kiwigirlnextdoor

A week in Chicago and Michigan (The Wedding!)

2008-10-14T21:29:00.038+13:00

Tuesday 30 September

If anything was going to go wrong, this day would have been it, with three flights – the first departing from London at 6am and transferring through Frankfurt and New York to eventually arrive at Chicago at 8pm. Had a bit of time to chill in New York as I didn’t want to miss my connection (the plane ended up being a little delayed anyway) but all in all a pretty good day finished up with quesadilla’s from Taco Bell for dinner – welcome back to America!!

Wednesday 1 October

We were up bright and early to head up north – unfortunately our start was delayed a couple of hours by Mick locking her keys in the car which meant we didn’t have time for the Wisconsin Cheese Castle. She had organised a crossing of Lake Michigan for us so that I could see a bit more of the country rather than just driving straight up. The ride started off great, we watched them back a huge semi with a wide load on, played bingo, got colouring in books and decorated paper pirate ships all before the waves got too big and everyone wasn’t feeling too well so we just chilled and watched Indiana Jones. Had our appetite back by the time we got to the other side so grabbed something to eat and then continued the drive, arriving at the Lynch’s at around 1am

Thursday 2 October

Pretty awesome to be back here in Rogers City – love the Lynch’s and their gorgeous house and there were a few bits and pieces we had to put together before the wedding. Headed out mid morning to pick up Mariko (a friend of Michaela’s from her time at high school in Japan) and got to check out the amazing autumn colours. Spent the afternoon putting together “order of service” booklets, putting labels on water bottles and doing up welcome bags for those staying in hotels. Took some time out to make some jewellery and had dinner with everyone before an early-ish night

Friday 3 October

The day before the wedding so there was quite a lot to do. The morning was busied with sorting out table settings and tying ribbons around chocolates. That afternoon we had the rehearsal at the church which went pretty smoothly and good to have a run through. We had a dinner with everyone at a local sports café afterwards so it was great to get to know some of the guests before the big day and then finished off the night at Greeka’s – a smoky but very local bar with 40oz beers – interesting night

Saturday 4 October

Finally the day that this whole trip eventuated from. Started off with getting Mick’s hair done which took the whole morning, sandwiches for lunch and a bit of a flurry getting dressed so we could be at the church by 1:30 and have Mick in one of the side rooms before all the guests arrived. The service itself was lovely with some readings and nice words from the Reverend, Mick looked amazing and Joe very happy to be there! Photos at the church and home for a little before the pre-reception cocktails kicked off at 4:30. Mick and Joe did their first dance to a sweet song, dinner was delicious and got to catch up with Jonathan (a mate we’d hung out with in Texas a few years back) the night wound down with drinking and dancing – a great day all around.

Sunday 5 October

Up and dressed to go to church for 9:30am mass – was gorgeous that the church smelt like lavender as we walked inside. Big brunch with everyone calling by the house to say goodbye as they headed home and then it was present opening time. We left at 5ish to drive to Beaverton to spend the night with Joe’s family – which was a very different cultural experience to Mick’s place as Joe’s family are Hmong

Monday 6 October

Huge breakie at Joe’s families’ restaurant to start the day off and then we drove to Holland, MI. Had a pretty interesting chat on the drive yesterday but Mick was tired this morning so continued chatting about cultural differences with Joe. The dropped me at Holland and headed back to Chicago, I had a cool time chatting with Don over lunch at an Irish pub, meeting his wife and catching up with his family in Muskegon

Tuesday 7 October

Today was awesome, great to make the most out of it! Started off shopping at an outlet mall in Indiana and then trained to Chicago to meet Mick in town and she’d organised a great afternoon/evening for us!

Started out shopping around and picked up a bunch of cute summer tops (end of season over there), had leftover pizza for lunch and ate chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick – sonly in America! That night we went to the Unearthed gig at House of Blues which was amazing before seeing Wicked – amazing show, its become quite a tradition for Mick and I to watch a show from the nosebleed seats each time we’re together and really enjoyed this one. Spent the evening snacking away on cheese and goodies at home and got a good sleep before my 10am flight to San Fran on Wednesday morning

Long weekend in London

2008-10-07T16:33:00.012+13:00

Friday 26 September, 2008

Arrived in from Munich late afternoon after a gorgeous flight over, topped up my Oyster card and rode the Piccadilly line into town just like I’d just come back from a long weekend away not a year! Found my way to Gosia’s place alright and we ended up at the Slug that night, it wasn’t very busy but we enjoyed dancing to the old classics with jugs of snakebites and randomly ran into my old flatmate Adam there too! Finished the night up with a stint at Belushis and Sugar Hut before walking back to West Kensington

Saturday 27 September, 2008

With only three full days in London I had to make the most of them so we were up early to hunt for a bargain at Primark and TK Max in Hammersmith before everyone else woke up and they got crazy busy. It was a gorgeous day so was stoked we had organised yard (standing) tickets to see Timon of Athens at Shakespeare’s Globe – my favourite way to spend 5 pounds in London! Afterwards we sat down on the grass outside Tate Modern to enjoy the sunshine, southbank and to give our feet a bit of a rest : )

Walked all the way down Southbank (not quite as vibrant with street performers as it is on a Sunday but still a lot of fun) some awesome displays around with some huge lounge furniture made out of artificial grass, people competing in a race around London in dress-up, interactive water art and the biggest guitar class you’ve ever seen : ) Walked across the Thames and through Chinatown to have dinner at Misato – my favourite Japanese restaurant in London – even though we had to wait an hour for a seat it was worth it!

Had organised to meet a bunch of people at Waxy O’Conner’s in Soho from 7pm as I’m here for such a little time so it was great to catch up with heaps of people in one place. Unfortunately some couldn’t make it due to other commitments or having had a pretty busy day already but I still had a great time. A few Magners and catching up with old friends on the other side of the world meant it was always going to be a good night – thanks for making the effort to come guys!

Sunday 28 September, 2008

Started a Sunday off the best way I know how to in London with a cheap and cheerful English breakfast at Lloyds in Fulham before heading north to the Church. Interesting that the music never changes but they had some new entertainers and all the usual boat races etc. Went along with a few of Gosia’s flatmates and had a good time – even got up on the stage at the end for a dance

Wandered through Camden to check out the latest fashion, listen to some live music and enjoy some market food for dinner before finishing up the night with a few Snakies at Shepards Bush Walkies (never my fave place but Gosia said Redback isn’t that good on a Sunday anymore and this was closer to home). Glad I also got the chance to catch up with Te Maari, we chatted over ice-cream in the park

Monday 29 September, 2008

Up bright and early again and headed into to the centre to have a very sophisticated tea and cupcake with Katherine at Liberty, a very wholesome lunch at Leon with Natalie and then visited my old and current offices – everyone was doing really well - so stoked to have the opportunity to catch up.

Extra bonus was that because the office here is in New Zealand House in Haymarket I was able to get a spectacular view from the 18th floor function room out over London. Cruised back home to repack and then Hasan cooked us dinner at Cris and Sara’s flat to great to spend my last evening in London just hanging out with my old roomies.

Got a couple of hours sleep on the sofa at their place before my 3am night bus from Hammersmith to Heathrow for the first of three flights to make my way to Chicago.

Back in Munich for a good time not a long time

2008-10-04T05:05:00.008+13:00

Wednesday 24 September

The silver lining to only having 6 hours sleep the last two nights was that I could get some sleep on my 12 hour (day) flight to Germany on Wednesday afternoon . Flying Lufthansa meant no personal entertainment system (so you had to watch what was going) so didn’t mind sleeping quite a bit. But overall good food and great service made for a pretty pleasant flight.

Gow was awesome (as always) and met me at the airport. Really great to catch up with him – planned to have a pretty quiet night seeing as I’d been up since 5am Japan time but a few of his mates were at Oktoberfest so instead we dropped my gear at his house and headed out. Ended up having a great time there and getting home at about 2am after getting chickens from the main station and having a few after party drinks at a hostel somewhere

Thursday 25 September

No matter what time I go to bed I can’t seem to lie in much more than 9am, maybe it’s just because I don’t want to waste time on this crazy high speed world trip, so managed to get a few things done before Gow woke up. Headed into Marienplatz and got delicious bretzen for lunch and were back at Oktoberfest by 3. Managed to get in to Hofbrau and save a table until Gow’s friends (included Anthea so it was awesome to catch up with her again) arrived and hung out with a couple from Berlin who were good quality.

Had a good 8 hours there dancing and drinking the day away before finishing the night off at Ned Kelly’s (an Australian pub in town). I’d hit a wall at about midnight but glad I pushed through it because after a few Red Bulls and some music I could dance to I was back into it and we got home at about 3am – plenty of time to chill before my afternoon flight to London on the Friday.

Three Days in Tokyo

2008-10-04T03:47:00.018+13:00

It was awesome to finally be leaving on this trip after having it planned for quite a few months now. I wasn’t quite sure how I would handle being back in Japan (the last time I was here was three years ago) but just like last time there wasn’t any culture shock and by the time we got to Kayo’s house and chatted with her family I was back into the swing of the language before I went to sleep : )

Sunday 21 September

Met Junya at Nippori station and dumped my pack at his house (where it ended up staying for the whole time) then headed out to Ginza for lunch. Nozomi, Kevin, Hitoshi and Shinobu met us at the station and we spent the whole afternoon eating sushi waiting for Juliette, Shikwan and Genta to join us. Shoko even showed up (she was my other buddy – with Junya – when I was in Japan and we went to Niagara Falls together in 2006) she had been studying in Denver and I didn’t know she was back in Japan already so was totally surprised and stoked to see her!

We headed to Junya’s work (a Belgium Bar just down the road) and he ordered me a huge beer in preparation for Oktoberfest on Thursday and everyone had a few beers as a warm-up before the night cruise. Awesome of Junya to get everyone together (there were about 20 of us) and organise this for me, had such a great time dancing and drinking with everyone – an all-you-can-drink night cruise around Tokyo Bay is such an awesome idea! – and I’m happy that I felt a lot better after this cruise than went we went for Ken’s birthday (I blame the yukata!)

Monday 22 September

Ended up sleeping at Junya’s parent’s house as his apartment is quite small so it was awesome to be able to see them again and awesome to have a home-cooked Japanese breakfast as a great start to a big day. Decided that seeing as I was here, it would make sense to pop in to the Tokyo office of my work just to say hi – couldn’t hurt right! – everyone was pretty surprised with my Japanese (I’m stoked I haven’t forgotten that much even though it’s been three years since I’ve really used it) and it was great to get a feel for the office and the people in case an opportunity ever comes up there in the future.

Wandered from the Embassy down through Shibuya to Harajuku – took purikura, bought a new tie and just revelled in the atmosphere of Takeshita Doori, chatted over cake and an iced green tea in the late afternoon and met everybody at about 7ish for a big night – seeing as the next day was a public holiday. Started off at an izakaya (Japanese pub) with heaps of beers and delicious food that just kept coming – reminded me so much of the nomikai’s I used to have for my University Clubs (even ordered a Cassis Orange that just came as a big serving of Cassis and a fresh orange to squeeze into it yourself!) and was great to be able to sit there for hours while people made their way to Ginza after work.

Today just happened to be Hitoshi’s birthday so at about 10ish we went across the road to Junya’s work where he’d organised a Belgium Chocolate Cake as a surprise – so much fun sharing it around (for some reason I ended up feeding it to everyone around the table!) and it was just awesome to hang out and chill with everyone just like old friends. Most people left to catch their last train home and it ended up being just the three of us – Shoko, Junya and I (that’s how this crazy adventure started) – chatting till the wee hours, I’m really lucky to have those guys in my life : )

Tuesday 23 September

After a power nap (1.5hrs) I was back up again and heading out to Yokohama to meet Naomi and eventually her workmates. Seeing as they all had the day off, we went quite a way out of town (train, bus and walk through a park) out to the beach and had a BBQ. It probably doesn’t sound very Japanese but went you’re BBQ'ing small strips of meat, veges and rice cakes instead of steak and sausages with no tomato sauce in sight it’s a bit more of a cultural experience : ) We even made fishing rods and caught crabs in the rock pools to put in our miso soup for after the BBQ – I wasn’t very good at it but it was a lot of fun teasing the crabs with bits of squid and trying to catch ones that were big enough to eat without getting soaked by the waves.

Ended up staying to watch the sunset and didn’t leave until much later than originally planned but we were having such a good time. In three days there’s really not enough time to catch up with everyone properly but I made one last effort and headed out to Shounandai to check out Humphrey and Naoko’s place (which is soooo spacious for a Japanese apartment!) so great to catch up with them again before eventually crashing at 1:30am at Naomi’s place in Higashi Kanagawa

I have some pretty amazing friends in Japan and going back made me realise that I totally wanna spend more time there and with them – just have to figure out when and how…. will keep you posted : )

Winter Update

2008-09-06T20:11:00.010+12:00

Hi all from the depths of the world where winter (is hopefully) winding up and it's starting to get a little warmer. Its the start of September which means that I left my life in London a year ago and I've been back in Wellington for 9 months now. I'm not sure how much I've actually achieved (I mean by comparison I could have had a baby in that time!) but I'm getting into the swing of things here - definitely looking forward to summer though!!

In the last couple of months since I posted anything up here things have been going pretty well. I've gotten quite heavily involved with the Social Club at work (does that surprise anyone?) and in early July we celebrated our 5th birthday so that was a lot on fun (and a great chance to recycle my ball gown), had mates over for dinner to celebrate Claire's birthday on the 15th and on the 20th we farewelled another cousin to London (will be cool to hang out with both of them at the end of the month).

August was pretty fun - check out http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021708&l=ce172&id=220000480 aid=2021708&l=ce172&id=220000480 aid=2021708&l=ce172&id=220000480. Highlights were a big night out with the flatties in town on the 1st as Tim is leaving to move to Masterton mid Sep and Caroline was going on a huge holiday so we went out in style! Got pretty sick in the middle of the month with my evil athsma being allergic to the cold weather so was forever thankful for the Olympics and got to watch heaps of the swimming finals. Later on in the month I went to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet put on Romeo and Juliet which was absolutely amazing and Mikey was back for a ski week so had a night at DTL with him before he headed up there and again when he got back which coincided with Gemma and Wellum being back from Napier so good times! The month ended up with another Social Club function with our Office Olympics - our country won most popular : )

Am keeping pretty busy week-to-week between going to the gym most mornings (for either boxing class or to do weights), indoor soccer, Ceroc (have even managed to convince a few friends to come along with me) on a Wednesday, learning Spanish and teaching Japanese at lunchtimes at work so really enjoying the pace of life - even went to a small community production of Taming of the Shrew last night : ) The next two weeks will be pretty busy as Ive been at a HR sustainability conference (where I made the finals for best recycled outfit with my skirt-o-ties) for the past three days and am running three days of training next week and still want to catch up with people before I go.

For those of you who don't know, in a couple of weeks I'm heading off on a mini world trip (25,000 miles in 23 days!) and will visit friends in Tokyo, Munich, London, Chicago and San Fran. The main reason for going is for Michaela's wedding in Rogers City, MI on the 4th of Oct but when you're up in the Northern Hemisphere you might as well do as much as you can right! So keep an eye on this blog, hopefully it will be a little more exciting over the next month or so ; )

Six months after....

2008-06-07T17:38:00.005+12:00

So, I’ve been back from my OE 6 months yesterday, the blog is finally up-to-date and the pictures are almost all uploaded so I figured this was a good point to let you know what I’m up to these days. Warning, this is a bit more D&M than my other posts… also apologies for the lack of pictures but just links to my facebook albums.

To tell you about where I am know you need to know where I’ve come from. Getting back was always going to be a little bit tough. In some ways this was easier than coming back from Japan and in some ways it was harder. At least I didn’t have the cultural readjustment this time but it was more about coming back and feeling everyone had made real progress in their lives and settled with long term relationships, children and houses everywhere I looked and I just had a backpack filled with clothes and a journal filled with memories. It took me a little while to realise that I had progressed too, just in a different way to everyone here had during the last 18months.
The quote “What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly” helped me through the first couple of months back which were quite rough, as I slowly understood that my experiences had meant I’d grown as a person and could contribute to the lives of those around me in a different way. I still had all the same core values but little things had changed and that was ok, I would actually be a little bit worried if I’d seen and done all I’d seen and done and not changed even a little bit. Maybe it’s that a lot of people back here didn’t seem like they’ve changed, which was probably also a good thing as it’s easier to accept changes in yourself than in others sometimes. Of course there are some changes; all my friends have drifted apart at little, moved closer to their significant others and the small gap I left in their lives was filled quickly with new friends and activities as we all get increasingly busy you have to make sacrifices. Slotting back into their lives has been hard but I want to thank everyone for putting up with me, and for all the support during this time

The last six months haven’t been as adventurous as the last half of 2007 (where the number of countries I’d visited was well into double figures http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019963&l=cf27f&id=220000480 ) but I’ve been keeping busy in my own way.

