Our Euro Trip...

IT's been a while

2011-09-12T13:00:00.003+01:00

since I posted.. we've both been insanely busy, and life has sped right up.

Mainly because we're heading back to Melbourne. In last than a week. We went to the Thames Festival on Sunday, as one last Hurrah to london (following a night of drunken debauchaery in Watford, but anyway)

So, it's all a little bittersweet. I'm very upset to be leaving this job, and leaving London, but there's alot to look forward too as well.

See you all very soon! 3 days in New York, 1 in LA, then a few days in Brisbane with Kaz, before feet down on the 29th in Melbourne !

Dear Athens, learn to drive.

2011-05-31T14:17:00.000+01:00

Recently, we went to Athens for a few days, and chose to, for something different, do one of those 24hour hop-on/off tours. Not the red bus, our choice was about €3 each cheaper. High stakes !

It's a locally-run company, instead of the global conglomeration that runs the franchises for the Big Red Bus companies. So we thought this would be a good idea. Maybe, maybe not.

On the first afternoon, due to an unannounced protest out the front of Syntagma, we had to walk away from the signposted stop, because the roads were closed off. Once we were able to get on our bus, he had to turn around, which was great, until a random woman decided to try and cut through the inside of the bus to also turn around, then started havin a big bitchfight at the driver, accusing him of hitting her car and stuff. He didn't. We observed it all from the upper deck. Including the hilarity that followed.

As the queues formed up behind us, the other driver refused to let the bus move on. Eventually, he was able to. Only to have her hound the bus for several blocks, eventually getting in front of him in the far left lane, and stopping, thus causing the bus to also stop. So now, we have traffic banked all the way back on the other side of the road, and now banking up on this side too. All because of perceived yellow mark on the front right fender that wasn't there.

Eventually, police showed up, and another yellow bus showed up to offload us all.

It was a highly entertaining way to spend an hour of the afternoon. I'll talk about the next day, in another post.

To Athens, we go.

2011-05-30T14:23:00.002+01:00

The sun was calling, so to Athens, we went. We'd been to a few of the Greek islands last year already, and this was an opportunity to go to the mainland.
So, after booking up a hotel for €80 for 3 nights, and about £300 for flights, we were good to go.

Our flight got us into Athens quite late - around 11:00pm but we were still able to catch one of the last trains into the city from the Airport. Was really quite amazing to see just how busy the metro system was once we actually got into the city - Syntagma was packed, and this was now 11:40 on a Monday night.

We got to our final stop, jumped off the Metro, and proceeded to work out where we were, and where to go. It kind of fell apart here.
One of us had decreed that we shouldn't bring the GPS, because had seen something about street signs being in Greek and thus not much help. The other of us had drawn a little mud map, showing the street we needed to walk down and a few others, but failing to draw any other streets, so we wouldn't know if we'd walked past the street we needed to turn on to. Hilarity ensued. Well, almost.
I got a bit nervous... dragging a suitcase around a dimly well, dirty looking neighbourhood, with no idea that we'd already walked past our street.
Eventually, we ended up getting to the hotel - it was much closer to the station than we expected. All was well, that ended well. The room had airconditioning, and was nice and cool.

Being after midnight, there was little open.. so we settled on Oregano crisps. If we didn't rant about those last time we were in Greece, we should have. They are utterly awesome, but don't seem to be available anywhere else. These were washed down with a Pina Colado calippo-like iceblock.

Thus, we slept. And We should also talk about the flight, because Aegean airlines are actually pretty good. So, another post for that.

Morphing Rhiannon

2011-05-06T15:00:00.004+01:00

This came from Edinburgh. You sit in a machine, and take a photo, and it morphs you.

Paddling in Snowdonia !!

2011-04-28T21:01:00.001+01:00

More of Exeter, then to tintagel !

