Having a bit of a moan

I am going to take a break from my normal tales of mystery and adventure to fill you in on a side of London life I have not really shared up until now.

Lately it feels like I have experienced a severe case of de’ja vu... either that or our flatting situation once again turned to s..t. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is a glitch in the matrix.

We moved in to our flat at the beginning of June (see here). The place was perfect. Awesome location. we loved our big room with lots of space to chill out, gets lots of sun. It was perfect. The only problem - we pick the weirdest flatmates.

Hunting Nessy in Scotland

What a huge weekend. Late last night we got back from a 1200+ mile trip to Scotland... Definitely feeling the effects today.

The few days leading up to the trip were quite stressful. We decided on the weekend of the 11th September as Bridget and Aaron had planned to be busy and weren’t able to spend time with us – but plans changed. Rochelle decided she would stay and spend time with them as she would not be seeing them again for 18+ months. As we had planned and booked the holiday weeks before with friends, we could not both pull out at the last minute – so I did the hard yards and went on our holiday without her.

Thursday evening we left London around 6pm, making the mammoth drive up to Edinburgh. We got in about 1am, found our hotel, then hit the bed.

Friday we woke early to go and get ourselves a good cooked Scottish breakfast. We then headed into town for a free walking tour, starting 9:30am. It was a 3 hour tour so we loaded up the parking meter with enough to last the duration. I might quickly mention here that parking was very expensive. When we got there, we were told the guide was sick, and that there was another tour leaving at 11am. A bit annoyed, but still in high spirits, we decided to take a walk up the Royal Mile and check out Edinburgh Castle. We quickly came to the conclusion that this place is AWESOME! Incredible architecture, really nice people, great food, and such a huge amount of history. It is really authentic and cultural - plenty of tartan, bagpipes, kilts, crazy Scots! We even saw tartan being woven in a kilt factory.

Bridget & Aaron Visit / Day Trip - France/Belgium

Its been a busy few days! Bridget (Rochells sis) and her husband, Aaron are over from Australia. Friday night we caught up with them and Malcolm and Sharne in a pub in town for a few drinks. It was really awesome to catch up, as its been over 12 months since we saw them last.



Friday afternoon Shaun gave me a call and asked if we wanted to go to France for the day on Saturday... Yeah, why not?! Saturday morning Shaun, Sarah, Rochelle and I jumped in the car and were out of London by 8:30am. Drove down to Folkestone to catch the chunnel train, by 11:30am we were in France!

Stones, not sand - WTF? Day Trip to Brighton Beach

First off - a bit of unpleasant news - our bloody bikes got stolen! Just after I wrote the blog about how much we loved our new bikes, a day later they are gone. Grrr.

Anyway, other news. We got up relatively early Saturday morning and jumped on a train to Brighton. It was a short trip (~45 mins) from London out to the beach. I think the funniest part of the day was after being on the train for about 10 minutes. The train only made two stops after we got on, one on the outskirts of London, then not again until Brighton. We stopped at the first stop - the guy in front of us must have been day-dreaming because just as the doors closed he jumped up and tried to get off. No such luck. He then turned around and asked if this was the last stop before Brighton... We then listened as he rung up whoever he was meant to be meeting and explained why he was going to be about 90mins late.

We arrived to a sunny blue sky, and a lot of wind! We made our way down to a fairly packed beach, only to find that instead of sand, the beach is covered in stones! Wierd... We found a nice spot and sat down anyway, and after 10 minutes we were then confronted with this:

General Catch Up

I thought it time for another one of our updates I know you all look forward to reading. Things have been a bit slow since our trip to Paris, but we have done a few cool things - including London Zoo and going to see The Offspring!

One of the reasons we have not done a lot is because we been having trouble with our flatting situation, which has provided a lot of stress... and my work mates/friends a lot of entertainment. I will probably write a dedicated blog about that for you all to have a good laugh at in the near future (it is really pretty funny).

One really cool thing we have done is both acquired bicycles! Both riding to work most days which is good for fitness and saving us a lota money. We have also been on a couple of huge excursions all over the city discovering parts we had not seen before.

A couple of weeks ago we went to the London Zoo. It was a lot of fun – the highlight for me being the huge Galapagos tortoises. Rochelle loved the Anteaters. There was one awesome enclosure that housed the monkeys. You walked right through with nothing between you and the animals. They had staff walking around telling people to put away their camera's, though, as apparently the monkeys will snatch them right out of your hands and run up the trees. We also saw enourmous snails (as big as your fist!) jellyfish, snakes, lizards and a Tucan (which I couldn't get a decent picture of grr). We searched everywhere for a kiwi to no avail :(

Snails & Frogs Legs - Four Days in Paris

Grab yourself a coffee and find a comfy chair – I have a feeling this is going to be a long one!

Day 1 started off at 3:30am! We were up and out the door very quickly. Unfortunately we were up before the underground started running so we had to take two busses to get to St Pancras Station. A friendly French couple gave us a hand to find the correct bus which was really helpful. We got our tickets, through security, and boarded the train. All fairly painless really... I think I like this international travel via train deal...

