and Library surround the square, with a monument to Alexander II in the centre. Fortunately Alexander I also paid a visit, allowing a rare photo opportunity.

As you can probably tell from the photos, the weather picked up slightly and our spirits were further improved by a visit to an excellent free museum of Helsinki's history, tucked away just off Senate Square. Helsinki has been a strategic stopping-place for Swedes and Russians for centuries and as such has changed hands several times in a Baltic tug-of-war, before finally establishing its independence from Russia in 1917.

Upon exiting the museum we were greeted by a fresh downpour, and soon after headed back to the comfort of the boat. We'd spent just five hours in Helsinki and that seemed to be sufficient. Our overall impression matched the stereotypical Finnish character - cool, reserved, orderly, and not given to great flourishes. As such we found it a little hard to warm to.

Baltic Boating Part 2: Stockholm

2009-07-26T19:51:00.011+01:00

By Day 3 of our 12-day cruise, we were well into the swing of cruising. Breakfasts and lunches would be taken at the Windjammer Buffet on deck 11, with the eating interspersed with table tennis, billiards or Scrabble contests, or one of the many shipboard activities constantly on offer. With the ice broken, our dinner-table companions were now friendly faces amongst the 2200 other passengers, and we'd enjoyed the first "Formal Night" - a chance to swan around in full dinner-jackets and generally indulge in Titanic/Casino Royale fantasies:

Unfortunately, as can be seen in the casino photo, not everyone had the same definition of the Formal Night dress code (despite it being quite clearly outlined in the cruise itinerary). In particular, the quite large Latino contingent virtually disregarded any and all dinner dress code recommendations for the entire cruise, which greatly pained Johnny's sensibilities ...

The following day we slipped into Sweden's capital city Stockholm - and what a city. Arranged elegantly around the harbour are some of the finest classical buildings we could hope to see, while the old town Gamla Stan is a charming warren of cobbled streets and quiet corners.

A pleasant stroll along the waterfront gets you to the Djurgården - Stockholm's island playground. Our six-hour stay in Stockholm didn't allow us the time to check out all of the attractions, but we did find the time to put ourselves on the outside of more tasty Scandi-fare - this time some Swedish meatballs and another round of herring (not red this time), garnished with local berries of choice, lingonberries - delicious! We fell in love with Stockholm and could happily have spent days exploring its delights.

Baltic Boating Part 1: Copenhagen

2009-07-24T23:41:00.000+01:00

Quick! What are your first thoughts when we say Cruise Ship? Old people? Shuffleboard? Overeating? Expensive? Titanic? Probably not for you?

Yeah, same here. But what if you found out about a cruise that went to a whole heap of places you wanted to visit? And had last-minute prices that were actually pretty cheap? And left from a port 90 minutes by train from your house? And was pretty-much guaranteed not to hit an iceberg?

We first noticed that last-minute cruise prices verged on "crazy bargain" back in 2007 in Bath, walking past the travel agents. The particular itinerary we liked was the Scandi/Baltic loop which often took in St. Petersburg in Russia - a huge bonus as getting private tourist visas to visit Russia is a notoriously expensive and dodgy process, that can be side-stepped if visiting with a recognised cruise company.

After more than two years waiting for the stars to align, we finally took the plunge, booking an el-cheapo interior stateroom (no porthole!) on the Jewel of the Seas three weeks before it sailed to St. Petersburg via lots of lovely Scandi-cities.

Our first surprise was a free upgrade to an exterior stateroom with a huge window, quickly followed by a dinner-table upgrade as well. The Jewel is a truly massive ship - 13 storeys of pleasure and 293 metres long - and there was tons to explore on our first day at sea before we arrived in Copenhagen. After Johnny hit the rock-climbing wall (on the back of the funnel - a long way up!) we also spent some quality relaxo-time beside the pool(s) and got astonishingly sunburnt while crossing the North Sea!

Copenhagen was a good introduction to Scandinavia for first-timer Bec. After finishing our GBP4 / AUD$8 coffees, we wandered past the charming Little Mermaid statue and along the shore into town, discovering a very pretty Dutch-esque windmill in the Kastellet along the way. Nyhavn is Copenhagen's signature waterway/street, with gorgeous colourful architecture and bustling restaurants serving up herring-based delicacies. We toured the impressive palace square and looked for Princess Mary, Bec sat on Hans Christian Andersen's slippery knee, and we peered into the famous Tivoli Gardens. But at GBP10 just to go in, or GBP35 to actually go on the rides, we went no further. We got quite lost in the Botanical Gardens, and were challenged by a stern-but-polite guard after accidentally straying onto a military facility. An exhausting first day, so we called into a restaurant on Nyhavn on the way back to the ship to replenish ourselves.

Bec had challenged Johnny to order a proper Danish herring-based meal, which he promptly did. A plate of red herring arrived, prompting many jokes, but it was really quite delicious. Washed down with some fiery Aquavit in the local tradition, although the Aquavit in turn had to be washed down with some local beer!

Disaster!

2009-06-23T20:35:00.002+01:00

After almost 3 years of loyal service, our trusty little Apple Macbook finally had a hiccup. A big one. Since the start of the year Bec has been working on a special DVD project to celebrate Kath's 30th birthday - a chronicle of the trips we took together while Kath was living in England. It was finally all done a fortnight ago, but it seems the final effort of compiling the DVD was too much for the Mac's Seagate hard drive, which shortly after refused to produce anything other than ominous ticking noises.

"Oh well" we hear you say, "you guys would have backed up all your stuff regularly, so no big deal". Well, ummm... We last backed up in January this year. That means we've potentially lost ALL our digital photos from Iceland, Marrakech, Carcassonne, Bletchley Park, Rutland and the Peak District. About 1000 in all we estimate. Damn and blast.

A trip to some expert data-recovery people confirmed that the drive was indeed cream-crackered. They could attempt a difficult and dangerous "spindle swap" operation but chances of recovery would be slim, and the cost of finding out would be steep. We've declined this option and will be looking at other companies for a second opinion, as there is no shortage of disaster-recovery specialists around the country. We're clearly not the only ones not backing up often enough!

As of now, a new brutal backup regime is swinging into place. We're talking multiple backup disks, periodic copies, automatic internet uploads, the works. Remember people, if your stuff doesn't exist in at least two places, it doesn't exist!

Take a Peak, Part 2

2009-06-09T18:58:00.013+01:00

Monday morning, another monster Full English and we were on our way to one of the country's finest stately homes. You might remember Chatsworth House from such films as: Pride and Prejudice (2005) with Keira Knightley and The Duchess (2007), also with Keira Knightley. She must be well acquainted with the residents, the 12th Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.

We toured the extensive gardens first. Visible from a considerable distance, The Cascade is an incredible water feature commissioned by the First Duke for the usual reason - to impress his guests. Water is stored in a man-made lake high behind the house, and comes down through a pipeline, off the (artificial) waterfall just visible at the back, optionally tumbling down the roof of the Cascade House (it can even be made to come out of the floor and ceiling inside). From there, it descends 24 stone steps of varying height and texture, so that there is a symphony of splashes. The amount of water used would make a Melbournian need a quiet sit-down and a biscuit, so it's rarely turned on. By complete fluke we happened to be present at one of the few times a year when it's given the full monty, Cascade House roof and all, and very impressive it was too. Hot tip to see the Cascade in action - Bank Holiday weekends in May.

The entire area around the house was quite literally knocked into shape by legendary 18th-century landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown, who was employed by the 4th Duke of Devonshire. Brown didn't like the positioning of the nearby village of Edensor, so he had it moved. As one does. Similarly, he had the course of the River Derwent changed to make the views to and from his "park" more agreeable. Here's Johnny doing his best "Mr Darcy waiting for Miss Bennet", with Capability's park stretching out behind.

The 6th Duke of Devonshire was not content with the grand vistas, and engaged another gardening genius, Joseph Paxton, in 1826. Paxton, as far as we can tell, was given a blank cheque and went completely ballistic, not only creating giant fountains, greenhouses, and extraordinary rock gardens, but inventing new machinery in the process. Some of the stones in his rockery weigh several tons, so Paxton created a machine which could pick them up and delicately put them in exactly the right position.

Of Chatsworth's 126 rooms, less than a quarter are visible on the public tour. But it's still an incredible visit, if in that slightly strange "it's really fancy, but I'm not sure I'd actually want to live in it" way. The interior drips with priceless artwork and elaborate furniture, while some of the painted ceilings are Sistine Chapelesque. Our favourites were the library and the dining room - elegant and spacious:

And then, in true Jane Austen fashion, we took our carriage, and withdrew to London.

Take a Peak, Part 1

2009-06-05T00:44:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, if you'd asked either of us about England's Peak District you would have got an answer along the lines of "umm, it's in the middle somewhere, and ummm <cue frantic Googling>, it's more peaky than the Lake District, which, in contrast, probably is a bit more lake-y" . Despite knowing very little about it, we knew our time in the UK would not be complete without visiting. The second May Bank Holiday was a perfect opportunity.

Like the Lakes, the Peak District is a magnet for Serious Walkers aka Red-Socks, who like nothing more than slamming down 2000 calories of Full English, loading up the 60-litre Karrimor with a couple of sandwiches, and heading out for a bracing 10-mile hike along something called Willey's Willie or Knobgoblin Pass. Indeed some people go to the Peaks for a whole week with a book written by a fellow nylon-fan and do nothing but:
Strenuous; 8-10 hours; Frequent precipices; Unpredictable conditions; Inform authorities; Update will beforehand; walks every single day. But that's not really our thing. Instead we chose a two-hiker-icon, 3-hour "pleasure walk" along a ridge from a book our lovely B & B lady found for us. We figured we'd stomp that in no more than 4 hours and have time to call in to at least one other of the Northern Peak District attractions.

Perhaps we were a little naïve, but the extremely warm conditions turned the pleasure walk into a death march. The mercury was soaring into the upper half of the 20s (don't laugh unless you've experienced this in the UK) and the cheerful directions were always light on the detail when you really needed it most. These authors must go on a special "How to be Specific In Your Vagueness" course before writing - together with their "Scale Is For Losers" map-making colleagues. At the 3-hour mark we were actually only half-way around the loop, but convinced ourselves that our frequent photo-stops were the culprit. After all, it was absolutely stunning, with a clear view right the way back to our starting point, the village of Edale on the valley floor.

Bec also took what could well be her Photo Of The Year: Johnny taking a breathtaking leap off a rocky crag. Taken with a point-and-shoot digital camera with the usual annoying button-to-shutter lag, this was a genuine one-shot wonder!

We took some time out next to a lovely waterfall before taking a wrong turn and playing chicken with a family of sheep on a goat-track. How agricultural! At last we were on the descent, but even this was strenuous, as it frequently criss-crossed the babbling waters of the Crowden Brook, requiring combinations of careful footwork and energy-sapping jumps to make progress.

When we finally rejoined civilisation, we were dismayed to see the sign pointing back to Edale - still a mile and a half's stagger away! Eventually we slithered into The Old Nag's Head back in the town, some six hours after setting off. Our other plans for the day were shattered (as were we!), but a quiet pint by the river helped to compensate!

Carcassonne Cuisine

2009-05-21T20:56:00.014+01:00

The walled French town of Carcassonne has been on our radar since 2005, when Bec's lovingly-constructed European tour itinerary included it as a stop between Bordeaux and Barcelona. Due to forces beyond our control, we never made it then, and have been meaning to "tick it off" ever since. We finally managed it over the first May bank holiday, taking our second RyanAir (boo! hiss!) flight of the year to the lovely South of France.

Carcassonne is famous for the lovely castle/château that looms over the river, quite literally lording it over the "New Town". And rightly so:

The Old Town is still fully-functional, albeit dominated by tourist traps and restaurants these days. Actually staying within the town's walls is possible but ludicrously expensive, so we took the economical option and stayed in the Ibis just over the other side of the Old Bridge, getting a great view and plenty of exercise climbing that hill!