2011-04-19T16:38:00.000+01:00

- lots of breakfast. out to shops. underground passages. very cool. tried not to get red on light grey jumper / cardigan. had to almost crawl for one part. interesting. easter eggs. hit head several times - hard had good, but yucky. hear traffic up on street. people hid in during air raids.
- drove to tintagel. awesome castle hotel called camelot. amazing round table. cornwall is the most beautiful part of england. very farm-y. amazing coastline. cliffs. beautiful weather. amazing staircase. gorgeous place to stay. sea view room. very comfy bed.
- walk round tintagel castle. ruins. steep. over to island with more of castle. up for views over cliffs. down to merlin's cave. waterfall.
- back to hotel for welcome drink. rose and cab sav. took our free cheeses with us. went well together. sat outside on side of castle watching sun setting.
- into town for pub dinner. local ales and rattler cider. deep fried brie. chicken leek and bacon pie with mash and peas. just what I specifically said I wanted when walking out to dinner. burger and fries - actually cooked properly and crisp. lots of sauces. mousse more like ganache.
- sat at round table to look at photos. cool elevator with metal door.

Beach with Sand !!

2011-04-18T17:51:00.002+01:00

Today, we discovered a beach, with Sand. In the United Kingdom! That's right ! They aren't all pebbles.

We started off the morning at the Old Sarum site. This is where the Salisbury settlement was originally - high up on a hill, surrounded by moats, and apparently old Castle remains (they might have been a real castle back then though.)

The Heritage society had some tastings going on, so after trying mead, raspberry curd, lemon curd, elderflower sparkling wine and ginger wine, we felt it necessary to purchase both sparkling elderflower wine for our anniversary, and ginger wine just because.

WE drove our way on down to Bournemouth, and discovered that there are in fact, beaches with stones. And we even got a little sunburnt. It wasn't quite like most of the Victorian sea-side towns, as there was nothing really along the waterfront. It was like the other sea-side towns we've seen, in that there was a pier, however there were no amusements.
We had chips from Harry Ramsden's for lunch, sitting on the wall along the sea-front, dangling our feet in the sand. Apparently they are super-famous chips. They filled out stomachs, anyway.

There;s also a gorgeous manicured garden type area that runs in a sort of gully, from the beach, up to parts of the town. We found a mini-golf place, but didn't really have time, so instead, settled for a candy store, with a tropical slushy.

See, Garden.

Our next stop was Exeter, where we wandered along the top (yep!) of the old city wall, and discoverd the Quay area, which, if the helpful Hotel Chick hadn't pointed out, we would have had no idea about. It's clearly in the midst of regeneration, but a really nice area. We both agreed that Exeter is somewhere we could definitely live.

Dinner at Pizza express involved, among other things, a Pizza with toppings that are essentially a ceasar salad for Rhiannon, and some funky things called PepperDew on my pizza.
I want more of these! they have the sweetness of eating capsicum or peppers, but then it's followed with this marvelous bite! not astoundingly hot, or stupidly hot, but just enough to raise your endorphin levels and make you go "oh that's cool"

Then we went to sleep.

Oooh, a shiney car !!!

2011-04-17T19:11:00.004+01:00

It's been almost a year since I last got to drive a car. So today, we picked up a VW Polo from Wembley. It felt a bit odd, but at least it was on the right side.

We've always agreed that, as much as possible, we would avoid motorways and definitely tollroads - we want the picturesque pretty English drive. Turns out it didn't work as well in this regard as it did in Italy. But anyway, onward and westward.

Our first stop was Avebury. Widely regarded as the poorer, lesser-known sister than Stonehenge. We probably disagree - not least because you can walk up to,touch, and indeed, climb on, the stones.

Avebury is a big area, with a gigantic circle of stones, that stretches much further than you would ever have expected, despite being intersected by the road. There was also a cute, albeit small town in which we got some awesome butterscotch cookies, and an elderflower soft drink. It would probably have been good to spend more time and look at the other things nearby including the old barn thinggy, but time pressed on us, so we headed off through our next stop, Tidworth.

There's not really much there. So we kept going.