By the time I got through graduation http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020339&l=051d1&id=220000480 , a few phoenix games, helping Claire and Ricky move into their new place, Atlas, Elemeno P and Feelers gig, Christmas and camping with Mikey’s family, 2007 was all but over http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020404&l=afafc&id=220000480 . Welcomed in 2008 with a rogue party at Ricky’s old place, a BBQ at the Hammonds and then a few days were spent down at Oriental Bay, watching Claire play handball, Mark compete in the Ocean Swim Series and trying not to lose my tan from the Philippines. Family day trip out to Somes Island, camping with Ricky’s family up North, visited Gemz and Wellum in Napier, went to see the Police concert with Janna and John, checked out OdESSA playing in the Bot Gardens with Sam, Katie and Olwen and showed a couple of Arne’s mates from Germany that you can’t beat Wellington on a good day http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020783&l=e4600&id=220000480

Brady came over to visit in early Feb which was awesome to see him again, cruised up north for a couple of days and then back to Wellies for a free gig in Frank Kitts and Giles and Sheree’s stag/hen night – good times! http://bradytravel.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-zealand-taupo-rotorua-tauranga-and.html Of course a huge highlight of coming back was their wedding, it was so great to have everyone back together again just like the old days (sad to think that it might be the last time…) with people flying up from down south, over from Aussie and back from Germany to share their special day. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020748&l=9f5e2&id=220000480

I started my new job in Human Resources at the end of Feb, it’s a one year maternity cover contract (sound familiar… : P but didn’t want to commit for too long yet) but am still loving it, amazing views of this beautiful city from my office and the people are great which really makes a huge difference. Mid march I moved into an awesome flat ten minutes walk from pretty much everywhere I’d ever need to go (yes, Wellington is that compact!) great location and great flatmates and I live out the back in the sleep-out (totally my style if you ever saw my sunroom in Kelburn) and am loving it : )

March was pretty low-key, there were heaps of cool things going on in Wellington so checked an amazing show as part of the Arts Festival and some free acrobatics in Civic Square, had Hannah’s baby shower, a few more random parties, St Patrick’s Day drinkees and of course no March is complete with a pool party to celebrate my 24th birthday – scary! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020961&l=6c17e&id=220000480 April saw me catching up with some buddies I interned with years ago, Andrew coming back from his semester in Uppsala, exploring Karori sanctuary and checking out a few of the comedy festival shows. I went out for my dinners than any month in my life in May (you gotta use up those 2-4-1 entertainment vouchers) so got a new appreciation for another part of Wellington culture. Went up to Auckland for Mark’s graduation – am sooo proud of him! - good chance to have the whole family together again, eat at the revolving restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower and great to catch up with Janelle and Lettuce too and then I was up there again running a training course for work near the end of the month. http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021564&l=e81d3&id=220000480

Still loving work and my flat and keeping busy in my own way. Still not allowed to play outdoor soccer so have joined to work indoor team and we won the minor final (not too bad for our first season together) and also the gym – great because I can go before work everyday and it’s so close to home, and have started dancing again in an effort to keep fit and meet new people. I definitely miss travelling but it’s nice to be taking a break for a little bit; to let my mind slow down from overanalysing everything, to let my body recover from the rollercoaster adventure I’ve pushed it through and give my heart a chance to decide what it really wants.

Bear with me, and keep in touch.
Love always xx

Last stop Sydney

2008-05-31T12:38:00.008+12:00

The last time I was in Sydney was for a soccer tournament in 7th form so quite nice to come back and wander around (taking lots of pictures as I do) check out http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021145&l=177bb&id=220000480 and getting a feel for the vibe of the city

Sun 2 Dec
Had quite a mission actually getting from Manila to my flight to Sydney. Like a good skint traveller I had exactly 100pesos left when I got to the airport, wicked except there was a 750P departure tax I didnt know about, leaving me 650P short, no problems, figured I could get some cash out or at least change some of my Thai baht over. No such luck : ( The bank would only change US dollars and the ATMs outside both terminals were both broken and the best idea information could come up with was to taxi to the nearest mall! Luckily a supervisor took pity on me and asked some Filipino's waiting in line if they'd exchange my baht for pesos so they got a pretty good exhange rate but at least I could get on my flight : ) Picked up my bags in Bangkok and went to check-in and found out I wasn't actually booked on it (today was just not my day...) but luckily it wasnt full so they managed to get me on and I headed back down to the Southern Hemisphere

Mon 3 Dec
Woke up with 40mins of the flight to go so just enough time to have breakie before we landed.

It was a beautiful day and a nice approach into Sydney, my hostel included a free airport pick-up and used the free internet at the airport while I waited. Had a nap and then headed out for a walk in the afternoon ended up at Darling Harbour (my hostel was at Kings Cross). Was back at Kings Cross by 8 to meet Tenar (who I'd met in Thailand) for dinner and we went to a lovely Japanese place for dinner and she told me some cool places to check out.

Tue 4 Dec
Nice to sleep in, only getting up at 9am so I could make the most of the free breakfast at the hostel. Wandered to Circular Quay past St Marys, the top half of Hyde Park and some state buildings along Macquarie St. Took the ferry across to Manly for the afternoon - great views of the harbour bridge and opera house from the boat. Wandered around the Rocks with some funky architecture and christmas decorations and checked out the MCA before meeting Sarah at 6. Pretty cool to catch up with her and had Pollo de la Casa at a really nice Spanish place called Asturiana (Cnr Liverpool and Kent), washed down with some Sangria : ) Crashed on the sofa at her studio (right in the middle of town) coz it was just easier than walking back up to Kings Cross.

Wed 5 Dec
Was raining so was lazy and took the train home (to the hostel) and chilled for a bit before heading out to Bondi Junction. Walked all the way along Oxford St (quite far but nice to get out for a bit and get some fresh air). Paddington was one of those Bohemian places Tenar said I might like if I lived here, a little upmarket but more me than the CBD. The weather wasn't holding up enough to encourage me to bus to Bondi

Beach so trained to Newtown and walked down Kings Road really liking the vibe of this area. Very funky, reminded me of Cuba/Aro in Wellies with second hand shops, independent eateries, vintage stores and even a few punk ones. Wandered back into town and checked out Chinatown, got a $5 rump steak and mash from Scruffy Murphys and headed back for a quiet evening in and flew back home early the next morning

Boracay Island

2008-05-31T11:56:00.006+12:00

Such a great way to finish my trip, check out the amazing pictures from my three days on the Island Paradise of the Philippines - Boracay Island at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020911&l=f9eff&id=220000480

Wed 28 Nov
Taxi'd from Marakina to the airport and the journey from there to our guesthouse on the island was an awesome mission! Didn't have any trouble finding out bags on the worlds smallest luggage conveyorbelt and took a 2hr bus across the island the airport was on (awesome view of the life here just looking out the window). Took a tiny boat out into the deeper water then walked along a tiny plank to where the slightly bigger boat was anchored (so glad I didnt fall in with my pack!), short ride across and then a Filipino version of a songthaew and we were there - 8 hours after leaving Reich's place at 5:30am! Had smoothie's at Jonah's right on the beach, got our hair braided and the first of many Henna tattoos

Thur 29 Nov
Slept in until we were hungry enough for breakie and sunbaked on the beach for a few hours. Headed down to Da'Mall (central marketplace) and had delicious fruit salad in iced coconut milk in coconut shell - amazing! Had an afternoon swim - was perfect with white sand and no shells back into town for a spot of shopping, crepes for dinner and an amazing sunset!

Fri 30 Nov
Banana pancakes and chocolate milkshakes at sunrise cafe was a great way to start the day and in the afternoon we rented a boat to take us around the island and got off and snorkeled in a few places too. Spent the afternoon relaxing on the beach with the waves lapping over us and took some more sunset pictures. Had dinner at Club Paraw which had gorgeous low tables, bamboo mats and cushions right on the beach! Went down to Pat's for a drink and some live music and finally got the butterfly tattoo I wanted on my ankle symbolising the beginning of the end of this trip, inspired by the quote "What the caterpillar calls the end, the world calls a butterfly"

Sat 1 Dec
One last Buko (fruit salad in coconut) from Fruitas and some last minute pressies (got Mark a wicked graduation present) before we got picked up at 11:30. Tricycle ride, boat, bus, queued up to get into the tiny aitport as their computer system was down so got hand written departure cards and we an hour or so leaving but it meant we caught the sunset from the air on our flight back to Manilla. Met Reich's folks at Glorietta, then had dinner with Tin Tin at Yoshinoya and settled in for my last nights sleep in the Philippines

Manila & Marakini City, The Philippines

2008-05-30T22:50:00.004+12:00

Pictures tell a thousand words so check out http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020910&l=d0b2a&id=220000480 and read below for details of my time in the Philippines.

Mon 19 Nov

Was amazing to have Reich come and meet me at the airport (feel loved!) spotted her a mile away and was still able to pick her up and give her a hug even with my pack on! Initially Manila reminded me of Disneyland, passing all the Christmas lights around town as we headed to Reich's inner-city apartment, dropped off my bag and went out for fast food Japanese with her roommates. When our food hadn't arrived after 15 minutes, turns out the waitress forgot to put through our order, she showed up with some origami to apologise : )

Tue 20 Nov

Reichell's twin sister Reichenn, picked me up from the condo and we checked out the mall and met up with Reich for lunch of chicken inasal and sisig. Checked out the Ayala Museum in the afternoon which had some amazing dioramas and chilled at Starbucks - so awesome to get to know Chenn! Evening ended up trying my hand (or feet) at Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero and taking some purikura. It was Ladies night at Red Square so we karaoke'd for free from 7-12 and had a great time doing a mix of English, Japanese, and Filipino songs

Wed 21 Nov

Didnt leave the house until the early afternoon (great to feel like I'm actually on holiday) when Chenn and I took a couple of jeepneys to Little Tokyo and had a late lunch at the okonomiyaki shop (I swear I've eaten more Japanese than Filipino food in my time here so far!) We were the only ones in the restuarant so took our time and watched a Filipino game show (where people win money or health foods by dancing or singing songs) on the tv behind the counter . Had my first taste of Banana-Q (caramelised banana kebabs) for afternoon tea - so yummy! before heading out to Reich's parents place in Marakina City - what an adventure riding crowded jeepney with my huge pack! It's actually really nice to be in a family home again, had a great evening meeting the whole family and having great home cooked food - love chicken adobo!

Thur 22 Nov

The three of us shared one huge bed in their newly painted purple room and got to sleep in for a little bit : ) Had breakie and before I knew it it was lunchtime and then Chenn and I headed out to check out the sights of Marakina. Started with the Shoe Museum (housing Imelda Marcos' infamous shoes) and took a tricycle (like a sidecar) to the Doll Musuem with more great dioramas depicting the history of Marakina City and some insights into the culture here. Shopping and more street food at Riverbanks before a quiet evening at home watching "The Devil Wears Prada" and chatting till the wee hours.

Fri 23 Nov

Today we went on a day trip with Reich's mum, Reichenn and their little sister Lou Lou (who's taller than both of them) into Manila. Took and FX (mini mini-van) to the station and then two trains to get into the city (the overpass between which went over some unbelievable shanty towns). Had Chowking for lunch and Halo Halo for dessert before checking out Intramuros. Fort Santiago was amazing with Jose Rizal's shrine, prison cell, last steps and the famous lamp with its note "The Final Goodbye". Rode a calessa from Manila Cathedral for a city tour and then took a taxi to the Mall of Asia (MOA) which was huge (there's a cinema and even a skating rink inside!)and such a contrast to the shanty towns we'd seen earlier in the day. Watched the sunset from the boulevard outside and met Reich for dinner - there were so many options, it was so tough to choose! - at Congo Grill and then jeepney, train and FX to get home where we watched "Music and Lyrics". Think today might win the prize for most different types of transport in one day!

Sat 24 Nov

Headed out to the University of the Philippines for an Ame Gakuensai that Reich was hosting. There was a talent show section, loads of Japanese food stalls, a cosplay fashion show, live music and fireworks. It was a completely different appreciation of Japan than I had and interesting (and a little strange) to see it from a different angle especially from within Asia. Finished the day off with McDonalds - which sells spaghetti, chicken pieces and rice here!

Sun 25 Nov

Went to church with Reich's family which was interesting. Think it must be hard to hold onto a religion while you're travelling because it's expressed in so many different ways around the world. In the afternoon we headed out to Trinoma Mall to catch up with TinTin which was great to catch up, she's still with Yosuke and is lucky enough to have a job using her Japanese doing translation and intepretation (even though her major was Spanish). Another family dinner with everyone which was awesome, and Reich's dad commented "The weekends are the best. We are complete" - so cute!

Mon 26 Nov

Chatted to mum and dad at midday-ish and headed out to Riverbank at 3ish, bought a couple of watches, had pizza slices and pearl (bubble) tea before checking out the mall at Cubao. Seeing as it was going to be my last night at the family home, they decided I had to try balut - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut I'm pretty sure I've seen these on fear factor - they didnt actually taste too bad but just the idea of it is a bit gross

Southern Thailand

2008-04-02T18:32:00.004+13:00

Check out my best pics from Southern Thailand on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020259&l=c0a3a&id=220000480

Wed 7 Nov

Fresh start today (even after Natalie and I got stuck in the lift!) as I was booked on one tour, we had two different tour guides and some new friends. The six of us from the northern tour stuck together a bit at the start but soon we were all mates heading off to explore the south of Thailand, but first, one last day in Bangkok... A local boat down the canal and then a bus and we were at the Grand Palace which is pretty amazing! Saw the Emerald Buddha, Wat Po and the Reclining Buddha (huge!!) Had a quiet arvo, cup noodles on the floor of the train station and then boarded the night train heading south and drinks with some crazy French people

Thur 8 Nov

Got off the train and onto a 2 hour bus ride then 1.5hr ferry ride and we were on Koh Samui : ) Samui means cold in Japanese - im sure its no relation but it was raining and cold when we got there but the flooding wasnt too bad that we had to cancel our island tour. Stoked because we got to see Na Muang Waterfall, Grandma & Grandpa rock formations and the mummified monk. Pretty cool riding around the island on the songthaew with such high waters and stopped to check out the Big Buddha before settling into our cute as bungalows with hammocks for enjoying the sun : P Despite the rain a few of us headed out to check out the night life - the Reggae bar was closed due to the flodding but we danced the night away at Green Mango with the prostitutes till 4am

Fri 9 Nov

Slept in till midday then went for a swim on the beach and spent the arvo at an elephant and monkey show. Im not really sure about these, obviously at some the animals were better treated than others and this one seemed to be one of the better ones and it was pretty cute to play with the baby elephants (they even give you a massage and kisses!). Went across from quiet Bo Put to pumping Chaweng Beach for dinner at the Best Bar which was amazing. Gorgeous to sit out on the beach and chill at the low tables (FYI perfect date place!) enjoyed some shisha and we even lit a wish lantern.

Sat 10 Nov

Early start with songthaew and ferry back to Donsak before another 3 hour songthaew ride but it was worth it to arrive at our gorgeous tree top river huts right on the edge of Khao Sok National Park. Unfortunately the rain came just as we started our canoe trip but we had a great time and I even tried kissing a frog to find my prince! On the way back we played with some monkeys at a temple and had a quiet night in playing with the monkey that lives in reception.

Sun 11 Nov

Took longtail boats around the huge rock formation to Railay Beach in the Krabi province. Went for a swim but it didn’t get deep until you went out quite a way and then spent the evening drinking and relaxing at Bamboo Bar until the wee hours.

Mon 12 Nov

Today was why so many people come to Thailand. The sun came out in full force, we hired a boat for the day and headed off to explore the islands. We started off at Bamboo Island, saw the viking cave and then jumped off the back of the boat at Pi Leh Lagoon for some snorkelling. Lohsamah Bay was a bit prettier and this reef a little more alive. Maya Bay (where “The Beach” was filmed was our last stop before lunch on Phi Phi Don and a wander around before a final snorkel at Hin Klarng where I dived off the front of the boat and a nemo fish kissed my hand : ) Finished off they day with an amazing sunset on the West Beach of Railay, a beautiful Mas Man curry at Yaya’s and a few quiets at Bamboo Bar

Tue 13 Nov

Up bright and early to catch the sunrise on the Eastern beach. Everyone was quite sunburnt from yesterday so it was quite a rough day lugging our packs around. Boat to Ao Nang, songthaew and then back on a longtail boat for a tour around Phang Nga where we saw cave drawings and sailed through limestone Lod Cave and saw the amazing floating Muslim village ( Koh Pannyi) before our stop off at James Bond Island. Spent the night on Koh Lawa on the beach which was beautiful, pretty sunset, dinner, fresh coconut juice before sleeping on the beach (so glad I bought the sleeping bag with the in-built mosquito net)

Wed 14 Nov

Missed the sunrise because it was on the other side of the island but still got an early morning swim in : ) Took a boat back to the mainland (the songthaew’s are a little bigger in the south) and settled into our place in Phuket Town. Rode across to Patong Beach after dinner to see the ladyboy show ‘Simon Cabaret”

Thur 15 Nov

Last breakfast with the tour group, and had to ask one of the hotel staff to climb out my window and down onto the roof to get my skirt that had blown down while I was trying to dry it! Before relocating to our hostel. Took to local bus (20baht) across to Patong instead of taking a 400baht songthaew (grr tourist prices!) The beach was packed! (cant believe people come here for a break...) so we wandered down the markets at Thawiwong Rd. Local bus ride was great to see 12baht pancake stalls on the side of the road and kids coming out to welcome their mothers home, complete contrast to the Festival Centre which was a huge mall with AC comfort. SE Asia is so full of these huge contrasts

Fri 16 Nov

Took a walk around the streets and booked my bus back to Bangkok for the next evening before heading along to check out the butterfly farm which was really pretty and almost made arguing over the price of transport worth it. Thought about going out for dinner but ended up getting something from 7-11 and chilling at the hostel instead

Sat 17 Nov

Up early to see Natalie off and spent most of the day chilling at the hostel and running into brick walls trying to book accommodation in Bangkok. Killed time watching a movie “motorcycle diaries” which really made me want to travel through South America before making my way to my night bus. This was a huge adventure, loved being the only non-Thai person on the bus and just followed everyone else when they piled off the bus for free dinner and then got a bit of sleep

Sun 18 Nov

Grabbed a free lift with some other travellers from the bus station to Khao San Road and spent the morning chilling in my room and the afternoon having one last wander through the markets. Enjoyed a banana pancake and milkshake inside a fresh coconut for dinner (gonna miss those!)