We determined that two days in Carcassonne is exactly the right duration - you could potentially "do" the town and be gone in one day but then you would miss seeing the sun set over a scene that really hasn't changed much in hundreds of years. Also, you'd be depriving yourself of another 6-8 courses of delicious French food. Indeed, we seemed to spend most of our time deciding where to eat next! The local speciality (and hence centrepiece of countless prix-fixe menus) is Cassoulet, a slow-cooked white-bean casserole of duck and pork - delicious, but there were many other things to enjoy, the only exception being a very rough pork sausage that Bec chose as an entrée, which was a little too pig-sty-esque for our tastes!

We ate like nobles, we took a turn around the château with surely the finest view in all of France, and then we ate like nobles again. Life is tough...

Home Town Toy Time

2009-05-11T23:02:00.002+01:00

The Easter break saw us heading to possibly the least exotic holiday destination ever featured in this blog - namely, the county of Rutland, in England's damp and grey East Midlands. Rutland's main claims to fame are:

Being small - the smallest county in England
(Possibly due to the first point) Being the only county to not have a McDonald's
(Possibly due to above 2 points) Having the best-performing schools in the country

Fascinating. As you've probably guessed by now, Rutland is the county of Johnny's birth, and he had a long-overdue appointment with one of his best childhood mates, who still lives there. Despite being 6 months younger, James is putting Johnny to shame. He is the Chief Technical Officer of a very successful digital agency, husband to the lovely Emma and father to the adorable Annie-May and Millie.

We had a fantastic time, with James and John seamlessly picking up where they'd left off (after a twelve-year gap) and all the girls getting on like a house on fire. But there was another reason for being in the middle of nowhere. For his double-birthday present from Bec, Johnny was about to drive in a 4-way supercar shootout! Sunday morning saw an endlessly-patient Bec standing around a nearby ex-RAF base in the drizzle, with Johnny driving:

- A Porsche 911 Carrera S (996) - brilliant power and handling. Seemed like just caressing the throttle gave a glorious shove in the back, with the steering giving endless feedback. Lovely solid gearshift and stunning build quality. Truly a car to dream of.

- A Lotus Elise S2 - a road-legal go-kart, but even more fun. A really physical driving experience, with a small sueded wheel and a notchy gearshift. The engine is small and you wring its neck to make progress, but you can chuck it into the corners like nothing else. The greatest weekend-warrior/track day car ever.

- A Ferrari F360 - meh. Yes, believe it or not, the most expensive (by far) in this lineup was also the most disappointing. In the slippery conditions the car could not put its power down to the road (as the instructor said: "The Germans and Japanese are clever enough to properly do traction control, the British save weight by not doing it, and the Italians tried to do it, but made a mess of it"). The "F1-style" semi-automatic flappy-paddle gearbox is a complete waste of money and, literally, time. At full chat it took about 2 seconds to decide to obey a command to change gear! An expensive toy for non-drivers.

- A Subaru Impreza WRX (2006 edition). Driving the Subie was just like meeting up with James again - a great and trusted old friend. The Scoob's All-Wheel-Drive allowed it to carry much higher speed through the corners than anything else on the wet track, and Johnny's top speed at the end of the back straight was the same as in the Porsche. This version felt a little less nimble than Johnny's old "organ-donor express" 1998 model, but also much more solidly screwed together. Truly a giant-killing car.

We're hoping to catch up with James and the gang again very soon - Bec and Emma have now exchanged contact details so there won't be another 12-year radio-silence! And as for the supercars... Elise and Carrera, we'll be back for you later!

Marrakech Mayhem, Part 2: Found

2009-04-20T17:07:00.000+01:00

With our confidence rising all the time, we could set our sights on attractions further away from our riad; shaking our heads at dubious offers of assistance and sometimes even laughing at the audacious claims of cheeky young locals. "C'est fermé!" or "It's closed!" is apparently a witty and helpful thing to shout at tourists as they walk along a street. At least there were no sexist slurs - our friend Beth had been on the receiving end of quite a lot of unwanted attention when she visited Marrakech with a female friend.

After checking out the lush Jardin Majorelle we visited the one of the amazing royal palaces, Palais-el-Badi:

After 48 hours in Marrakech, we'd started to notice a pattern - a few hectic hours out on the streets would be followed by a period of recuperation in a quiet restaurant, palace, garden or riad, before we could face the mayhem again - but we were definitely warming to the craziness, the pace, and the sheer inventiveness of the locals. At the risk of being a bikesnob, observe if you will, this superb example of Moroccan bicycle style:

Of note:

Front brakes completely disconnected
Rear brakes also purely for decorative purposes
"Moroccan singlespeed conversion" with gear ratio chosen using the rule "whatever stops the chain from falling off too much"
Missing seatpost clamp, ingeniously replaced with padlock (Hah! That'll stop 'em!)
Asymmetrical seat orientation; this actually suits the sidesaddle riding position adopted by most riders for easy ejection (see first two points)
Cargo rack - this allows the vehicle to carry livestock and building materials with ease. We spotted a full-size front door being carried like this.

We decided to brave an al fresco dinner in the "big square", delving somewhat apprehensively into the crazy maze of smoky, smelly food stalls, teeming with beggars, pickpockets and extremely inventive spruikers. Easily the cheapest meal of the trip, the food was surprisingly good and the atmosphere incredible. We caught this little guy red-handed, trying to relieve Bec of some change!

For our last full day in Morocco we ventured out of the city, our guide Majid taking us into the Atlas Mountains to experience the rural life of the Berber people. Johnny was kept busy translating as Majid was much more comfortable in French than English, but Bec was improving all the time. By the end of this year she will probably be as good at French as she is German, if not better!

The scenery was spectacular, and quite astonishing at times, seeming more Swiss Alp than Moroccan Atlas:

We enjoyed a scrambling climb up multiple waterfalls before heading back into the city for a very different watersport. The Hammam. Neither of us really knew exactly what this was, but we knew it had to be done and Thierry had organised a visit to a very special one close to our riad, operated by another French expat. Veronique gave us a lovely welcome on her rooftop terrasse before Bec was sent off to be Hammam-ed. She came back in a dressing-gown looking somewhat dazed, but refused to give any details to Johnny before he was sent to his fate.

Now, not being at all knowledgeable about ancient North African cleansing rituals, we cannot definitively say that our experience was the norm. If there is an expert reading this, does this sound right?

Enter a small bathroom-like cubicle with no fittings beyond taps and drain
Strip down to bathing suit
Large member of the same sex enters the room
Large person also strips to bathing suit
Large person fills plastic buckets with warm water
Large person pours water over client
Large person applies soap to client
Large person flagellates client with what feels like cheese grater (coarse side)
Repeat steps 5-8 using ever-finer grating devices until all client skin has been removed
Large person sloshes a final 20 litres of water over client
Client dons dressing-gown in order to stop internal organs from falling out

Our hammam experience in many ways mirrored our overall impressions of Marrakech; confronting, unfamiliar, a little scary, but somehow simultaneously fascinating, enjoyable and totally unforgettable.

Marrakech Mayhem, Part 1: Lost

2009-04-08T11:07:00.021+01:00

There are four levels of being lost:

Oh no! We're not going the same way as we did last time! But it's OK, because there's a sign telling us we're still going towards our destination, and frankly, where we are is pretty nice anyway. This variant is frequently experienced in Venice, and is known as Pleasurably Lost.
Hmmm. None of this looks familiar, but we've got a map that correlates to the street signs, so we can work this out. This is a feeling you might get in a large foreign city - Lost In Translation.
This is not good. Where the hell are the street signs? There are no other tourists around, but I've just got a feeling that if we go towards that thing, we'll get to the nice stuff. This is not a good state to be in for too long - Lost In Space.
Omigod omigod omigod. Everything looks the same. No signposts, no landmarks, the map isn't making sense. No tourists, people are telling me things but they want money so I can't trust them. And now there's a crowd of vultures following us. Lost In Marrakech.

Yes, we had a level 4 nightmare when we arrived in Marrakech. We hadn't taken enough notice of our Riad's neighbourhood before venturing out into the madness of this crazy Moroccan city, and we paid dearly. Our lovely host, Thierry from Bordeaux, had drawn a line on our map showing how to navigate back from the main square, but the scale was way too tiny to really help. In the end, in 11pm desperation we had to ask a shopkeeper for assistance - he delegated to a seven-year-old boy who led us through the dark alleyways for what seemed like an eternity, while suspicious characters lurked a few paces behind. At the door to our Riad, we gave him a banknote which would feed him for a week (the smallest thing we had) and he still wanted more. We were scared he and his mates would still be there waiting for us the next morning - not a nice way to spend your first night in a new city.

We had determined that things could only get better from here - and we were right. The next morning, a fantastic breakfast on the sun-drenched terrasse of the riad helped a lot, and we spent a good half hour learning the landmarks near our accommodation so as not to be flummoxed again. Suitably confident, we jumped right into the tourist circuit, taking in the Ben Youssef Medersa, a former religious academy featuring a stunning internal courtyard in the local Arabic tiles-stucco-and-wood style.

Next stop was the Musee de Marrakech, showcasing more of the extravagant interior wall ornamentation. Exterior walls usually form the streets and alleyways, so no effort is spared when it comes to decorating the internal courtyards!

Following a relaxing rooftop lunch we plunged into the exotic, colourful and pungent souks. Your nose really takes a battering in Marrakech, going from the foul smells of poorly-tuned diesel and two-stroke engines in the streets to sweet confections in the patisseries, before turning a corner and having the raw odour of tanning leather grab you in the back of the throat.

After several hours of meandering through the seemingly-endless array of glassware, carpets, pottery and random tat, we found ourselves people-watching at the amazing Djemma-al-Fna square - Marrakech's crowning glory:

And after a couple of Tagines, we headed home nice and early. It had been a much, much better day, and we didn't want to push our luck!

Oyrgpuyrl Cnex

2009-04-07T21:50:00.002+01:00

We recently welcomed Brush and Bel to London - primarily they were here to see Wicked, but we got to hang around with them for a few days on either side, which conveniently included John's birthday. We still don't quite know how, but the topic of Bletchley Park came up at Johnny's birthday dinner, and the idea of a nerd-excursion to the home of modern computing was born.

For those who have no idea of the significance of Bletchley Park, and/or haven't seen the film Enigma, here's the quick summary. In WWII, the Germans used a machine called an Enigma to encrypt their radio communications.

It was an electro-mechanical machine which used a system of rotors to ensure that every character was encrypted with a different key to the one before it. The Germans believed their system to be unbreakable. They didn't reckon on the persistence, pluck and absolute brilliance that was assembled at Station X, the "Codes and Ciphers School" based in Bletchley, an hour north of London. Winston Churchill was a very keen supporter of this team of elite chess players, mathematicians and crossword-puzzle solvers, and they didn't let him down. In particular, a mathematician from Cambridge called Alan Turing devised a machine which would test a particular "crib" or suspected Enigma configuration in just 15 minutes, enabling the British to stay one step ahead of the Germans and ultimately win the war. This machine, the "Bombe" was the forerunner to the computer sitting in front of you right now. What makes it even more incredible is that your machine would take roughly twice as long to crack the code, such was the power of Turing's design.

Bletchley Park is now a museum, showcasing the fascinating work that was done at Station X, including guided tours of the various huts, and lectures from clever people who understand some of the technology. We sat in on a one-hour "Introduction to the Enigma" lecture, which was superb, and gave us an idea why the Germans believed their device to be unbreakable - there are 150 million million million possible configurations!

There simply wasn't enough time to see it all - luckily, the ticket gives admission for a whole year, so nerd-boy here can come back again and again...

Such A Nice Land

2009-03-13T22:00:00.000Z

Credit Crunch. Economic slowdown. Financial crisis. It would not be an exaggeration to say that every British TV and print article in the last 6 months has contained one of the above phrases, or alluded to it with the classic "... in the current climate". The once-proud nation of Iceland copped an absolute spanking from the world's financial institutions and is quietly licking its wounds, probably hoping to get on board with the Euro and regain some stability. In the meantime though, their carrier Icelandair has been offering some excellent deals to entice people to their chilly, currently cashflow-challenged capital Reykjavik.

