Coffee is a Legal Drug

Went and saw The Hives on Friday night at the Brixton Academy. They rock. The lead singer is a complete showman but it works somehow without him coming across as a complete prat.
Anyway at the end of the evening the drummer went and chucked his drumsticks into the crowd - guess what I managed to catch with my wicked netball skills... Ok its pretty obvious but I managed to catch one of the drumsticks, I've decided that they make a much better souvenir than a t-shirt.

I saw my first live fox today! Almost mistook it for a cat at first but then proceeded to have a staredown before it ran off into the shadows.

Well I have not updated this yet with the accounts of my trip to Edinburgh a couple of weeks back. Unfortunately I have now left it too long to discuss in great detail all the happenings there because of the happenings last weekend. As I am currently in denial I find myself unable to utter the word beginning with R or those other two words beginning with W and C (all kiwis should know and understand). Hence I am unable to talk about my experiences in Edinburgh and Murrayfield.

However I may get organised enough to post some photos on the weekend and so will be able to converse about the rest of the weekend, not just about the performance of the A and B (being unable to say those two words either).

New trips planned - a day in Birmingham in November. Birmingham is the home of that most sacred place called the Cadbury Chocolate Factory which I'm sure I'll have time to worship.

Well this blog was supposed to be about my travels out in the big wide world but somehow it is also turning into a blog about my parents ever expanding menagerie back in NZ.

Anyway seasons come and go and despite the complete lack of anything resembling a summer we're heading into autumn over here. Leaves are turning orange and falling off trees, nights are getting dark sooner but the temperature is much the same. Which says something about our summer.
This all means as well that on the other side of the world all of you down in the Southern Hemisphere are approaching spring. Which means lots of rain and lambing season. And yes my parents zoo has expanded again.

See Exhibit A for the cute and fluffy critters that were birthed to Flopsey who was renamed Gigantus before anyone realised that she was actually pregnant and not fat.

The black lamb has been given the very politically correct name of Goggy (after a childhood mispronunciation of Gollywog) and the white one is The Beard after Carl Hayman's Beard.
I suggest that if the All Blacks don't win the World Cup that my parents eat The Beard for dinner.

Latest trip has been a week-long pilgrimage by David, Doug and myself around Ireland on the quest to drink the perfect Guinness. My humble opinion is that the first one I drank in Dublin was the best, oddly enough the one at the Guinness storehouse was not the best although it did have the best view to accompany it as we were 7 floors up. The factory was rather cool showing just how Guinness was made, my particular highlight was the video showing how they made the casks. Photo below is of the 3 of us standing in front of the water from the same river that makes Guinness.


It wasn't all just Guinness as we also went to a microbrewery in Dublin and tried a few of their brews as well as drinking Murphy's and Killkenny when we were further south.
During our day or so in Dublin we visited Trinity College where we saw the Book of Kells, but I think I was most impressed with the Reading Room. It contains stacks of old books and tiny spiral staircases leading to the second floor of stacks of old books. It was just what I have always imagined a library should look like. And it smelled like a library should.
Otherwise I was very impressed with how good a cup of coffee you can drink in Dublin, actually throughout all of Ireland. Most of their coffee stores are little independent cafes rather than chain stores.

Anyway the road trip began after we hired a car in Dublin and drove to Cork for a night there. On the way we managed to think we were lost when we actually weren't and saw many tractors out on the road. Not in fields, out on the roads mostly taking hay somewhere. The countryside was gorgeous, hills with large purple patches due to the heather. Conveniently the weather behaved itself for the whole trip as it was mostly sunny with a few overcast periods.
From Cork it was on to Killarny (seeing more tractors on our way) which is a horribly touristy town with the most expensive meals. We stopped off on route to Blarney Castle where we kissed the Stone so now apparently I am terribly eloquent (have you noticed?).

We were in Killarney for a few nights so that we could drive around both the Ring of Kerry and the Ring of Skellig (an extra bit on the end of the Ring of Kerry). The Ring of Skellig was probably a highlight of the trip as we found the western-most chocolate factory in the world where I managed to eat a lot of chocolate. This was a complete accident as I had no idea that it was there and so had no intention of directing us an hour out of our way just so I could eat chocolate. Really.
We did find a nice beach called Saint Finians Bay where we skipped stones, I think it may be the first time I got wet in the Atlantic. Rather cold so we didn't stay too long. The picture below is of the boys when we were getting our feet wet.