Mon 19 Nov

Took the airport bus (way cheaper than a taxi) and was there with plenty of time to spare so had one last green curry and sent some postcards before boarding my flight to Manila.

Northern Thailand

2008-01-22T15:15:00.010+13:00

A collection of the best pics are at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020182&l=2c5f9&id=220000480

Mon 29 Oct

Long-ish flight over (glad I'm not going all the way home yet) no problems with immigration and finding my way to my accommodations for the night. After meeting the crew I was going to be travelling for the next week, we had a quick bite to eat (the smells and the heat hit you as soon as you get outside) and a good nights sleep before we set off the next day

Tues 30 Oct

Early start to an amazing day! Took the bus to Kanchanaburi (so thankful for the aircon!) The traffic in Bangkok is pretty crazy and best thing was somebody strapping a fridge to the back of a songtaew (ute with a roof). We checked into a pretty cute little guest house and dumped our bags before heading out the Tiger Temple. Awesome to sit and play with all sizes of tiger from cub right up to the big guy with his head on my lap - they were pretty relaxed and used to people after living with the monks and it was an amazing experience. Spent the afternoon at the JEATH war museum, look a longtail boat to the Allied War Ceremony and then the Bridge over the River Kwai. Pretty heavy afternoon so had a relaxed dinner at Happy Frog and a pineapple filled with fried rice was just the answer.

Wed 31 Oct

Pineapple pancakes are the best way to start a day especially as we had more war histroy coming up. Look a long songtaew ride out to Hellfire Pass and the museum. It was pretty shocking to see information about the POWs of the war (and some people conscripted from captured lands) who were forced to build the Burma-Thailand railway and in particular the cutting. In the afternoon we cooled off with a swim in the waterfalls at Erawan National Park, gorgeous and blue to swim in if you dont mind the fishies nibbling at your toes. Re-energising Thai Massage before dinner was just what I needed

Thur 1 Nov

Ayuthaya was worth the 5hr local bus ride, and totally appreciated the day room at the hotel with the pool and a shower at our disposal. Had a crazy bike ride through the streets to Wat Maha That - the first temple Ive been to here, it was amazing but pretty sad with a lot of Buddha's missing their heads. Had a great adventure navigating our way back on the roads with every other kind of traffic available and then getting off tiny boats with our huge packs before boarding our overnight bus (an hour late leaving) and heading towards Chiang Mai.

Fri 2 Nov

Love overnight trains, not only do you not have to pay for a nights accommodation but its awesome to wake up in an entirely new city! Roast duck from a roadside food stall for lunch before making our way to Doi Suthep Temple. This was a very different style of temple to Wat Maha That with dragons running up the 309 step path to the main Buddha, really enjoyed our afternoon there and pretty special (as a woman) to be blessed by a monk. Checked out the Hill Tribe Museum after that to find out what we're getting ourselves into and then checked out the famous night markets and crazily ran into Brady and Jordan there - the world really is a small place!

Sat 3 Nov

Crazy to start the day having banana pancakes in Chiang Mai and ended up sleeping in a hut at one of the hill tribe villages, what an adventure! Headed off at 10ish, stocked up on some snacks and pressies for the kids, pad thai from the roadside stall for lunch and then we started our hike. It would have just been a nice little hill climb but the rain added an extra challenge, turning the stream crossings into full on rivers! Great adventure trying to keep our feet dry to no avail, not fall off the skinny bamboo bridges and the last downhill just turned into an absolute mudslide! But it was all worth it to spend a night with the villagers and have the best homemade green thai curry ever!

Sun 4 Nov

Today was another one of those days that when you get to the end of it you cant believe where it started. Woken up in our hut by the roosters outside and left the village mid morning on elephants, a short songthaew ride and then bamboo rafting down the river. Went to play with some monkeys in the afternoon and spent the evening shopping in Chiang Mai’s famous night market for a few goodies to take home

Mon 5 Nov

Had a free day so decided to go on an authentic Thai cooking class – it was a great opportunity and I had a great time making some traditional dishes that I’ll easily be able to cook back home too, helps that they gave us a cookbook at the end of the day. With a small group of 5 of us and a really professional kitchen we got to make (and eat) pad thai, spicy and sour soup, spring rolls and green chicken curry all in four hours – yummy! Night train back to Bangkok

Tues 6 Nov

Great to spend our last day with the group having a free day in Bangkok, checking out markets, the air conditioned mall, took the sky train to a department store and then tuk tuk’d it to Khao San Road. Really busy and crazy but did a bit of wandering around the markets and then spent the afternoon outside at a pub just people watching in this crazy place. Somewhere between the beers I managed to convince Bronwyn to get her braided and mine dreaded – as you do : )

Last week in London (23-28 Oct)

2008-01-22T13:17:00.000+13:00

Wanted to have a few days in London to tie a few things up after my Europe trip and before heading off to SE Asia - I have to admit it was kind of nice to arrive in London and know exactly where I was going, how the transport system worked etc. Managed to cross a few boring"must-do's" off my list like closing my bank account, checking wth the travel agent that everything is sorted, cancelling my phone, getting malaria tablets, numerous doctors and dentists appointments and getting some foreign monies etc - fun fun!

Got to do some touristy things I hadn't gotten around to in the past year like changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and of course caught up with a bunch of friends; had a pint at Pitcher and Piano with James, went with Sara and Duff to look at moving into a room at Cris and Hassan's place, one last cubs meeting and Ceroc class and even tried a hip hop one (just to keep me out of trouble!)

Went out for lasagne with Katia, Drinks with Dave at So-Bar and a hard rock night at Intrepid Fox. Had a few leaving drinks at Havana with some close mates (and a salsa class just for good measure), continued at Belushi's and ended up dancing to the classics at the Slug. Spent the last day wandering around Spitalfields market with Sara and Duff, nibbles at Leon and then lunch with Paul, Hayley and some other friends at Brick Lane.

Sick of goodbyes, I tube-d home, picked up my bag, bussed to Hammersmith and took the train out to Heathrow to take my flight to Bangkok. Ciao London, I promise I'll be back

Norway 18-22 Oct

2007-10-28T21:03:00.000+13:00

Norway was my last country stop on my Europe tour and what a great place, its gorgeous and I had a great time catching up with some old family friends too! Check out the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/kiwigirlnextdoor/StavangerAndFlekkefjord

Oslo
Arrived really early off my night bus from Stockholm so had a nap in the lounge room of my hostel before heading out to explore for the day. Pretty surprised that the centre of town is actually quite small (pretty good because it was freezing!) but had a chance to walk around in the afternoon. Saw Karl Johans Gate (the main shopping street), past Parliament, National Theatre and Oslo University before I reached the Royal Palace and the gorgeous Slottsparken that surrounds it. Wandered through some more pretty streets past Uranienborg Church on the way up to the famous Sculpture Park (Vigelandsparken) which I didnt realy know how to take with stacked statues of bodies in an obelisk shape but glad I visited. Had a quite evening checking out the sunset on the harbour and walking past the small Akershus Fortress and Castle.

Stavanger
Oslo was pretty but taking the train right from East to West Norway on the 19th of Oct was amazing and great of Hans Edward to meet me at the station too., hadnt seen him in years but we got along pretty well and had heaps of travelling stuff to talk about. Ended out having a couple of drinks at Consensus (notably a traditional Norweigan Christmas spirit called Aquavita), the Irish Pub (always good value) and Kardina - with over 350 different types of beer - awesome! Needless to say the next morning was pretty quiet and we headed into town to check out the fishmarket, the culture house and cathedral before heading off on our road trip to the fiord.

Flekkefjord
We had a beautiful drive out here past Hatsfjord (and the three swords that commemorate when Norway was bought to one kingdom in the 7th century) and stopping in Moi for candy. Had a great quiet night in their amazing bach, went out and set crab pots, had homemade pizza and look the little dinghy across to some dancing in the community hall on the main island. Up early to collect the crab pots, a fun psuedo dad-daughter thing to do with Noel : ) A flounder even swam in - woohoo! that's lunch sorted : ) Cooked the crabs up, another explore around the main island and visiting some family and then took the scenic route back to Stavanger and ate crabs and drunk wine till the wee hours

Stavanger
Had one day left in Stavanger to spend with Arnhild and we checked out Norway's Petroleum Museum which was pretty well done, and then we had a delicious lunch a the restaurant next to the museum. Spent the afternoon at Ikea (its a good thing I dont live in Europe or they'd be in trouble!) and then had a delicious home-cooked roast (moose calf and kumura!) for my last night here before heading back to London, thanks so much for having me stay guys!

Sweden (Stockholm and Uppsala) 14-17 Oct

2007-10-18T03:12:00.000+13:00

Had a great time just taking a couple of days to chill in pretty Sweden and catching up with two ex-roommates, Freddie and Anna : )

Stockholm
After a long-ish train ride up from Copenhagen Freddie met me at the station which was awesome and a great chance to catch up. On my only full day on Sun the 14th we headed out for a long walk around the river which was cool and checked out the government building and Royal Castle before meeting a friend of his, checking out the old town and spending the afternoon chilling at a cafe in Soder and Freddie cooking me an awesome dinner at home.

Uppsala
Trained up to Uppsala and hung out at Anna's place for a couple of nights which was cool. Had a great time catching up over lunch at a gorgeous indie cafe with a wicked vegan salad bar and then I went exploring around the town. Checked out Uppsala cathedral (Scandanavias's largest church so pretty impressive), Uniersity hall with its grand main building, Carolina Rediviva Library (exhibition room containing the silver bible) and circled Uppsala Casle. The next couple of days were spent mainly just hanging out with Anna, also checked out the Botanic Gardens and Uppland Museum which were pretty cool and nice to have a couple of slower paced days on this crazy trip. Went back to Stockholm and wandered down Queen St and had a final dinner together before I took the night bus to Oslo on the 17th.

Thanks for having me guys, it was awesome to catch up : )

Copenhagen 12-13 Oct

2007-10-17T08:07:00.000+13:00

It was quite a train ride up from Berlin to Copenhagen (and glad my rail pass is still valid for another couple of days as it probably would have been an expensive one too) Changed trains in Hamburg and had time for a quick coffee with Jess at the station before continuing on my way. Pretty ride up but the coolest thing was when the train drove right onto the ferry and right back off at the other side!

I had another bout of awesome luck with timing in Copenhagen and one step better than Salzburg's "Night at the Museum", the 12th of Oct was Copenhagen's "Night of Culture" with so much more than just musuems open it really was a great night out! Started with City Hall (can't turn down free coffee and cake!), next the Danish Design Centre was awesome with its travel gadgets, watches, lights and cars and then I checked out a dance performance at the Glyptotek with everything from interpretive to breakdancing. Checked out some information about Esperanto, "Play Day" with a sandpit and campfire in one of the squares, Human Rights tent and got a book on "The Way to Happiness", Helligrands church and a cannonball reenactment at Tojhus before calling it a night.

Wanted to give Copenhagen a real thorough exploration in the daylight so had a 4 hour city walk with my rucksack (glad there were no hills) and definitely saw a lot : ) Started at the Town Hall Square past Lurdblower's column toward Nytorv Square with the court building. Hojbro Plads was a pretty nice square overlooking Christianborg Palace and the city canals before finding another pretty square (Kongens Nytorv) with cool houses and the Royal Theatre. The port of Nyhavn was awesome with brightly coloured houses lining the port lit up by the morning sun that was just coming out from behind the clouds. Marble Church was awesome from the outside, as was the square enclosed by Amalienborg Palace (residence of the royal family) which looked out over the new Opera House. Past Geflon fountain and the Langeline Harbour Promenade I finally found the Little Mermaid and walked back into town via Kastellet (Europe's best preserved fortification), the yellow Nyboder houses (built in the 17th C for the navy), Jerusalems Church, and Kogens Have (a renaissance garden) home to the Rosenborg Castle. Last few notable things on my quick tour were the Round Tower, Church of our Lady Cathedral (where the crown prince couple were wed in 2004).

Copenhagen is a really pretty city to wander around and I was really lucky with the sun coming out as I walked along by the harbour and the people were friendly. Would definitely recommend a trip here if you're heading up to this part of Europe : )

Berlin 11 Oct

2007-10-17T07:10:00.001+13:00

Shame to only have one day here but just really wanted to hang out with Arne and Sina (who had moved from Hamburg since last time I was in Northern Germany) so it was just a whirlwind visit to catch up with some good mates. Arrived in the evening on the 10th, picked up some turish and had dinner at Sina's apartment. Check out the pics from our Day Trip at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021234&l=a1798&id=220000480

I had done most of the touristy stuff last time when I was in Berlin for New Years but we met Sina at Hermannplatz and took the number 100 bus from Alexanderplatz all the way to the end of the line, it was a pretty cool route running past heaps of the main sites. Sina had fallen down some stairs while moving a couple of weeks back and injured both feet and it was really interesting to see a different side of Berlin with her on crutches.

Managed to borrow a wheelchair and the three of us spend the afternoon exploring the zoo which was a lot of fun. Spent a lot of time in the monkey enclosure (a few of the bigger ones were so human-esque! and the little ones were mental!) saw all the normal animals as well as Knut - a 6 month old polar bear cub which was really cute. After a big day we just had a chilled evening at home having dinner with Arne's flatmates as we were all pretty tired and I had an early start the next morning (heading up to Denmark) thanks for inviting me back to Berlin guys - it was awesome to see you again - next time in NZ yeah ; )

Prague 8-10 Oct

2007-10-17T05:25:00.001+13:00

It actually ended up being a good thing that I was two minutes late for my train from Vienna to Prague. The two hours waiting for the next train gave me time to enjoy a beautiful Weiner Schnitzel and Edelweiss Beer at the station and I ended up meeting Mark, Kelly and Greg (from Utah) and Lauren (from Toronto) who introduced me to Flight of the Conchords while we raided the mini bar (pretty cheap even though it was a train!) We lost Mark and Kelly when we got to the station but the three of us had fun there and waited for three more of their friends to arrive on the next train from Vienna. We checked into our hostels and ended up having a great night out partying at the club next to my place.

Check out the Prague pics on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021231&l=ddb9c&id=220000480

Its hard to suddenly go from travelling by yourself to having 7 other people to work around but it was pretty nice to have the company. Once we got all sorted with breakie at Bohemian Bagel and the others moved from a hostel to a hotel we started on a little bit of sightseeing walking towards Charles Bridge. The others headed back to the hostel for a nap and to get pretty and I continued on to the other side of the river to czech (see what I did there - haha!) out the Church of St. Nicholas, the Wallenstein gardens and made my way up to the castle for a look around. We all met back up and spent the afternoon wandering around town. Split again for dinner (with Lauren and I going for 99K Indian while the others had steak) and then spent the evening hanging out at the Irish Pub on the square - awesome to just chill and chat with these guys.

Was up pretty early to make the most of my day (whats different!) and wandered through Wencelas Square on my way to the station to head out to Kutna Hora famous for its ossuary. Gow had recommended the "bone church" one hour out of Prague, it wasn't as scary as the catacombs Id seen but pretty amazing to see chandeliers made out of every bone in the human bosy and pyramids of bones with over 40,000 people contributing to the "artwork" of this unique church. Next stop... Berlin

Austria 6-8 Oct

2007-10-17T03:13:00.001+13:00

Pics on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021217&l=7fb3a&id=220000480

Salzburg

Had a good start to the morning with a true Bavarian breakfast of white sausages, sauerkraut and beer with Gow in Munich but definitely needed it for the big day ahead. The 3.5hr train ride wasnt anything special and the sky wasnt so welcoming when I first arrived in Salzburg but I decided to just dump my stuff at the hostel and headed into the centre to check it out just as it was getting dark. Saw Kajetanerkirche and wandered down Kapielplatz with a gorgeous view of the fortress on the hill, fountain, sculpture and it lead through the Domplatz with the amazing cathedral. Due to the weather Salzburg wasnt that pretty during the day but lots of places in Europe get this gorgeous yellow glow at nighttime.

