With a sunny Saturday forecast, and Mel & Nath planning a day trip to Cambridge to visit family, Nick, Belle, Andy & I decided to join them for the day for a bit of a punt! After nearly missing our train from Kings Cross to Cambridge (Nick and I having to do the madman dash through the rat’s nest that is the London Underground!), the four of us boarded our 45 minute train up to Cambridge. It is so nice to get out of the city sometimes as see some of England’s wide open spaces.
We met Mel & Nath at the bus stop and proceeded to head immediately to the River Cam hoping for a cheap punting price! As it was January, it was much easier to get a punt and get out on the water pretty quickly. Our punter, Alfie (what an appropriate name!), was our guide for the morning as we passed through the Backs of Cambridge. It was actually surprisingly pleasant as we made our way up to Cam Bridge and back. Alfie even threw in a couple of local tales (about his siblings who had studied at Cambridge) for good measure against the historic, well known Nightclimber ones.
After lunch at The Eagle, the pub where the University scientists first announced that they had discovered “the secret of life”. They had finished their proposal for DNA, and celebrated in this pub over a few pints! The ceiling of this pub is also graffittied with notes and signatures of RAF pilots to their loved ones from WWII. For lunch I enjoyed a Beef Yorkshire Pudding Wrap: that is, beef wrapped within a curled up Yorkshire pudding! Interesting. And lovely washed down with a Bulmars.
We signed up for a walking tour of the colleges in the afternoon, and I enjoyed this less than the punting. Although the guide was very good, her tour was laid out for 60 year old daytripper, not the young daytripper and her taletelling reflected this. Either way, we had a glimpse within the colleges and learnt a few tales of Cambridge’s past.
Unfortunately for the tour guide, the Siberian winds started to whip in and caused us to lose concentration on the tour and focus solely on trying to keep warm! Hence, at the end of the tour we headed back to The Eagle for a lovely hot coffee, before boarding our train back to London.
I really enjoyed Cambridge, and our trip up the River Cam by boat. It’s a shame the weather turned frosty at the end and we had to spend the end of the day indoors!
On the eve of Australia Day, we (Melanie, Nath, Nick & I) decided to catch the train up to Yorkshire to spend the weekend with PJ and Lisa. They had just moved into their own 2 bedroom place in Howden (Where? Exactly!) which is a short train ride from York or Hull, depending on your direction of travel. From London, it’s approximately 2 hours on the train. But it seemed much quicker to arrive as we all merrily enjoyed a few bottles of wine on the train up!
Lisa picked us up from the train station (literally, a train station with nothing around, we thought it was an early April Fool’s Day joke at first!) and delivered us to our abode for the weekend: theirs. It was a lovely warm, well fitted out apartment with views of the local church (read: a daily alarm bell!). We immediately began the well overdue catch up with them both, over a few more bottles of wine and an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. (I’m not too sure how that last element snuck it’s way in!).
On the Saturday, we caught the 10:30am train from Howden to York. We then spent the day wandering the tiny lanes and window shopping our way around. We were all slightly feeling the effects of the night before, and the many, many, many stairs to the top of the York Minstrel definitely didn’t help! But a good, hearty English lunch did. Pies and roasts all around (washed down with a Coke, much to the boys’ dismay).
We spent the afternoon at the Viking Museum, and seeing Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate. Before a final stop in a traditional sweet store, and then the fudge shop, we then had a cider in a pub that is actually underground in a cellar. Very nice!
On Saturday night, Lisa cooked up a superb curry that we all enjoyed before the Pictionary Competition began! The game became a heated competition of lots and lots of all plays! Drawing with eyes closed, with left hands, without your pen leaving the paper – we had it all! I’ve never laughed so hard in my life! Surprisingly, Melanie & I were victors! ‘Yay us!
It was then Fireworks time. We loaded up Nick’s backpack (actually, it was already packed with goodies) and headed out to the rugby fields across town. We carried nothing but fireworks. The boys set up a great display on the fields, and one by one the rockets hit the sky for a fabulous fire in the sky! Pity about Nath’s unfortunate mud-slide fall as he went to reload……. But hilarious!
Church bells woke us on Sunday morning. After a leisurely breakfast, we went for a wander around Howden before picking one of the local 6 pubs for a Sunday Roast. It went something like this:
Waitress: “Would you like the beef or the pork?”
