Venice, Florence, Siena and Pisa

Easter had a bit of a different vibe this year. It usually signals the last gasps of summer and that last long weekend before the long haul til Labour Day. Here it is of course the opposite. Spring is starting to spring and things are on the up. Easter then felt like a good opportunity to head away, enjoy the warm spring days and have an extended long weekend. So, as the rest of London seemed to remain in hibernation, we toured northern Italy. With six days to do the four cities everything was quite compressed. This blog entry is much the same!

Venice is the sort of place that is difficult to describe. Canals, boats and islands kind of sounds like.....well, Pauanui really. Needless to say however, it isn't like Pauanui even in the slightest bit. Having been there in the past I had an idea of what to expect. Sam was in the dark a bit and I think somewhat surprised by what she found. The startling lack of busses was high on the list of things she didn't expect.

The first half day (after flying in that morning) was spent hitting the highlights: St Mark's Square, Rialto bridge and Grand Canal. With the early morning catching up with us it was an early night in what seemed like a quiet Venice (or Mestre, where we were staying). We got a bit further afield on the second day by going to Murano to see some glass being blown along with a lot of shops selling the finished product on the way. An interesting little sidetrack was to an island cemetery. Dinner by the Rialto Bridge that night wrapped up our time there having wandered the street for a day and a half.

A three hour train trip on Saturday morning took us to Florence. Florence is a lovely city although a bit of rain and a distinct drop in temperature made it a little more difficult to enjoy. Some highlights include: Michelangelo's David (which is much larger, more detailed and magnificently clever than you imagine), Ponte Vecchio and the Duomo. We were also lucky enough to be in town for "The Exploding of the Cart", a tradition held outside the Duomo where a big wooded cart is loaded with fireworks and....well, blown up.....kind of. Imagine 15 minutes of double happys, lots of smoke, fancy outfits and a lot of people (none of whom work for Occupational Safety and Health).

We woke up on Monday to the news that despite waiting all winter for it to snow in London, we had missed it. CNN was showing images of snow in Hyde Park (just down the road from us). We grumpily got on the train to do our day trip to Siena where, upon arrival, it began to rain. After stumbling across Del Campo (the main 'square' in Siena) and scrambling into a cafe for a cup of coffee and the use of their heaters we sat there and watched the rain turn to snow! It was only a brief flurry but as far as we're concerned being in the Campo when it snowed was pretty cool (excuse the pun).

Siena held a few surprises with a very large cathedral and some picturesque views. The Campo is the highlight but climbing to the top of the remains of an old church gives you a great view across the city and into the countryside.

Pisa is the closest international airport to Florence so we took the opportunity to drop in and check out the leaning tower. That's pretty much all there is to see in Pisa apparently but a few hours on the field of miracles was a nice way to wind down from the last five days of walking. It is a very pretty little part of the world and when you get bored you can watch all the tourists taking photos of their friends holding the tower up.

All in all the trip was great. It was fantastic to see a bunch of places you spend five years studying and we felt that we had used our short amount of time to the fullest. We hope you enjoy the photos!

Mat & Sam

P.S. After six days touring Tuscany we are surprised to report that we didn't see a single one of those houses you see in Howick.

When Kiwis go to London they.....
Hang out for the clocks to change to summer time.
Go to watch the Oxford/Cambridge boat race.

The best meal we've had since our last update was.....
A steak in Florence (a local specialty apparently – it tastes just like New Zealand beef…).
By the way, our last blog entry didn't include our meal in Tenerife which was a blinding light in an otherwise dark gastronomic cavern.

Underground countdown
Our total so far is 59/321 and new entries include:
Heron Quays, Greenwich and Cutty Sark.

We've also had a setback in that Terminal 5 opened this week therefore adding one to the total. With some summer weekends on the way we hope to knock a few more of soon.

Married life one year on....in Tenerife

Well one year on from spending a fabulous day with all our family and close friends in the sun on our wedding day, we got to spend the day lying on the beach and eating 3 meals of ice cream in Tenerife!

As a treat to ourselves we spent a week in the sun on the Spanish island of Tenerife. There isn't too much that's Spanish about it, but there was sun (22 degrees everyday), surf (albeit the freezing North Atlantic), and sand (black to be more precise).

