Back from another holiday

We’ve just returned from holiday, in which we visted both Greece and Turkey over 4 weeks. We had a fantastic time in both countries, and had some great adventures which I’ll be posting up here real soon.

We started out in Athens and spent 1 week on the mainland before getting a flight to the Dodecanese Islands (Greek) off the coast of Turkey for another week. Our final 2 weeks, were in Turkey where we travelled up from Marmaris in the south west of Turkey to our final destination of Istanbul in the north west, and stopped at many places on the way up.
People in both countries were friendly and hospitable, and we had very little trouble using public transport to get to all the places we wanted to.

I’ve been uploading some of the 700ish photos we took in the 4 weeks, so if you’re keen to see them now, you can check them out here.
Otherwise, look out for the upcoming posts…

We’re back!

We arrived back in London after our month long holiday ended yesterday. We really enjoyed our travels, met some family (on both sides this time) and interesting people, and saw many marvellous sights. But by the end, we were feeling a quite travel fatigued; so I don’t think we’ll be repeating another month long trip anywhere soon.

If I’m not too slack, you can expect some more posts of our British Isles adventures to appear soon – once I get all the photos (and video) sorted out.

Stay tuned!

Lots of London. Next up: British Isles

Before we head out on another holiday, I thought I’d better add a quick update, as I haven’t updated the blog since Easter!
This time, we’re taking a trip around the British Isles – minus England, since we’ve done that already. So that means Wales, Ireland and Scotland are in our sights.

But until then, you might be wondering what we’ve been doing for the last few months??
The answer is: exploring more of London. There really is quite a lot to see once you look behind the major tourist draw cards.

As I’m sure you’ll want to see some photos, here’s some links to the latest ones:
Photos of Kew Gardens
Photos around London in May
Photos of Hampton Court Palace
Photos around London in June

We visited Kew Gardens with my cousin Frances, her husband Cliff and daughter Esme back at the start of May. We had a great time there, even if the weather on the day wasn’t the best. As Kew Gardens is massive we only got to see around half of it, even though we spent most of the day there, but what we did see was impressive. The giant greenhouses and the tree top walk were my favourites parts.

We also took a trip out to Hampton Court Palace later in May. At first it struck us as a poor imitation of the Palace of Versailles which we visited in France, but after spending a day there we found it had a charm of it’s own.
As Henry VIII was a big fan of food, the kitchens in the palace were huge; they took up most of one wing of the palace. While there, we also got a bit lost in the hedge maze of in the gardens of the palace, but found our way out after a while!

Here’s some of the other things we did in May: took a visit to the Science Museum; explored the large Imperial War Museum; walked around Hammersmith; caught a train out to Reading for a day (not recommended, as there’s not much to do there!); wandered around Kensington Palace; and relaxed in Hampstead Heath.

In June, I don’t think we did anything worth writing heaps about, so I’m going to be lazy again and list what we got up to again: perused the ancient manuscripts at the British Library; caught up with Glendon and Shireen – friends from New Zealand on holiday in England; forced our way through crowds at the Columbia Road flower market; got confused by the weird artwork at the Tate Modern; caught up with Hugh – another friend out from New Zealand; and boated down the river to Greenwich where we got caught out in a thunder storm.

Now, I’m back to packing for our trip out tomorrow, while trying to keep cool in this heatwave. It’s 30°C outside right now!

Out and about around London

Since I haven’t created an update for a little while I thought I’d summarise what we’ve been up to in the last month or so which mostly consists of visiting places around London. We have been taking some photos while we’ve been out and about most of which can be seen here.

Work consists of most of what we’ve been doing for the last couple of months, but we’ve managed to get out on the weekends most of the time. Over a few weekends we visited the National Gallery, Tate Britain (art museum), Natural History Museum with ice sculptures, the Monument to the Great Fire of London, Westminster Abbey, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Westminster Abbey and the V&A were my favourites out of those. The abbey had a huge amount of history to it, and magnificent architecture; while the V&A had many varied exhibits of art from throughout history and throughout the world. The absolute best item on display was Tipu’s Tiger, an Indian 18th century fullsize wooden crank driven tiger mauling a white man. It even produces sound like a roaring tiger, and a dying man’s wails.

We’ve also managed to go to a few markets (apart from our local Acton market) around the city. The best ones so far have been the Portobello Road Market and the Borough Market. They are usually massively busy on the weekend.

As you may have heard on the news a few weeks ago, London had a lot of snow fall on it’s streets causing most people to skip out on work for the day. I was excluded from the festivities though, as I can easily work from home. We took a few pictures of the snow from our flat which I’ve posted up here.

When Waitangi Day came around, Tanya was keen to head out with other London kiwis and join in on the festivities in the Waitangi Day Pub Crawl. The photos we took of the event can be viewed here.
We weren’t too keen to write off the whole weekend, so we only made it to a couple of pubs. The first one we went to in Notting Hill had almost completely cleared out by the time we got there, but we caught up to the crowds of kiwis at the second pub in Victoria. After the Victoria pub, we tried getting the tube to Westminster for the highlight of the day, the haka in Parliament Square. The tube train we got on was packed full of drunk kiwis, some with open beers, attempting to sing kiwi songs such as “Slice of Heaven”. Of the few non-kiwis on the train, all had fear in their eyes.
At Westminster, the hoard jumped and stumbled off the train with a cheer and we headed up with them to Parliament Square. It was busy. We made our way into the square, but had trouble seeing the haka when it was eventually performed by a load of drunken white guys with their tops thrown off.