The trip went quickly. I spent most of the time planning our day and Rochelle spent most of it sleeping. We departed the train about 9am (Paris time) and headed for another station on the network that was closer to where we wanted to go and had luggage storage. Little did we know, but this was to be the start of a loooong day in France.

We successfully navigated the Metro. A few observations – it’s a lot larger than the London underground. They have two-storied trains which are much wider than the tube on the routes that head out into the suburbs (RER) and even the smaller trains (Metro) were much bigger. The whole atmosphere was much dirtier though... dodgy people hanging around, a lot of graffiti etc. We also found the people to be quite rude! Very pushy and inconsiderate, which made things difficult with all our luggage. Anyway, we got to the station where we wanted to store our luggage, spent a good 45 mins trying to find the lockers, with the help of some unhelpful French people (if that makes sense). Finally we got our two bags and laptop bag into the small sized locker (with a lot of shoving and cursing) to save ourselves €3 =)

We excitedly headed outside, finally to venture into the beautiful city of Paris. We stepped out into a huge courtyard and took a second to orientate ourselves and work out where we were heading. We were greeted by a grey sky, a dodgy looking character and a couple of stoner dudes. The place reeked of urine – which as it turned out is not uncommon in this city. Our first destination was Saint-Michel Fountain for the start of our free walking tour, about 2kms walk from the station. I navigated us along what I thought would be a nice walk along the bank of the river Seine... as it turns out there were no decent walkways in that part of the city, and it was an almost industrial area with no shops at all. Being quite tired, a bit stressed and a little disillusioned by the mornings events, we were both not in the best of moods. This was amplified by the fact that all we had to eat that day was half a banana at 3:30am. We decided to try to find somewhere to eat, which was proving difficult in that part of town. We finally stumbled across a subway, where communication with the attendant was difficult, but I got almost what I wanted. He proceeded to blatantly rip me off, then turn around and ignore me. I gave up and decided it wasn’t worth my €1 to argue. Rochelle found a semi-decent pastry shop and had her first taste of French pastry – I think she was impressed.

We got to the free walking tour (after an hours walk) with about 3 minutes to spare. Keeping in mind our morning so far, and the fact that the tour went for three and a half hours, we weren’t sure weather we would make it to the end or not. But we set off with the best of intentions and agreed we would see how we go. Our tour guide was a kiwi from Rotorua, who had been in Paris for 8 months. He was quite a cool guy and very knowledgeable about the city and its history. He also gave us some tips on the scams to watch out for, which ended up being very helpful. On the tour we visited so many amazing places. Was saw so many awesome things I think I'll let the pictures do the talking (click to enlarge).

Hard Rock Calling + more

Its been a while since our last update. We have been keeping busy but nothing worth writing a blog about. Until Friday that was...

We both had half a day at work in order to head to Hyde Park for 'Hard Rock Calling'. What a frikken awesome day. We got there about 4pm with our stash of smuggled alcohol. First band we wanted to see wasn't until 5pm, so we chilled under the trees and enjoyed the sun, while listening to idiots trying to sing karaoke. We headed up to the stage with about 15 mins to spare so we could get a good spot right up front. The Silversun Pickups played were awesome! Highlight of the day for me. Unfortunately they only played about 5 songs.

Metric played next and were also really good. But again only a really short set!

At about 7pm we headed to the main stage to meet up with Malcolm and Sharne and a friend of theirs. We caught most of the Kooks set... I wasn't right into it but they sounded good! The Killers came on last and they rocked! I was impressed - I'm not a huge fan but they were awesome. We were standing right behind these awesome people that were dancing up a storm, check out the vids

Somewhere to live - Take II

We have a new flat! :) We moved into our new place on Friday, with the help of Sarah, Shaun and his work car. Its going well so far, we are much more central now. Within biking distance of work for both Rochelle and I so we plan to invest in a couple soon.

The place is quite small. Two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom... thats it. Sharing with one other guy who seems fairly easy to get along with... so far. The only reason we moved in to such a small place is the fact that we have such a huge room! Well, its not even really that big, but the landlord has made very good use of the space. Our bed it elevated, which opens the room up a lot. We have a big area to chill out in with a little two seater couch, coffee table and tv, which awesome! We can come home and chill out, watch some tv, and not feel like we are cooped up in our room. We also have a huge window that lets in lots of sun =)

So all in all, we are pretty happy. I just hope the flatmate turns out to be OK. Heres a few pics.


In other news, we have booked a trip to Paris. We are travelling on the Eurostar (train) - covering the 350kms in about 2 hours, getting up to 300kmph! We depart the 11th of July for 4 days in the worlds most romantic city. We plan to check out all the touristy sites, the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, as well as Disneyland Paris. If you have any suggestions for things we should see/do - then please get in touch.

Totally random... this is rochelle in a suitcase