Sunday, May 17, 2009

A Long Way to London

We flew the long way from Brisbane to Auckland to LA to London, but we eventually made it with all our luggage and escaped from swine flu. We are now in London, on the search for jobs and somewhere to call home. We have been here just over 2 weeks.

London wasn't as we expected. It is big but doesn't have the hussle or hum of a thriving city. It seems to just progress at it's own pace. There are no really tall buildings with everything being no more than 8 storeys. It's been cloudy but hasn't rained that much. It certainly is windy though, although some locals say it's just the Spring weather. But it does have an enormous amount of history. Our first dabble into the history of the place was to see the Tower of London. We obviously appreciated it from the outside with a 15 quid entry fee. The place is near on 1,000 years old and still stands tall and strong on the banks of the Thames. And this is it's recent history. A thousand years before this even existed the Romans came and conquered England. The turned it from a river bank, into a thriving city with all of the engineering knowledge the romans. They ruled here for around 350 years before the collapse of the Roman Empire. After the Romans left the city became a ghost town. A while later the Saxons from Germany came over and breathed live into the city, then the Normans came and conquered it. Throw in a few continued attacks from Nordic vikings and it's quite a bit of history over the 2,000 years.

London has some great parks and gardens. Massive green spaces in the middle of the city. The above photos are from Regent's Park. Notice all the jet streams in the air. London has 3 airports and the skies are busy places. This all bodes well for travel, as the fares are cheap, we just need to get jobs first.This is the famous Punch & Judy (we had to look them up too). A famous puppet duo from the world of English Comedy. They put on a pretty good show, entertaining both young and old. We stumbled upon them in Covent Gardens where there are buskers of all shapes and sizes, although unicycles and juggling are the main stayers.

Now, back to the search.....

Rewind

A catch up from July 2008 to May 2009.

We last left you in Vancouver, Canada. We worked until the end of August, when we packed up our worldly possessions and piled back into Felix (our trusty van) for another whirlwind tour. This time our destination was the USA. We focused on the Western half of the country and packed 5,500kms through 9 states in only 11 days.

We visited some amazing National Parks. Yellowstone NP is amazing for its wildlife and crazy geological stuff. Grand Canyon NP really is a big hole. We visited it from the less popular North Rim (only 5% of visitors) and went for a great day hike into and out of the canyon. Thirdly was Zion NP. A lesser known park to the tourist but a great place. Amazing sandstones cliffs and canyons with patches of green rainforest. Click here for some photos.

But the highlight was a day of not driving in the Californian mountains. A friend from Fiji, Andy, lives there and took us out for a days sailing on the lake. A welcome relief. The next target were some cities. We did a night in Las Vegas and a night in San Francisco. And then all the way back to Vancouver. Click here for the next lot of photos.

From Vancouver it was a flight home to Oz back not without a week long stopover in Fiji. A great chance to catch up with friends and visit a few cool places. I also managed to squeeze in asking Bella to marry me.

So we made it back to Oz. We had 2 weddings, a 21st and 90th in the first 2 weeks. After that, we settled into a few months of work, wedding planning and planning for our next trip to the UK. It was a great few months at home enjoying the Australian Summer.

We had a great wedding in Mackay in February and followed it up with a month long honeymoon roadtripping through Australia. Here are some photos from the wedding.


And I think that brings us up to our flight to London.