Search for a Flat and Work

We had decided before we even left New Zealand that would try living and working in London … unless we really didn’t like it. So after arriving back from France, we headed up to the big smoke to first find a flat to live in, and second get ourselves some work to make back all the ££’s we spent on our travels. We’ve taken a few photos of the flat we’re living in now, which can be seen here.

We started out by renting temporary accommodation by the week from Accommodation London. We were staying in a tiny, cheap studio apartment in the Queens Park area, just around the corner from where my Dad grew up. The apartment was quite claustrophobic and managed to fit a double bed, table and chairs, 2 wardrobes, TV, kitchen and bathroom in about 10m squared. The size of the apartment was a blessing in disguise, as it gave us huge motivation to find a permanent place quickly.
We concentrated our search around Acton and Shepherd’s Bush as we had heard it was cheap and there was a large New Zealand and Australian population in the area. We mainly used the Gumtree website to find places to look at, but we also pounded the pavement by going around many local estate agents.
The first reply we had from sending a message to an advertiser on Gumtree nearly put us off. It was from someone with very poor grammar claiming to be a missionary in Africa with a sick wife, saying that they would send keys and documents to us if we sent 1 months rent in advance. Definitely a scam. Fortunately we didn’t hit any more scams afterwards, and we did report the advert to Gumtree, who promptly took it down.

The first place we saw, we really liked. It was in a quiet street and very nice and spacious inside with a bit of a garden outside. On the downside, it wasn’t furnished, and was a bit beyond what we wanted to pay per month. We made a quick decision, went back to the real estate agent who showed us around and said we would like to sign up. We signed all the forms and agreed to pay 6 months rent up front as we didn’t have any UK credit history (this seems to be the norm among London estate agents). We were suffering from buyers remorse the next morning and were actually a little relieved when the estate agent rang us to let us know the owner had decided not to accept the offer, and go with a different estate agent in order to try to get more for it.

We spent the next week or two looking around about 12 other rental properties, but there was always something wrong with each one, such as too small, too expensive, too close the railway, too dodgy or too dingy. Once we started looking exclusively at privately rented flats, in order to avoid paying agents fees, we had more luck. The second privately rented flat we saw was (and still is) perfect. It’s properly “fully furnished” with cutlery, TV, pots and pans, bedding and dining table included, when most “fully furnished” flats only have a bed, couch and white-ware. It’s in North Acton, not far from the tube and buses and has a co-op below. The landlord is very friendly and reasonable too, which was a bonus. The only downside was that it wasn’t going to be available for 2 weeks. Still, we jumped at the chance to get it, and immediately offered to rent the place, which was happily accepted.

With the flat sorted, we had to find some work. We had chosen a bad time to start looking as the Global Financial Crisis was just starting to hit its stride and many potential employers were putting a hold on recruitment. We got to a slow start, and I didn’t start to get interviews until I dropped my salary expectations slightly. Tanya was having a bit more trouble, as she tried to get into a Management Accountant position, which was different to what she had done before. From talking to recruiters, we heard that there were less jobs available, and more qualified people out looking for them.
Tanya eventually got a job offer for an auditing position doing almost the same as what she was back in New Zealand. It was for a 7 month contract, and as we had both been looking for over a month, she took it, and is now working in Victoria.
I was getting a bit downhearted once Tanya had been working for a week or two, and while I had gone to about 8 interviews, I still had nothing to show for it.
I had heard that my previous employer, Northern Arch, still had lots of work available back in Christchurch, so I contacted them to see if they had any temporary work they would like me to do remotely. Luckily they did, and I am working for them on contract for a few months, with the possibility of another few months extension. I’m working at the offices of a business partner of Northern Arch, Sungard, in Canary Wharf in London. It’s up the at the 40th floor of the 2nd tallest building in the UK with great views over London.

Quick Update

Here’s a quick update on what we’ve been up to… sorry for the lack of new posts recently, but Tanya and I have been having a rip-roaring good time in Europe. Where’d we go you might ask?

Well here’s a rundown:

First, to North France by ferry:

• Dieppe
• Rouen
• Paris
• Versailles

Next, Switzerland to see our old friend, Marco:

• Zurich
• Interlaken

Then down to Italy:

• Venice
• Rome
• Pompeii

Then back up into the South of France:

• Nice
• Carcassonne
• Bordeaux
• St. Emilion

Then back up to Dieppe to get the ferry back over.

We really liked France, especially the south, and also enjoyed visiting Switzerland. Italy for reasons I’ll go into later, we didn’t like as much, although Venice and Pompeii were exceptionally unique.

Right now we’re back in London, staying in a studio flat temporarily while we look for permanent accommodation. We’ll also get back on the job search bandwagon real soon.

I’ll update the blog with some more posts soon, when I get round to it, with links to photos, etc. Promise!

Photos Uploaded!

I finally got around to uploading the London and Brighton photos.
Here’s the links:

London Photos

Brighton Photos

Enjoy!

Hello World, Welcome to my blog

Welcome!

I’ve started this blog to keep people updated on my recent activities. I also thought I’d give this web-log thing a try. Hopefully it ends up being more successful than my attempts at emailing friends and family…

Recent events include:

- Planning to go over to the UK at the beginning of June

- Getting engaged to the love of my life; Tanya!

Ok, I’ve got the first post done, lets see how this thing goes.