Suddenly, as we went over the hill, we saw a great big field of rocks. Surrounded by lots of people. Because we're tight (or because we'd just been to Avebury) we elected to simply pull over on teh side of the road, and look at Stone Henge from a distance, before heading on to our accommodation for the night.

Salisbury, on a Sunday night, is very quiet. Some might say, dead. At least our parking right outside the hotel was free. Which in some way compensated for the fact that the receptionist was a bit rude in telling us that we didn't have a reservation (we did, and it was prepaid!!)

Making the best of what we could, we went for a walk around the town, and saw the Cathedral, (about all there was) before heading back to our hotel to get changed and head out for dinner.

Dinner was at The Old Mill - still in Salisbury. It's a gorgeous place, with a waterwheel, rushing stream, and pond. Well, it's an old mill, so.. makes sense. We did get seated next to the window though, to eat the following:

Chicken and Asparagus Filo / Smoked Duck Salad for entree
Sausages and Mash / Beef Casserole for main.

Sounds boring, but wasn't.

And thus ended our first day

Sad.

2011-04-13T18:35:00.000+01:00

All of our thoughts are with those at home in Wagga just now.

BHP

2011-04-11T19:57:00.004+01:00

BHP is one of the biggest companies in the world. Their helpdesk is currently outsourced to IBM, and run by about 5 or 6 guys in India. It seems this is upsetting the high level staff that work in the London office.

So they want to outsource the helpdesk a bit further. To us. And I'm the trailblazer. I'll be going out there by myself, to work within their processes and procedures, and be someone who can break down the understanding barrier. Awesome. There's a little more to it from the side of what my employer wants me to do, but basically, i'm representing IBM, and there should be no discussion of my employer. It's a 3 month contract, and they want someone ASAP. Yet I'm away for a good 4 weeks of it.

And we can't even work out when they want me to start - especially as I'm about to go away for another 17 days. More about that soon.

It was time

2011-03-15T07:24:00.004+00:00

to pull the plug, and let the waters drain away from our trip to Bath. But we still had half a day or so, and some things to see.

So up we got in the morning, and discovered some markets outside our hotel! It was just bric a brac, but we're both suckers for markets, so we wandered through here first, then headed up to the Crescent.

The Crescent is a big, crescent shape building, high up on the hill overlooking the country and stuff. It's got massive big lawns in front of it, and seems to be residential, but the cream of the town.
Quite a unique building.

We also had lunch at a cafe, and then another wander through the town with our suitcase took us back to the station, and home again.

Was a great trip, and we both needed the relaxation!

Coming up soon, Oxford.

From modern, to Ancient...

2011-03-11T07:27:00.003+00:00

This relates to our second day in Bath, where, pleasingly, the weather cleaned up a little bit.
Today was also actually the day we went up the Abbey tower, despite my writing about it in an earlier post.

We started our day with a tower of the Abbey tower - in a small group of about 8 people, we were taken up some 220 odd steps, through first the rope room, and then up to the inside of the clock - definitely a new experience on time. Apparently keeping the light behind the clock lit was a very popular job back in ancient times.

We also found out that this clock is different to many others - they always used to be on the northern face of a building, but because the mayor paid for this one, he wanted it facing the council offices, so it faces east.

After that, we wandered on over to the actual ancient Roman baths. Everyone's seen pictures of this place, with the lurid green water. Here's one of our takes:

As you can see, it's nothing like the water in the thermal baths we were in last night. To be fair though, I never knew there was actually so much in this complex! I just figured, ya know, some green water, surrounded by old roman building. But there;s actually so much more, as you go down inside, and underneath - it's completely like an ancient version of a modern bathhouse, with rooms tat used to be steam rooms, and plunge pools.

It was fantastic to just wander through (even with groups of school kids, @#$%%#@$!) at our own pace, and listen to the handheld thinggy that told us stuff.

After that, we wandered a little bit more, and checked out the river (the Avon) and the Pultenay bridge.

Take away chinese saw us finish off our evening in the hotel.