We stayed at an apartment complex in a part of the island called Playa las Americas (see –not very Spanish!) and our apartment was bigger than our London apartment (but that's not hard to beat)! It was a 5 minute walk from the beach, and then there were 6 other beaches within walking distance. There is basically a promenade running the length of the foreshore that is lined with restaurants and bad souvenir shops. Having breakfast, lunch and dinner a stone's throw from the sand was a highlight, as was having ice cream for breakfast (with pancakes) lunch, and dinner!

We pretty much spent the whole week lying on beach reading books and trying not to be too put off by the amount of nudity around us. Lets just say that I was well overdressed in my Glassons bikini! Lycra should have been outlawed for most of the pensioners, and then those that did go there should have spent a bit more money to buy some extra lycra!

We managed to become victims of the stereotypical pink Englishman in just a couple of days, and our tans are still evident now, but are either falling off quickly in the grimy London air, or are being covered over from lime scale build up from the London water.

Married life is still treating us brilliantly, and we are looking forward to an action packed year 2!

SPECIAL ENTRY! Lifelong dream....fulfilled!!!

This is just a short entry, but a very special one. I filled a lifelong dream at the weekend......I bought my first ever pair of knee high boots! I seem to have been gifted with tree trunk calves which makes finding a pair of boots that will zip up past my ankles near impossible. However, there is one store in the UK that sells boots not only by shoe size, but also by calf size! I over indulged slightly and spent a few pounds on a pair....but they are possibly the perfect pair!
Check out http://www.duoboots.com/.

Oxford & Bath

Hi from mild London! That's right...it's been at least 10 degrees for most of January! The weather has been much better than we imagined so we have embarked on a couple of trips to other parts of the UK –Oxford and Bath.

The train system here is fantastic and makes a trip to pretty much anywhere in the UK very simple. 1.5 hours west of London is Oxford. The town is very much a university town where bicycle seems to be the most appropriate mode of transport. The colleges that make up the University are scattered around the small town –they are all amazing old stone buildings with centuries of history. There were plenty of book shops to shelter from the cold wind in, so we managed to kill some time perusing the shelves of some very academic looking books –Mat was looking for a specific kind of dictionary but it is a Rogers Dictionary....something that proved pretty hard to find in Oxford!!!


Christ Church

Oxford University Library

Bath was amazing –just under 2 hours out of London it was another very easy day trip. We went with some of Mat's fellow classmates from Unitec –Peter and Rachel, so architecture was definitely a hot topic. Our day started at the Bath Abbey –with a vaulted ceiling that is 67m long it was very impressive (FYI it's an Abbey and not a Cathedral because there is no Bishop)! It is also pretty cool from the outside –with its gothic architecture and flying buttresses (note this is Sam here and, my, hasn't my architecture knowledge improved!!!). No trip to Bath is complete without a visit to the Roman Baths. Apparently the English are still struggling to come to terms with hot water bubbling out of the ground! The audio guides provided gave us a really good insight into what used to happen at the baths –it was mainly a place of healing for pilgrims.



Mat and I at the Roman Baths


Rachel, Pete and Mat with their audioguides


The Bath Abbey


The Royal Crescent

Bath is an old Roman town that has been re-built, and highlights of the re-built architecture are the Circus and The Royal Crescent. The Circus is a set of houses set out in a circle and the Royal Crescent is just that –a crescent of expensive houses built in crescent shape. They are all classical buildings with a traditional order of roman columns (Doric, Ionic and Corinthian...there I go again!!!!), and are famous for their shapes.

Mat would like to comment that the Cider there is pretty good too, and it was also the highlight of fashion for me, as we heard about a store that sells boots by both foot size AND calf size.....watch this space!!!

Cheers –Mat & Sam

When Kiwis go to London they.....
Are surprised at how good the post-Christmas Winter weather is
Are told way too how good the Kiwi Summer is (and how it's the best in the last 10 years!!!!)
Struggle to decide which country to go too next!

The best meal we've had since our last update was.....
Tapas with Flick and Ben at a great little Spanish restaurant in Putney! Not sure how Spanish Banoffee Pie is……but it's highly recommended!

