6 Months on!

Crikey! 6 months already!

It's hard to believe that this time 6 months ago we arrived at our hotel in the lovely surroundings of Wembley Park, where Clint's work had kindly put us up until we'd got settled. In some ways it feels like an eternity ago (probably because we have tried to repress the memories of being stuck out in the suburban dreariness that is Wembley), but in other ways it feels like it has flown!

We've managed to survive our first London winter, and we can both say that it wasn't as bad as we thought it'd be (hindsight is a wonderful thing). It's quite funny that the only snowfall we had in London was only a few weeks ago halfway through Spring.....

Life in London is pretty good in general - always lots going on and new restaurants and bars to try out. Clint and I managed to score a pretty nice apartment in Zone 1 in Shoreditch which is spacious enough to accomodate the steady stream of overseas visitors....

Work is...well....work. As most of you know, I managed to score myself a job straight away at the London Development Agency as a Performance Analyst. It's been good experience and have made some great mates, however I feel that my work there is done.

So I have now managed to secure myself a permanent position at Visa Europe! I'll be based in Paddington in an office with a measly 1200 other staff - it even has its own canteen!

Clint is still waiting on his major project to get underway at work - they are still in negotiations over the contract! But hopefully that will all get underway soon, and his life of leisure will be over....

Holidays!

The best thing about work at the moment is being paid in pounds, then using those pounds to book holidays! Our next one is to Andalucia in Spain in 3 weeks time, where we'll be hiring a car and driving around to a few places such as Seville, Granada, Ronda and Cadiz - can't wait! Stay tuned for our next posting on that!

In the meantime, below is a quick overview of the few trips we've done since we've been here, in reverse chronological order.....

The Lakes District Road Trip

It'd been a while since Clint and I had done a road trip, so it was with great excitement we piled into the 7 seater Chrysler with a bunch of Kiwis and Brits, and hit the M1 a couple of weeks ago. The purpose of the trip: the take part in a 15km race in the Lakes District.

I was planning on walking it, while Lauren, Richard and James were planning on running. Stephen and Tane (who was too sick to race) were there for moral support, and Clint buggered off elsewhere to go mountain biking! The race was pretty tough, even for a walker, but the scenery was awesome.

There were some pretty serious competitors - I think I was the only entrant with a SLR camera hanging around their neck for most of the 15kms. I managed to finish it in under 3 hours though, and I even sprinted the last 20 metres when I saw Clint taking photos....


Other than the strenuous walk, the rest of the weekend involved a lot of complaining about how sore we were, a large number of games of speed scrabble and circle of death, a few other walks around the area, more mountain biking for Clint, a few wrong turns when trying to get to places, a picnic in freezing cold weather, and for some - a nice dip in chilly Lake Windemere....








All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable Weekend!


Belgium for Easter...



When we decided that we wanted to go away for the Easter long weekend, we were unsure of where to go. We then thought to ourselves 'Where can we go that has.......

.....great beer......

........lots of chocolate.......

.....and a free tour guide?'

And then it came to us: Belgium!

Clint's good friend Hans lives there, and it is world renowned for it's fancy beer and chocolate.... So we booked our EuroStar tix and had a leisurely trip down to Brussels on Good Friday.

Brussels was really nice, albeit a bit of a tourist trap.

Once we'd seen a few sites and done the token museum visit, we felt we'd fulfilled our tourist duties and found a pub to hole up in for the afternoon. We ended up at a very cute bar next to the Manekin Pis (Pissing boy) which is one of Brussels most famous tourist attractions.

As you can see, the weather wasn't the nicest (snow and sleet), so we decided to stay for a few more than planned and had an enjoyable arvo sampling some of Belgium's finest (and strongest) beers on offer. A very fun day indeed!

On the Saturday we jumped on a train to Antwerp - Belgium's second largest city, and the home town of Hans the crazy Belgian. We had an enjoyable day of checking out the sites, partaking in a little shopping, and of course having a few beers in a Belgian bar.

On the Saturday night we caught up with some of Hans' friends, who much to Clint's delight, took us back to their place to allow us to sample possibly Belgian's rarest beer: The Monk brewed Westvleteren trappist beer. Westvleteren has become so popular that due to fights occurring between eager customers at the Monastery where it is brewed, the only way to purchase it now is to call the monks on their special 'beer phone' and make an appointment to come and buy a crate of it. Clint was very impressed by it all....to me it just tasted like beer :P

On the Sunday Hans was kind enough to chaffeur us to Bruges for the day. A very pretty little town! Bruges is a World Heritage site and is known for its medieval architecture, amazing churches, and more recently, Colin Farrell.







We said our farewells to our gracious host Hans on Sunday night and trained it back to Brussels. We spent our last night relaxing and then wandered through the city centre before jumping on the train back to London. A very fun weekend, and made even more enjoyable by the ease of catching Eurostar and not having to deal with the airport palaver.

Amsterdam

Okay I've been writing for a while now and am keen to post this, so Amsterdam and Denmark may be a bit brief in the description! I'll try and come back later to post some more details....

A couple of weeks before our trip to Belgium we jumped on the plane to the infamous Amsterdam. We'd planned a bit of a group weekend away, and were joined by Mark and Amy from Adelaide, Lauren and Tane from Wellington, Hans from Belgium, and another kiwi couple who were friends with Lauren and Tane. We stayed in a semi-decent hotel in the red light district (non-intentionally I must say) which turned out to be quite handy, as Hans was able to make the most of the spare bed we had been given for no reason.

We were quite relaxed with our site seeing in Amsterdam, as the city tends to move at a very chilled out pace (which I'm sure has nothing to do with any of the herbal refreshments on offer).

It was a lot of fun having a small group of people there to hang out with, and most of our time was spent enjoying a few cold Vedett's in the many bars the city has to offer. It is an amazing city though - here is one of the many, many canals that you have to be careful not to fall into.....




For our last night in the Netherlands Clint and I caught the train up to a small fishing village North of Amsterdam called Enkhuizen. The weather was terrible so we spent the night in our lovely hotel room with the crazy wallpaper, then did a brief walking tour of the town in the morning before jumping back on the train to Amsterdam!

It was nice to see a little bit more of The Netherlands other than the 'dam - but as one of Clint's dutch friends told us, if you leave Amsterdam to see more of Holland, all you'll come across is a few farms and then Belgium!

Denmark

This is the first trip Clint and I took from London! We'd decided it would be great to head to Holbaek in Denmark to spend Christmas with my host family, the Glistrups, from my Rotary Youth exchange which was now 10 years ago (wow!). We were very spoilt by Henrik and Lone who filled us up with the many yummy Danish foods I had missed!

It was all quite strange for Clint, who didn't speak a word of Danish, and had never experienced such Danish things as dancing round the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve!

But we had a great time in Holbaek catching up with family and friends, and a big thanks to Henrik, Lone, Alex and Casper for looking after us and filling us up with food, Christmas beer, and schnapps!

After a few days in Holbaek we caught the train to Copenhagen and stayed with my friend Mathilde, in a very trendy area of the city. Copenhagen is such an awesome city! We had a great few days there, even though it was freezing! Going to Tivoli to see all of the Christmas lights was one of the highlights....





All in all it was a fantastic way to spend Christmas 2007!