Heading into the city at night turned out to be a better idea than first planned as there was a special "Night out at the museum" evening on on the 6th of Oct in Austria where a whole bunch of museums were open from 6pm to 1am and a cheap card got you entry into all of them so I spend the night making great use of my one night in Salzburg. Started at the Salzburg Museum with lives and works of people who had influenced Salzburg and and awesome video comparing the city historically to now. I got to sample Austrian red wine and see old music boxes being played in Freysaultkeller, Romanischer keller had live music downstairs, saw the foundations underground of the Dom Cathedral , walked around inside the Residenzgakerie (with an amazing throne room) and the Dom Museum (with a great explanation about the bronze door of hope), Landkartengalerie (the universities map gallery) was really well restored and finished my evening with a funicular ride up to the fortress on the hill for a guided tour and a beautiful view out over the city at night

Seeing as I was in Salzburg I figured I should see a few of the Sound of Music bits and pieces and being a Sunday public transport wasnt a great option as a few of the places were a bit out of the city so signed up for a tour and the 6 young ones of us banded together and had a fun time. We saw the Schloss Mirabell (with the "Do Rae Me" steps), Schloss Hellbrunn (with the "I am 16 going on 17" gazebo), Hellbrunner Allee ("I have confidence"), Palace of Leopoldskron (this was the outside of their house in the movie where they had pink lemonade on the patio and the kids fell into the 1m deep man-made lake). It was awesome to get out of the town and see Lake Wolfgang / St. Gilgen (and Red Bull H/Q!) and we had a great time toboganning down the hill - made a great change from sitting on the bus : ) Last stop was Mondsee and the Collegiate Church where Maria and the Baron finally got married, and enjoyed apple strudel for lunch before training to Vienna

Vienna

After a busy morning following in Maria's footsteps I ended up spending a quiet night at my hostel in Vienna. It was a really cool one with a awesome underground bar and I had some pretty awesome roommates so just spend the evening chatting to Matt and Jenkins from South Carolina, good times : )

Up pretty early the next morning to cover everything I had been lazy about doing the night before. Vienna was a pretty city (so many statues and important buildings!) Started at Herrengasse near Minoritenplatz and I took the scenic route to Rathaus and ended up at the Imperial Palace (Hofburg) which was pretty so wandered through there and Maria Theresien Platz with the Natural History and Kunsthistorisches Museums and the Museum Quarter itself before finding the Rathaus and taking some pretty pictures with gorgeous blue skies. Found Austria's first holocaust memorial in Judenplatz on my way to Stephansplatz, the church is pretty amazing from the inside and out but its always a shame about the construction work. My pack was getting a bit heavy so did one final ride of the tram around the ring road which goes past all the major sights again and saw the Royal Apartments, Karlskirche and the Secession Building before heading to the train station to catch a train bound for the Czech Republic

Munich 1-5 Oct

2007-10-17T00:16:00.003+13:00

Munich pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021203&l=5c97b&id=220000480

Oktoberfest pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021215&l=6c294&id=220000480

Was awesome to spend some time in Munich (and my visit just happened to conincide with Oktoberfest) Gow had just moved down a couple of weeks ago and was lovely enough to let me crash at his and Andrew had come down from Sweden and Nina from Goettingen so it was an awesome little reunion. The boys picked me up off my train, welcoming me to the city with a beer and we had a great evening catching up.

Mon 1 Oct
Wanted to actually see a bit of the city with Andrew before going to Oktoberfest so took the train out to Olympiazentrum and checked out the Olympic grounds from the top of the tower (pretty amazing views!) and also the BMW Museum because we could : ) Had a huge bretzel for lunch in Marienplatz and saw a few of the must-see's in the area; St Peterskirche, shopping Street Kaufingerstrasse, Munich's landmark church Frauenkirche (if you stand at a certain point in the entrance you cant see any of the amazing stained glass windows), Michealskirche is Germany's grandest renaissance church, Kalstor (old city gate) and Richard Strass Fountain before watching the Gockenspiel at the neo-gothic Neues Rathaus perform at 5pm - bit of a let down to be fair so we decided it was time for beer. Had a great first experience at Oktoberfest, Andrew and I ended up making friends with a table of German and Irish guys and having a fun night

Tues 2 Oct
One of Nina's friends had booked a space inside one of the tents from 12-6 so we jumped on the bandwagon and soaked up the atmosphere with a couple of their other friends from NZ, Ben and his sister Francis. Oktoberfest really is an awesome vibe, its so much more than just drinking (although that is the main order of the day) with a huge theme park outside waiting to suck up all the drunken monkies' monies. Had a great time with Nina inside the tent with live music and the most amazing grilled chicken youve ever had in your life, the beer isnt even that expensive at 8euros per masse (one litre). Met Gow (after he finished work) in the biergarden outside and continued to have a pretty good night with free gingerbread hearts : )

Wed 3 Oct
A public holiday in commemoration of the reunification on this date in1990 so we decided to take a break from the beer and enjoy a picnic in Englischer gardens all afternoon and then we made a huge chicken salad at home for dinner, great to have a day to just chill with good mates in this pretty city

Thur 4 Oct
Nina was heading home today so was cool to hang out with her for a bit and also to get a few jobs done (my first time to wash clothes in a bathtub and then hunt down a laundromat to dry them - it was like an American movie but i didnt meet any cute guys while I was waiting for my spin cycle). Checked out the last few things around Marienplatz that I had missed on Monday - Adamskirche which was amazing and so ornate you wouldn't believe it was a church inside, Stadtmusuem was interesting with one crazy and one boring photo exhibit, an awesome musical instruments section and some scary puppets. Last church in the area was Hellinggeistkirche and then wandered through the cool open-air market that is Viktualienmarkt before spending a quiet night in

Fri 5 Oct
Okay so I didnt really plan to stay in Munich this long but I was having a great time hanging out with Gow and Paul and Hayley had just arrived in Munich last night so I wasnt going to pass up the opportunity for one more Oktoberfest experience. Checked out the Deutsches Museum in the morning before meeting them though (so I didnt fell completely uncultured!) and was really glad I went. There were exhibits on everything; glass, paper, textiles, the environment and of course being a science and technology musuem there was a lot of technical stuff I didnt understand but also some really cool presentations of things like the high-voltage unit - awesome! Any museum that can hold boats, planes, rockets and a planetarium is pretty impressive. Later that afternoon I was back at Oktoberfest with Paul (my cousin whose living in London) so it was awesome to see him again. Hayley and a few of her mates showed up a little later in matching dresses and they looked gorgeous and we had a great night chatting, eating, drinking, dancing and just enjoying the atmosphere - good times! Check out the photos at the link above ; )

Liechtenstein 30 Sep

2007-10-16T08:22:00.001+13:00

See the pics from my afternoon in Liechtenstein on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021014&l=4468a&id=220000480

Randomly on the way from Zurich to Munich I decided to take the really scenic route and pop into a different country - Liechtenstein - just for a few hours in the afternoon to check it out. There are no trains in the country so I took the train to Sargans and then the bus into Vaduz (the capital) which gave me a little bit of time to see the rest of the coutry. Vaduz was really pretty, a nice peaceful little town to visit on a Sunday afternoon. Got my passport stamped at the tourist office just to prove Id been there, sent a postcard to my folks and bought the obligatory patch and country sticker. Hiked up the hill on the edge of the city (with my pack) for a closer look at the castle where the prince and his family live and then took the bus back out to Buchs and trained on up to Munich from there. Pretty cool to just pop into another country for the afternoon but it (at least Vaduz) was really pretty to spend a couple of hours wandering around and great to add another country to my ever growing list.

Switzerland Adventures 27-29 Sep

2007-10-16T06:59:00.001+13:00

Lausanne and Bern pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021010&l=bf993&id=220000480

Lausanne
Recommended by a couple of girls from Perth Id met at a hostel, I took the train for an hour from Bern seeing as I was too early to check into my hostel (yay for rail passes - absolutely love travelling through Switzerland by train, its so pretty!) to check out Museo De L'Art Brut, which was definitely worth the trainride. The musuem is really more like an art gallery with pieces by untrained artists - psychiatric patients, eccentricts and incarcerated criminatls - making for some pretty interesting displays. Really impressive collection but I think my favourite piece by far was a 3D aquarium made completely by shells by Pail Amar. Also had time to check out Cathedrale de Lausanne and Esplanade de Montbenon with pretty views out over Lake Geneva (Western Europe's largest lake) Lausanne was cute but steep and it was a little crazy to switch from Swiss-German to Swiss-French but really glad I came to visit, even if it was short

Bern
Awesome to see an old town in Switzerland, Bern was lovely bordered on three sides with the river Aare and with a number of churches I had a great time wandering round in the evening when everything had a faint orange glow to it. The zeitglockenturm chimes on the hour and the city is filled with fountains, cute covered walkways and a really regal feel, awesome to stumble across free live music in Kornhausplatz too. Shame Parliament was under construction (as they usually have free guided tours) but it was great to walk up the tower at Munster cathedral and get a great view out over the city, as well as the gorgeous stained glass windows inside.

Luzern and Zurich pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021013&l=821bd&id=220000480

Lucerne
Now this is a picturesque city if ever there was one, the touristy Kapellbrucke (Chapel Bridge) has graced many a photo and it was amazing to look out over Lake Lucerne to Mt. Pilatus. Got a chance in the afternoon to look around the Glacial gardens which were pretty awesome, the musuem had a great presentation about climate changes in Lucerne and scientific explanations and facts about glaciers (in all three languages!) and there was even a recreation of 18thC living quarters and a "hall of mirrors" just for good balance. Finished the night off by dipping bread and sausage into cheese fondue with an aussie girl from the hostel - so good, especially being able to taste the hint of wine. Definitely dont overlook Lucerne if you ever have the chance to visit.

Zurich
Arrived just in time to find the English Sports Pub to watch the ABs beat Romania in the afternoon made a couple of NZ mates who invited me to a party later that evening so still had the time to cram in a few touristy things. Zurich was pretty too (anyone sensing that I liked Switzerland yet...) checked out a couple of churches;Grossmunster had a pretty view from the top of the south tower, Fraumunster had some absolutely amazing stained glass windows and St Peters Church had the largest clockface in Europe. Checked out a funky exhibition of buddha statues mised with snowmen and empty cookoo clocks before wandering down the east bank of Lake Zurich to Zurichhorn park and enjoyed people watching all those out and about on a Saturday afternoon. Wandered up Bahnhofstrasse - amazing elegant shopping street - on my way back to the hostel (awesome with partitioned beds even in a dorm room!) and then had a great time chilling with new friends at a house party.

Jungfau Region 23-26 Sep

2007-10-16T06:23:00.002+13:00

To see my pictures from the Jungfrau region, check out http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021011&l=84e47&id=220000480

Well, Ive never been to Switzerland before but never has taking the train into a country felt so much like coming home as this did. Maybe after all the craziness and history overload of amazing Italy it was just awesome to get back to nature. I absolutely loved this part of the world, everybody definitely has to include it in their Europe trip!!

Interlaken
Had a great train ride up from Verona (4 different ones) it started getting beautiful through Northern Italy (Verbania and Domodossola) and we rode along the side of avalley from Brig to Spiez (right on Lake Thun, so shame my train was in 15mins!) but rode around the lake to Interlaken an settled in for a quiet evening at my gorgeous little youth hostel right on Lake Boningen. Walked into town along the lakefront the next morning to explore before my canyonning adventure (probably not the best idea with my neck still not 100% but a lot of fun!). We clambered into wetsuits, drove a little out of the city, hiked up-stream a bit and then proceeded to jump, abseil and slide our way down the canyon - awesome way to spent and afternoon!

Lauterbrunnen
On recommendation of a good friend of mine I made it to this tiny valley in the mountains and a really cute friendly independent hostel. It was too cloudy to go right up to the top of Jungfrau (or even Schilthorn) but had a great time just chilling in the valley - its gorgeous! Checked out trickling Staubbach Falls and then the mighty Trummelbach Falls - 10 glacier waterfalls inside the mountain - amazing! Took a cute funicular and train ride up into the clouds and wandered through the mountain town of Murren and back down the gondola to the valley

Grindlewald
Didnt do anything touristy in Grindlewald at all, it was a little drizzly out and my hostel was on the hill overlooking the mountains with a fireplace, guitar and a comfy sofa so I just settled in for the night with a good book enjoying the view, great re-energiser

Padua and Verona 21-22 Sep

2007-10-15T08:44:00.002+13:00

Check out my pics from Padua and Verona on facebook at
http://vuwac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020529&l=989ae&id=220000480

Friday 21 September
Spent the day wandering around Padua. Checked out Scrovengni Temple which was pretty amazing with 38 frescoe panels by Grotto that depict Christs life. It wasnt like other religious artworks I had seen with the bright, blue starry roof making this a pretty amazing place. Continued to get properly lost in this city without a map but stumbled upon a fruit market, wandered along the river and a huge detour around St Giustina Church before finding Basilica di Sant Antonio (patron saint of Padua and lost things - so very ironic that it took me so long to find it!) Made my way to Verona and my hostel up on the hill, watched the sun set from San Pietro Castle which was a gorgeous panorama of the city.

Saturday 22 September
Up early to make the most of my day in Verona - such a pretty city! Walked into town across Ponte Nuovo, quickly popped into Duomo at the start of a service and then through Piazza Erbe and Di Signori before picking up my Verona Card. Found Juliettes tomb (and a couple of weddings) and had lunch in Piazza Bra before checking out the Arena - third largest amphitheatre in Europe dating from the 1st century. Juliettes house was pretty roomy (about six floors with high ceilings) and stood on the balcony overlooking the graffiti covered courtyard and rubbed the breast of Juliettes statue as its said to bring good luck in love. There was some random international games festival (called Toscali) in town this weekend with petanque, old-school hockey and baseball, marbles, knife throwing, giant dice, biscotti making, arts and crafts, giant chess, stilts, whips, goh, go-karts, and spinning top pinball (which I was awful at but it was fun!). Found Romeos house (now a private residence) and the Della Scala (Scaligeri) residence in my wanders too. Had a quiet night chatting with my roommates at the hostel, had a great time in Verona and it was awesome as my last impression of Italy - off to Switzerland tomorrow - ciao!

Venice 19-20 Sep

2007-09-28T20:13:00.000+12:00

Check out my photos from Venice on facebook at
http://vuwac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020516&l=b36a9&id=220000480

Wed 19 Sep
Found my way to Venice and my campsite in Maghera (its really hard to find accommodation actually on the islands) but it was great to just dump my bag and go for a swim as soon as I arrived. Made the most out of the afternoon and headed into venice - what a lovely city to get lost in. The Grand Canal was cool but the tiny ones were much nicer and I felt like I was crossing a bridge every 5 minutes. Walked across Accademia Bridge (one fo only three that crosses the Grand Canal) and arrived at Piazza San Marco - an amazing square (crazy that tourists pay to buy pidgeon food to have them climb all over them). Went up to the top viewing platform of the 99m capinale (bell tower). The sea between the islands was a gorgeous blue and I watched the most amaying orange sunset from the top - so romantic

Thurs 20 Sep
Into town early and on the traghetto (water taxi) out to Murano Island by 9:30. Its the home of Venetian glassblowing so checked out a couple of demonstrations (reminded me of my summer in Nelson) and looked at all the amazing glasswares in the shops (luckily only buying one necklace). At the Glass Museum I got to see all the tools (cant believe I used to know all the names for them) and some awesome centerpieces of Italian gardens made for the doges - amazing. Back to Piazza San Marco to see Palazzo Ducale (official residence of the doges and the seat of the republic government) the cabinet meeting rooms, prisons and bridge of sighs were highlights as well as the worlds longest canvas painting in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio. Basilica di San Marco was nice inside but a little dark so glad I checked out Pala D'Ora (the gold alterpiece behind St Marks Tomb decorated with countless priceless jewels). Took the boat out to Lido Island which seemed deserted out of season but loved taking my shoes off and walking along thebeach. Caught the sunset as I went down the Grand Canal towards home - loved venice

Pisa and Florence 17-18 Sep

2007-09-28T20:02:00.001+12:00

Check out my pics from Pisa and Florence on facebook at
http://vuwac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020504&l=f23c7&id=220000480

Mon 17 Sep
Spent the afternoon (5hrs) in Pisa. Stoked I could still climb up the Leaning Tower. It was a 2hr wait (as they only let a few people in at a time) but thtat gave me the chance to try and get the perfect shot of me holding the tower up and check out the baptistry which had an awesome echo. Climb up the ltower was disorientating (as all the steps are on a lean - duh) but very much worth it to see the view out over Camp del Miracoli and everyone sitting in the shade of the tower or the cathedral. Took the train to Florence and randomly ran into Arne as I was leaving the station (He knew I was going to be there from my status on facebook but I had no idea) such a wixked surprise so I dumped my crap at the hostel and and caught up with him later that night for a beer on the steps of the church at Santo Spirinto

Tues 18 Sep
Big day in Florence starting with the Uffizi Gallerz - Im sure it would have been amaying if you have a real interest in Renaissance Art but I didnt recognise a lot of the pieces or understand the themes (although I could appreciate that they were beautifully painted) Doesnt help that museums in taly dont seem to give out guides or brochures at all. Found my way to Duomo (worlds fourth largest cathedral) and climbed the 400 gruelling steps up to the cupola (some were as steep as ladders and most in slanted hallways) but well worth it to see the views out over Florence and the 82m capinale and battistery (oldest building in Florence). Wandered throught the open market and the fruit and vege market and was in line to see David at 3pm. He was woth the 2.5hr wait as hes absolutely gorgeous "in person". Caught the sunset from Ponte Vecchip which was lovely but the best things in Florence were moste definitely seeing David and Arne : )

Latina 13-16 Sep

2007-09-19T00:33:00.001+12:00

Check out my pics from Latina and Rome with Claudia on facebook at
http://vuwac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020479&l=f7dcc&id=220000480

Thursday 13 September
Stoked up on food from the local markets, stopping the car and chatting in the middle of the road to various friends and relatives along the way. There are only 120,000 people in Latina and Claudia's mum is one of ten so there was a big chence that we knew a lot of the people around - awesome atmosphere! Went back to the doctor to check on my pneumonia and got another course of antibiotics. Had a big lunch and dinner at home of spaghetti with clams and in between walked around a lake that reminded me of Rotorua (with the sulfar smell), saw buffalos and had a nap on the beach. That night I tagged along on a hens night, not as crazy as the London ones (although they do go a bit mental) but fun none the less!