From Killarney we drove to Galway, again seeing many tractors out on the road. Stopped off to see the Cliffs of Moher on the way, rather impressive and a bit windy. Also went through the Burren and saw an old dolmen. The whole area there is just scattered with rocks, makes for a rather primeval atmosphere.
Galway is very cool although it made me appreciate how well sign-posted most places are back home. We found a few pubs with some live music, there was a band called No Banjo who unsurprisingly didn't have a banjo, and yet more Guinness. From Galway it was just another drive to Dublin, seeing yet more tractors, for our flight home (with a final drink of the black stuff at the airport).

This weekend we're off to visit cousin Sarah in Cambridge. She has been given the vitally important task of finding us a venue to watch the ABs game on Saturday so lets hope she comes through with the goods :)

Well despite it being August yesterday was cold enough to warrant pulling on my big coat and scarf to keep warm. Today is not much better. At this time of year its supposed to be summer!
At the moment I can see why the English spend so much time complaining about the weather as well quite frankly it sucks.

Ok so a while back David and I made it to Greece and as I have been slack here is (finally) all the news and a few photos to remind you of what I look like.

So we did what hundreds of people have done before us and left buying plane tickets a bit too late so ended up flying out of Gatwick airport at 6am. This meant getting up around 3am for a taxi ride as it was too early for the trains. So after getting hit with a £70 taxi fare (still cheaper then getting a later flight) we end up at the airport to find our flight has been delayed!

Eventually arrived in Athens where it was a nice 35°C and managed to find our hotel. The next few days were spent wandering around various ruins and eating lots of icecreams and cold drinks to cope with the heat. The Acropolis was impressive with the white marble gleaming in the bright sunshine. The view was spectacular although I found the wind made the experience rather dusty and the crowds meant it took a while to get around. Also there was scaffolding everywhere which got in the way of any views and constantly reminded me that we were still in the 21st century not BC.

I felt that the ruins of Zeus of Olympia more easily conveyed what they had looked like back in BC.


The rest of Athens was spent alternating between ruins and stopping to have a cold drink because of the heat. Highlights were the food, buying leather sandals and being able to turn a corner and have yet another ancient thing to look at. The guards at Parliament were very cool and get bonus points for their funny little walk.


Mykonos was wonderful, partly as it was the first time swimming in the sea since we left NZ but it was all white houses and good times. Took me a while to work out how the white houses were different to the ones in Spain but there they were very square while here the architecture was more rounded. So apart from a day trip to Delos our time here was spent lazing by a beach while drinking strawberry daiquiris (me) or beer (David). We went out quite a bit, were rather amused when one evening we found that the small restaurant we were dining out was half-filled with New Zealanders, not what you expect on the other side of the world. We felt a little out of place as there weren't as many english people, instead a great many europeans who were incredibly tanned and we were feeling very white!

Delos was fascinating, its an island not far from Mykonos that was believed to be the birth site for Apollo and Artemis. As a consequence of this it ended up being inhabited by about 25000 people in 500BC and due to its geological stability many of the ruins are still in good condition. We're talking walls, mosaic floors, staircases, theatre and even a sewage system. You really got a feel for the size of city that it must have been despite only a quarter of the city being uncovered.

Anyway it was a brilliant holiday and I returned with a bit of a tan!

Ok, well I have managed to see a few acts in the last couple of weeks (not Glastonbury but I don't know if thats a bad thing considering the amount of mud there) which have entertained me.

Firstly there was the O2 Festival in Hyde Park which is a bit like the Big Day Out but it runs for 4 days. David and I went to the Sunday only and didn't know many of the bands other than the Kaiser Chiefs. So we ended up picking bands to watch based on how interesting their names were, this meant cutting out most of the "The" bands but otherwise seemed a success.
Under the Influence of Giants had the best name and was probably the best act although Los Campesinos! from Cardiff were pretty close. Any band that has the lead singer playing a xylophone is pretty cool. Headlining was the Kaiser Chiefs who were brilliant and certainly knew how to work a crowd. They even had a guest singer from the Polysics who were a crazy band from Japan wearing orange boiler suits and doing star jumps all over the stage. Also I decided that the lead singer from The Editors shall henceforth be known as "clawman" due to his unusual singing actions while on stage.