We kicked off early on Saturday morning with a Golden Circle tour with David - an expat Englishman who has been in Iceland since the mid-80's. He was a goldmine of information about the place, and all the changes that have happened since he arrived. His first point was that Iceland is about the same size as England, but their populations are 312,000 and 45 million, respectively. Take away 100,000 children and 50,000 wrinklies, and you've only got about 150,000 people to do the work and pay taxes. Yet somehow, Iceland has created a complete first-world infrastructure with roads, communications, power, schools etc.

The whole nation was basically funded by fish - but as stocks started to deplete and fishing quotas took hold, Iceland had to start looking for other things that they either had in abundance or could support with relatively little investment in people and funds. To this end they have become a world leader in harnessing geothermal power. The other thing they tried was international banking...

But enough of that stuff. The natural delights of Iceland were what we had come for, and it delivered, big-time.

This is the geyser at Geysir, which does its thing roughly every four minutes:

We lasted about 5 minutes beside the mighty waterfall at Gulfoss - the wind was blowing about -30°C right into our faces as we looked at it:

We met some lovely Icelandic Horses, all wrapped up in their thick winter coats.

That night we embarked on a less-successful tour - to hunt down the Northern Lights. After four hours of fruitless pootling along mountain roads, our Icelandic guide apologised - despite a reasonably-favourable forecast, it just wasn't going to happen for us. Damn.

We had another busy schedule the following day, kicking off with some Icelandic Horse riding! It's been illegal to import horses to Iceland for many years, so these sturdy units have been on their own evolutionary branch, developing a couple of unique "gaits" in addition to the usual walk, trot and gallop. Bec had been looking forward to this for a while, with Johnny slightly less enthused, having never actually ridden a horse before. Once we got going however, his natural speed-freak tendencies took over, and when the group divided into "slow" and "fast" there was barely any decision time required! The pace gradually increased, finishing with Kistil (Bec's horse) and Scroggi galloping over the snowy landscape. Yes, they're only small, and their little legs mean they don't go that fast, but it's still pretty fun!

To soothe the aching horsey-interfacing bits, we took a dip in the amazing Blue Lagoon - superheated water comes up through cracks in the Earth's crust, picking up all sorts of lovely minerals on its way, and fills up these pools in a lava-field, ending up at a delightful 37-40°C. You would think it was man-made, it's so perfect. But like almost everything you see in Iceland, it's just a by-product of being on the join of the American and Eurasian tectonic plates.

For our last meal in Reykjavik, we headed to a unique Icelandic Tapas restaurant that had been recommended by Yorkshire holidaymakers Andrew and Carly who had taken the Golden Circle tour with us the previous day. Behold! Puffin meat with a blueberry sauce - dark and delicious; and Minke Whale with cranberry sauce. Started out tasting like roast beef, but ended up tasting like fish - Bec was undecided, Johnny not a fan.

When it comes to Iceland however, we're unanimous - fantastic!

The French Family Félix

2009-03-09T17:40:00.000Z

As some readers may know, John's Mum is French. Her brother and his family live in the south-east of France in the city of Grenoble, right at the foot of the Alps. We have visited them on several occasions in the past, while holidaying in Europe, but had not managed to see them at all since moving to England. Early this year, we decided that simply was not good enough, and promptly booked cheap(ish) flights for the first weekend in February. (Naturally we cleared it with them first).

Grenoble, as you can imagine, is an incredibly picturesque place. With the Isère river running through it and the impressive backdrop of the Alps, you feel surrounded by natural beauty. We had hoped for the possibility of more skiing, as there are numerous ski resorts within easy driving distance, but unfortunately the weather let us down. It was all rather grey and drizzly, dully reminiscent of the London weather we'd left behind us. We didn't let that spoil our fun though, instead spending a very enjoyable Saturday afternoon strolling through the nearby town of Annecy with John's aunt and uncle, Dominique and Pierre.

On the Saturday evening we were treated to a Félix family feast, complete with five delicious courses. John's cousins, Anne and Laure, joined us with their partners and Anne's two little boys, Lucas (pronounced Luca) and Nathan (Na-ton), the latter providing much entertainment with his inexhaustible 3-year-old energy and endless French chatter. It was a jolly group, with conversation flowing in both French and English. John's French flourished but while Bec tried her best, she was grateful for the presence of a few English speakers to ease the pressure.

Merci beaucoup to Pierre and Dominique for your warm hospitality, which we hope to repay one day soon.

All Star Portugal Extravaganza

2009-02-22T19:30:00.000Z

Star, the company Bec works for, has a fantastic employee recognition policy which involves selecting 10 people - Star performers, let's call them - and sending them and their partners away on an all expenses paid, 5-star luxury holiday. Last year's trip was to Portugal, the Penha Longa Spa and Golf Resort to be exact. Just outside of Lisbon and close to the beautiful, historic town of Sintra.

Why are we blogging about this, you may ask? Yes, you guessed it, Bec was lucky enough to be selected as one of the winners for 2008! As a result, she and (even luckier) Johnny were whisked away in October for four days of pampering and indulgence.

We truly were treated like royalty. From the welcome drinks and canapés on arrival to the luxurious spa treatments we all enjoyed, no detail had been overlooked. And the food! Each meal had been carefully designed to give us a smorgasbord of Portuguese delicacies, and in various gorgeous settings. The wine and cocktails flowed just as freely, including a private port tasting on our day trip into Lisbon.

But the icing on this mind-blowing cake was the incredible group of people we got to share it with. Everyone was happy, friendly and up for a great time (as can usually be expected when free alcohol is involved) and before long, the "Portugal Posse" had been forged.

2008 - What sucked, what rocked...

2009-02-15T12:13:00.001Z

About a year ago, we summarised the pros and cons of our first year in the UK. With another year gone and a different, London-centric perspective, here's an updated list for 2008:

Things That Rocked:

Travelling with friends and family. Really boosts the enjoyment factor! We were lucky enough to meet up in various exciting new places, with both "travelling friends" living in Europe and friends from home on holiday. Who will come and share the fun in 2009, we wonder?
Commuting by Bike. The Langster has well-and-truly paid itself off, and is now a London rarity - an asset gaining in value! Johnny is also a substantially fitter unit than a year ago, and ten kilos lighter!
Concerts. The array of musicians that visit London is astonishing. You could quite easily see a world-famous act every night of the year. While we didn't go that far, we did see Queen, Kylie, Bon Jovi, Scouting For Girls, The V Festival, The Fratellis, The Feeling, and Bec even saw Celine Dion. Johnny wants no association with that one...
London Social Life. So much to do, lots of friends (new and old) to do it with. The contribution www.lastminute.com makes to the possibilities is also noted! It's been great for cheap West End show tickets and restaurant deals.
Parks and Gardens. We've loved seeing them change with the seasons. But really, any time is always a good time to escape the bustle of the city.
Getting to know "Our Town". London isn't a city you can get to know in a week, or even a month. Perhaps you can never really know all of it, due to its size and diversity. But in the last year, we've enjoyed becoming familiar with life in "Our Town". There's no doubt it can be an intimidating place, but there's a tremendous buzz and huge rewards in uncovering its secrets.

Things That Sucked:

Tube crowding. The Underground is a great system, but is frequently a victim of its own popularity. Johnny avoids it where at all possible.
Crowds in general. The flipside of London's popularity and attractions is the truly staggering number of people that swarm the streets. But we're getting to know ways to beat the crowds...
Air Travel just gets worse. America is even worse than Europe, but why is the whole palaver so bad? Getting on the plane is now a relief after the shenanigans that precede it! Bec is also becoming more nervous with each and every take-off...
Job-Hunting got especially challenging as the Credit Crunch loomed. Contract work in London used to be the way to go, but the situation is now definitely reversed. We certainly wouldn't recommend arriving at Heathrow without a locked-in job right now.
Missing Home. If you're reading this, we miss you!

Toy Time: Boys will be ... Girls?

2009-02-14T10:00:00.003Z

Kath's comment in our last post reminded us that many people think it's Johnny who does all the wordy stuff on this blog. Not the case. In fact, that last one was written almost entirely by Bec. Usually they're a one-person effort, with an "editorial" check-over by the other "team member" before we hit the big red button.

It is true that in general however, Johnny does the words and Bec the pretty pictures. And here's the proof, courtesy of the really-quite-nifty GenderAnalyzer.com - point it at somebody's blog and it'll use clever computery stuff (the internet is on computers now!) to work out whether the author is male or female. Here's our result:

Nice! Johnny is pleased to have his masculinity noted :-) Especially as almost all of our travelling-friend blogs (on the right) seem to be filled with girly-girly girl-germs - some highlights:

Andy is a woman, albeit right on the fence at 50%

Brett and Belinda (is?/are?) all woman with 60% confidence. Must ... resist ... commenting ... :-)

Dave and Kristy is written, as far as we know, entirely by Kristy, and this tallies with a 52% certainty.

GenderAnalyzer nails it again with Krista And Mike's Blog which is almost all Krista-powered - 53%.

Cool huh?

A Look At London: Winter Wonderland

2009-02-02T17:34:00.010Z

London must have read our previous blog posts about how much we adored Canada's snow-covered beauty, and thought: "I can beat that!" Here's what we woke up to this morning:

Unlike a large proportion of Londoners we actually did make it into the office, albeit a little later than usual. The delay was caused partly by the near collapse of London's public transport system under the weight of the heaviest snow fall in 18 years, and partly due to the slight detour we couldn't resist taking through a gorgeous, snow white Hyde Park:

The fun didn't stop there though - here's what Bec found across the road when she finally arrived at work:

Happy Holidays! Skiing In The New Year

2009-02-01T10:55:00.016Z

A mere 130 kilometres north of Montréal lies Mont Tremblant, "Eastern North America's Premier Ski Resort" and a destination Johnny had been drooling over ever since landing in gorgeously snow-covered Canada. The Twixmas-New Year period is Mont Tremblant's most popular time, and it had been tricky and expensive to book a couple of nights over the 2008-09 join, so we had very high expectations.

The drive up from Montréal was both ridiculously easy and gorgeous, with stunning wood cabins sitting in picture-perfect glades of snow-frosted pine and fir trees:

Driver Johnny had expected some twisting mountain roads but they never eventuated - we were now so far north that no altitude is necessary to guarantee good snow. We drove past several other resorts where slopes were so close to the road that the skiers actually passed under the highway in a tunnel!

After only a couple of gentle hours we had arrived in a wonderland. The entire resort village has been constructed to look like the perfect European alpine township, and the effect is very convincing. Yes it's fake, and most of the buildings were all built by the same company at exactly the same time (about 5 years ago), but it sure is perdy:

A major advantage of staying at a resort where the one company owns almost everything, is the level of connectedness everything has. When we checked in, we were handed our lift tickets, and later that evening, a lovely guy from the ski rental shop called in to fit us for our gear. The next morning, our equipment was magically waiting for us in our locker in the changing rooms. Slick.

Of course all of it would come to nothing if the skiing was rubbish, and Johnny was nervous that the slopes would be choked with most of Eastern North America. The reality was, this puny 850m pimple-on-the-base-of-an-Alp had so many trails that for long periods we felt like the only people on the mountain. We never waited more than 30 seconds for a lift, and the snow was deep. And crisp. And eeeeven. Check it out for yourself:

John apologises to the snowboard police for having arms flailing everywhere - this was a very icy black diamond! (Bec would like it noted that she completed said run several times with some aplomb, albeit at a slightly lower speed).

We love Mont Tremblant and would recommend it to any snow-fans out there, with one proviso. It is cold. Colder than we had ever experienced before. -25° Celsius-plus-significant-windchill cold. Some examples:

It took 5 minutes to regain any feeling in John's hand after filming the video on the left barehanded.
Bec was wearing two pairs of gloves and still had painfully cold hands at the summit.
Johnny had a sliver of earlobe peeking out from under his hat for a couple of hours. Frostnip caused it to swell up to twice its normal size and it hurt for the next week.

But if you can deal with the cold (and all it takes is appropriate clothing), just look at the rewards:

What a perfect place to ski in the new year.