Friday 14 September
Today we were supposed to head out to the Island Ponza but when we got to the docks it seemed there were no boats which was probably a good thing as I managed to catch an evil stomahc bug, that combined with the phuemonia meant that I had as very lazy day

Saturday 15 September
Awoke feeling way better (thank god!) we headed up to check out a beautiful medieval town on the hill (Sermoneta) but unfortunately the castle seemed to be closed. Caught the end of a wedding at Abbey Valviscolo (just as they threw rice at the bride and groom coming out) and checked out pretty Lake Ninfa. at 6ish we headed into Rome as there was a free MTV live concert happening in Piazza San Giovanni which was amazing we saw Irene Grandi, Tiromancino and Elisa perform. Elisa was amazing Ive listened to her heaps with Sara in our bedroom back in London but she was just awesome live and I knew all of her songs!!! Turned out the subway in Rome stopped at 11 so we had to run to catch the bus back to the station and only just made the last train!

Sunday 16 September
My last day in Latina was great. We went out with a couple of cousins, a nephew, an uncle, a girlfriend and a friend to a beautiful home-style cooking place called Roccagorgo, went ot watch another cousin play in a football match at Pivernio, called in on Grandma & Grandpa and a friend on the way home. Thanks so much to everyone in Latina for welcoming me into your life!

Rome 10-12 Sep

2007-09-18T23:34:00.000+12:00

Check out my pics from Rome on facebook at
http://vuwac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020478&l=b466a&id=220000480

Monday 10 September
Took and early flight from Barcelona (had to get up at 4:30am) so was all checked into the hostel by midday and ready to start exploring Rome. Saw San Carlo Quattro Fontane, Fonte del Tritone, Fontane de Trevi, Spanish Steps (Piazza di Spagna), Tomb of the Unkown Solider and Piazza del Popolo before arriving in the Vatican city that afternoon. Piazza San Pietro was beautidul with a semi circular collonade with four rows of Doric columns and a obelisk in teh centre. Took the life up to the base of the dome of St Peters Basilica and walred the 349 steps up a stanted staircase to the top of the Cupola but it was worth it for the view! Checked out the inside of St Peters Basilica iwth amazing mosiacs that looked like paintings and spent the afternoon eating pizza and spaghetti and drinking wine with some Japanese friends from the hostel

Tuesday 11 September
Started off the day with the Colessuem, spent about 2 hours wandering around and got a bit of a history lesson too. Walked through the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. Open air music for Sep 11 Rememberence. At the Pantheon there was a free "German Young Brass" Orchestra concert. Walked up Gianicolo Hill for a beautiful view out over Rome in the sunset and wandered St Maria in Trastevere and back across the river (and magical Isola Tibernia) to get back to the hostel

Wednesday 12 September
Claudia came up from Latina to meet me and we went to the Vatican Museum together. The queue was long but fast moving and we spent three houes wandering aroudn inside. Saw Museo Pio-Clemintino, Tapestry and Map Galleries, Stanxe di Raffaello, Apartment Borgi and of course the amazing Sistene Chapel. Italian Gellato for lunch (three huge scoops and cream foronly 2 euros!) and then went back to Latina for a walk along the beach and a BBQ dinner at Claudia?s cousins place

Barcelona 6-9 Sep

2007-09-18T23:15:00.000+12:00

View my pics from Barcelona on facebook at
http://vuwac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020476&l=305c9&id=220000480

Thursday 6th September
Arrived by overnight train from Pairs with beautiful coastal views. Met Gosia (old Polish flatmate) at the hostel and had patatas bravas for lunch (yum!) spent the afternoon at Barceloneta beach relaxing and watching the sun set before enjoying tortialla by the beach and drinking wine out of a carton and catching up - pure class!

Friday 7th September
Temple La Sagrada Familia, beautiful outside and inside (even though its not finished yet) and amazing views from the top. Picnic lunch in Placa Catalunya before going back to Barceloneta to swim in the afternoon. Hit a "rock'n'roll" club called Magis that night and danced until 5am

Saturday 8th September
On little sleep we just gtot up in the morning to head down to the beach to sunbathe - such gorgeous weather! Tortilla and salad for lunch at the hostel. Wandered into town past Casa Battla and Casa Amatler down Las Ramblas with an awesome fruit and vege (Mercat de la Boqueira) as well as open-air market. Checked out a short Flamenco Show at Placa Reial and then a fountain, light and music show at Montjuic

Sunday 9th September
Spent the morning exploring La Pedrera (apartments, attic and amazing rooftop). Wandered around the Barri Gothis area and the Cathedral before taking the bus up to Tibidabo to check out amazing views of Barcelona from the church on the hill we had seen from town our whole visit. Watched the sunset as we wandered around Park Guell with some awesome Gaudi "Dr Seuss" style buildings and a mosiac lizard. Spent my last evening in Spain and with Gosia enjoying a beautiful paella down Las Ramblas.

Paris 2-5 Sep

2007-09-06T03:34:00.000+12:00

After a pretty hectic last day packing my boxes and rucksack I took a night bus (and ferry) across to Paris to catch up with Christina and Juliette one last time (for now!) Was nice to go back and do some of the things that I didnt get a chance to when I was only here for the day in July

Sunday 2nd September

Arriving at 7am-ish I had enough time to find my way to Juliette´s and drop my pack off before heading back into town to meet up with Christina and Michelle for a coffee. We wandered through the markets (La Marche aux puces de la porte de Clignancourt) and up to La basilique du Sacre-Coeur to eat baguettes for lunch looking out at the view of the city from the top of this hill. We even had the chance to wander around inside the church - now Im not religious but this was a pretty amazing church inside! Really humbling and inspirational with every candle I walked past reminding me that everyone is wishing for something - a great start to my trip

Walking through Monmarte and on the Metro to Centre Pompidou

Being the first Sunday of the month all the museums in Paris were free, so we decided to go and check out Centre Pompidou - the modern art gallery. It was a piece of artwork outside (with exposed pipes on one side and a huge outdoor staircase on the other) even before we got inside!

Spent a few hours wandering around this place, pretty cool art inside (and nice views out over Paris from the top too!) A pretty interactive gallery with a great vibe, definitely worth checking out if you´re in the area and keen on modern art : )

Juliette headed off to meet some friends so Christina, Michelle and I went and did the touristy thing, bought wine (had to scrounge a bottle opener off someone), plastic cups, baguettes, cheese and tomoatoes and sat in Champ De Mars looking up at the Eiffel Tower getting more and more beautiful by the minute as it got darker all around us and we enjoyed a picnic dinner

It even sparkled for us for about ten minutes at 9pm- how romantic!

Monday 3rd September

Today, after my first lie-in in a while (so nice to sleep in a bed!) Juliette and I headed to the Lourve to check it all out, for the 9 euros entry we paid and the five hours we spent there it was most definitely worth it.

There was no way we were going to cover all the pieces in just one afternoon so instead we chose a couple that we really wanted to see and found amazing stuff along the way, here are a few of the most famous pieces, great that you can take photos (although I think its technically not allowed with the Mona Lisa... very sneaky...)

¨Mona Lisa¨ and ¨Psyche and Cupid¨ (my favourite piece)

¨The Winged Victory of Samothrance¨ and ¨Borghese Gladiator¨

¨Aphrodite¨(known as Venus de Milo) and ¨Seated Scribe¨

¨St Mary Magdalene¨(G.Erhart) and ¨Joan of Arc¨

There was even a section with art from the Americas, Africa and the Pacific (although none from Australia or NZ) these were a couple of my favourite pieces

The great thing about the Louvre was that there was so many different types of people all enjoying the amazing art together, great way to spend an afternoon!

After the Lourve it was time for some more classic french culture so we met up with a couple of Juliette´s friends for coffee and crepes - yum Baileys and Banana crepes for afternoon tea!

That night we caught up with some more friends for a birthday party. It was a great night actually hanging out with French people speaking French - I know that sounds weird after being in France for a couple of days now but with Juliette and Christina we either speak in English or Japanese, so it was just great to hang at her friends place; listen, eat, drink and chill with friends, great way to end a busy day!

Tuesday 4th September

For something completely different we headed to Disneyland Resort Paris on the Tuesday, it was perfect weather fot it (not too hot, not too cold) and we had a blast hanging out with Juliette´s brother Raphael and being little kids for the day! Yay for expired student cards that got us a 20 euro discount!!

We rode Space Mountain 4 times, saw 3D ¨Honey I shrunk the Audience¨, Star Trek Motion Master, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril and Big Thunder Mountain

And all this in the morning before checking out a 30 minute stage show of the Lion King , it was nothing compared to what I saw on the West End but pretty cool for Disneyland and something I hadn´t seen at the Tokyo one (otherwise all the rides were pretty much the same)

Because its celebrating its 15th anniversary this year we also were lucky enough to catch an amazing ¨Once upon a dream parade¨in the afternoon with the most amazing floats and costumes!

Because we had student cards we managed to get into both parks (there´s an additional small one called Disney Studio Parl) for 10 euros cheaper than just the one park pass, there weren´t a lot of rides there but we did get to do two cool ones ¨Crush´s Coaster¨based on Nemo and ¨Rock´n´Roll Coaster starring Aerosmith¨both indoor coasters and a lot of fun as bonus rides! All in all a pretty fun day out!

Wednesday 5th September

Leaving Juliette at home to study (for i-kyuu!) today I headed back into town to hit the last couple of touristy things on my list, I had seen Notre Dame before when I came for the day with Michaela to visit Adeline but this time I had a chance to go inside and up to the top!

Views out over Paris from the Chimera gallery (46m above ground) with the gargoyles. On this level we also got to climb through a small doorway like quasimodo into the South Tower Belfry with the cathedrals largest bell ¨Emmanuel¨(they´ve all been baptised) weighing 13 tons with a 500 kilo clapper!

View from the top to the West (Eiffel Tower and the Siene) and the North (Monmarte in the distance)

Views from the East (looking down the sparkling Siene - so beautiful!) and to the South (to Pantheon)

The courtyard of Hotel Dieu (the oldest hospital in Paris) If I ever get sick enough I definitely want to stay here!

From there I got a savoury crepe for lunch (chicken and cheese - yummy!) from one of the random caravan vendors and checked out the Catacombes - pretty freaky stuff! In 1785 huge hygiene problems posed by Paris´ overflowing cemeteries was solved by exuming the bones and storing them in three disused quarries. One, created in 1810 is called the Catacombes, descending 130 steps from street level I was able to walk through 1.6km of corridors stacked with the bones of millions of Parisians - very creppy but interesting!

Coming above ground again and back to life I checked out Jardin Du Luxemborg, 23 hectares of beautiful gardens was a great place to chill in the afternoon!

That afternoon I just chilled at Juliette´s place, watched part of a Japanese movie and packed getting ready to take by night train to Barcelona. I had a great time in Paris and loved staying with Juliette´s family, I saw a lot of awesome things in this four days in Paris but the best thing was just chilling at their house having dinner - merci!!

Last Month in London

2007-08-30T10:12:00.000+12:00

Welcome to my last month in London - August 2007

The first Saturday in August Sara and I headed to Regents Park to check out the Innocent Village Fete. It was the biggest fair Ive ever been to, the weather was beautiful and there were so many free samples that by the time we left we didn't want any more organic yoghurt or soya milk. There were loads of cool stalls and live music and it was a great day out!

Being the last month of the "official London summer" meant that Scoop had their third entitlement of free things to do and this month it was theatre so one Friday night after work I grabbed a bottle of wine and some nibbles, met a couple of mates and sat in the sunken amphitheatre and enjoyed "The Jungle Book" first and then "Helen of Troy" - it was awesome! They used the same actors for both plays highlighting their versatility and it was a great way to relax after a crazy week at work, gotta love London on nights like that when you can watch free outdoor theatre and then have the beautiful view of Tower Bridge (even got to see it opening up to let a boat through) at night : )

For my last weekend in London we managed to cram in quite a bit with one final house party on the Friday night to celebrate. It wasn't as big as ones we've had in the past (seeing as it was a bank holiday weekend a lot of people were away, probably a good thing though as I can't drink much with my current antibiotics) but I had a lot of really close friends there so it was great to catch up with them.

On Saturday I headed out to catch up with Chris (we lived together at Sam's parents place in second year and I caught up with her in Conneticut almost a year ago) who was randomly passing through London on a trip before she starts a new job. It was great to catch up - can't believe its been a year - and enjoy a new dining experience but having lunch at an okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) restaurant.

Continuing the theme, I checked out the "Creating Beauty in Modern Japan" exhibition at the British Museum with a friend. Great exhibition and hopefuly I will have time to check out the rest when I'm back in Oct because it looked beautiful on the inside, with the architecture reminding me a little of the Met in New York.

Rather than my main focus being crazy amounts of travelling, work has actually been a really big part of my life lately, though usually things are pretty cruisy, this month an extra project has been keeping me out of trouble. I learnt a lot of new skills when I had to copy everything from the HR/Training sections of our current intranet site into the back-end of a new intranet (even got to learn some code - the boys would be proud!) and set up a system to effectively manage our new external training programme. That on top of all the normal admin my job entails have meant that just as I was understanding everything and it becoming a bit routine it all got a bit of a shake-up which is definitely a good thing. This has been a great job, a 6 month maternity cover contract turned into a 10-month one, so great to have had pretty much just one permanent position my whole time here and had some opportunities for training and development. My team are lovely, they have made my first job out of uni a lot of fun, Im sure I will never find another department like them (they're crazy in a good way!) and I will miss them a lot.

There's always a few random things that don't really fit into anywhere and this month is no exception. I went to see Pan's Labyrinth at Prince Charles Cinema, went to a karaoke bar in Tower Hill with Brady and Kirsty (everyone was pretty impressed with my "One Week" rendition), had dinner at Hell Pizza with Alistair, caught up with Karla (Caroline's old flatmate who’s visiting London on a holiday from her job teaching English in Japan) for a drink at my local. Checked out Amora "World's First Exhibition celebrating love, sex and relationships" and saw "The Vegemite Tales" with Hayley and a friend. The last show was pretty well timed (saw it just as I started my two week countdown to leave London) and so although a comedy I found parts of it quite emotional as I could relate to a lot of the characters feelings and recognised a few situations that I have found myself in over the last year

The last few days here have just been a bit of a blur really, after finishing work I went to the tax office and looks like I might get a nice little sum back (I know it was overpaid in the first place but getting tax back always seems like a huge bonus!) Caught up with Brady that night and grabbed some pub food and went to “We Will Rock You” the Queen Tribute show at the Dominion Theatre which has been playing since May 2002!! It was amazing, such a fun atmosphere with everyone standing up and clapping along and getting really into it. Interesting story line with songs and snappy references built in, the actors were amazing, I know it’s their job to sing and dance and act but wow! Definitely glad I checked out one last West End Show before I left. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Will_Rock_You_(musical)

Friday in-between the dentist/doctor and the travel agent I got the chance to spend the afternoon with Dave and Kate on the last day of their big UK tour. Haven’t seen Dave in ages so it was a great chance to catch up. We had lunch and Leon and then headed up to Camden Markets (gotta love that place!) to check out the shops and buy more stuff I don’t need : P Pulled an all nighter packing my boxes on Friday as they were picked up at 7:30 Sat morning so just had a relaxed day before my bus to Paris that night.