Underground countdown
Our total so far is 56/320 and new entries include:
Putney Bridge

New Years in Zurich

Happy New Year! It has been a while since we last updated our blog, and this entry in well overdue, but here goes….

We headed to Zurich on Dec 27th for 5 nights in sub-zero temperatures. We had a fabulous time and the definite highlight was a day trip to Mt Titlis (yes Mat had fun with that name!!!). We put on as many clothes as we could but were still frozen up the mountain. We took 3 gondolas to get to the top (10,000 feet!) and the last gondola actually rotated 360 degrees as it went up. There were amazing panoramic views of the Swiss Alps to reward us at the top –we have a feeling that we were probably able to see Italy, France and German all at the same time!
We also managed to find some rubber tubes and have a blast sliding down a man made purpose built track.

Mat at the top of Mt Titlis (10,000ft)

The city itself is very pretty –situated around the top of a lake with elegant architecture and lots of chocolate shops! Mat’s new found love is church steeples (I will just stick with the chocolate –after all the Swiss did invent milk chocolate!). While it didn’t snow while we were there, it had snowed a couple of days beforehand, so there was a fair amount of snow and ice on the roads for a few days. We saw many frozen fountains and ponds, and there was a severe frost one morning too.

Completely frozen fountain in Zurich

We spent New Years Eve on the edge of the lake where there were plenty of food and beer tents and an array of DJ’s and live music. My fav was the ‘Pure 80’s’ tent! It was freezing cold and we couldn’t sit down for more than 5 minutes or else we started to lose feeling in our extremities. At midnight everyone gathered around the lake ready for midnight –the strangest thing is that their tradition is to have fireworks at 12.20am! At midnight a token firework went off and everyone wished each other a happy new year, then we all waited for 20 minutes for the real fireworks to begin! The coolest thing was that all of the city lights were turned off for the fireworks so it was really dark.
We have decided that we really miss January 2nd in NZ as it is a holiday. Here, everyone is back at work on the 2nd –most still hung over from New Years Eve if they make it in at all (1 in 5 Londoners called in sick on Jan 2nd!).
So it is back to same old same old at work, but with a lot of planning going on in the background on how to best spend our 5 weeks of annual leave for the year!
We have been dreaming of the sun and sand after looking at holiday pics on Facebook, but are looking forward to seeing more of Europe this year to make up for a severe lack of daylight and warmth at the moment.

Cheers –Mat & Sam

When Kiwis go to London they.....
Are astonished at how little travel the locals do outside of England!
Do nothing ALL weekend recovering from the last European trip (also to shelter from the weather)

The best meal we've had since our last update was.....
A traditional lamb dish in Zurich –the meat is crumbed and baked very slowly in an oven. It was the most full I have felt in ages!

Underground countdown
Our total so far is 55/320 and new entries include:
Royal Oak

Not such a good couple of weeks due to being out of the country.

London 4 months on....and Christmas

So we have now been in London for a little over 4 months and have just had our first Christmas as husband and wife, in a foreign city, in the Winter! Perhaps a time for some reflection....a few things that still puzzle us about London!

Mystery jackets –these are winter jackets that come to the bottom of a girls butt cheeks and we are never too sure if she has anything on under the jacket or not...a mystery!

The highlight of a British Christmas is apparently the TV that is on over the festive season. There are in fact TV ads highlighting the programmes that will be on over Christmas (they are all rubbish). Because it rains a lot here and is so cold, all you are expected to do after you have stuff your tummy on Christmas Day is hit the couch
and tune into some really bad British TV!

Yes the winner of Britain's latest reality TV singing programme (The X Factor) made it to #1 in the Christmas music charts (I think there would have been riots had this not been the case!). I trust that Simon Cowell thinks he has done his job and this will be the last we see of singer Leon!


Still slightly confused over the British past time of tea drinking –in NZ we think that people waste time at work by going outside for a smoke, well here I think you could kill an hour or 2 each day by making tea! Everyone is very friendly and always ask if anyone else wants a cuppa, but 6 times a day?? Mat isn't a tea drinker (he prefers the REALLY bad English coffee), and I am a one cup a day kind of person....the variety of tea commonly known here as "builders" (milk and one!).