Happy Holidays! Keeping It Réal

2009-01-31T10:15:00.001Z

After an interminable customs-stop at the Canadian border, we finally rolled into Montréal station - clean, airy, businesslike. A friendly, uniformed porter was helping people with their bags, and was greeting every passenger with a cheery "bienvenue!". It was great to be back in Canada again!

Montréal is the capital of the province of Québec - where French is the official first language - so we both had a strange period of adjustment while we got used to the seemingly-implausible Franco-American mixture:

	The French Like	Americans Like
Housing	City-centre apartments	Large suburban houses
Cars	Small, efficient hatchbacks	Gas-guzzling SUVs and large sedans
Clothes	Elegant, tailored minimalism	Elasticated-waist trousers, logos, bling
Food	Fresh ingredients, rich flavours	Hot dogs, orange cheese

Our first morning in Montréal was spent in a picture-perfect clone of a 1950's American diner - all chrome, posters and booths - but we ordered our pancakes and coffees in French. Mostly. It's quite amazing (and amusing) how quickly everyone can switch from rapidfire, properly-accented French to full American English drawl.

The weather was, frankly, nasty, so we did as the locals do and headed for the souterrain - the network of underground passageways and shopping malls that keeps central Montréal running during the long winter months. It was quite fun seeing how far we could go without setting foot outside, but eventually we had to brave the cold in order to explore the Old Town and Port areas.

As you can see in the picture above, the streets were perilously icy, and on more than one occasion we had to save each other from a painful and embarrassing tumble. Montréalers, on the other hand, are very adept at dealing with icy surfaces, as demonstrated by this multi-tasking mother:

A visit to Montréal is (apparently) not complete without sampling The Smoked Meat at a deli - the most famous of which is (apparently) Reuben's. We didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into when we ordered a couple of classic deli sandwiches - and we're still reeling. The key idea seems to be to cram as much meat between two slices of bread as possible (more than can conceivably fit into any normal mouth), adding mustard and other substances as throat lubricant. Quite a challenge to eat!

Our final mission was to climb the city's namesake - Mount Royal - which rises up behind the city to a dizzying 233 metres (!) What should have been a gentle stroll became quite an adventure however, as the entire park was covered in deep snow and treacherous ice. Most of the staircases resembled frozen waterslides, but we managed to reach the top with no significant damage.

Let's not mention the trip back down the hill...

Happy Holidays! Riding The Rails

2009-01-24T09:28:00.010Z

Finally it was time to leave both Brandy and the Big Apple and head back up into Canada again. We'd decided to mix it up a bit and take the train to get there. Johnny had been looking forward to this train journey since Andy had first made him aware of The Adirondack; New York to Montréal in ten hours, undoubtedly passing through stunning forested scenes, frosted with snow. Andy's Amtrak catalogue reinforced the picture of scenic, 1950's golden-era elegance, with glossy pictures of Vista-Dome observation cars, uniformed porters and small pockets of well-heeled retirees enjoying their SKI* funds.

The reality, of course, was very different. Despite its noble history as a unifier of a vast nation, American train travel has unfortunately been relegated to, at-best, a third-class mode of travel behind the automobile and the aeroplane.

The dismal experience began at Penn Station, a subterranean maze of dingy, claustrophobic corridors populated by shambling hordes of drunks, the homeless, and the insane. And the occasional horrified European, accustomed to the airy, clean, businesslike style of modern terminals like St. Pancras or the Gare de l'Est. We had arrived with plenty of time to spare - our train hadn't yet been allocated a platform - so we spent a couple of minutes obtaining bagel and coffee supplies. Unfortunately, during that time, the platform was announced, and a truly epic queue had formed at the escalator leading down to the platform.

After a shambolic documentation-check (America still struggles with international formalities, despite sharing the world's longest peaceful border with Canada) we boarded the train, and quickly forgot any notions we'd had about Vista-Dome, Electro-Glide style. The train was clearly insufficiently long for the number of passengers, and the carriage's internal styling was a mixture of the forced intimacy of a Greyhound bus and the porthole windows of an aircraft, reminding all passengers of their exact position in the American travel pecking-order.

Seats on board were in short supply and none could be reserved in advance, resulting in jockeying for position which as unassertive non-Americans, we had no chance of competing with. So the two of us ended up sitting in line-astern, hoping that one of our neighbours would get off at the next stop - they never did.

As an aside which illustrates the blackness of Johnny's mood, here's an excerpt from his original set of blog notes written during the journey:

Hypothetical time: You have a gun with one bullet; which fellow traveller do you shoot, the snoring old lady next door or the eye-wateringly smelly guy in the seat in front?
I'd take the snoring old bat - it'd shut her up, and if the stinky guy was dead he'd only start getting smellier. Hypothetically of course...

The train clattered on through some pretty nice scenery, it must be admitted, but none of our photos really turned out because the windows of the train were so dirty. Pretty symbolic of the whole experience really. America's railways could be, and should be, great. Instead they have been allowed to rot away - what a horrendous waste.

*Spending Kids' Inheritance

Happy Holidays! A New York Christmas

2009-01-18T13:44:00.001Z

We've all seen the movies. There's no doubt about it. New York City does Christmas very well. Everywhere you look there are decorations, lights, dazzling Christmas trees, busy ice skating rinks and people wishing you "Happy Holidays!" And snow! Yes, we finally experienced our first white Christmas. Okay, so it didn't actually snow on Christmas Day... but there was still an abundance of the white stuff in the streets and particularly in Central Park. Talk about a Winter Wonderland:

We met up with Brandy and took in some sights. Having already visited New York before, we were content mainly to wander and absorb the festive spirit. Here's the spectacular tree overlooking skaters at the Rockefeller Center; Bec and Brandy outside the restaurant where we gorged ourselves splendidly on Christmas Day; and an adorable Christmas market in Bryant Square.

One experience we did have our hearts set on was ice skating in Central Park. Despite the inevitable crowds on a clear afternoon, on Christmas Day itself no less and with carols playing in the background, it could not have been more perfect.

Happy Holidays! Niagara Chills

2009-01-08T19:07:00.014Z

Seeing as Niagara Falls is a mere 120 kilometres from Toronto, we decided to take one of the many coach tours available from downtown to check out this famous spot. A little bit of research had already uncovered that the Maid Of The Mist (the boat which takes you right up to the foot of the waterfall) does not operate in the winter - but it still looked like a good day out, and had been recommended to us as a "must-do" while in Ontario.

First stop was a winery situated on the fertile strip of land between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Despite the frosty conditions they have to deal with for months each year, they manage to produce many varieties of wine - indeed they have taken advantage of the cold to develop their own unique variety of ice wine, made from frozen grapes. We had a taste and were impressed by the rich sweetness of the flavour.

From the winery we took the road Winston Churchill described as "the prettiest Sunday afternoon drive in the world" - Niagara Parkway - which runs from the cute town of Niagara-on-the-Lake (where Mike and Krista co-incidentally were honeymooning) right up to the Falls. The snowy conditions made everything look pristine, and combined with copious Christmas decorations, even the biggest house (and they were all BIG) looked like a snug little cottage:

Next stop was lunch at a restaurant with a great view of the falls, both the Horseshoe Falls (on the right in our pictures) and the smaller American Falls. We were lucky enough to score a window table, and almost spent more time looking out the window than eating!

After lunch we took to the tunnels drilled into the rock behind the falls. These give you a great feel for the power and sheer quantity of water that launches off the 53m Horseshoe Falls. It also makes you partially deaf!

As you can see, there is a lot of ice around the falls. This is almost entirely due to the constant mist that they produce, which freezes in the cold temperatures. The day of our visit was no exception, with a nearby building telling us that it was -15°C! The mist freezes onto trees, fences, lamp-posts, etc making the whole place look like a winter wonderland!

Happy Holidays! Toronto Wedding

2009-01-07T19:01:00.000Z

Following our last-minute passport reprieve, we blasted off from Heathrow to Toronto, via Chicago. We knew it was going to be cold in Canada, but we hadn't quite counted on just how fierce the cold would be. A spate of particularly vicious weather had just passed through, leaving half a metre of snow in its wake, and temperatures stuck firmly in the -15°C region. A midday walk from our hotel to a nearby mall resulted in noses and ears that stung like they were going to fall off!

Mike and Krista's wedding was an incredible experience. Set in a beautiful old mansion on the outskirts of town, the gardens were blanketed with snow and made a stunning backdrop:

The ceremony was just how Johnny likes them - short and to the point, but also very touching and intimate.

The reception was a stand-up cocktail-and-nibbles affair so after some heartfelt speeches there was no holding back - the dance floor was quickly jammed with people bopping to the excellent DJ's selections. While Johnny got stuck into the G&T's, Bec was swept off her feet by this guy who introduced himself as simply "the gay cousin":

It was all over much too quickly, but everybody had a fantastic night, especially the stunning bride and groom.

The following morning, we'd been kindly invited to a "recovery brunch" at Krista's parents' house, outside of Toronto. Although Bec was somewhat under the weather for a goodly portion of the day (having enjoyed herself a little too much the night before), we still had a wonderful time, getting such a warm welcome from both Mike and Krista's families that we almost felt like a part of the family ourselves! It really was a true Canadian experience, with snow falling on a forest scene behind the house, and a cosy scene inside. Johnny's offer of a straight swap (4-bedroom family home in Toronto for 2-bedroom apartment in Melbourne) was politely declined by Mr Riddell!

Christmas Is Un-Cancelled!

2008-12-19T10:06:00.003Z

In our last post we indicated that the outcome of The Waiting Game would hopefully be exciting. Well, the UK Border Agency must be reading our blog, because they made the whole process extremely exciting. Possibly taking years off our lives in the process...

On Monday, Bec began a systematic campaign of enquiring/nagging/begging/pleading by both fax and telephone, but was met with the same familiar stonewalling as before: "We can only tell you if your documents have been sent back to you". By Wednesday night, we had all but given up hope, but Bec gave it one last shot on Thursday, and was overjoyed to hear "the application is complete and your documents will be dispatched today".

Royal Mail is usually pretty efficient and guarantees that a Special Delivery, Signed-For package like this will be delivered next-day. But that wasn't going to be enough - we had to be at Heathrow Airport by 11.30am. So Bec got pro-active and contacted our local post office, arranging to intercept the delivery there rather than face an agonising wait for the postman at home.

And so, at 9.00am today, Bec arrived home with our passports, with a whole 2 hours to spare before we needed them to leave the country. Now that is cutting it fine!

Before we head off for Canada, we just wanted to wish all our friends and family a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year.

The Waiting Game

2008-12-13T10:41:00.002Z

"Ah, the waiting game sucks - let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos!"

Homer Simpson

He's got a point. For seven weeks now, we've been waiting - at first patiently - for Bec's UK Working Visa extension to be processed. UK Immigration helpfully provides the following statistics: "70% of applications will be processed within 4 weeks, and 90% within 14 weeks". Awesome guys, thanks for that. So that's been seven weeks sans passports for BOTH of us (because Bec's visa depends on Johnny's UK nationality, so both passports had to be sent off).

So our wings have been clipped for a while. And it hasn't really been too much of a hardship. However, a very large problem looms - at the end of this week.

You see, many months ago we were invited to a December wedding - in Canada - and we accepted. Neither of us have ever been before and it seemed like a great place in which to spend the Christmas-New Year period. So we assembled a plan: Mike and Krista's wedding in Toronto, Niagara Falls, then New York for Christmas with Brandy, the Adirondack train up to Montreal, then skiing and New Year's up in the alpine village of Mont Tremblant. Thoughts of this trip have been keeping us going through our travel drought.

But now time is running out. Will our elaborate Christmas travel plans be once again foiled by elements outside our control? Will we once again turn up at Granny's with our tails between our legs? Why does it take soooo long to rubber stamp an application for someone as lovely as Bec? Only the immigration department knows. And they're not telling - it's official policy.

Stay tuned for the (hopefully) exciting outcome of The Waiting Game!