In retrospect I’ve had a great year here, done a lot, met amazing people and just enjoyed this crazy city. I would love to be able to stay here for a few years living it up but there are big challenges ahead to look forward to as well. Keep checking this for updates on my 7 week trip around Europe starting this Saturday, my 4 days back in London, a 2 week Hill Tribes and Beaches Tour in Thailand and catching up with a friend from Japan in the Philippines - so guess I cant really be sad about leaving with all that to look forward to right... : )

"It is not the days we remember but the moments"
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Christina visits London

2007-08-30T08:48:00.000+12:00

25-27 August

Well, just when I thought my time of being based in such a central location in the world and having the pleasure of friends from back home and around the world come and visit me was over - I was wrong! Christina (an awesome mate from who I studied with in Japan a couple of years back) came over for the weekend as part of her speedy but awesome Europe trip. It was amazing to catch up especially as she was back in Japan when I was in Vancouver last year.

Seeing as I was leaving in a week, Sunday was the perfect chance to catch up while checking out some of Londons amazing touristy sights in the first dose of beautiful weather we've had in weeks. We did the Tower Hill Exhibition (cool to be able to go up to the top walkway and the lower bridge even raised while we were up there!) and saw City Hall etc before enjoying a Sunday Roast at an English pub near Southwark Cathedral.

Wandered through weird and wonderful Southbank (one of my favourite places to spend a Sunday in London along with one of the many markets), played in the fountain and then checked out The Eye, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey before heading into town and doing some shopping along Oxford St (gotta love the new huge Primark!) We finished our night off back in Kensington catching up with an old flatmate Cameron for a pint.

Monday was just about as crazy, if not more so, because it was August bank holiday we went to check out the Notting Hill Carnival and it was an amazing experience (so glad I was in London for this!) We checked out the parade in the morning, picked up Christina's friend Michelle from the hostel and headed back to dance through the streets and check out the amazing floats and dancers crowding the streets and ate jerk chicken for lunch - awesome!

Once we eventually made our way though the crowds to a tube station that was actually open we went back into town and wandered down Carnaby St, took photos at Piccadily Circus, and grabbed a well deserved pint at Waxy's before heading down through Leicester Square, Covent Garden, The Strand, Trafalgar Square, Admirality Arch and along Downing Street to check out Big Ben and the Eye at night. One final night view of Tower Bridge to squeeze in before walking back across it and heading home. At least noone can say Im not making the most of my last days in London

Despite the fact that we did so many amazing things in the two days that Christina and Michelle were here the best things were the conversations. Its hard when you meet amazing people and you're not sure when you'll ever see them again but now I know that with the real friends you can pick up the conversations just where you left off even if its years between meetings - thanks for visiting babe!

Two Days in Brighton

2007-08-25T00:22:00.000+12:00

20- 21 August

After being really busy at work I wanted to take a long weekend to relax so took Monday and Tuesday of this week off. I had originally planned to go to Prague but being summer (altho it doesn't seem like it in London) the flights were really expensive and all the buses full but I had already planned to have days off so thought I may as well use them and headed down to Brighton for an overnight trip (one more thing crossed off the list!)

Took the bus down from Victoria (took a couple of hours but you cant complain when its only £8 return!) and spent the afternoon wandering around town getting an idea of what I wanted to see/do in my couple of days there. Walked along the Pier (opened in May 1899!) which has a whole pile of "fruit machines" (the gambling ones where you have to get the apples to match up), tacky carnival rides accompanied by carnival food stores, games and the odd souvenir shop specialising in "Brighton Rock"

The be honest the pier was a bit disappointing so I wandered away from the beach up into town via an area called "The Lanes" lots of narrow streets, alleyways and squares brimming with boutique stores and eventually made my way up through North Lane (kind of like a mini Camden) and was very impressed by the vibrancy of the stores, all the colours and of course the graffiti

That night I went to see the circus - never been before so figured it was a good chance to go and see it on a Monday night. Walked from Brighton to Hove (only about 5kms) to the circus ground along the waterfront which was really nice and stumbled across the remains of the West Pier. IT was built in 1866 and has been closed and deteriorating since 1975. In a storm in 2002 the walkway between the concert hall and the pavilion fell into the sea and in Jan 2003 another collapse saw the destruction of the concert hall in the middle of the pier and in March the pavilion at the end of the pier caught fire. Despite the setbacks they were adamant that restoration work would begin in 2004 it was decided to build the i360 - a 183m observation tower in the tradition and spirit of the west pier substituting the idea or walking on water with rising into the air. "The Eye can be seen as a unique vertical pier matching in quality and spirit the horizontal old West Pier" There were also some pretty cool boathouses along the waterfront, a recurring theme in Brighton seems to be a real mix between old and new

Well the circus (the main reason for my venturing out in the rain) was pretty interesting, there was a young girl (6ish) dressed up in a cowboy outfit with three little ponies who did tricks, a trapeze artist, a girl who juggled 5 soccer balls and tennis racquets, a gorgeous guy with silk knots, tight rope walkers, comedy skits involving the audience in food fights and air guitar showdowns, cheerleaders dressed up like Pocahontas, the ringmaster (about 60 years old) with trained budgies who climbed stairs and went down slides, 4 big horses prancing around the tiny ring, a ring acrobat and dancing girls in-between acts who had very little purpose. Bit tacky like the pier but a fun night out nonetheless

Tuesday I was up early for hostel breakie (with coco pops - nice to have a hostel right on the beach!) and headed off to check out the Royal Pavilion - now this place is amazing and it's definitely worth coming to Brighton just for this. There is an audio guide included in the entrance price and it gives you sooo much interesting information about the palace - not even going to try and include all the history in here but this was a great supplement to my day at Windsor on Sunday, for more info check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Pavillion. Indian in style on the outside the inside was almost Chinese in design, I walked through the most magnificent dining rooms with huge chandeliers hanging from the dome in the roof, a gianormous kitchen, dancing rooms and more - such a shame you can't take pictures inside but this place is definitely worth checking out!

The Brighton Museum and Art Gallery was right next door (and free) so checked that out, stoked to find some pretty cool modern art and views about what its like to live in Brighton and the history of the town. The even had some Maori carvings in the "World Art" section and some information about body modification and creating positive body images for women - pretty interesting place!

Took a bus open double-decker bus (my first! and just like taking Chris's convertible out to Stonehenge it got pretty cold pretty quickly but you stick it out for the experience) and headed out of the city through the countryside up to a small pub at Devil's Dyke for lunch, it was a pretty cool view but didn't stay long as it was quite chilly up there. But noticed that they had zorbing - crazy that something that originated in NZ had spread all the way to this random place on the outskirts of Brighton - I guess they thought it was a lot of fun!

My last afternoon in Brighton was pretty quiet, checked out the aquarium - there was quite a line to get in and lots of crazy kids and young mums trying to control them inside as its still school holidays here so a bit mental but enjoyed it as I haven't been to an aquarium in ages.

Sat on the beach and read a book for a little bit, although weird because its a rocky beach instead of a sandy one and I didn't see one soul swimming! Took the bus back to London at 5ish for a quiet night at home - nice to get away for a couple of days out of London and the craziness of work for a bit!

Windsor

2007-08-24T18:59:00.000+12:00

19 August

One of the things left on my "list of things to do before I leave" was to check out Windsor Castle so last Sunday I headed out to check out Windsor and Eton Central (and of course the castle) with Sara and Fede. We had a great day out and cant believe how cheap it was to get there (only £15 return from Paddington for all three of us!)

So Windsor is a pretty impressive castle, here's a little bit of background info... It's the largest inhabited castle in the world (approx floor area 45,000 metres square) and the oldest in continual occupation dating back to the time of William the Conqueror, and is now one of the principal official residences of the Queen. We had a great couple of hours wandering around the castle and (although very anti-social) we learnt a lot with the free audio guides. Unfortunately St George's Chapel was closed (I guess being a Sunday) but it was still really pretty from the outside. (second on the left below)

The gardens at the castle were also pretty amazing, although I guess the Queen does live here sometimes so they have to be up to a pretty high standard : ) While we were there we also checked out the Queens Doll House and the State Apartments. The first was amazing as it has an amazing collection of miniature items that actually work. It was created as a gift to Queen Mary from the people, and to serve as an historical document on how a royal family might live during the period in England designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1924

After the castle we wandered around the town of Windsor for a little bit (and grabbed Subway for lunch as they do £2 chicken teriyaki with sub-of-the-day on Sundays!) Walked across the bridge, past all the crazy swans and down the main street of Eton Central, everything was closed (as it was Sunday) but it was still a pretty nice area of town. All in all a great little day trip out of London, cheap (to get there, though the castle is about £15 to get into), close, interesting, would definitely recommend a visit

Dublin

2007-08-16T00:31:00.000+12:00

10-12 August 2007

Well, this was to be my last city break (as Im leaving London at the end of the month) so we decided to make it a good one and five of us - Paul, Hayley, Reisha, PJ and I headed over to Dublin, Ireland for the weekend in search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

We caught an 8pm flight out from Heathrow and it was about 11 before we got our junk dropped off at the hostel and headed out for a night of partying at Temple Bar (no comments guys! not the actual Temple Bar anyway just around the area as it was close to our hostel). Had a great night out drinking Bulmers (cider) as we'd started the evening with a couple of those in the departure lounge and finished the night off by dancing away at Fitzsimmons to R&B until the wee hours - note Dublin (along the Liffey) is beautiful at night, yay for Ha'penny Bridge!

On the Saturday morning we were up fairly early to grab hostel breakie (addicted to soya brown bread now!) and head to the Guiness Storehouse before the queues got too long - good thing we did too as they were all the way down the street when we got out 3 hours later! Was nice to walk along the Liffey in daylight this time despite the light showers, took lots of reflection photos!

Had a great time at the Guiness Storehouse, this was my third brewery in the last couple of months so interesting to see how they set it up and promote their beer differently. Here they had a great overview of the ingredients, including an indoor waterfall, got to see how the old barrels were made - what a mission! And was great to have my first pint of Guiness from the top of the Storehouse with a 360degree view out over Dublin

That afternoon (after a quick pub lunch) we headed to Kilmainham Gaol which played an important part in Irish History as it held many of the most famous people involved in the campaign for Irish Independence. Many of the leaders of the 1916 Easter uprising were held and executed here. We also saw "Madonna and Child" which Grace Gifford (who married Joseph Plunket hours before he was executed here) painted on the wall of her cell in 1923 in the famous Victorian Wing (pictured below)

We caught the tram back to town after wandering through the grounds of the modern art museum, pretty impressed with how green the grass was here we were all a little bit too tired to wander in and have a look around but that didnt stop me taking random squirrel pole pictures! Caught the tram back through town to the hostel and had a couple of hours to chill before heading out once again to check out the Dublin nightlife. With 50% of its population under 25, Dublin is very much more lively at night.

We finished off a busy Saturday by heading out to dinner at Cafe de Siene, it was a beautiful place, long and narrow with the decor changing as you moved into it depths and eventually ending up in a greenhouse looking room which turns into a dancefloor after the sun goes down. I was feeling a little bit under the weather (evil cough has resurfaced but will have a chest x-ray when I get back to London) but a few mudslides (made with Baileys - the Irish cream!) helped fix that!

After two big nights we had a late start on Sunday morning, checking out of the hostel and wandering through town taking the touristy photo by the Molly Malone statue which commermorates the beautiful fishmonger (and theme of the song) who piled her trade on the streets of Dublin, but died young, of a fever. It was erected in 1987 to celebrate the city's first millennium and is known colloquially as "The Tart with the Cart"

Once everyone had grabbed some breakie, our first stop that morning was Trinity College. Here I played tour guide by reading out the blurb in Reish's Ireland Lonely Plant while we looked around. The line for the Book of Kells (an ornately illustrated manuscript produced by Celtic monks around AD800) was huge so will have to add that to my list of things to do when I come back and visit. We did check out "Sphere within Sphere" a modern sculpture in the courtyard outsdie the new library that is supposed to "speak of the challenges with which technology faces us" For me it was a reminder that we were killing the earth, not only on the surface but with deep irreperable damage to its heart and soul, anyway... Trinity College's Modern Art Museum closed on sundays so we drowned our sorrows with a bit more Guiness at ODonaghue's

The next touristy thing to cross off the list was Christ Church Cathedral. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_Cathedral,_Dublin for background info. It was a pretty impressive building though we didnt bother to venture inside and instead just took some fun pics outside, great that it was so bright/warm out that everyone could wear sunnies instead of the raincoats we'd donned the day before

Outside Christ Church we wandered past some people eating fish and chips and Paul couldnt refrain from asking where they had bought them. Good thing he had too as we ended up just around the corner in Leo Burdock's, inadvertantly stumbling upon an Irish Treasure and the best damn fish'n'chips Ive had in a long time!

Dublin castle was only open between 2-5 on a Sunday but by the time we snaked through the queue in the rain the next available tour was 3:45 and we had to be at the airport at 5 so decided it was a bit tight and settled for checking out some amazing pieces as part of the 2007 Sand Sculpture Festival and watching a bit of Gaelic football (similar to Aussie rules) at the local pub back in the Temple Bar area.

Think we managed to cram quite a lot into a weekend especially with five different people's moods/expectiations to consider. Although not normally my style it was kind of nice to travel with a group of people seeing as my 7 week Europe trip (starting on the 2nd of September) will be completely on my own it was nice to have some company for my last city break.

One Day in London - 1 Aug 2007

2007-08-10T21:14:00.000+12:00

Seeing as Im leaving London in a month I decided to take a mid-week day off work (instead of sleeping in I stuck to my routine of getting up at 5:30am) and crossed four things off my "have to do in London before I leave" list - London Eye, Tate Modern, Natural History Museum and Avenue Q - it was quite a day!

The day started bright and early with a few of my cubs. As part of 21st World Scout Jamboree held in the UK and celebrating the centenary of Scouting they had organised a sunrise ceremony (at 7:30am seeing as some of the kids are only 6!) for all the Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorers to remake their promise and then go on the London Eye so I was definitely along for the ride. The London Eye had recently been taken off my list of things to do since I did the math and figured out how much they make off it each day - ridiculous - especially when there are lots of free/cheap ways to get views of London - although not from 135m! But it was great to do this with the kids : ) It was a pretty clear day so nice views (although probably not worth the 15 pounds the 30 minute flight costs normally) It might be lovely at night but with the huge pods fitting around 30 people its not really that romantic. I know its the largest observation wheel in the world but I cant help thinking there are probably other cities that look more beautiful from above and that the smaller ferris wheels are pretty cute in their own right and not as sterile (nor the line as long) as for the London Eye. Still a fun way to spend a Wednesday morning though : )

Walked up Southbank (kinda nice to do it the other way) from the London Eye and caught up with Anna (Swedish roommate) to check out the Global Cities exhibtion at the Tate Modern (as well as wandering around the rest of the gallery). The Global Cities exhibition looks at "the changing faces of ten dynamic international cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, Sao Paolo, Shanghai and Tokyo" It used London as a comparison on size, speed, form, denisty, diversity and it was amazing. If you're lucky enough to be in London before the 27th of August check it out (remember Tate is free!) otherwise check out http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/globalcities/

Next stop on this crazy London Day Trip was the National History Museum with Belinda (as she was heading home - via Italy - a couple of days later). The building itself was really impressive even before we got inside but the displays were amazing!! This was the first Natural History Museum I had been to as the one in DC was closed for refurbishment when I was there, so it was amazing to see so many dinosaur skeletons (not that I ever doubted they roamed the earth but this really hammers the impact of that home!) and other information about so many amazing creatures we still share the earth with - was a great afternoon!

After quickly calling home to eat dinner and open a new bank account I headed back into town to see Avenue Q with Brady. What an amazing show, its like an adult seasame street where the main character is 22, just graduated with a BA in English and searching for his purpose and along the way it addresses some serious issues such as racism, pornography and homosexuality with in-your-face-honesty but in a light-hearted way. You have to see it to really know what I mean. For more details check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_Q. With songs like "Everyone's a little bit racist", "Im not wearing underwear today", "The Internet is for Porn" and "If you were gay, Id shout Horray" I had to buy the soundtrack and you can definitely get an idea of the mood of the show, if you get a chance, definitely see this one! We had a great night and finished off with a couple of pints in the sofa lounge of Waxy's Little Sister - great way to end a crazy day - cant believe I only have a month left in this amazing city!

Visitors from NZ

2007-08-07T00:14:00.000+12:00

One of the coolest things about living in London (as opposed to Tokyo) is that people are more likely to take up the offer of crashing in my lounge room - and at the end of July Kerry came to stay at my place for a week (between travelling in Germany and Aussie) and we also managed to catch up with Andrew (between a TopDeck tour of Europe and heading to Sweden to study). Was great to see you guys here! Needless to say it was a pretty crazy week!

With Kerry a little tired from the trip over it was nice to chill at home on Wed night and see loads of pictures from the past year or so at home - awesome to see familiar faces again! Thursday it was Brady's birthday so we went out to have steak for his dinner and then introduced Kerry to a few of the local watering holes around Soho including Waxy's and a bit of dancing at the Roxy. Friday was another quiet night in but we were saving ourselves for a big weekend.

Saturday we went for a big London touristy walk to take all the pictures you have to do. The District Line was suspended eastbound from Enbankment (what a surprise!) so we wandered from there all the way up Saint Pauls and up the Monument (this was closing for major refurbishment on the Monday and I'd never been up before so it was great to seize the opportunity) £2 and 311 steps later we got a pretty nice view out over London.

