Walk Along the Thames

Welcome to another day in London!

This was the biggest `hot jacket` I`ve ever seen... you can see how big it is from the cutlery. I think at least 2 cans of tuna went into this? I could only manage half.

Here are a few famous sights of London... I walked part of the Millenium Mile yesterday in the rain to catch a glimpse of classic London. The Tower Bridge is actually the stunning one, while London Bridge is very ordinary and you`d miss it unless you were looking for it. I think this one is more worthy of the song! I walked across it and walked to the Design Museum, then walking along the river to Southwark Cathedral, London`s oldest gothic style cathedral; Globe Theatre which was humming with schoolkids, and then to Tate Modern.

Here`s the Tower of London, especially for you Tiff! You can see the trees of Tower Green, and if you keep heading along the right side, Traitor`s Gate. It looks lovely and peaceful and it`s unnerving to know it was the site of historical beheadings and executions. I`ll go on the tour another day and report back, this is a must do after reading so much historical fiction. Phillipa Gregory does an amazing job of creating the atmosphere of historical periods.

The Tate Modern was absolutely brilliant. Full of famous names like Monet, Mondrian, Giacometti, Picasso, Rothko, Bacon, Lichtenstein... just amazing. One of my favourite walls was featuring the work of Sophie Calle, a French photographer. She had worked as a chambermaid in a Venice hotel in the early 80s and when she cleaned a room, she recorded tiny details about what she found there. It was slightly voyeuristic but interesting what she deduced about the room`s guests from little things, like the kind of footwear that was in the room, and what items people left in the bathroom.

I`ll leave you here to go and get ready... I`m hoping to catch the Tube to South Kensington to spot the Changing of the Guard at 11.30am and post some handsome Beefeaters for you!

Crisps not Chips

No Watties, Pams or Sanitarium here...

Visiting a foreign supermarket is a sightseeing destination in itself. I went to Morrisons to find some eggs today (unsuccessful!). Clare says its roughly the equivalent of Pak N Save whereas Waitrose would be your posher end, like Woolworths. The frozen/refrigerated section was a bit of a maze, with lots of separate shelving for ham, turkey, gammon and all the rest of the usual meats. There is also a huge selection of cheeses, many from the EU and fromage frais is in its own special section from the yoghurt.

There were lots of ethnic foods, especially Indian, as well as British food like canned steak and kidney, and canned cod roe. I thought it was cool that crabmeat was about the same price as tuna! Especially for Mum, I checked out the crisps (NZ potato chips) flavours. As well as the usual suspects, there was Steak and Onion, Prawn Cocktail, Smoky Bacon, BBQ Rib, and my favourite, the Farmer`s Choice pack ~ Ploughmans, Roast Gammon and Sweet Cumberland Sausage. Pretty cool!

For those who are curious about the price of British groceries, my receipt: bag of spinach leaves 99p, 6 pack Walkers Farmer`s Choice Crisps 1.15, Carte D`Or Greek Yoghurt Icecream 2.99, Pink Salmon 420g 80p, Crabmeat 300g 88p, Wholewheat pasta 79p, Sunsilk Shampoo and Conditioner 85p (not on special, maybe cheap because they make it here?), Apple Turnovers x3 82p, Ham 89p. Total GBP11.01.

London

I am having some problems learning how to use Clare`s laptop today, so pardon the jumbly post! Finally made it to London and... amazingly no jet lag after toughing it out the first day. 29 hours airtravel was definitely not as hard as I thought; six movies, a sleep and 2 stops, lots of Tetris and Hangman and 2 dinners, 2 breakfasts, lunch and snack and there was London Heathrow. Clare`s flat is 5 minutes walk from a Tube Station directly off the Picadilly Line from the airport, I was very impressed.

London is warm but overcast at the moment so from when you wake up til about 9pm at night, the sky and light looks the same all day. Parts of London could be any part of the Western world, including NZ, and then something iconic like an ancient looking pub with an interesting name like the Crooked Surgeon, or a red doubledecker bus comes into view. One of my issues at the moment is remembering to stand on the right of the escalator at the Tube stations, it`s so firmly ingrained in me that I should stand on the left!

Today we went to East London to find the Sunday Upmarket, taking the Tube to Aldgate East and wandering down Whitechapel St.

Big ears.

Flower Market

Picadilly

Clare, Dan and Joel at St James Square having some icecream. We met up in Chinatown yesterday for a Chinese Buffet meal then wandered around Soho and Picadilly.

Design Gallery in East London. Not sure what this chair is about, but I like the funky colour combination.

This one is made out of push-pins.

A cardboard knight.

Some cool collage art. It was fantastic just wandering, I only found out about Rob Ryan`s papercut art before I left NZ and today we stopped by Tatty Devines and found out that he had an exhibition there, so I got to see some originals! It was a collaboration between Rob and Tatty Devine, so papercut art and jewellery together. Awesome.