Changing of the Guards is a world famous 'ceremony' taking place a Buckingham Palace every second day in the Winter. This supposedly includes lots of pomp and ceremony with marching bands and horses and swords and big black fluffy hats! We decided that the Sunday before Xmas was a good time to do this London must, so we assumed a position in near freezing conditions and strained to see the action through the fog! I was looking forward to the brass band the most, until they broke out a set of Disney classics while the guards stood in the grounds of Buckingham Palace like statues probably freezing their extremities off like us! What kind of Welsh Military band breaks out Disney tunes during the Changing of the Guards? Just one more thing that puzzles me!

On a more serious note, yesterday was Christmas Day –it bought cool temperatures and a lot of rain. We were lucky enough to enjoy a traditional Kiwi lunch at a friend's house with about 13 other orphaned Kiwis. We had a feast of beef, ham, chicken AND lamb! This was followed by fruit salad and ice cream (kiwi fruit included but no Hockey Pokey ice cream unfortunately) as well as my traditional strawberries dipped in chocolate (but this year the strawberries were from Egypt!). Thankfully Mat remembered to send a change of address to Santa so we were also lucky enough to have a pile of presents to open again this year.

Deliveries from Santa and NZ!

Presents in bed!

We are heading off to Switzerland until the New Year tomorrow, so look forward to sharing some pics of the snow with you afterwards. Until then, have fun in the sun if you are in NZ!!

Mat and Sam


When Kiwis go to London they.....
Go and see Crowded House at Wembley!
Eat Pineapple lumps and jet planes sent from home!

The best meal we've had since our last update was.....
Indian on Brick Lane. Not because of the food (which we're not quite sure if we've recovered from yet) but because of the pre-dinner bartering. Four free bottles of wine, beers for the boys, pompadoms and 35% off the bill! Not bad!

Underground countdown
Our total so far is 54/320 and new entries include:
Wembley Park
Southwark
Old Street
Marble Arch
Picadilly Circus
Liverpool Street
Green Park

We made good progress on this recently. Not only did we knock off another 7 stations but the entire East London line has been shut down so our target has been reduced by 4 stations!

Soho

So when we ventured off around the world to see and experience new things, no-one told us that good coffee would be so hard to come by!

Correct me if I'm wrong but if you spend a month or so buying the odd coffee from a cafe you might expect the staff to recognise you. You might even get lucky and they might remember what sort of coffee you drink. When you get your coffee there's a pretty good chance it will be .....well....good.

I'm afraid to report however that this isn't the case in London. Not only can you go the same cafe every day for a week and still not be recognised (there's only three staff) but the chance of them remembering the type of coffee you ordered two minutes ago is slim. The chance of them giving you what you ordered seems even slimmer. No sugar means NO SUGAR!

All of this might be OK if the coffee was any good but it's not. It's enough to make you do what the rest of the population does – revert to tea or beer.

So, just when almost all was lost we acted on a good tip. We visited Flat White, a cafe in Soho established and staffed by similarly desperate Kiwis. Apparently flat whites (the ones we all know and love) are a Kiwi/Aussie thing. You can't buy them here. Not that this really matters because the Flat White is far more than just a place where they serve coffee differently.

First of all, when you walk in, there is a bit of Ponsonby about it. It's one of those little narrow cafes with one too many tables pushed into it. You know, you have to climb over someone's lap to get to the bathroom out the back, past the F+P fridge and through the beaded curtain. OK I might be exaggerating slightly but you get the drift.

Secondly, you walk into the Flat White with your accent on your sleeve and there is an assumption that the people behind the counter know you already. You order, they look up, try to figure out which part of Auckland you come from and then, when they can't place you they get back to making coffees. If you don't know them you'll probably know someone else in the cafe. It's chocker full of kiwis.

Finally the coffee is good. It's real coffee. None of this "single shot of espresso watered down with gallons of milk" stuff. The flat whites are prepared with a silver fern 'drawn' in the froth (you know how it's done). It's a shame to spoil them by drinking them really.

Needless to say, we will be going back.

In a strange way, the best thing about Flat White and its presence here, is that even though we're half a world away and enjoying the adventures that we are being presented with, it's nice to know that there is a touch of home just a few tube stops away.