Us: [We are considering…]
Waitress: “Oh wait, sorry we are out of the pork.”
Us: 5 beefs it is then!
And the roasts they delivered to us could have fed the whole village! Potatoes, cauliflower, carrots and more as a “side” to our gravy and puddings. We had to take that walk around Howden after lunch (through the graveyard? Hmm) just to walk off some of that saturated fat.
By 4pm, it was time for the Londoners to return to the train station to catch our train back south. We had such a wonderful time up in Yorkshire – a sneak peak at the quiet life was great fun!
Rather than dining over a Michelin star dinner and copies amounts of champagne, we decided to go away to the countryside for a nice, quiet and relaxing long weekend to celebrate our second anniversary.
We left London on the Friday evening after work, expecting to arrive at our cottage by 9pm at the latest. Due to the descending foggy weather and low temps (-5C), road visibility was poor and we were struggling to see further than 5m in front of our rental car after we left the M25! An oncoming car was a relief because we could actually see the edges of the road, and also the middle of the road! After stopping in at a petrol station just outside of Cambridge (as my navigator skills were painfully let down by the GPS on Nick’s new phone, and the lack of visibility) so Nick could replenish his energy with red bull and a packaged sandwich, we rang ahead to the cottage to let them know we were running a little late….
We eventually rolled up to Henstead cottages at 10pm! Luckily the owners were night owls. Though, we were literally given the keys and they disappeared for the weekend. They had started the fire for us though (phew).
We spent the weekend sleeping in, finessing the art of fire starting, eating well and roaming the surrounding Suffolk countryside in our little car. It was freezing cold (-5C) for almost all the weekend, which inclined us to be indoors where possible; excepting a beachside stroll in Southwold and a country walk through the Norfolk Broads to see a Roman Fort that has remained relatively untouched and survived the test of time.
Suffolk is a county of patchwork farmland. With very few
major roads (or perhaps our keen interest to take tiny country lanes),
hedge-lined and with plenty of grass or crop, the peace and quiet is
intoxicating. The air is still, there are birds (something we hear very little
of in London!)
and the smell of trees in the air. It was such a refreshing and lovely break
into a slower, peaceful side of English living.
Our cottage was super comfy: a massive queen size bed, a warm and comfy lounge area and a brand new kitchen. My favourite feature though was definitely the wood fire: all those camping trips as a oungster came in handy in achieving the perfect combination of newspaper, kindling and hard wood to warm us up! Each morning was a greeting of peace and quiet, not even a rooster to wake you. What a relaxing, regenerating and lovely weekend for us in celebrating of our deux ans.
We did read the cottage guestbook to snoop on what others had done during their time in Henstead Cottages. Everyone else saw a woodpecker.
But not us.
The end of 2008 has descended suddenly in temperature, making the evenings very chilly indeed. London is usually relatively balmy compared to other northern habitats; but we were starting to experience close to zero everynight. Brr!
Since we stayed in London for Christmas, we also were looking at bringing in the new year in London as well. We arranged to have a group dinner in Piccadilly at an Italian Restaurant called Biagio. After tallying everyone up, we had a group of ten of us for the evening: Nick, myself, Melanie, Nath, Mel’s friends Kevin, Kirsten & Gareth, Gareth’s parents from Oz, and Tim. We drank many bottles of red wine (wine blanket) and enjoyed some fabulous (and yet surprisingly cheap) Italian food. By 10:30pm, we decided we’d better head down to the Thames!
We navigated our way down to the Thames in the frosty -1C air, we had come prepared with red wine in a soft drink bottle (felt like we were teenagers again!) as glass is banned in the surrounds of Westminster bridge. Some of the areas had been closed by the police, but we managed to find a perch on some stairs near the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) where we could view the fireworks display and have some room to move. Perfect for a big penguin huddle to keep warm!
We had such a fun night! The fire in the sky brought in the new year with a surprise as we were too far away to hear the count down; but we all offered our applause and celebrated the turn of another year. Welcome ’09!
As we ventured off to Norway for Christmas last year, staying in London for Christmas was a real treat this time. London certainly goes all out for Christmas: fairy lights galore, department stores are decoration-mad, and the people crush on Oxford Street, or in Harrods, is only to be experienced to be known.
