London!

Kia ora whanau,

OK. So I wrote a goodbye email before I left NZ, then I saved it, so that I could sort out all of my the email addresses to send it to. Can't remember if I actually sent that one as I stopped thinking about my email outbox, and started worrying about my backpack's inbox.

Anyway... I'm in London now. This is what I've been doing:

I last emailed from Hong Kong airport. At the time I was between flights and had to wait 5 hrs till the next one. I got real hungry but because it wasn't peak time, a lot of the food restaurants had closed, so there wasn't much choice. Found one and ordered a "chicken bake". It came out too fast to have been freshly cooked, and because I only had pounds, I paid with that and got my change back in Hong Kong dollars. Then I had to convert this back into British Pounds, and in the process of these two transactions this humble chicken dish cost me just under 9 pounds, or over $20 NZD. If it was a good meal, then that would have been alright, but I think a $20 note would have tasted nicer.

Had a lovely Virgin Atlantic flight from Hong Kong to London... Landed in London at 4:30am, outside temperature -1 degrees. This was considerably warmer than the outside temperature when we were flying, but I decided to wait for Pip inside anyway. 2 hrs later - off the first tube - Pip turned up carrying a traveling pack of her own.

Packs on our backs - between tube, rail and bus lessons - I learnt that we weren't heading back to London, but instead south, to Brighton.

Brighton is like "Right On!", but without the space, and with a "B" in front. It could also be thought of as a washing powder, "Brite-On!", and is apparently the gay capital of England. Or maybe not, but it's right up there with potential gay capitals. Apparently.

Brighton has a pavilion that looks like the Taj Mahal, and a pier with a roller-coaster and other rides at the end.

Anyway, so we stayed in a room looking out to the sea, had beautiful weather, walked, shopped and relaxed.

Came back to London and yesterday I ventured out into the city. Here are some place names and landmarks. Walked from Pip's place in Kennington, up Waterloo rd, then along the Thames river to the Tate Modern. They are rehanging an entire floor there, so I only saw one floor of shows. Then across Millenium Bridge to St Paul's Cathedral, then around in circles, then back to the South Bank. Shakespeare's Globe; London Bridge; Tower Bridge; Tower of London; then all the way back to Big Ben; then home. It doesn't really feel like I did much, but it was a lot of walking, and I'm beginning to feel like I have some sort of handle on the basic geography of the city. Although I have a tendency to think North is South and South is North, I'm keeping that to myself as I can think of some terrrrrrrible downunder jokes that would come back if I said it out loud.

So today I'm going to the Tate Britain, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square and anywhere else that catches my eye.

Having a good time. It's kind of cold, and if I stay still it's really cold, but whenever I see babies in prams without a scarf, beanie, gloves or oil heater, I remind myself that it's got to get colder before it gets warmer, and if baby James can do it, so can I. (I'm not breaking out the long-johns just yet.)

So in a week we're heading out to Spain, then back to London after Christmas. I'll need to sort some stuff out, but then I'm going to take off to (not-so) far away lands with names like Croatia, France, Germany, Switzerland. Wanna get away for a bit before I come back and find a job here, then I'll hopefully make some more money before I take off again and have a better look around.

Hope everything and everyone is well. Drop me a line next time you have time.

Go HERE for more photos