Fantastic Plastic

2008-12-07T11:48:00.004Z

Ever since John was a small boy (insert joke here), he has loved LEGO^® - the king of toys. And for as long as he has known of the existence of LEGOLAND^® he has wanted to go. For many years, this would have meant getting to Billund in Denmark, surely an adventure in its own right, but hardly accessible. But since 1996 there's been an easier option for British LEGO^®fans - LEGOLAND^® Windsor. Yes, right next to one of the Queen's official residences at Windsor Castle. Unfortunately the admission price is such that even the Her Royal Highness would wince should she ever decide to pop in. Luckily we'd done some homework prior to our visit back in September, and had secured a 40p packet of crisps that gave us 2-for-1 entry to the park - saving some £32 (AUD$70 - $90 depending on the crunchiness of the day's credit) - winner!

Our impressions at first were underwhelming. It was a sunny Sunday in the middle of summer, so the park was heaving with kids, prams, strollers and other "family stuff". Johnny inwardly fumed at the slow-moving crowds but kept quiet - you can't really have a whinge about all the kids when you're visiting what is clearly a children's theme park! The rides were very tame, even the ones with the most potential dangers listed (always the ones to ride first!), and the queues were horrific. Johnny's childhood dreams were crumbling before Bec's eyes! But it turned out that the park's planners had saved the best for last. Miniland is the true jewel in the crown - where the park shows that it's more than just a collection of kiddie rides and overpriced food stands. More than 40 million LEGO^® bricks have been used to create 1/20th scale recreations of some of the world's most recognisable landmarks, plus a stunning compressed version of London. The whole thing is finished off with immaculate landscaping including in-scale bonsai trees, waterways with moving boats, and (Johnny's favourite) working trains. We both absolutely loved it!

Here's Leuven Town Hall in Belgium, and a canal scene in Amsterdam:

Big Ben, Edinburgh Castle and the Sacré Coeur in Paris:

Johnny towers over Central London, and the Royal Coach exits Buckingham Palace Gate:

Johnny Goes Caving

2008-11-27T21:23:00.004Z

After more than a year of pressure from Bec, Johnny has finally capitulated and is now on Facebook. Although his alter ego (a French-Canadian professional cyclist) has been on the 'book for ages to do research for work - seriously! - Johnny has until now resisted the urge to record the urban minutiae of his life for all to see. Hell, that's what this blog is for! But Bec introduced him to a "killer Facebook app", an anagram game called Word Challenge; and now the word-nerd in him is hooked.

He is interested to see whether working 8 hours a day on a social network platform will affect his interest in them after-hours!

Molto Bene (Part Due: The Search for the perfect Spiaggia)

2008-11-26T20:16:00.001Z

After such an idyllic first day, we could probably be excused for thinking we would enjoy similar splendor on each subsequent day in "The Cinq". Unfortunately, though, our luck was about to run out. We woke the next day to a grey sky, a light, constant drizzle, and the discovery that there really isn't all that much to do in the Cinque Terre when it rains. There's eating, of course, but believe it or not, there is actually a limit to how many trattorias, ristorantes and pizzerias you can handle in one day!

We decided to take the train to Monterosso, the northern-most of the five lands and the one we had yet to explore. While it wasn't looking its best in the dreary conditions, we managed to amuse ourselves in the many "crapola" shops until the weather cleared enough for us to tackle the walk back to Vernazza. This turned out to be the most challenging section of the CT trail, with a seemingly endless series of steps, especially tricky to negotiate in the slippery conditions. We were rewarded with some pretty special views though.

Faced with more rain the following day, we bid a fond farewell to Vernazza and made our way to Genova. An important port town with not much else to recommend it, this was fine by us as we were just passing through on our way south to Sardinia. We did manage to see quite a lot of the place, however, courtesy of the boys' poor navigational abilities. "How about we head up here?" soon led to "I'm not sure how we get back down...", which in turn led to a manic taxi ride back to the station for our bags. (Mis)adventures out of the way, we were soon tucked safely away in a surprisingly comfortable 4 person sleeper cabin on a southbound ferry.

We had sensibly stocked up on plenty of Italian wine, bread, salami, cheese and biscotti for the voyage. This feast, combined with a marathon Uno session which saw Mandy the unlucky loser (punishable by being made to eat "floormaggio", i.e. cheese that fell on the floor), made for a very enjoyable night.

On arrival in Sardinia, at a tiny backwater of a port town that made Genova seem like the centre of the universe, we quickly realised that this leg of the holiday had been somewhat overlooked in our trip planning (i.e. it had been left to the boys). We had no idea where we were exactly, or even where we wanted to go on this deceptively large island. It also quickly became clear that this place wasn't exactly set up for tourists, at least not to the extent we've become accustomed to. Hence we spent a good half a day getting our bearings and tracking down a car hire place that was actually open within its stated opening hours.

Equipped with wheels, we were off and running. From the tiny paragraph our guide book had to say on Sardinia, it seemed that the best thing to do was find a lovely, white, sandy beach and just relax. Easy, right? After all, this is an island surrounded by beaches! In reality, this proved somewhat difficult due to the size of the island, the quality of the roads, the questionable weather conditions and our general lack of specific direction. Nevertheless, we dedicated our entire three days in Sardinia to "The Search for the perfect Spiaggia" (taking only a little time out to taste yet more delicious pasta and seafood combinations).

The boys got a little side-tracked at times...

...but we eventually achieved our goal, with a roaring success!

A huge thanks to Mandy and Stu for a bellissima Italian adventure we'll never forget. See you again next year?

Molto Bene (Part Uno)

2008-11-15T10:16:00.029Z

It occurred to us early this year that despite having lived in Europe for ages, we hadn't been to Italy since 2003, when we whipped through as part of a breakneck European tour. We loved Italy then, and wanted to make sure they hadn't broken it since. When Stu confirmed that he'd be visiting again for another Euro-summer (you may remember him from such blogs as Glastonbury last year), with his new lady-friend Mandy, it was a perfect opportunity.

Over many emails we concocted a plan (by "we", I obviously mean "the girls") to revisit the classic Cinque Terre area, on the Northern Italian coastline between Pisa and Genova. Google Map here. We'd spent a few hours there previously, but wanted to really explore the "five lands" while gorging ourselves on pasta and fabulous fresh seafood. Well, Mission Accomplished.

We were arriving from different places - us flying in from the UK and Stu and Mandy rolling in from France, freshly-engaged(!) - so our first Italian evening was spent apart, with us in Florence and ze 'appy couple doing the Pisa thing. Tragically, our one night in Firenze coincided with the Florence Wine-Festival and we were forced to drink copious samples of the delightful local vino until late...

The next day we met up at Pisa station and made our way to Vernazza, which was sparklingly lovely - as was Mandy, to our great delight! After chillaxing down by the harbour for a while, we chillaxed some more after a strenuous climb to a bar overlooking this beautiful fishing town. I like saying "chillax".

The following day had been earmarked as "The Big Walking Day" - our plan was to walk south down the coast and see as many of yonder 3 Cinque Terre towns as we could. The weather was superb and in the end we saw all of them (Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore), dined superbly, had some quality pebble-beach time and walked back most of the way as well. Words cannot describe just how perfect this day was - we need a montage:

A Look At London: Through The Eye

2008-11-08T10:09:00.010Z

One fine day some months ago, we decided it was time to be tourists in our city again and hit The London Eye together with Bron and Andy - collectively and affectionately known as Brandy. We had already seen the Eye from many angles (it's somewhat hard to miss) but had never actually ridden a "pod" to see for ourselves why the queues for this thing are still monstrous, 8 years after it opened.

We joined said monstrous queue and waited for about an hour to take the 30-minute "flight". As we rose, we had good views off to the East - The City/Square Mile (financial district) and St Paul's Cathedral, just visible over Andy's right shoulder.

As we rose to our maximum altitude of 135m, we looked North to central London and Soho, dominated by the BT Tower. In the foreground is the Hungerford Bridge leading into Charing Cross station. The Thames is doing its best "I'm muddy like the Yarra" impression.

Finally, we began our descent, with very hazy views out over the Houses of Parliament and in the distance (you might have to squint), the iconic Battersea Power Station, looking like an upside-down table:

After we "landed", we were all in need of some refreshment. So we finished our day out with a (horrendously expensive) jug of Pimms in St James's Park. Note the obligatory and very well-coordinated raised pinkies.

10 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About London

2008-11-01T09:27:00.005Z

November already! Scary! We've now officially been living in the UK for two years, and London for one. So to celebrate, here's a list of 10 "insider" facts about London you may not have known before. Oh, and to keep you on your toes, we've made up one more. Which one? Leave us a comment if you think you've picked it - answer in the next post.

Riding the Tube for long enough will result in a syndrome known locally as "Black Bogies" in one's nostrils, commonly explained away as congealed dust from the train's brake pads. But this is only partly true. Yes, it's 30% brake dust (giving the black colour) but the rest is human skin particles. Ewwww.
One-in-three London households do not own a car. (Melbourne: one-in-ten).
Both of us work in the area of Soho, which used to be Henry VIII's hunting grounds. When a hunter spied a deer, he would shout "Tally-Ho!", but with a smaller prey, the cry became "So-Ho!". New York also has a SoHo, but this is an abbreviation for the area South of Houston [Street].
Currently playing in London: 34 musicals, 12 comedies and 53 dramas.
The big coffee chains in London are Starbucks (bleh), Costa Coffee (awful), Coffee Republic (never tried 'em) and Caffe Nero (passable), with an astonishing 962 stores between them in London in December 2006, and presumably many more by now. Our hot tip for a good coffee when in Central London: try AMT (often found at mainline stations), Monmouth Coffee, Flat White in Soho or Sacred in Carnaby.
The Tube carried over one billion passengers last year. That's more than the entire population of Australia each day.
One of the options at Gordon Ramsay's 3-Michelin-starred restaurant is an entrée of oven-roasted squirrel in a hazelnut and truffle oil velouté.
If you see someone riding around London with a clipboard attached to their scooter's handlebars, they are almost certainly an aspiring taxi driver "Doing The Knowledge". A London cabbie has to know all the streets within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. That's 25,000 streets. In addition, they have to know all the places of interest (schools, restaurants, churches etc) on those streets, including such details as the order of theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue. In the test, the examiner gives two points. The cabbie-to-be must recite the quickest and most efficient route, naming each street and turn on the way there. At any point, the examiner can ask for a description of what is "alongside". Hence the "knowledge boys" on their scooters have to drive every street to learn these features that can't be absorbed from a map.
In a single week, the average male Londoner drinks 13.9 units (almost 7 pints of beer) and a woman 4.9 units (2-3 glasses of wine). This is actually the lowest average intake of all UK regions.
The average speed of a car driving through Central London: 10.2 mph (16.3 km/h). The average speed of Johnny on his bike in the morning: 11.1 mph (17.7 km/h).
There are an estimated 200,000 French people living in London - making it (theoretically at least) the fourth-largest French city.

Going Hungary

2008-10-23T20:16:00.018+01:00

Apologies for the bad pun - but surely you've come to expect them by now?!

Another weekend, another European city - Budapest. Or rather, two cities straddling the Danube: Buda and Pest, each with their own distinct personalities. Speaking of distinct personalities, we were lucky enough to coincide our visit with our friends Beth and Dan, who had already been in town for a day. We met up with them at a restaurant recommended for its authentic Hungarian cuisine - here's Dan sizing up his pan of unidentifiable Central European foodstuffs:

The following day we made our way around town, enjoying the grand architecture and numerous interesting statues:

Here are some of the famous baths of Budapest - the indoor one is in Buda, the outdoor one (which we much preferred, despite the occasional budgie-smuggling octogenarian) in Pest:

After a hard day of bathing, we felt like we deserved another nice meal - and we sure found one! For about a quarter of what we'd paid at Aubergine, we had an absolutely amazing seven-course degustation menu, with some of the most delicious and exquisitely-prepared food we've ever had. The service was outstanding too, so we're giving two-thumbs-up to Babel - look them up next time you're in Budapest!

Despite parts of the city feeling reminiscent of Paris or Rome, Budapest definitely has its own unique flavour. Perhaps best enjoyed with a glass of wine at the peak of the citadel, overlooking the lovely Danube at sunset.