We continued our wander past the Tower of London and over Tower Bridge to the other side of the Thames to check out the painted guitar display - stoked it was still there! Went to Borough Markets to soak up the atmosphere (and grab some free samples) before deciding on some delicious cheese, fresh potato and rosemary bread and cherry tomatoes for a picnic lunch enjoyed outside Tate Modern and then wandered up the Oxo Tower for a free view of the city from the other side of the Thames - gotta love London!

Checked out all the weird and wonderful buskers at Southbank, watched some grafitti artists at work in the skatepark and played in the fountain / art "Appearing Rooms" before taking more compulsory pictures of the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Walked down Whitehall and checked out the security at Downing Street, saw some horseguards and then wandered up through Admirality Arch and St James's Park to Buckingham Palace. A couple of final photos at Picadilly Circus and a stop off at the NZ shop for some much deserved pineapple lumps and our great London tour was over.

That night was Steele and Belinda's leaving party (going to miss you guys!) and it was at a pretty funky club called Strawberry Moons just off Regent St. There were a lot of hen's parties going on so Kerry had a great time getting photos with heaps of random girls and they even managed to convince me to get up on stage to take a shot from the half naked Vodka boy! Had fun dancing the night away and it was a great send off for Steele and Bel who head back to Aussie on Friday!

Sunday we were up bright and early for breakfast at Weatherspoons and the tube up to Kentish Town for the Church (Gow and Nina might remember how this goes!) It was Kerry and Andrew's first time and it's pretty hard not to have a good time there. For those of you who dont know the Church (you should have from my previous posts, although Im not as regular a church-goer as some!) its 4 hours on a Sunday afternoon of drinking, dancing away to classic songs and some good old NZ vs Aussie rivalry / patriotism - oh and they have a stripper to : P

Monday was back to work for me and Kerry took a rest day hanging out around Fulham, met Andrew after work and cooked dinner for both the boys before heading to the Simpsons movie - perfect way to end a crazy day at work and topped it all off with a couple of pints at So Bar afterwards. Kerry checked out the free London tour on Tues and headed up to start life in Edinburgh early on Wednesday morning. Was great to catch up with friends from back home and show them around London as well as just chill - thanks for visiting guys!

July in London

2007-08-03T00:33:00.001+12:00

In between watching the start of the first leg of the Tour De France, travelling to Northern Italy to see the Artic Monkeys, going to Amsterdam for Paul's birthday and showing Kerry and Andrew the wonderful sights of London I also managed to cram in some other fun stuff : )

By the same series that saw me watching Swan Lake for free at the end of May in Trafalgar Square with Nelsons Column as the backdrop, at the start of July I went to Potters Field Park and watched a free screening of Tosca (with subtitles) in the rain with the Tower Bridge in the background - it was a pretty surreal experience! Pretty cool place to be after the sun sets too, really lovely view down the Thames, saw Tower Bridge raised to let a boat through and then wandered across it to take the tube home.

Had a great time checking out Hyde Park for the Tour De France and was pretty impressed with Speakers Corner, great that people have a place to express their views, no matter how much they differ from mine. Have matured a bit since my socio-eco-femi-nazi days of high school so didnt particpate in the debates but had to bite my tongue a bit (might join in next time) remember "A different point of view is simply a view from a place that you're not" - see why I want to work for HSBC!

Juliette was heading back to Paris (has been awesome to hang out with you in London babe!) early July so we caught up one night after work and spent the evening in Camden chatting in Japanese with people staring at us while we enjoyed 2 pound Chinese market food for dinner before checking out some live Acoustic music. Love hanging out with Juliette - we always end of doing such awesome random stuff and having a great time, will miss you babe!

Got free tickets (yay for signing up for random emails) to a filming of the Album Chart Show at Koko one Monday night so went along with Sara and Phil. Shame we had to spend 4.5 hours waiting outside in the rain while they restored power to the club (it got struck by lightening) which meant Kings of Leon (the main band we went to see) werent performing but we still got to see Rufus Wainwright, Fergie and The Enemy perform so a pretty crazy way to spend a Monday!

To finish off the month, we bought Sara's stepsister and her friend back with us from Rolo as they wanted to explore London for a week or so and we took them to some of our favourite dance spots - Roxy and Slug : P Caught up with Andrew for dinner at Misato, Anna for dinner at Misato (I hardly ever eat out at restaurants but when I do Im going to my favourite Japanese one in Chinatown!), went to see Die Hard with Brady and had lunch with Robert at Leon, gotta love that place, If you're ever in London you HAVE to eat there! My favourite is Roasted Sweet Potato Falafal with basmati rice that they serve at lunchtimes - yummy! A pretty good July all round : )

When in Amsterdam...

2007-07-28T00:29:00.000+12:00

20-22 July

Well the 20th of July was Paul (my cousin's) birthday so three of us decided to go to Amsterdam for the weekend to celebrate. It poured on Friday morning so we were delayed at Heathrow for three hours but had the most animated in-flight safety demonstration aboard KLM and finally made it to our hostel at around midnight. Just enough time to dump our stuff and head out for a few drinks and a dance until 4am.

The next morning I was up early to beat the crowds and head to 267 Prinsengracht (otherwise known as Anne Frank House). It was great to walk around - everything is really well displayed - and amazing feeling to step behind the bookcase and up the narrow stairs to where they were hiding. It brought a sense of completeness to my other experiences of the Holocoust on my travels and I feel like Im getting a much more complete picture of a part of history I really had little knowledge about before this trip. Was definitely glad I got in early as the line was all the way around the corner by the time I got out.

Paul and Hayley met me after I'd finished at Anne Frank House (they'd both already been to Amsterdam before and done it then) and we decided to hire some old-school Dutch bicycles for the afternoon, it was a bit crazy cycling through the city but beautiful to get out for a bit

In search of windmills we cycled about 10 miles down the Amstel and then back up the other side, it was such a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon and we got some great pictures!

We returned the bikes at around 2ish and decided it was time for

lunch at a cute little cafe, so stopped for a couple of pints of Amstel - the beer not the river : P before continuing with the afternoon's adventures. Checked out Dam Square and a Dutch verion of Punch and Judy, it was classic - even if we didnt understand a word : P

Paul and Hayley went back to the hostel for a rest and I wanted to wander around the city a bit more and checked out the Sex Museum - pretty good value for money (I think it was about 3 Euros) and had lots of weird and wonderful stuff with some photos even dating back to the 1800s! Amsterdam itself was just a really cool city to walk around, I think growing up in Wellington its really nice to have water around so all the canals here help make it a really calm and picturesque city. It is also really well organised with cyclists having the right of way, outdoor urinal stands for men and delicious food stalls for everyone to visit after the coffee shops.

That evening we had booked a canal cruise around the city for 8:30pm. Turned out to be perfect timing with the sun setting while we were on the cruise and it was awesome to get to see the city from another angle and get out to some parts of town we hadn't even seen before. Hayley was so excited when we found the parking garage just for bikes!

Finished off the evening with dinner at a Thai restaurant and a couple of pints, nice relaxing way to end a pretty busy day.

The next morning we decided tocheck out a few more of the touristy things to do around the city. Up bright and early again we grabbed breakie at the hostel - sooo good! They had quality cereals, fresh bread, ham, cheese, salami and spreads (including the awesome chocolate one I tried at Nina's house in Bremen) and orange juice and coffee so a great way to start the day. Hayley and I went to see the Van Gogh Museum and Paul checked out the Rijksmuseum.

After a morning of culture we decided to continue in that fashion and ended up at the Heineken Experience. This is on the site of the old factory and was very much commercialising the whole idea of the Heineken lifestyle (like crazy motion master rides of what its like to be a Heineken bottle) but there was a great time had by all. And at 11 euros for the walk through that included 3 (half) pints and a souviner bottle opener, it wasnt a bad little way to spend our last afternoon

After that we just had enough time to take a photo outside one of the famous Bulldog Coffee Chain stores and then chill at the airport until our flight back. Had a great weekend in Amsterdam. Thanks to Paul and Hayley for organising/coming along! What an amazing city! Would love to come back in the springtime and see all the tulips - just know when I get back to Europe (at some stage...) that Amsterdam will definitely be on my list to go back and visit!

Despite it raining in the afternoon in Amsterdam it was beautiful weather flying back into Heathrow. And I got some great view of places I've come to know and love in London

Northern Italy

2007-07-19T05:10:00.001+12:00

13-15 July

This weekend I took a trip with my rooomate (Sara) to Northern Italy to catch up with her family and friends. We started out fairly early on Friday morning (even though our flight wasnt until 11 all the cheap flights are from airports quite a way out of the city centre). Arriving in Torino in the afternoon we were immediately hit by the warmth as we stepped off the plane (so much nicer than the grey rainy London morning we had left!) Managed to figure out how to take the train into the city centre and the bus to the park while Sara liaised with her friends about meeting up later. We had some time to chill before they arrived so peered over the fence to catch glimpses of the bands backstage and sunbaked in the huge area that would later that night be jammed with people

Saras friends arrived and we pitched our tents a little away from the central festival area. After settling into the park with a few drinks we decided to grab something to eat before the concert started and had a whole pile of caravan vendors to choose from - not selling chips and hot dogs but instead pita breads and foccacia rolls - nice but festival food is always pretty expensive.

Around 10pm the bands started up - pretty amazing atmosphere and you can never complain about a free gig in Italy - what a great excuse to come here for the weekend! Check out http://www.trafficfestival.com/en/chi.asp for more information on the Traffic Free Festival that happens every year in Turin. On Friday night, The Coral and then the Arctic Monkeys played and was stoked with how many songs I knew. Managed to mosh our way pretty much to the front and had a great time.

After the concert finished at around 1-ish we headed back to the campsite to wind down and got to sleep at around 3. Up at 5 to find our way to the central station and buy tickets to head towards Sara's hometown, Rolo. Because it was a Saturday we couldnt go the whole way but training through Northern Italy from Torino to Modena was pretty nice - even if we napped a little along the way. Sara's older brother Mario picked us up from Modena and we drove to her place, it was lovely and her parents were so surprised and happy to see her.

Unfortunately we could only stay at their place briefly because one of Sara's best friends Marty was having a BBQ for her birthday in the park so we drove out there. Had a great time chatting to people (despite my very limited Italian!) delicious food (we had Argentine steaks and salad followed by home-made Tiramisu), and just relaxing in the park - but not in the sun because it was too hot!

Came home at around 6ish and were greeted with one of the biggest watermelons Ive ever seen so we had huge slices each which was the perfect way too cool off after being out in the park for the last 6 hours. Spent the early evening chilling and then went out to dinner with Sara's parents and her younger brother to a delicious fish restaurant and had my very first espresso - thats what you get if you ask for a coffee in Italy!

That night we headed to a house party in this huge old house in the middle of the countryside. Sara's older brother Mario and some of his friends rent out this place but its not up to standard for people to live in so they use it as a workshop/studio area (as most of them are artists) and once a year they have a huge party there - which just happened to be the one Saturday we were in Rolo - stoked! The party was great with beer on tap in two bars inside and out, a DJ, awesome art adorning the whole place and a bunch of friends I'd met earlier that day at the BBQ.

We got home from the party at about 6am so after having a huge day on Saturday its no doubt that Sunday was pretty relaxed. It was even hotter than Saturday so plans to walk the three blocks to the centre were traded in for chilling at Sara's and her next door neighbour's place.

One of the coolest things about this trip was that I already knew 3 or 4 of the faces as they'd come to stay at our place in London so great to see them again and get to meet Sara's other friends. Her family were lovely and it was so nice of them to welcome me into their home. Although I will come back and travel around Italy on my own in September its not very often you get the chance to come to a small town and hang out with a real Italian family - it was a great experience!

Italian people seem really emotional in their non-verbal communication. I watched a lot of it this weekend - not knowing much more than Ciao! - but never got sick of listening to people speaking Italian and trying to figure out what it why they were talking about by their tone and facial expresssions etc. Even the graffitti was lovely!

We flew out of Bologna-Forli airport a little late but managed to make up the time in the air arriving into Stansted at midnight, this would have been fine as the last cheap bus back into town runs at 1am and I only had carry-on luggage but I was stuck in the Non-EU passports queue for 90 minutes! So by the time I got through I made an executive decision to sleep at the airport, catch the first bus back into town in the morning and go straight to work. Sara and her friends opted to buy tickets on the 24hr bus and got back home at about 4, while I had a nice fairly solid 5 hours sleep on the seats in the Bus Waiting Room - what a great end to the weekend!

London Le Grand Depart 2007

2007-07-13T00:33:00.000+12:00

Last weekend London was lucky enough to host the Prologue and Stage One of the Tour De France - the first time it has ever started in the UK in its history (104 years!) so I figured I'd better take advantage of it. I took lots of photos and videos over the weekend but here are a few of my favourite. There was a great vibe all around London with lots of Londoners and visitors out on the streets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France

The Opening Ceremony on Friday night saw Trafalgar Square completely packed out. They introduced all the teams and all the riders and had a free concert afterwards : )

After watching the Aussies beat the Saffas at the Walkabout on Saturday morning, we headed down to town to check out all the hype before the Prologue began that afternoon

St James's Park

Everyone came out to watch (and capture their memories on film!) . We even saw Didi Senft (the Tour de France Devil) watching the race from a prime spot outside Buckingham Palace

In the Prologue Riders had an amazing route through town, past buckingham palace and down the Mall

Crowds watched the prologue on the big screen in Parliament Square and lined the route to get the best view

On Sunday I was up pretty early to get a good spot to see the riders at the Start of Stage One. The official start was at Greenwich but I managed to see them all cycle through town past the Guerkin and head off over Tower Bridge!

And what major sporting event could take place without loads of advertising and freebies that you don't need from T-Mobile in bright pink - blow-up hands, hats, t-shirts and flags!

After all the riders cycled past the crowd dispersed but there was still heaps of cycling related things going on around town, in St Paul's Courtyard you could try out some "interesting" bikes and there were a few mountain bikers doing stunts including a one-metre bunny-hop!!

Headed out to Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon (can you believe I've never been there and Ive lived in London for en months now - totally kicking myself about that one!) But it was the perfect day for it (especially considering the awful weather we've had so far this summer) and I even managed to pick up a nice little tan - woohoo!

Whether you decided to get your photo taken with Lance Armstrong or just chill watching the rest of Stage One on the big screen it was a beautiful afternoon in the park - amazing finish, great atmosphere with Millar winning King of the Mountains and Robbie McEwan taking out the stage in an amazing finish! http://www.tourdefrancelondon.com/en/308.asp

There was a youth cyslists race around the Serpentine and through Hyde Park

As well as displays of old, weird and wonderful alternatives to your normal bicycle

A leg of the Handcyclists World Cup also took place in Hyde Park that afternoon

It was an amazing weekend with everything cycling in the capital drawing everyone out of their houses to enjoy the sunshine, what a great way to welcome in July - hopefully the sun stays out : )

June Highlights

2007-06-27T23:56:00.000+12:00

Michaela's visit at the start of June took a lot out of me as we had a crazy week and crammed a fair amount in so the week or so after that was pretty chilled and then I got back into the swing of things and resumed normal pace for the rest of June, Here are some pictures of the highlights : )

The 11th was Sara's (Italian roommate's) Birthday so we decided to have people around for dinner, have to admit it was a bit of a mission getting home at 6:30 and having lasagne for 10 people cooked by 8pm but we managed to pull it off and we had a great time, even moved the table out into the garden so had a nice night chilling outside (inbetween showing new flatmates around!) Two friends of her's visited from the 13th - 18th (great to meet them as Im going over for a weekend in July) so we went dancing at Roxy and Koko and cruised around Portobello Market.

I didnt have any travelling plans for the whole month of June but I managed to have a couple of amazing weekends, with 16/17 June being particularly international. On the Saturday Jess (old soccer buddy from Vic) was over on a long weekend from Hamburg for a work function so we caught up over lunch and chocolate cake at my place before I headed out to a party at Ania (Polish mate's) place with all her friends which was awesome to chill and catch up as I havent seen her in ages. And then on the Sunday it was Juliette (French friend for Japan's) birthday picnic in Greenwich Park so had a pretty amazing weekend :)

For a couple of days my cousin Tom (Paul's brother) was visiting on his way to France so it good timing that I was in London otherwise I would have missed catching up with him. We met on Sunday to have fish'n'chips at Anchor Bar by the Thames for lunch and then checked out the Refugee Festival on South Bank - I swear there's always free music and stalls and entertainment along there! After a busy weekend my evil cough came back so I had to take a few days off work but wasnt going to miss the opportunity for one final dinner with Tom and Paul. We went to Gaucho (an Argentine Steak Restaurant in Picadilly) inside was dimly lit with animal prints on the walls and we spent four hours there enjoying a delicious dinner - of course we had to order the steak! So Good! Dad would be jealous!