As I work just a couple of blocks south from Oxford Street (where my bus also drops me off), my stop-drop-and-roll to battle the Christmas shoppers was a daily occurrence. Being little, I had the advantage of weaving my way through the crowd, but at the end of a long day at work (well it felt long seeing as the sun didn’t rise until 9am and it was to bed by 3.30pm!) the last thing I felt like doing was going against the tide up Oxford Street. Or being crushed into a line onto the bus and hoping for a seat. You know, because all that shopping has to sit somewhere on its journey home, right?
Harrods: our near death experience!
I decided to buy some lovely Harrods Christmas decorations for my Mum for Christmas as she had visited us in September, and it was a nice reminder of her time here in London that she could reflect on every time she put up our Christmas Tree at home. But, when we lined up on Nov 30 at 11.15am just to get into Harrods (Was there a sale we wondered? Was someone famous inside? Why all the commotion?) we were every man for themselves in the Christmas department. And the food department. And the perfumery department. And wait, yes, all of them. Once we had selected our Christmas purchases, we were dismayed when we were informed by the customer service attendants that we could not purchase anything before midday! It was 11.30! We had to “browse” in a crush where you could barely move for 30 minutes without going insane!
We kept out cool, we got into a cashier line and waited. Once through the line, we made a beeline for the exit. Harrods and Christmas? A London experience. But never again!
Work Christmas Party x 3
Due to the current economic climate, Christmas cheer was a little more limited when it came to free champers from your employers. I wasn’t alone in working for a company that had to scale things a little bit back this year – I was able to enjoy our big company do in the New Bond Street galleries (sampling Clemintine Martinis, Pie & Mash and karaoke during the evening), whilst also enjoying a BYO (now buy your own!) Marketing department Christmas lunch at Cha Cha Moon’s near Carnaby Street (http://www.carnaby.co.uk/stores/stores_item.cfm?store_id=255&cat_id=8 ) where a main set us each back approx 3.50 GBP each! Our Marketing division (marketing, design, display, magazine, catalogue production etc) enjoyed a BYO Sainsbury’s wine & cheese evening on a desk in our department, loving decorated with hand-made banners and snowflakes courtesy of us! It was probably the funnest one of the three, finishing up about 9pm and full of lovely wine and cheese! Plus as I spend most of my time working with these departments it was really lovely to celebrate with them.
Christmas Day
Santa was working against me this year, and I came down with the flu on the 23rd December which prevented me from joining in some of the pre-Christmas cheer (including Xmas Eve drinks with Simone). However, on the big day, enjoying the comforts of my own home and central heating Nick and I enjoyed a lovely London Christmas. No snow, but still!
We woke up about 8am and did all of our Christmas calls to our loved ones in Australia until about 9am. It was nice to hear that everything at home was how it should be – bloody stinkin’ hot, with everyone enjoying cold platters and plenty of booze late into the summer night! Following our calls, we went to do the annual present opening. How excitement!
My dear St. Nick spoiled me rotten. I received so many lovely presents. Of course, I had to try and wear them all at once – all day! We spent the day lounging about, watching DVDs (apparently that’s what the British do) and preparing for our turkey feast that night.
Nick became the TURKEY MASTER this Christmas. He cooked up the most delectable succulent bird, stuffed with sage & lemon, and some lovely roasted parsnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and beans. Melanie joined us for dinner after she had finished work that day. We enjoyed Christmas crackers, silly hats, jokes, turkey, champers, santa hats, and apple pie before retiring to bed late into the night.
A quiet Christmas, but a lovely & scrumptious one too!
Iceskating at Somerset House
As we iceskated at the 02 and Tower Hill icerinks last year, I was very keen to experience Somerset House for this one. We arranged with Melanie, Nath, Tim and us to go on the 30th as it proved very difficult to get into a session. It is the most popular ice rink in London!
We met for dinner at 6pm in Covent Garden at the lovely Le Café du Jardin, a French restaurant Nick and I enjoyed before the Lion King upon my return to London. We could enjoy the set menu for 2 courses + coffee for 13 pounds (http://www.lecafedujardin.com/)! A delectable, and cost-effective pre skating feed!
Somerset House is truly the prettiest ice skating rink of them all. It is so picturesque, with it’s Tiffany Christmas tree and majestic building backdrop. As usual the blades were blunt, but that did not deter us from very much enjoying our skating time and helped me to slowly hone my ice skating skills. We should really go ice skating more often! I love it!