Then, aided by Doug, it was off to the Windmill in Brixton which is only about 20 min walk from our flat. In fact it would have been much quicker to walk direct rather than take the tube in the attempt to get closer. Anyway this place turned out to be a dingy little dive with barely any signage outside. It did however have live music most nights and a couple of old geezers watching hurling on a tv at the back.
We had 4 bands of which the first started out country-rock before morphing into full country complete with harmonica. The third were the Outside Royalty who impressed me enough I'm now on their mailing list. They had a string section with both a violin and a cello. The main act was the Immacculate machines, a three piece from Canada who were brilliant.

Latest but not the least was going to watch the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club when they performed at Somerset House. This is an outdoor venue right by the Thames. Luckily the weather behaved itself and so we had a rock concert while surrounded by really old building that used to house the Inland Revenue department.

Plans for this weekend involve attending the Ben & Jerry's festival with yet more bands but most importantly free samples of Ben & Jerry's icecream. This is the company that has such wonderful flavours as Cookie Dough. I may not be able to face icecream afterwards.

As some of you may know my parents recently moved from Auckland and are now living on a life-style block in Wanganui. They now have sheep. I have naming rights to a few of these sheep and so need interesting names. Unfortunately my first choice of Ughboot was declined (apparently the sheep aren't woolly enough for the name to fit) so any other suggestions would be welcome. I am considering Casserole as a possibility.

Pink and white blossoms on all the trees, glorious.
Summer time temperatures so in t-shirts and shorts, neat.
Picnic at the park with cold beer and strawberries, wonderful.

Suffering from hayfever for the first time in my life...Priceless!

Well I was reading in the paper a few days ago that the German government sneakily pulled down the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall overnight on Easter weekend. Apparently it wasn't really noticed until all the tourists turned up and couldn't find it on Easter Sunday. It was the 18m section that was referred to as the East Side Gallery as it contained murals painted by international artists.


Anyway in retrospect we were really lucky to get there when we were in Berlin on our trip so for those of you who haven't made it to Berlin here is a photo we took of the best artwork in the now-gone section (and also the same or very similar picture to the one in the newspaper article).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14953796@N00/317935815/

And David in front of the wall.


In other news we now have broadband and have installed Skype so if anyone else has this nifty program send me an email and we'll exchange names.

Well here is a very late update of some of the stuff that happened on my trip to Paris:
Caught the Eurostar both to and from Paris so could avoid airports and the general hassle of flying. Great decision, would have been better if their website didn't keep on crashing so we had to resort to phoning the helpdesk but it didn't turn out too problematic in the end.
In Paris itself we managed to do a fair bit of sight-seeing although the weather wasn't great as it was drizzly on both Friday and Saturday but it did clear up on Sunday (just in time for us to leave!).
Friday was mostly spent wandering around 3 wings of the Louvre admiring all the works of art, mostly the sculptures but we did fit it time to look at a fair number of de Vinci's including of course the Mona Lisa. I actually preferred a few of the other paintings but that may have had something to do with the crowd surrounding her detracting from the impact of her paintstrokes.

Me standing in front of the glass pyramid in front of the Louvre.

Saturday was spent looking inside the Notra Dame and then wandering the streets looking at all the various shops. We picked up a very nice vase, yet another tea pot for my collection and some yummy macaroons in a variety of flavours (I got the chocolate, caramel, coffee, raspberry and vanilla but turned down the pistachio). There was also a large number of clothes bought:) Also managed to eat some wonderful meals and I got my pronunciation of "l'addition" corrected by a friendly waiter. I was pleasantly surprised by how much of my brief eduction in french (6months in 3rd form) returned to me over the trip, not huge amounts but enough sentences that we didn't annoy the locals.
In the evening we went and looked at the Eiffel Tower while it was all lit up.

Sunday was sunny so we went up the Notra Dame to see Paris all spread out. There are also a large number of impressive gargoyles perched on the walls which I really liked.

Then it was on to the Arc de Triomphe where we then had a beautiful view of all the insane French people in their cars driving around the round-about. Lots of hooting going on.

And finally back to the Eurostar and the really long tunnel.

Hypothesis: That Cadbury Creme Eggs taste better in England than they did in New Zealand.

Method:
1. Eat lots of Cadbury Creme Eggs
2. Eat more Cadbury Creme Eggs.
3. And then eat a few more just to be sure.