And yes - we still have more to come from Bath !

The Lengthening Shadow

2011-03-08T09:00:00.003+00:00

Or shortening, I'm not sure? Anyway. It seems the longer days are almost here again.

Despite Rhiannon telling me consistently that during winter, it would be dark by 4:00 in the afternoon (ok, you were right.) I wasn't quite prepared for it, even though it happened sort of slowly. God it was a surprise though, to look out the window at work one afternoon at around 4:00 and find it dark.

Anyway. Yesterday morning, we both woke up yesterday - Rhiannon with a start going "oh my god what time is it".
Turns out it was 6:55. IE, before we were supposed to wake up. But it was so BRIGHT !
Previously, it would still be kind of dark once I eventually dragged my ass out of bed around 8:00am.

Now, it's gorgeously bright! and the past two days have even been sunny! not warm, this is England people, but sunny.
And it's still almost light at 6:00pm now !

You know what this means. Summer is approaching again.

Also - it's been just over a year now we've been here. Just thought I'd mention that..

For Whom the Bell Tolls...

2011-03-07T12:42:00.004+00:00

The bell (at least, the bell in the Abbey tower in Bath) is tolled by me. That's right. I'm the one who rang the bells in the abbey at random times, and not on the hour.

But it's ok, I was allowed, it was part of the tour.

Our Bath trip started (as all good English weekends do) with grey, miserable skies and rain. But that's ok. We hiked our way up from the train station to the Hilton (yes, we like having expensive tastes :P) and got ourselves settled in, after buying two new tshirts for me, quite appropriately:

"Just assume I know everything" and "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Our first stop was the actual baths. (THat's right, we went to the Baths, in baths.) Not the green ones everyone knows about, but the therapeutic swimming pools. The place is massive, spread across 3 levels. There's a pool in the bottom level, then they have scented steam rooms (yes, scented! it's an entirely new experience)

Then up on the very top level, they have the outdoor heated bath. Yes. Outdoor. Yes. Heated. And you can see the rooftops of the city and stuff. (See shamelessly stolen picture)

It was still raining while we were there, but meh.

That pretty much took care of our first night, apart from dinner at a less than suitable restaurant, where we actually argued over the bill, which we almost never ever do.

I will write some more later about the next day.

Cambridge Photos!

2011-03-01T15:58:00.001+00:00

I told you I might.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47930781@N03/tags/cambridge/show/

New photos

2011-02-28T18:44:00.003+00:00

It's actually been ages since I've posted. However, in that time, we've been to Bath, Oxford and Cambridge.

You can see some photos of Bath here. I'll put up some of Oxford and Cambridge tonight.

I should mention, we're also planning our 11 day driving extravaganza, including a stay at Tintagel (the area reputed to be where Camelot, and Merlin's cave, are)

So stay tuned. I might even write about Bath, Cambridge and Oxford !!

Here's a photo to whet your appetite:

Am I just being massaged?

2011-01-28T07:55:00.004+00:00

The other week, my boss pulled me outside and discussed a few things with me. This came after a team meeting the day before, and a chat i'd had with HR before that. Essentially he told me he was working me towards managed services - more server side than desktop side. Great, I thought.

On Tuesday, he pulled me into the Big Chill (I'll mention that at the end of the post, just so you know what I mean) and sat down to discuss something with me again.

Recently, a sales exec, and the operations director, were both let go - the company director felt they weren't the right fit for the company, and the direction he wanted to go. Oh well. I never really knew what they did anyway, so didn't make jack shit difference to me. Some of the other guys were quite happy though.

anyway, he was my bosses boss. My boss is the helpdesk manager. We have main operations up here in London, and another team down in South Africa. But I'm digressing.
In our team meeting, it was mentioned that the helpdesk manager is off to SA for a week or 2 to help refine and resetup all our managed services stuff. (We use a tool that monitors servers on all our clients, and we can push out scripts and stuff. cool shit really, and I haven't gotten too far into it)

Anyway. in the big chill. He's asked if I'd be interested in a team lead position here in London. We don't currently have one (with HDM we didn't need it i guess) but now with him being in SA for a while, and other changes with the ops manager finishing up, it means he can focus on strategic and operational shit more, and needs someone to back it up - managing workload within the team, attendance, supporting the other guys on a technical level and shit like that.