Here I am at the Sunday Upmarket, located in the Old Truman Brewery. Lots of tempting food and very cool stalls.

Here`s Clare with a summer fruit tart! Very yummy with the seasonal strawberries, blueberries and huge blackberries. Next time I think I`ll definitely try the Ethiopian vege rolls, they looked fabulous. We were so happy to find the market, and definitely will be back. The flower market was closing as we wandered through, but what we did see was lovely. Very cute plants and flowers, including kumquat and lemon trees and gorgeous bunches of sweet William.

Here`s an old Yoong girls joke! The rastafarian actually sells coconut juice in the shell.

Topsy~turvy...
Here is Dubai from the air. It was a really alien looking landscape to me, all sand, glass and white buildings. There were swarms of construction cranes and I managed to see the Palm Jumeira island from my window seat. It is beyond belief how much construction is happening in Dubai.


See you all later with more posts and photos!

Bye bye NZ

Oooh, I managed to fit everything in finally with a few tugs and re-arranging here and there. I think this was the hardest packing I've done yet. I wouldn't want to open any zips til I get to London. So here I am finally, thank you everyone for your kind wishes and travel tips and to my family for supporting me and helping me out with all the things that make me feel special- being patient with me waiting for various this and that, looking after me without wisdom teeth and with wisdom holes(!), going to Yummy, NZ food shopping, pumpkin cake, travel stories and sharing old photos, travel ring (see lonely planet...) See you soon, lots of love!

Papercuts

Good news - I'm definitely off to London on the 29th of May (two days time!). Very excited. Soon I hope to have some pictures from Europe to show you.

I saw some beautiful papercuts on a few blogs - thank you Elsita - and decided to give it a go... It's quite addictive and different. I used some watercolour Bockingford paper folded in half, freestyle-cut with a craft knife, then opened the paper up to do the assymmetrical bits on the bottom two pieces. The benefits of this medium is that you don't need much equipment and there's not too much to commit to, just an A4 piece of paper. It's also very forgiving as long as you remember you can always cut off more, but it doesn't look pretty if you try to glue stuff back on! I also tried using plain copy paper, which is easier to cut but also easier to rip as my blade is a bit blunt.

The Cinderella piece is for Mum. She likes shoes, pumpkin soup and her Chinese zodiac animal is the mouse so I think this is her fairy tale. Which fairy tale would you choose?

One day I'd like to have a go at creating a Javanese shadow puppet. I really enjoyed the use of the puppets in Aurelia's Oratorio. It was such a beautiful show.

I am a lucky girl at the moment having a bit of time to play around with arty things and being with my family. I love being able to spend time with them, doing things like going on outings and also the little things like just being by the fire and watching tv/knitting/snoozing/sneaking treat food (there are a few open packets of biscuits in the house at the moment: gingernuts, hundreds and thousands and almond), fruit and vege shopping or riding in the car together and chatting.

I'm now registered in the UK

Yay! I checked my professional registration on the HPC website and it's finally done... I'm a registered physio in the UK! Thank you to everyone who helped me out with the paperwork in Taranaki. It took a long time (since August!) but it happened. The locum agency is bombarding me with details of jobs in London, Manchester and Australia maybe to entice me in case I've chickened out. Nice to know there are some cool jobs out there.

I am still waiting for my beloved passports, hoping everyday that the courier will come. My flight is now on the 17/05 but I'll still hold my breath until I see the visa. I can't call the High Commission, but apparently they're very busy this time of year. So I'll have to exercise extreme patience and think positive thoughts.

So... while I've been waiting, I've been pottering around the house. Random things: Elsa Mora's amazing creative blog, reading my Let's Go Europe Guide 2008 - do you know there are 300 bikes in Helsinki, Finland that you can borrow for free to ride around the city?, baking feijoa cake (very yummy but next time I will undercook it a wee bit), reading some Philippa Gregory books, discovering the mnemonic for the fates Henry VIII's wives - divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived; and harvesting the garden crop of crabapples, Granny Smiths and feijoas. I think I may also have too many pairs of gloves now. Time to stop knitting?

Yes, I'm still waiting in NZ...

I am getting a bit anxious now, on the lookout for courier vans and anything that comes by the letterbox. My passport and visa are due, but if they aren't here on Monday I'll have to change my flight. On the good side of things, my Eurail ticket for France, Italy and Spain has arrived and a rough journey has been plotted on the map.

In the meantime, I've been doing some cleaning up of my hoarded things. It's amazing what's been unearthed - old letters, poems, notes from high school slipped under the table, childhood collections -stickers, badges, semiprecious stones and treasures, heaps of art materials.
I finally recycled my old university notes and made peace with the fact I will never re-read my old Biochem and Philosophy notes and essays for fun.

Please don't kill me Clare, but I still love this drawing you did in class in high school! I asked her to draw me a date for the winter formal. It always was a hard choice.



------>Postnote: I'm not leaving today... passport still hasn't come back so my flight has been postponed. Watch this space!