A Look At London: Park Life

2008-10-14T19:31:00.019+01:00

For all of its constructed landmarks, London has an incredible collection of parks - 5500 acres in all - and when the sun shines (it does, honest!) thousands of people pour into them, including the two of us!

The closest park to us is Hyde Park, a monstrous green space, great for jogging around and reading papers in. We've discovered the squirrels there are very partial to Belgian chocolate!

If you walk south and east for about 45 minutes, you can continue through Green Park (which is as generic as its name suggests) to one of our favourites, the intimate St. James's Park. With a lovely lake and the tamest squirrels and waterfowl in London, it's a great contrast to the breakneck pace of Central London.

Not too far away is Regent's Park, which is, well, quite regal. It also boasts a beautiful lake and bird collection, along with a stunning array of English roses.

Walk north past London Zoo and you're climbing up Primrose Hill for a fantastic view of London from one of its highest points.

Most recently we visited Kew Gardens, a beautiful garden which, despite costing money to get in (and it's not cheap!) and being directly under the Heathrow landing path, is a lovely day out. We went there last weekend with Hammer and Anna and it looked gorgeous with all the trees changing through their autumn colours.

Taking a Punt

2008-09-25T21:50:00.001+01:00

It's no secret that we love London, but it's important to get out of the city every now and again and see the rest of beautiful England. So many Aussies-in-London use the city as a base for European excursions and don't actually see any of England's charms - not us though!

After all, what could be nicer than a lazy sunny Sunday in Cambridge with some friends? With Bron and Andy we headed into the countryside to explore this famous university town. After a scenic train ride, and a quiet pint with a roast for lunch (in the pub where the discoverers of DNA enjoyed the same), we wandered around town, enjoying the great weather and the relaxed-yet-academic air of the place. But we all had a not-particularly-secret agenda: To Punt On The Cam. And so we were drawn, as if by magnets, to the Silver Street bridge, a mecca for would-be punters and puntees alike.

The young lass spruiking for student-powered and -guided punt-tours implied that if we were to self-propel, it would be very difficult for us to get any further down the river than "a couple of bridges". That was a direct challenge to our (hitherto unknown) punting skills, and a challenge that could not be ignored.

Johnny took on driving duties first, which proved very challenging - getting the boat under control and under a narrow bridge while an endless stream of boats came back the other way! Annoyingly for a town with a stellar reputation in science and technology, the punt refused to obey the laws of physics - pushing on the starboard side of the boat would cause the boat's nose to swing starboard, not port as you would expect. This took a lot of getting used to, but together with strategic use of pole as rudder, we all got the hang of it in the end.

... as Bec demonstrates here!

Cruising along through beautiful scenery, past impressive buildings and under many bridges, we each took turns "working the pole" while the others relaxed. A true English experience we can definitely recommend.

A Tale of Two Weekends

2008-09-15T20:36:00.009+01:00

It's amazing what a difference a week makes. One weekend you're eating bacon and egg sarnies and glugging cider in the middle of a field, the next you're savouring Best End of Lune Valley lamb with garlic purée and quaffing Côteaux du Languedoc 2003 in the middle of seven courses.

What are we on about?

Well, the first weekend was the V Festival - a two-day music festival held out in Essex. Yes, after swearing he'd never go to another festival after the mudfest that was Glastonbury 2007, Johnny was somehow convinced to try it again. Damn that Bec and her persuasive powers! But the tidy line-up (which included Lenny Kravitz, The Feeling, Muse, The Kaiser Chiefs and The Verve) was also a considerable factor working against his extreme dislike for camping in fields and chemical toilets. Not camping in chemical toilets, mind you. Although sometimes it can smell like you are... Thankfully, the weather was far superior to Glasto, although the atmosphere was definitely not as electric, with the whole shebang having a distinctly commercial feel.

Quite a contrast to our outing the following weekend, to Aubergine, one of London's finest restaurants (with a Michelin star to prove it). If you're not familiar with the Michelin star rating, it is frequently used in Europe as a measure of culinary excellence, although you might be fooled by the official definitions - 1 star is "a very good restaurant in its category", 2 is "excellent cooking, worth a detour" and 3 is "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey". Seeing as there are only eleven 2-star restaurants in the whole of the UK, it's almost certainly going to require a detour to try one! The food was, unsurprisingly, exquisite, as were the carefully-matched wines that accompanied our seven-course dégustation - the only bitter taste being the frankly horrific bill at the end of the evening. Ouch. Bec was blissfully unaware of this though, having been given the "non-payer's" menu at the start of the night - identical to Johnny's except for the strategic omission of the prices!

Here's a montage of our experiences. Which would you prefer?

Waffling about Belgium

2008-08-31T14:20:00.027+01:00

Belgium is a funny sort of place. Home of the European parliament, it's famous for simultaneously being gorgeous and captivating (Bruges) yet maintains a solid reputation as being dull, grey and bureaucratic (Brussels). For a Eurostar weekend getaway package with our fellow Aussies-in-London Beth and Dan, we thought we'd check out both towns and draw our own conclusions.

Sweeping out of the fabulous St. Pancras on Saturday morning, we were in central Brussels before we knew it. I suspect it took longer to get our bearings and actually walk to our hotel (the Hotel Metropole - well-located, massive rooms, with a charming faded grandeur befitting its way-too-cheap-to-be-five-stars price tag).

We took a turn around the centre of town, taking in the innumerable chocolate shops and the surprisingly attractive Grand'Place - here's Beth in front of her namesake choccy shop, the aforementioned square, and a mussel's-eye view of our lunch, taken in the rather cute Rue des Bouchers district (which our guide-book had recommended against), where restaurateurs vie to undersell each other for your business.

No trip to Brussels can (apparently) be complete without a visit to the Mannekin-Pis, the fountain of the "pissing-boy" which is supposed to perfectly capture the "irreverent and whimsical nature of the Bruxellois". Yeah whatever. It's a huge tourist-puller (try finding a restaurant or shop nearby that doesn't have a urinating toddler on the front of it) - but there are some hidden gems in the streets of Brussels - like the random bits of Tintin-esque graffiti-art that adorn the ends of some buildings:

Plenty of walking and a three-course lunch conspired against us on the Saturday afternoon though, and we all retired to "quiet time" in our rooms for a while, before heading out for a six (!) course dinner. These Belgians love to eat well, and it's important to try and get a feel for the culture, after all!

The following day we dragged our distended stomachs off to Bruges (via a waffle-shop, naturally) - and discovered that our Eurostar tickets included free train travel to/from any destination in Belgium! Bonus! We left the big city behind and headed into the lush, green, and incredibly flat Belgian countryside, arriving in Bruges just in time for lunch! Yes, this was definitely becoming a Flanders-food-fest, and none of us minded one bit. Bec even got into (quite a lot of) Belgian beer!

We liked Bruges a lot - a very attractive and historic little town, perhaps best observed from a canal boat - but before we knew it, it was time to go. We just had time to make some strategic "souvenir" purchases at one of the myriad chocolate shops before heading back to Brussels and then London. All in all, a sweet weekend!

The Daddy of all Visits

2008-08-23T11:25:00.009+01:00

We've recently been playing host to Johnny's Dad, who has been flitting around Europe for a month or so. He spent most of his time in Munich, and came back raving about it. We felt we had to show him how good London can be, but without the regulation tourist-traps which he's done many times before. So on his last day in Europe, we gave him a tour of some of our favourite "secret" London spots - this is actually a tour we would recommend to anyone coming to London:

Starting from Trafalgar Square, we ambled through St. James's Park, feeding the waterfowl and laughing at the squirrels.

Pausing to watch a brass band play, we continued up past the Queen's House and passing the other grand houses overlooking Green Park, before Tube-ing our way down to Borough Market, home to tons of fantastic gourmet food. Unfortunately, we'd lingered over the squirrels for too long, and the market was packing up, but we still got some coffee and cake at one of London's best coffee-houses, Monmouth's. Really good coffee is still a bit rare in the UK, but Monmouth import their own beans and know how to make a good strong latte. Dad had been flagging a little with all the walking and far less than his usual 6-cups-a-day, but his caffeine levels were soon fully restored!

From Borough Market we wended our way to a pub in Southwark, sinking a pint and watching some cricket before walking over Tower Bridge, and then it was time to get Dad back to Paddington and the Heathrow Express.

It was great to show Dad a side of London he hadn't seen, and we must have done alright, because now he's threatening to come back in Summer 2009! And of course, we'll be delighted to have him. Now, better start planning next year's Secret London tour...

Feeling The Fratellis

2008-08-20T20:54:00.013+01:00

We've been enjoying the fantastic London music scene lately. A Summer Series of concerts was held at the lovely Somerset House, including two of our fave British bands, The Feeling and The Fratellis. The courtyard, used in Winter for ice skating, provided a wonderfully intimate and attractive setting.

Both bands put on a fantastic show. They're quite different in both style and approach, which was also reflected in the crowds they attract. One is all about rocking out, playing loud and hard with very little chit chat in between songs. The other is much more chilled out and mellow, engaging with the crowd while pumping out their unique brand of harmonious and oh-so-catchy pop rock. See if you can tell which is which...

The Fratellis:

The Feeling:

Our verdict: It's gotta be The Feeling, they create an amazing atmosphere and really get the crowd feeling the love (you almost want to turn and hug your neighbour at the end! But you don't of course, this is London after all). They've got so many recognisable hits - if you live in England that is - and when they throw in covers of 80's classics "Take on Me" and "Video Killed the Radio Star", the sing-a-long can be heard in France, without a doubt.

As for The Fratellis, well nothing beats live music, but a little personality wouldn't go astray. You could get almost the same experience by inviting a few friends round and putting the CD on at high volume, with the added bonus of not having strangers jumping on your feet and thrusting their elbows in your face.

Toy Time: Specialized Langster

2008-08-02T12:12:00.000+01:00

After a couple of weeks of taking the Underground to work, I'd had enough. The weather has been unfeasibly warm (anyone would think it was summer!), making it like an oven in the carriages, and tourists (pah! ;-) were everywhere. The entrance to Oxford Circus Tube was starting to resemble the inlet to a meat-grinder - I guess the full trains coming out the other side were the sausages.

As a bike-fan from way back, it seemed to me that a bicycle was the answer. Google Maps confirmed it by telling me it was 5.3km to work and that the biggest change in elevation would be the three steps down from our front door. After a few days of visiting bike shops, talking to colleagues and trawling t'Internet, I found exactly what I was looking for on good-old eBay:
The Specialized Langster in SR-71 Black. Eagle-eyed readers will note there's just one big cog at the front and one little sprocket at the back, rather than the usual proliferation. Yep, this is a one-speeder, and that means all the extra mechanisms, cables and levers can be left off, saving a heap of weight. And I'm sure any Tools reading this will confirm that one Sprocket is all you need!

To use the trusty car analogy, if a mountain bike is like a 4WD, and a road bike is a sports car, then this bike like is a Formula One car - absolutely everything non-essential is stripped away in the name of performance. Over here this machine sells for £400 new - with no pedals - but I found the deal of the year on eBay. I got the bike, as new - ridden 5 times for a total of less than 50km, plus clip-in pedals, the matching shoes (in my size), helmet (in my size), windproof jacket (in my size) and a bike computer (aka speedometer) - for £250. We've speculated that perhaps the previous owner bought all this gear while going out with a bike-mad girl, and just wanted to be rid of it when the relationship ended? Who knows - but one thing is for certain, I scored a sweet deal!

So what's it like commuting on the mean streets of London Town? Well, I was expecting the worst. Back in Australia I had given up on using the roads to bike-commute after a halfwit in a ute ran me off Burwood Road and I brought myself to a halt using my face. My Melbourne experience taught me that peak-hour traffic can be aggressive, unpredictable and intolerant - so logically London should be 3 times worse, right?