Considering this is really the direction I've been trying to go for a little while, or thinkin about going as being a next logical step, it's a good choice, so I said yes. Long story short - I'm currently trialing as a team leader.

On other work-based news, Rhiannon passed her probation period, and because there is currently a company-wide policy to not increase salaries, is still on the same one she started at. However, they HAVE offered to pay her commission on all teachers she registers, that are placed for more than 6 weeks. It's only £25 per teacher, but it seems like it's even retroactive for ones she registered during probation. So that's cool.

And what is the big chill ? Well, my office is in Farringdon, just on the fringe of City of London. It's a huge big lofty kind of place, easily several hundred meters long. As you walk in the front door and turn right, it just goes on and on. About half way down, is a kitchen area. In here, there's a round cafeteria-style table with chairs. Some other cafe-style 2 person tables, with chairs. The kitchen shit. 3 couches surrounding a 42' plasma tv. a wii, a ps2, an xbox 360. Then a massage chair. Another couch. A Foosball table. And a pool table.
Yep. I work in one of "those" offices. The lively, young, let's keep our staff entertained sort of offices. And this stuff all gets used, not only at lunch time.
Friday afternoons, they chuck on snack food and beer - I leave at 7 and it's still often goin quite busily.

(And an assortment of bikes belonging to other people, but that;'s not the point)

Ruby Blue

2011-01-23T12:52:00.002+00:00

Apparently rubies are blue. This came about because at th end of last year, we splashed out £30 on a Taste Card. The Taste card gets us 50% off or 2-4-1 offers at a huge number of restaurants around London and, we believe, other places in te UK. We'll test this in Bath.

So on Saturday, we went to a place called Ruby Blue, on the edge of Leicester Square.On this one night alone, we saved more than we paid for the card, so it's worthwhile.

Our food was as follows:

Tomato and Basil Soup ; Mushroom in Pepper Sauce on Ciabatta

we followed with

Steak and half lobster ; Steak with relevant trimmings

and being greedy pigs, dessert entailed

Chocolate cheese cark ; chocolate fudge cake with white chocolate sauce.

Now, the lobster was barely bigger than a large langoustine, and overall the food quality was not as good as the place we went to last week, but for £40, we weren't complaining.

So consider ruby blue, if you have your taste card.

Bath !

2011-01-09T19:16:00.002+00:00

We don't have one of these in our apartment. So we're off to Bath for the weekend. Of course, that doesn't guarantee we'll have a bath in our hotel room. However, some of the Hilton rooms do have baths, so we've asked if we can have one of those. We may strike out.

We wanted to go to Bath for the Christmas Markets, but work wouldn't give appropriate time off. Don't get me started. So, we're going for Rhiannon's birthday instead, which is coming up very soon.

Yes, you read correctly, we're staying at a Hilton. It seemed the best option - slightly more appropriate than the Mercure, and not a B&B. Plus, they are doing some deal where any bookings you make before the end of January for weekend stays in UK are 50% off.

So while we may not have a bath in our room, we'll going to the thermal baths, and relaxing in them. Kind of takes us back to Budapest a bit, as apparently it's got one of the lazy rivers !

With the weather being nice and warm recently (7-9 degrees!) we probably won't have any snow, which is good for our snow trip, but I can't help but think it would be very pretty in the snow.

New Years in London

2011-01-04T08:46:00.002+00:00

So, I'm getting old, stodgy and boring. I tend to find places with loud music a little uncomfortable, because I can't distinguish properly between the background noise, and conversation.
Crowds also piss me off. And we were both unwell

It was for these reasons (and cold, and laziness) that we stayed home on New Years Eve. We drank a little bit amongst ourselves, watched some movies, then the fireworks on tv. It must be one of the quietest nyes ever. But I think we were both happy.