Conclusion:
I've eaten a lot of Cadbury Creme Eggs!

And have decided that they are much too yummy for me to resist.

However I do believe after my extensive testing that I have proven my hypothesis that English Cadbury Creme Eggs are better than New Zealand ones, mostly as the fondant seems to be more runny. I unfortunately had a lot back home where the fondant had started to crystallize which detracts from the yumminess of the egg.

Of course now after talking about Cadbury Creme eggs I want one.

Well my recent weeks in London have been interesting. Work is starting to get more interesting as I get trained up on more experiments so now I am doing proper work as compared to just following around watching the analysts do their work.
We have had snow twice this winter which has been cool, my trousers got suitably wet from walking through all the snow and I may have even thrown some snowballs. It was about an inch thick and threw me into a bit of a tizz as I ran around trying to find the camera to take photos (see below for glorious images of the white stuff).



Also time moves on so as we know everyone gets older including David despite how much he objects to it :) Anyway his birthday prompted an exploration of the bars around Clapham and all the alcohol that they serve in those bars. It also meant that I expanded my repertoire of cakes with a chocolate cake courtesy of the Edmonds and iced to look like a football field complete with little soccer ball.



Other stuff we've done lately includes walking up to Battersea Park and seeing the powerstation there as well as visiting Borough markets where I managed to pick up half a kilo of yummy coffee beans as well as chilli flavoured chocolate truffles. Its always interesting walking around a place that has entire deer hanging from the walls.

Well not really but I did see it opening to let a boat through when I went to look at the Tower of London which doesn't look all that tower-y from the outside due to all the skyscrapers. However it does look very cool from the inside, the ravens are still on the grounds and the Crown Jewels are still under lock and key.
I haven't done a huge amount of looking at sights here as I was completely fed up with looking at sights (particularly cathedrals and churches) by the end of the trip through Europe. I have however walked around most of the city central which includes all those streets on the Monopoly board (the old one as the new one has Knightsbridge rather than Mayfair as the most expensive street) and entered into the hallowed walls of Selfridges but not Harrods. I have also walked through all the parks, Kensington Gardens was particularly lovely with all the leaves on the trees turning orange and the dogs chasing the squirrels up the trees.

I have seen a fox, unfortunately it was roadkill which rather diminished the occasion.

In recent news I am starting to work on Monday so waking up early and putting a full day in is going to be a shock after 5 months on holiday. Thats right, its been 5 months since I last played with chemicals and got paid for it.

Also David and I have found a flat which we are moving in to on Sunday, its with about 4 other people (3 English and 1 Kiwi) and in Clapham North which is well connected for both of us to get to work.

So Spain. We spent close to 2 weeks in Spain in total, 2 nights in Barcelona before traveling by train to Seville for a further 4 nights. Then there was a mild change in plans leading to a few nights in Malaga before heading to Ronda which is a small town halfway between Malaga and Seville. Then it was back to Malaga before catching a flight back to London the next day.

I really liked Barcelona. Besides being hot (28C both days!) it was also a lot of fun. We spent most of the days looking at the Cathedral which you can actually walk on the roof for some great views of the city, and finding examples of Gaudi's architecture throughout the city. He designed some magnificent buildings which make you think of seaweed moving, a great city park with the famous mosaic dragon statue and started work on this huge church which isn't finished yet.



The train journey to Seville was interesting as we were able to see some of the countryside, its all very dry looking but quite impressive. Seville itself was wonderful to walk through and we entertained ourselves with yet another cathedral, a tour through the bull ring, the local old moorish palace and sampling some of the food which I found I didn't like all that much. The coffee was good though. We also managed to find a bar which had mostly proper flamenco playing and dancing which was one of the highlights of the trip.

The brief stop in Malaga was so we could do a day trip to Granada and view the Alhambra which we had decided we couldn't miss after being told about it by everyone we met who had been to Spain. It was fantastic so was definitely worth changing our plans.

Ronda is this little town where all the buildings are white and its set on a small mountain ridge line with a huge gorge running through the middle of the town which is spanned by a bridge. We basically chilled out here rather than doing the tourist thing of running around looking at sights. Although we did manage a few walks to see the gorge from different angles, a visit to the old arab baths and a look at the Bandit Museum. It was a nice and relaxing way to finish the holiday.