Wrong. I couldn't believe I was riding in one of the world's biggest cities! Perhaps because of the Congestion Charge, perhaps because driving in Central London is best left to professionals, the roads are quiet, and the drivers observant, courteous and patient. Taxis move across to let you slide to the front at traffic lights. Bus drivers flash their lights to let you merge in. And people understand that there's no point roaring past a bike when they'll be passed back at the traffic lights 100m down the road. It's a weird feeling trundling along at 15 miles an hour while an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish purrs quietly behind you, waiting patiently and leaving plenty of space!

So I'm hooked. Each day I ride in I save £4 in transport costs - this bike will pay for itself in no time. It takes 20 minutes door-to-door, plus 5 minutes of freshening up when I get there; so I can leave for work 10 minutes later than I did before. I'm getting good exercise, but it's actually less sweaty than taking the Tube on a warm day. The only question now is, can I bring it back to Melbourne?

Die Werkzeuge in Deutschland

2008-07-27T22:13:00.013+01:00

As already blogged by Brush and Matty, we had a bit of Tool reunion last month in Southern Germany. Brush was a most gracious host, picking us up from a typical RyanAir-airport (125km from the city it purports to serve) and providing us with excellent Bed and Breakfast facilities at his place, including a fantastic genuine German breakfast of white sausages and eggs - delicious! He also blew us away with his Deutschensprechen, being so fluent now that he can engage in wittenbanter mit the locals. OK Brush, I know how much it annoys you so that was the last of my patented Deutschenmanglen in this post. Well, apart from that bit...

Being much more diligent bloggers than us, both the other guys have already blogged about our visit to Burg Hohenzollern, a fantastic castle perched atop a mighty peak. So we'll be lazy and just stick in some pictures:

Not content with that, Brett also took us to Tübingen, a lovely traditional town:

And to top it off, we headed into Frankfurt to experience one of the high points of the local traditional cuisine, Handkäse mit Musik - yes, you read that right, I didn't just make it up - "Hand-cheese with music". This turned out to be a very barnyard-scented, cow-esque cheese which was augmented with a raw-onion-and-vinegar garnish. Quite how this could be described as "music" was beyond us, and luckily Brett only ordered one serving for us handkäse novices to share - it was ... interesting!

Perhaps as a reward for finishing the handcheese, on the way home Brush very graciously allowed Johnny to give his Beemer 1-series a caning down the Autobahn, and what a pleasure it was to be back behind the wheel of some quality German engineering. Johnny loved the thrill of seeing the speedo needle on the interesting side of 200km/h. Bec did not. :-(

Thanks again to Brett for a terrific weekend and we hope to be able to welcome him (and Belinda) to London soon. Maybe we can arrange a flat-out driving session in a Tube train!?

Lost Highway to... Southampton?

2008-07-15T12:54:00.011+01:00

When Bec first heard that Bon Jovi had announced their Lost Highway tour of the UK, she could hardly contain her excitement! Johnny, it has to be said, was somewhat less excited. But, due to a combination of unavoidable factors - namely that Bec could not find a single other person willing to go with her, and also that Johnny is, let's face it, a genuinely lovely person - he ~~reluctantly~~ enthusiastically agreed to come along.

For some insane reason, which seemed perfectly plausible at the time, we booked tickets not for the London show but for the one in Southampton, about 80 miles away. This necessitated a hire car, an early departure from work and a 2 1/2 hour drive. Matters were then complicated significantly by Royal Mail, who managed to record our secure ticket delivery as "Delivered and signed for" when in fact it had been neither. After several phone calls and much frustration and anxiety, the tickets were finally in Bec's hot little hand... but not until the morning of the concert! All dramas resolved, we were finally on our way.

Even Johnny had to admit it, Bon Jovi know how to put on a rock concert. For almost 2 hours they had the crowd enthralled, belting out some of their new tunes as well as the obligatory classics that, let's face it, we were all there to hear. Highlights were In These Arms, Always, Raise Your Hands, I'll Be There For You (sung beautifully by Richie Sambora to give JBJ a break - despite still sending every woman over 30 into swoons (and yes that does include Bec), he's not as young as he once was), and of course Bec's all-time fave, Livin' on a Prayer. The crowd went wild, and Bec was in Bon Jovi Heaven.

And just to prove Bec's not the only Bon Jovi fan left in the UK:

Success In The City

2008-07-06T09:24:00.007+01:00

Good news from London Town! After being unemployed for the entire month of June (conveniently coinciding with Wimbledon on the TV...) Johnny has finally found himself a new job.

He was hoping to get another contract role, but after 3 weeks of disappointments and zero-progress, he switched to looking for permanent work. The contract market in London is in very bad shape at the moment, with all this Credit Crunch malarkey making employers a great deal more likely to be off-loading contractors than adding more to their payroll. As this situation looks to be around for a while, even if he had picked up a contract, Johnny didn't fancy being dropped back into that market in 3 or 6 months (or perhaps even less if things went very badly!) Sure enough, within a week of looking for permanents, he had an interview, and 3 hours later, a job!

In a change from his past two roles, the new company couldn't fit all its employees into a minibus - they are 50-strong and have very good partnerships with some big, big names (Nokia, Vodafone, etc). So hopefully they won't follow Johnny's kiss-of-death pattern and go down the tubes like his last two! The company is called Icom and they build websites for "communities" of like-minded people. For example, 50% of UK universities have their Student Union websites operating on the Icom platform, which offers various cool features like a mini-Facebook for students of the same uni. Icom also developed a "GlastoNav" product which helps drunk Glastonbury music festivalgoers find bands and each other via interactive maps on their mobiles.

So the work is interesting and the job is secure, but best of all, the location is slap-bang in the middle of London - just off Oxford Street - and only a few minutes away from Bec's work. Result!

Chillin' in a Villa

2008-06-22T10:36:00.014+01:00

May is a wonderful month in England. Not only does the weather (hopefully) start to improve, we also get two - count 'em, two! - bank holidays! We had spent the first one in Paris with Bron and Andy, so we thought we'd do something a bit different for the second one and, well, go on a trip!

Unlike most of our last-minute jaunts, however, this one was planned waaaaay in advance. Back in October while we were visiting Melbourne, our friends Steve and Carolyn had mentioned they were planning a trip back to their homeland, England, to visit family and friends. Oh and they were thinking of renting a villa in Spain for a week, and would we be at all interested in joining them? Um, let's just think about that... ;)

We decided to join them for 4 days rather than the full week, although in hindsight this was a mistake as we had such a lovely, relaxing time we didn't want it to end. A villa holiday with a group of friends / family is the perfect way to chill out, especially in such a gorgeous setting:

Much of the time was spent eating, drinking and chatting on the terrace or by the pool, although we did make one day trip to the Alhambra near Granada. The 3-car road trip over the narrow, mountainous roads was fun, if a little too exhilarating for some, necessitating a short coffee break in a tiny Spanish town, where we seized the opportunity for a group shot:

The Alhambra is a Moorish palace constructed in the 14th century. It is a stunning place, set up high in hilly countryside and full of beautifully intricate Islamic architecture, surrounded by gardens that are perfect for strolling around in. We all enjoyed it very much.

As you may have noticed, there was a certain small difference between this and our other holidays - the patter of tiny feet, as it were. Carolyn and Steve have an almost-two-year-old named Ella, and their friends Bob and Khin have two kids, Raoul and Sienna. So how did we cope with this toddler invasion, you might wonder? Did it cramp our child-free, city-dwelling, liberty-loving style? Well, this might answer your question:

Yes, we were both entirely smitten by little Ella Bella, and who could blame us - she is one very cool chick!

Watch Your Language

2008-06-08T10:37:00.009+01:00

Right. There's a rumour going around that we're starting to sound a bit English these days - and perhaps even getting some London accents. Well, that is bang out of order, it's a load of cobblers and totally pants. Now we may have picked up a few expressions which just save time - like to get 'em in (to buy a round of drinks) or to describe something as mingin' (nasty/smelly/generally distasteful) - but that's only because we're well wicked and we like making sure everything is sorted. Innit.

O'course you can't just say'em like you're back Down Under, that'd be naff. It's very important (unless you wanna sound like a total nutter) to swallow your T's - so sorted becomes saw'ed, and total nutter actually comes out sounding like toe'ul nuh'uh. Lovely jubbly!

If you get too knackered wiv all your practicing, and can't be bovvered going to work, just take a duvet day, and go to work the next day well fit. Then when your workmate says "Alright?" as their daily greeting to you, you can safely reply "Blindin'!"

So in summary, have we picked up any English accents? Not bleedin' likely!

Lai'ers!

Mother + Country

2008-06-03T19:59:00.010+01:00

Last month Johnny's mum paid us a visit, as part of well-deserved miniature World Tour. After a few days getting settled into London (Portobello Road was a favourite) we left the city behind, travelling by train through beautiful countryside before swapping into a hire car to take us deep into the Lake District. As you may remember, we are massive fans of this area, and as Mum had never visited before, we took the opportunity to get back there.

To avoid being too repetitive we tried staying somewhere new - on Bassenthwaite Lake, at the western end of the region.

By complete and amazing coincidence, we happened to be within walking distance of our ANZAC friends Kristy and Dave, who work at the Pheasant Inn - a highly-recommended pub, by the way - we knew their pub would be nearby but we didn't think it would be that close! We ended up having a quiet pint there before taking Dave the barman's advice and having a nice traditional English evening meal of a curry, at the interesting nearby town of Cockermouth. The following day we took even more of Dave's advice and visited the Jennings Brewery, which was both interesting and quite intoxicating as the visit finished with 3 halves of the ale of your choice. Earlier in the week, Mum had seemed quite surprised how largely the pub figures in English life (admittedly we had gone "down the pub" 5 times in 4 days!) - but now she was right into it, even having a go at pulling a pint!

We then moved to Keswick, our favourite town in the district. Mum is a keen walker so we took plenty of strolls around the hills and lakes, taking particular pleasure in being so "amateur" compared to the people Mum calls "Red-socks" - the serious walkers with all the Gore-Tex, backpacks and special poles. She had a good point; we were doing the same walks as them, none of which was longer than 8 kilometres, but they were equipped like they were tackling Everest and we were in T-shirts. Oh well, whatever makes you happy!

After four days in the Lake District we returned to the Big Smoke refreshed and invigorated. A few days later we saw Mum off for the final leg of her world tour: Kyoto, Japan. Now there's somewhere we definitely can't get a cheap flight to!

Mid-Year Report

2008-05-31T08:53:00.004+01:00

Wow - it's almost June already! For us, 2008 has been absolutely flying by. Often literally - you can see from our "trip reports" that we've been getting around Europe quite a bit. Well, we're seizing the moment as this is the "last year of really cheap flights" according to an expert on TV - so it must be true...

So leisure-wise, we've been travelling both in the UK and abroad, plus getting to know "our town" a bit more, and catching up with friends both new (ANZAC tour buddies) and old (high school mates). Johnny's mum was in town for a couple of weeks earlier this month too - in fact there's quite a cavalcade of Aussies scheduled to pop in over the next few months - and the more the merrier, we say!

Work-wise, Bec has been enjoying her gig, although some of her favourite colleagues are now leaving for various reasons. And as for Johnny, well, let's just say he's getting very familiar with the UK job market. Yes, the extremely-tiny startup company he was working for (doing self-destructing mobile phone messages) finally ran out of money - so as of yesterday, John has been released from his contract and is back on the street, so to speak. New-contract-hunting begins on Monday. Oh well, it's never boring!

The second half of '08 has a few exciting things already planned but is relatively trip-free - at this stage anyway. Don't worry, Bec will soon fix that! We've also gone absolutely crazy on concert tickets for various bands - some old faves like Bon Jovi (well Bec's fave...) and Queen, plus some newies like The Feeling and The Fratellis, and there's at least one music festival in there as well. London is absolutely amazing for music, as you can probably surmise!

Stop Press: Wimbledon Centre Court tickets have just arrived! Complete shock, if we won them in the ballot we should have received them 3 months ago! GOOOOO London!

Paris in the Springtime

2008-05-24T08:12:00.006+01:00

With a bank holiday at our disposal, what better way to spend 3 days than popping across to Paris... again!?!? Our friends Bron and Andy had rented an appartement in the XIIeme complete with spare sofa-bed, so no further excuse was really needed to Eurostar it to Frog-land.