I didn't feel like going out - I don't see quite what the big deal is.. it's just like a Sunday night really. Plus, the footage we saw of the banks of the Thames - it was pretty damn crowded. Probably lots of little Gypsy girls there, lookin to steal wallets. The fireworks also didn't look entirely spectacular.

I think the place to be might have been inside the little thinggies on the London Eye.

But oh well, we spent it together, and we're glad:)

so different, yet the same

2010-12-31T07:53:00.003+00:00

So rather than read a local newspaper like the Times, or something distinctly London based, I read the Age online. And this morning, an article made me realise that while it's so different, it's still all the same.

I quote for you:

Metro spokeswoman Geraldine Mitchell said the delays were caused by a points failure at Flinders Street station, which was not related to today’s scorching temperature.
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The mercury had climbed to 38.6 degrees at 2.45pm, and was forecast to eclipse 40 degrees between 4-5pm, before a cool change this evening.
It's just like being in London.. "London Underground said the delays were caused by signal failures at Baker Street, which were not related to the snow and icey conditions. The mercury shrank to -2 degrees at midday, and was forecast to eclipse -5 degrees"
Hot, broken points. Cold, broken signals. The cosmic ballet continues.
Yea, that's really all I have today. Our New Years Eve is likely to be quiet.

Christmas Presents

2010-12-30T14:58:00.003+00:00

So we had earlier decided that we weren't going to bother with christmas presents for each other - we've spent rather a lot of money this year. So apart from our christmas lunch, christmas was fairly uneventful.

Plus, we recently bought a big swag of clothes, and a Kindle, and a blackberry. So we think we're christmas'd out in that regard.

I was looking at our Au bank account today though, and noticed (apart from 3 charges for alleged police fines in Italy, 6 months later!) a $AUD300 deposit - can only suspect this came from Rhiannon's parents, so thanks :)

It has nicely paid for our tickets to Jerry Seinfeld, and Danny Bhoy for June. Impulse purchases you might say, but that's our right.

Now, to decide what to do for new years eve.. Probably very little since we've both been remarkably unwell, and Rhiannon has frostbited feet

Singularity Christmas

2010-12-29T12:04:00.004+00:00

While it may be far from the first christmas we have spent together, this year was the first christmas we actually spent alone. Figuratively speaking. It doesn't mean we couldn't eat up a storm though.

As we mentioned earlier in the year, we found Iceland - so our christmas lunch/dinner was comprised entirely of frozen food. Laugh if you will. It's not bad food. But I've railed on that before on this site I'm sure.

To start with:
Three Bird Roast, with stuffing. Duck and chicken, stuffed inside a turkey breast roll, with Marmalade sauce caramelised on top. Oh come on, which of you hasn't wanted to try a multi-bird roast? I'm just too lazy to make it myself.

Honey Roasted Parsnips. Not just parsnips, but covered in a honey glaze, and baked in the oven.

Stuffing Balls. You heard me. Balls of stuffing - herb and something in this case. Just chuck em in the oven. I didn't realise at this point that we had stuffing already in the turkey.

Yorkshires. These are relatively new to Rhiannon, but mum's been making them for me for years. Still, at £1.50 for a pack of 12, and 4 minutes in the oven, as if I could be bothered making my own.

Gravy. Go figure. It's just not roast dinner without gravy. all thick and dark and greasy, spooned into those glorious yorkshires, drizzled across the meat...

I was going to have steamed frozen vegetables, but by this point, my plate looked very full, so I gave up on this idea. then we moved on to dessert.

Chocolate Brownie Cheesecake. It's got nothing on our double-cooked caramel cheesecake but was still pretty good for a frozen dessert.

We followed it up even more later with mini chocolate and mint melts. We could have heated these, but didn't bother.

Stand by for photos.

Saturday Snow !

2010-12-20T14:23:00.001+00:00