On Thurs the 21st four of us when to check out the Dave Dobbyn concert - kind of hypocritical that my first time to see him perform live would be in London not back home but it was a great atmosphere. There were two opening acts - the first sung the most beautiful version of "E Papa Wiari" Ive ever heard and then "Chris Cope and Band" played some pretty cool stuff (and the lead guitarist was gorgeous!!). Dave came on and everyone knew the words to his songs, he did all the favourites and a lot of new arrangements too, and involved everybody for "Welcome Home". It was just a great Kiwi night out and gives you a lot of pride in your country, unfortunately I didnt get a pic with him to add to my "Famous Friends" list of Elemeno P and Steriogram but I did manage to catch his water bottle (with cat-like reflexes) so might have to load that up on Facebook.

That weekend there was a free "West End Live" event happening in Leicester Square where the cast from a whole bunch of top West End shows were performing 15 minute "enticers" alongside a load of other musical acts. http://www.westendlive.co.uk/ I was there for 12-3 on Sat and managed to see Dirty Dancing, Kids Hip Hop Performance, A Midsummer Nights Dream, Fame, Mamma Mia, Chicago, Kids Chorus/Dance Groups and Avenue Q - so definitely have a few things to add to the ever growing "Must-do before I leave London" list

Saturday arvo I caught up with and Aussie mate of mine, John to watch the NZ vs SA Tri-Nations game at the Walkies in Shaftesbury Ave, pretty tense but the last ten mins were amazing - looking forward to the NZ vs AUS game this weekend! Headed to John's mates place in Leytonstone (East London) for a BBQ party on their rooftop and had a great time hanging out with a bunch of randoms all dressed up in trashy 80's costumes (not too sure what the theme started out as but it ended up being fun)

Back at the West End Live on the Sunday to catch Stomp, Menopause: The Musical, Wicked and Bollywood dancers, but the most amazing was an electric string quartert called "Stringfever" http://www.stringfever.co.uk/ Hunt around for some videos of them, especially the "History of Music" it was amazing. Caught up with Sara's other Italian friends who were visiting and grabbed a coffee as West End Live wound down but definitely and amazing way to spend a weekend - yay for free stuff in London!

Had been out to a Green Day cover band gig on Friday at the Swan with a Candian mate Brady (who I met on the Becks tour in Bremen and came along with a mate of his Jordan to a BBQ at Paul's earlier on in the month) who is now crashing in our lounge for a couple of weeks while he finds his feet in London so the last week on June involved quite a few late night chats (good thing I don't start work until 9:30!). It also meant I had someone to celebrate Canada Day with, good memories as I was actually in the Rockies for the last Canada Day, so checked out the live music and festivities in Trafalgar Square on Friday and finished up a busy weekend with a few drinks at the Maple Leaf in Covent Garden and dancing at Zoo Bar in Leicester Square until 3am on a Monday morning with new friends was a great finish to a crazy weekend

I was all over the show this weekend, between Freddie's (ex-Swedish housemate) leaving drinks on Thursday after work, catching up with Ian in Cockfosters for dinner on Thur, Lunch with Juliette in Greenwich on Fri, Free outdoor movie called Monsoon wedding (entirely in Hindi with no English subtitles - awesome!) near the painted/signed guitar display at London Bridge on Fri night, up early on Sat with Katia to watch us lose the game, another BBQ and dancing at Revolution in Clapham...

Okay so now its technically July but its all part of the one weekend so our Sunday day trip out to Greenwich can slot in here, we had lunch at Slug before heading out to the Greenwich market and the Prime Meridian of the world (the rain stayed away - just!) There was yet another BBQ to attend - this time at Juliette's - she goes back to France on Sat : ( After that we headed back into town and watched our Saffa friends (Greg and Dave) in a metal gig at Tottenham and then finished off the weekend with the aforementioned Canada Day antics. Good times. If things continue on this way I may have to do more than one blog post a month though. Glad life is still keeping me on my toes - no point in slowing down now!

One year on...

2007-06-26T23:26:00.000+12:00

Seeing as its my one year anniversary of the trip (I left NZ on 26 June 2006) I decided chocolate cake for afternoon tea at work was in order - yay for M&S Swiss Rolls : )

I wanted to write something deep and philosphical (dont think I can even spell it and Im not great with words) and I thought there were some things that deserved a mention on this anniversary. Firstly I wanted to say a huge thanks to my family and friends back home and around the world for your support this year (Big Warm Fuzzy Melissa Hug!) Thanks for your emails, phonecalls, presents, comments, chocolate fish, photos and visits (keep them coming!) Its been amazing and I can't believe its less than 6 months before I will be back home with some of you.

I could say this year has gone really quickly, which in some respects in has but Ive also managed to cram in quite a lot of stuff. Its great to flick back through this blog and reminisce. Yes Ive taken all the amazing pictures of the Rocky Mountains, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Sydiving, Niagara Falls, Times Square, Big Ben, Stonehenge, The Eiffel Tower etc but at the end of the day its the things that haven't made it into this blog that are the most amazing; the way I can wander down streets where the houses are all attached in London and not think its weird anymore and its the D&M chats until the wee hours with the Polish guy in the Krakow hostel, The Scottish guy I met in Oxford and the Canadian guy I met in Bremen that have really made this trip worth it.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes"

Thanks to everyone I have met along the way, so many people have been so kind to me and I want to repay this kindness - even if I can't do this directly to them, I like to think I can project it out into the world. I have loved being able to open my home, travel to other's homes and spend time with people from all around the world, and I have learnt so much from these conversations, but I think Ive lived up to my profile of "travelling the world to open my mind and heart" and I look forward to continuing this in my last six months.

Plans for these last six months have changed a little bit but it should still be exciting. I've bought a rail pass for September so will cover Italy, Greece, Switzerland and Southern Germany (finishing with Oktoberfest). Ive got an evil lingering cough so not up to doing the camping tour in the Western Desert and cruise down the Nile in Egypt this time round so have decided to head off to Scandanavia for the couple of weeks in October before leaving Europe for two weeks each in Thailand in the Philippines in November and home in time for graduation in December. Should be fun

Well, sorry this has been a really wordy post, I couldnt find many pictures to express the way Im feeling about how much Ive learnt from travelling this past year, but just to remind you Im still the same old Melissa you all know and love, here is pic of me playing inside the water fountain at South Bank a couple of Sunday's ago - good times!

Peace and Love xx

Lunch In Paris

2007-06-12T00:38:00.000+12:00

5th June 2007
Just so happens to be Mark's Birthday - Happy 21st babe!

We had a pretty early start, but if you're planning to go to Paris just for the day then I guess it's to be expected - and the sunrise at 4am was beautiful!

Taking the Eurostar (not actually as expensive as Id first thought especially seeing as they do youth rates for under 26's) we arrived to the station at 10:30 and Adeline met us there. It was great to see her again and we recognised each other straight away even though its been almost two years. The first thing we did (after grabbing a quick crossoint for breakie) was head straight up to Basilique du Sacre Cour, it was a beautiful building and so were the views from the top of the hill out over the city.

Having Adeline to show us around was amazing (especially seeing as we didnt really have time to get lost). We wandered through the artsy markets of Monmarte, a guy made a silhoutte of me out of a single piece of black paper and scissors and we tried on buree's - look how French I am! (okay so when you're writing this down it doesnt seem so funny but in my head you should have a French accent when you read this : P)

We wandered back down the hill towards the town and hopped aboard the Metro, gotta love the great public transport connections in all major cities in Europe! For our one meal in Paris we decided to get crepes from a street vendor, Ive had them in Japan and England with sweet toppings on but for lunch I went for ham, cheese and egg and it was delicious. We took a break to soak up the rays, eat lunch and wave at all the tourists on the floating restaurants on the Le Siene (river that runs through the city) before another wander.

With Adeline guiding us we just happened to stumble upon Notre Dame and later on, the Lourve. Unfortunately the Lourve happened to be closed on Tuesdays (something to keep in mind if anyone else is crazy enough to go to Paris just for the day - not that you'd be able to get around the whole thing in one day anyway!) But it was nice to chill outside for a little bit.

We walked past the Place De La Concorde and through Jardin Des Tuilertes (a big park in the middle of the city - kind of reminded me of the National Mall in DC with the Washington monument!) and then we wandered along Champs De Elysees to sit down a little cafe for a bit of afternoon tea and a coffee. We were just sitting quietly chatting and enjoying the afternoon sun in the outside part of the cafe when all of a sudden a group of armed policeman made a row along the footpath in front of us and about ten minutes later a group of protestors showed up. Adeline said it was something to do with them outsourcing a call centre of a telephone company and explained that protests were at the essence of French culture, so I had to get a photo looking like a hippy in from on the armed policemen!

The two big "must-see's" in France were a great way to end our trip, we wandered all the way to the end of Champs De Elysees to be greeted by the Arc De Triomphe - I still dont understand why they build these amazing structures in the middle of roundabouts... the same thing happened in Madrid too but it makes it so hard to take a decent picture! And we finished off the day with a photo of the three of us in front of Tour Eiffel.

Mick was pretty tired after an intense day covering as much of Paris as we could so she chilled in the park for a bit while I went up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower. There were huge queues to take the lifts up but none for the stairs so I decided to walk up (you can only walk up as as high as the second level) and although I didnt have time to take the lift right to the top, the views from the Eiffel Tower out over Paris in the late afternoon were still pretty amazing.

Well, we managed to cram about as much into Paris in a day as possible. It was a great chance to catch up with Adeline and awesome to take Mick to another country for the day on her visit. Had an amazing experience with you guys : )

An American in London

2007-06-09T01:33:00.000+12:00

2 - 6 June

Well, it was amazing for Mick to come and visit me in London for a week. She's a great mate from uni in Japan and took great care of me when I was in the States, driving down from Chicago to Texas to pick me up and then I got to stay with her family in Michigan and at her place in Chicago for a week. When I left I wasnt sure when Id next see her again so stoked that she could come over on a whim between jobs and I could repay some of her kindness and show her around the city! Seeing as we only had enough time to drop off bags at home before leaving for Birmingham on Friday (and its light till about 10pm these days) we took the scenic walk through town past Buckingham Palace on they way home on Saturday night

Sunday was absolutely gorgeous weather (it had been horrible for the whole previous week!). We started the day off with mass at St Paul's Cathedral - the choir boys were amazing!! and checked out the Gherkin (the Swiss Re Tower) in London's financial district, before crossing over the Thames to South Bank. We got wrangled into helping some Korean students with a psycology study of Eastern vs Western thinking (I dont think we fitted in with their stereotypical Western view...) And took a break to chill outside the Tate Modern to write postcards and shared a traditional roast for Sunday lunch followed by a stroll along the weird and wonderful South Bank. Did a few more of the major sights, attacked Big Ben and Westminster Abbey and wandered back along Enbankment and then back into town via The Strand and finishing up the afternoon with Covent Garden and an alcoholic mint and chocolate smoothie at TGI Fridays - we deserved it!

On Monday night after work we met up Juliette and went to watch "The Merchant of Venice" at no other than Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on South Bank. After a quick ice-cream by the river for dinner (once Mick figured out the crazy English monies) we headed into the theatre. For £5 you can get standing only tickets and be a groundling, and if you handle standing for 2.5 hours its definitely worth it!! The actors wandered through us to get to the stage and we were soo close to the action! The costumes were amazing and they did a brilliant job of this play, the second half was a bit easier to understand than the first (maybe just because we knew the characters more...) and the whole thing ended on a high with a big dance, it was amazing! Might be the best £5 Ive spent in London thus far - and thats a big call, Ive spent a lot of money here : P Check out http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/themerchantofvenice/

Mick had never met Juliette before as they were both studying at Meigaku for a year but I was there for Mick's second semester and Juliette's first so it was great to all get together to appreciate Shakespeare. It meant I loved Shylock's quote even more. It outlines that the end of the day we are all human "I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?" Its simple people : ) Shakespeare understood this back then and I cant believe the world is still struggling with this concept today!

The night view along the river after the play was beautiful and we couldnt resist taking another couple of pictures on the walk back to the tube - what a great way to spend a Monday eve!

On Wednesday I planned to take Mick to a Ceroc class but instead surprised her at the last minute with tickets to Lion King - also a treat for me! This is THE show that Ive wanted to see for ages (seeing as it never came to NZ and I was thinking about flying all the way to Aussie to see it so figure I had no excuse when its showing in London!) The show was amazing! You HAVE to see it! Our seats were right in the middle of the back row of the Lyceum Theatre which is huge but from that angle we looked down on the actors masks rather than straight at their faces so it was perfect. I had goose-bumps most of the way through, the play (compared to the movie) had a much more magical African feel to it with the colours and movements - simply amazing! There were some songs I didnt know (although I haven't seen the 2nd movie) but it was a great way to end Mick's stay in the UK - hope you had a great time babe, I loved having you here!

Anyone else who wants to visit feel free, Im around until September and would love to see you - its a lot of fun!

A Kiwi in Birmingham

2007-06-09T00:45:00.000+12:00

1-2 June

Tough (Matt) was over in the UK the past month to travel, catch up with family and among other things, compete in the GKR World Champs 2007!! I figure that was more than enough reason to take an overnight trip to Birmingham to catch up.

Completely shattered from sleeping at the airport and with Mick's flight arriving in at 6am we were stoked to make our 9:30am bus up. After wandering around the centre of the city for a bit (one wrong turn right at the start can completely screw you up...) we finally wandered into the middle of town and found the train station and straight out to Cadbury Land. A little bit different than I'd expected - my tour of Dunedin's Cadbury Land with Campbell had been more of a factory whereas this was just fun for kids, but there was still plenty of free chocolate to keep me happy!!

After staying in a pretty nice hostel not far from the city centre and taking full advantage of the free breakfast we started out pretty early to make it in time to the National Indoor Arena when the GKR Karate World Cup was being held. The opening ceremony was amazing, there were competitiors of all ages from NZ, AUS, USA and the UK and it was so inspirational to see everyone representing their country! Finally found Tough in the crowd (the orange hair doesnt stand out so much when its short!) but had a great time chatting to him for a couple of hours and catching up on each others lives. Turns out he wasnt competing until Sunday (huge bummer coz our bus was heading back on Sat night) but at least we got to catch up!

Had a pretty chilled afternoon after leaving the NIA, it was a beautiful day outside so we wandered back into town for a bit - there are some pretty nice buildings and public areas dotted around Birmingham : )

Being girls on holiday we decided to splurge and have Pizza Hut for lunch (dont think Ive had it since Ive been in the UK!) so we went all out and got this fancy one where the crust was turned into little cheesy rolls and came with a tangy dipping sauce - yummy! Of course after all that food we had to walk it off by checking out the shops (I didnt buy too much... but there were some pretty good bargains around) before catching out bus back to London at 6pm. Great to get away for little trips like this and it was awesome to catch up with Tough : )

May in London

2007-06-06T19:55:00.000+12:00

Looking back over the month, the weather has been pretty dismal (but hey Im living in London so I guess I can't complain), the "April Showers" finally arrived in May but unlike me to waste any time living abroad I still managed to make the most of it. Got away with the Cubs and Scouts to Cluster Camp at the start of May which was amazing (probably a good thing it wasnt too hot with all the running around outside we did), took a day trip to Oxford and met a Scottish guy who stayed at our place for a couple of days so more Haggis and Whiskey - woohoo! And in the middle of the month I ventured to Bremen and Hamburg for a long weekend (check out the huge blog entry)

Caught up with Jayne for Japanese dinner, Katia and Tom for Spanish food, Paul (Jr) and his mate Hayley for Friday night drinks. Had some serious issues with my flights home - just miscommunication as to whether they were 12 or 18 month round the world tickets that I had purchased - so a bit stressy in the middle of the month but think it is all worked out now although I will have less time in SE Asia (probably only enough time to do Thailand and the Phillipines) than I originally wanted but might get the chance to go to Egypt which would be cool.

Went to a "Sound of Music Sing-a-long" Movie this month at the Prince Charles Cinema (which has funky couchettes in the back!) which was amazing, it was a four hour show - they had a drag queen to warm us all up for the first half an hour and then showed the original movie with subtitles for all the songs so we could sing along! We even had little props to make us feel even more involved, and heaps of people were dressed up as nuns or brown papaer packages tied up with string! It was great because it automatically broke the stereotype of not being able to talk during a movie so people were really interacting and talking back to / cheering on / boo-ing certain characters all throughout the film, it was a great night out!!

The last weekend in May was a bank holiday (yay for four day weekends!) I spent Saturday night at Katia's house (the family she lives with were away) and we had a sophisticated night with a good dinner and nice wine before the ruckus of the Church the next day. With everybody having Monday off it was soo packed but we had a great time with Paul, Hayley and a few of their friends and ended up at Temple Walkabout until it closed. Monday was absolutely freezing (had to pull out my winter jacket again!) so just went out for pub food and enjoyed a quiet afternoon at home.

One of the coolest things this month was a free screening of Swan Lake in Trafalgar Square. We had been there earlier in the week when it was covered in grass for two days - which was amazing! And this time they had a huge big screen set up in front of Nelson's Column and they broadcast Swan Lake from the Royal Opera House for free so everyone could enjoy it, it was an awesome experience and they even gave us free inflatable cushions to sit on (seeing as the grass was gone and it was back to grey slabs of concrete : ( which came in handy as I took the last train out to Heathrow to sleep at the airport and meet Michaela off her flight from Chicago on Friday morning! Crazy!