Now in London where it is quite a bit colder but I have managed to see squirrels! They are the evil grey kind which I'm not supposed to like as they have displaced the nice red ones but still, squirrels!

Ok, as I am currently in Salzburg waiting for the start of a cumulative 21 hour train ride to Barcelona I thought I might update this thing.
Prague was gorgeous, the type of city its fun to just wander around in without any particular aim in mind as the streets (and the shops!) are so interesting to look at. However we did make it to the Castle with its Cathedral, walked across the Chain Bridge, went to Vysehrad Citadel which was a pleasant change after the Castle as there weren't any tourists there. We even managed a day trip out to Kutna Hura which has a church decorated with the bones of over 40 000 people - there are chandeliers made out of clavicles and skulls as well as pyramids consisting just of femurs and yet more skulls. This town also had an old alchemist lab where mad chemists used to practice so we visited that as well and I marvelled at the changes, or lack thereof, in glassware over the centuries.
I also bought a wooden marionette which is rather large and won't fit in my pack so I have to carry it around separately but its a murdered nun complete with sword through the throat.
I have decided I don't like absinthe, it does bad things to me.

From there we spent a couple of days in Cesky Krumlov which is very scenic and cold before heading to Budapest.

Budapest was very cool but suffered in comparisons to Prague. We managed yet another castle and a very cool church with a Fishermans Bastion from which you had a magnificent view of the entire city. Easy to see why it is a World Heritage site. We then had a day on a guided tour seeing Statue Park which is where some enterprising person put all the statues from the communist era so people will pay money to see them rather than just tearing them down like other countries did. Weird looking at these larger than life statues of Lenin and hearing from the guide about how he spent his childhood watching his Dad tune the radio to the illegal station which didn't contain any communist propaganda. From there we went to a wine cellar as they have over 30 km of tunnels under the city where they store wine. This was then followed by tasting about 11 Hungarian wines and making very good friends with everyone else on the tour.

The rest of Budapest was spent wandering around the city, getting lost in the Central Park, looking at the Zoo where they have wolves and other critters and a relaxing few hours in the thermal baths.

Then it was yet another train ride to Salzburg where we have seen yet another castle although this one was more a fortress. We have not done anything related to the Sound of Music. Now its off to Barcelona...

Prague is fascinating and wonderful and I will give a full update on it in a few days. As a few people have asked about when photos of my trip will be appearing here I must say that it probably won't be until I arrive back in London as I don't really want to hook Davids nice digital camera up to a random computer. You will then be deluged with lots of photos including an amazing amount of gargoyles.

By the way...absinthe is evil.

After doing some drinking in Germany I have come across a fascinating thing which is called a radler - a half and half mix of beer and lemonade. It tastes exactly like the Radler back home so could someone please check a bottle and see if it is entirely beer or if Monteiths has done a sneaky advertising campaign and achieved in getting Kiwis to drink what is effectively a shandy and therefore a sinful waste of possible alcohol drinking time.

Well Munich was fantastic and I take back what I said about beer being evil - its only evil when it comes in 1L flasks and it turns out to be about 7% alcohol. Oops. Anyway despite the over-consumption of alcohol on our first day at the Oktoberfest David and I managed to see a few more of the sights in Munich. This was helped by my cousin Michael who very kindly put us up for a few nights in his nice apartment which he shares with his girlfriend Carmen. Even nicer he managed to get us tickets to seats in one of the German tents where we had more beer (we'd recovered sufficiently bay this point) and the best half of a chicken I've ever eaten. We also went on heaps of cool rides as the Oktoberfest is not entirely about the beer (who would have imagined?).

He and Carmen then showed us what a lot of German people do when they hang out which is to head to a beer garden with some food (its the reverse of BYO here) and drink the beer there while playing a cool board game which was a bit like Risk.

From Munich we traveled via a 6.5 hour train ride to Berlin where we both came down with rather nasty colds. Hence while we have managed to do a fair amount of sight-seeing here we haven't explored the Berlin nightlife as we're both coughing too much to enjoy it properly. And we should probably stay away from the beer for a bit.
We have managed to see the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall and on German Unification Day too as well as a number of cool museums including one today which showed how people smuggled themselves out of East Berlin.
David is over the moon as he has been able to find bottles of cherry coke here. I found a place that makes flat whites.