As we've been to Paris before (understatement...) we didn't really have too many "touristy" things left to do (with the exception of Versailles, but more on that later) - so we could instead concentrate on enjoying the true Parisian lifestyle - eating, drinking, shopping, walking, and of course the favourite pastime, people-watching.

To kick off our first day, we hired some bikes and hit the road. They have introduced a public bicycle-hire system in Paris which lets you pick up a bike from any of hundreds of racks around town and drop it off wherever you like. Très cool. So we moseyed over towards the Jardin de Luxembourg, via the Notre Dame cathedral, stopping only occasionally to discreetly check our map. We didn't look like tourists at all - don't worry!

Here we are in the Luxembourg Gardens, on one of the few "permitted" lawns - there are many others, but sitting there will result in a shouting-at by a uniformed Lawn Enforcement Officer.

Next day we trained it out through the countryside to Versailles, which was heaving with people - can't imagine what it must be like in "high" season - but was very impressive. The gardens were magnificent, filled with extravagant fountains, towering statues and evocative of a bygone age. God I'm crapping on - I'm just trying to justify the sepia-toned picture...

Inside the Hall of Mirrors was like Bron and Andy's apartment, and only slightly larger ;-)

On the way back from Versailles, we realised we were going to go right past the station for the Eiffel Tower. Of course, we didn't need to see it up close again, but as Andy had never checked it out, we had to go and keep him company. And take another 30 photos...

Big thanks to Bron and Andy for hosting us, and being excellent long-lazy-lunch companions!

A Load of Maltesers

2008-05-11T20:16:00.010+01:00

If you're anything like us, what you know about Malta and the Maltese could be comfortably be written on the forehead of a small white dog. Hence over Easter we thought it would be fun to head to this little island in the middle of the Mediterranean to learn more, courtesy of those crazy leprechauns at RyanAir. Coming along with us for this particular adventure was Bec's old uni mate Kieran, who has been doing "The London Thing" for about 5 years now, and has visited Malta before, making him a very useful resource. We were all in search of a little sun, having endured a pretty cold UK winter.

The first Maltese surprise was that Malta was now using the Euro, and not the Lire. Turned out they switched on the first of January, and our year-old guidebook was now a little bit more useless. Bugger. The second surprise was the weather, which we'd hoped would be glorious mid-twenties sunshine, was really not much better than the mid-teens greyness we'd left behind in Blighty. Double Bugger.

Our first excursion was to the ancient town of Mdina, which Tone Loc fans will be relieved to hear, was both funky and cold. Made entirely of sandstone from the local quarries, a town has been here for at least 6000 years. Wandering around the streets, it was easy to understand how this former capital got its nickname "The Silent City". We got back home thanks to one of the elaborately decorated and passionately well-maintained buses which grumble their way across the island:

When we got back the weather was still somewhat chilly - as an optimistic Kieran can be seen demonstrating here on the pool deck:

The next day we took an organised tour which would show us some more distant parts of the island. First stop was one of the many quarries which produce most of Malta's building materials (Malta has no natural wood supply, so houses are built with the bare minimum of expensive imported wood). There's only so long you can spend in a big hole in the ground before your attention starts to wander though, and we thought that this bunny was in a pretty brave position considering Rabbit Stew is Malta's national dish!

Next stop was the harbour town of Marsaxlokk - pronounced "Marsa - shlock". A mouthful to say, but a pleasure to visit. The harbour here is filled with the traditional brightly-coloured boats of the Maltese fishermen. Each one features a pair of painted eyes which ward off bad luck while at sea - this is an ancient tradition and failure to repaint the "eyes of Osiris" each year could have disastrous consequences! Hence we bought some magnetic ones to protect the contents of our fridge from evil. Judging by the smell of our last cleanout, it's not working...

Talking Turkey

2008-05-06T21:24:00.033+01:00

Following on immediately from Portugal, we headed off to Istanbul in Turkey. We were booked in to join a tour of Turkey, culminating in a night at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli for the 2008 ANZAC Day ceremonies.

Over a couple of days many plane-loads of Aussies and Kiwis arrived in Istanbul. We could only spare a week off work so we'd chosen the shortest, 6-day, tour - along with about 80 others - but there were hundreds more doing longer versions. We all kicked off at the same time though, and celebrated the commencement of our tours with a Gala Dinner. In between the courses we were entertained by traditional Turkish group dancing as well as a (slightly past-it) belly dancer - but the highlight was definitely these awesome torso-headed dancers!

The next morning we headed out of town towards the Gallipoli peninsula, and realised just how stunning a country Turkey really is. We drove for many hours through lush green fields and swaying crops, before arriving at Anzac Cove. This was April 23, two days before ANZAC Day, so the place was relatively peaceful and very beautiful. A striking contrast to how it must have been 93 years ago.

The next day we rested before the big night, and headed to a rural village where they hand-knot traditional rugs. We received an extremely entertaining and slick sales pitch, and duly parted with some Lire for a nice rug, which should be winging its way back to Melbourne as we write! No, it's not a flying rug sadly...

We got in to Anzac Cove at about 10pm, and the place was already "full" by any measure. Luckily, there was a really great co-operative spirit amongst everyone, and we all shifted up several times during the night to accomodate the seemingly-endless busloads of people arriving well into the small hours. Our little posse consisted of Dave and Kristy, from Sydney via the Lake District, as well as new-found friends Letitia and Jess. The authorities have wisely made Anzac Cove a no-alcohol zone, so it was pure sugar that kept us laughing and joking until about 3am when we finally all dropped off, piled on top of each other in a scene that apparently resembled a seal colony.

An hour and a half later the crowd started stirring, and at 5.30 the ceremony began. It was very powerful as the sun came up over the rocky outcrop the Anzacs called The Sphinx. Bec got a little 'motional as the Australian national anthem was sung but Johnny's upper lip stayed stiff throughout. After the main dawn service, we headed off up the dusty trail to Lone Pine, for the Australian service. At this point, the lack of sleep really became apparent and both of us had to fight to stay awake - as did most of the crowd, it must be said.

After a shambolic coach pick-up process that took several hours, we headed back to Istanbul, and on our final day we had a tour of this unique city that spans two continents. Highlights were the Blue Mosque and of course the Grand Bazaar, where you can literally get lost in the bargains! We also had our last kebabs for a while - it seemed every meal had been a kebab!

O Porto!

2008-04-29T19:40:00.012+01:00

Two weeks ago (apologies for the delay, we've been kinda busy as you'll soon read about), Bec reached that magical milestone birthday, the big 3-0. Johnny had planned a weekend away to celebrate, and he wasn't giving any hints away as to the mystery location, to the point of making Bec avert her eyes and block her ears in the airport whenever someone or something might spill the beans. She did think she heard the check-in lady mutter "Bordeaux" at one point, which confused her a little as we've been to Bordeaux before... but as it turns out she actually said "Porto" and that's where we went!

Porto (or Oporto as the Portuguese call it) is Portugal's second largest city, probably best known for the port wine which takes its name from it. There are several port cellars along the river and we certainly made the most of them, joining a few tours and more importantly tasting lots of port - the white variety in particular being quite new to us and full of sweet, syrupy goodness.

Unfortunately it rained quite a lot while we were there, which meant we didn't really get to see Porto at its best. Although there are clearly some lovely parts of the city, particularly along the riverside.

The food was fabulous and the people extraordinarily friendly (even though at times they sound like they're talking with a sock stuffed in their mouths!) And on the plus side, as Johnny had booked us into a swanky 5-star hotel complete with the most amazing, relaxing, luxurious spa you could possibly imagine, the rain actually gave us an excuse to spend some time just chilling by the pool.

A Look at London: Ye Olde Tower Of London

2008-04-15T21:31:00.018+01:00

We are lucky to be in a quite unusual situation in that we have a lot more explore-time than most tourists who visit this great city, but haven't yet hit the been-there-done-that threshold which (we assume) must exist for every resident. So we thought it might be interesting to give our thoughts on London's various attractions in an occasional series. For our first instalment we'll be reporting on The Tower of London.

First and foremost, it should be noted that The White Tower, the tallest and most readily-identifiable structure in the complex, is going to be swathed in scaffolding and plastic sheeting for the next THREE YEARS while it gets refurbished. You can still go inside - there are numerous rooms full of weaponry and suits of armour, including Henry VIII's hyper-codpieced mid-life-crisis sports model - but your exterior photos will not be quite as instantly recognisable. You'll still have a great angle on Tower Bridge though!

Of course, no visit to the Tower is complete without a stickybeak at The Crown Jewels - you'll be whisked past them on a travelator, but there's nothing to stop you going back for another look. Frankly, they're not the most impressive bit of royal jewellery on display. Queen Victoria's crown features a diamond comfortably bigger than a golf ball.

There is a MUST DO when you go to the Tower however. The Beefeater Tours are free with your entry ticket, run several times a day, and are definitely well worth hanging around for. On our visit, we had a real tough-nut ex-paratrooper who was also absolutely hilarious. He'd ask the assembled crowd a series of simple questions, to which we'd all dutifully reply "yes", "yes", "yes" etc until he'd throw in a trick question - we'd reply "yes" and he'd bellow "NO!!!!!" Terrifying but funny. He picked on Bec for being a "ginger" (like Queen Elizabeth) in between teasing Americans for being fat and stupid. Legend.

He also had a neat explanation for the "ER" on the front of his tunic:

"Would've thought it was obvious. It's 'cos I work for 'ER (jerking thumb towards Buckingham Palace) isn't it?"

Bec's (Pre) Birthday Bash!

2008-04-13T21:43:00.010+01:00

A certain milestone birthday is fast approaching for Bec, but as Johnny is planning to whisk her away to a surprise location for the big event, we decided some early celebrations were in order. Bec's uni buddy Kieran had reached the same milestone during the week, so Friday night's party was doubly significant.

It was a great turn-out, with a huge contingent from Star (Bec's work). Here's Esther & Pete with the birthday girl, Jainy & James, Sam and a sliver of Tutu:

A proper one of Tutu, who keeps Bec extremely entertained at work, and Kevin, Jo & Myles:

Also joining in the celebrations were some familiar faces from back home. Here's Dan with Johnny, Chris (an honorary Aussie) and Kate, and also old friends and flat mates Bec & Beth:

By the end of the night we were all feeling merry and finished up with some impressive moves on the dance floor, the birthday boy and girl happily partying on 'til the end:

After all, they do say life begins at...

Chamtastic

2008-04-03T20:17:00.008+01:00

Waaay back in February we met up with Brett and Belinda again, this time for some skiing action in the French Alps - Chamonix to be exact. Also staying with us was B-and-B's friend Kate, another Aussie who was also celebrating her birthday. We had secured a self-catering chalet apartment just on the edge of the town for a long weekend of fun - but in typical Bec and John fashion, it started on the back foot somewhat.

Despite leaving copious amounts of time to get there, we'd only just managed to check-in to Luton on time - and it turned out that our bag had not been so lucky. We waited around the baggage reclaim area in Geneva for an eternity before finally giving up and getting the shuttle minibus to Chamonix. It ended up being a full 24 hours before our bag was delivered to us - so big thanks to Brush and Bel for all the gear-lending that allowed us to have a great first day regardless!

Chamonix is a slightly difficult place to get around, as it's not one mountain/resort but actually half-a-dozen or so, all based around and above the town. To get to each from town requires an annoying bus ride followed by a gondola ride to the piste. Still, once we were up there on the first morning, all the hassle of travelling was quickly forgotten. The weather was really great, and while the snow was not super-fresh, there was certainly still plenty of it.

Here's Brett demonstrating that when sweaty, his hair is several thousand metres in height, comfortably dwarfing mighty alpine peaks:

Subsequent days were less great weather- and snow-wise, but it was still ace to get back on the white stuff. Evenings were filled with food (soooo much cheese!), frequent groans as new sites of pain and soreness were discovered, but also much merriment - like when Kate requested a nice refreshing Margarita and received a nice cheesy pizza!