The Food

Just a quick post to talk food.

So far, not a fan of the meat or cheese...

As we are staying in an 'aparthotel' we have our own little kitchen to cook meals in (save all the money!). We have been having Crunchynut cereal for breakfast, which is quite yum, and saves us ridiculous amounts of money. We've been having lunches on the go as we've been out each day so far - these have included my very first burrito (yum!), a pub lunch where I had a burger and Mr had a steak and ale pie, and also a lunch at a McDonalds to try a chicken burger we don't have back home. Overall, breakfasts and lunches have been pretty good.

We also bought some fresh raspberries and peaches at a market. They were so juicy and tasty we will be going back to get some more and try some other fruits! If all the fruit is like this, at least from the markets, that will become my snacks and desserts very quickly. From the same market we bought a loaf of sourdough bread, which was equally delicious.

My problem is with the cheese and mince meat from the local grocery store. Yuck. Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love cheese. Well the one we bought is absolutely awful. Granted it's the store brand, but we bought the store brand back in Aus and it was actually our favourite. This one tastes powdery and not exactly like cheese at all... Will not be buying again.

The mince was also the store brand, same as back home, and was also pretty awful. So much fat! I understand this is something I will have to get used to - we are fairly spoilt with our beef in Aus - but it makes me sad that a simple bolognese, like we had on our second night, I could barely eat because it tasted so bad. The mince spuds we had the other night were much better - the mince was seasoned with taco seasoning and some good veg. So maybe that's the way to go - strong seasoning.

On an unexpectedly good note, we bought a container of store-brand chicken and sweet corn soup to have for dinner last night, along with a cob loaf, and both were quite good, especially because combined they were a grand total of about 4.50! We've decided (and we'll see how long this lasts) that we could easily do a soup night once a week to save some money and avoid having to cook as much. Special thanks here go out to Kayla and Dane for that fateful cauliflower soup night - Kayla for persisting and cooking the delicious dish, Dane for not caving and running out to buy us pizza - because of that night Mr is now happy to eat soup!

At a Marks & Spencer we bought a bag of chips and a bag of pretzels - both of which are really good. But then that could just be our genuine need for a bit of salt. Contrary to popular belief, nothing we've bought out has had any amount of salt on it - chips come plain so you add your own, and the sauces don't taste salty at all.

We've yet to have an alcoholic beverage, which are sold in the supermarkets here at what seem to be similar prices to home, but we might save that for the first night in our own place.

It will be interesting once we're in our own place with a proper kitchen to work out good foods to buy - we've noticed a lot of the same brands, most with different packaging, but have yet to find Mr's other love - vegemite!

Exploring the city (22,924 steps)

Our third day in London was dedicated to exploring the city. I had done a little bit of exploring last time I was here (for iday - see my previous posts), but Mr had not, so off we went to see the sights!

We started out on the fringe of the city centre due to where our train ended. We almost walked right past St Paul's Cathedral as we were too busy looking everywhere else! Thankfully we happened to look down a side street at the right time, and were able to go have a quick look around. We went in downstairs where the restaurant and gift shop are, and admired the statues carved into the walls. We decided not to enter the upper areas, as we'd like to come back at a later time and do a guided tour.

From here we walked down to the Thames and across to check out the south side of the river. We were thoroughly unimpressed with the National Theatre (just a giant concrete block from the side we saw it), but enjoyed walking through the Jubilee Gardens. Mr finally believed me that the London Eye is significantly bigger than the one in Brisbane, and we decided we would definitely come back to go through the Sea Life Aquarium and check out London Death Trap (a live horror show).

Over Westminster Bridge we walked, dodging the let's-stop-right-here-and-take-a-photo tourists, to find our own quite place to take the necessary pictures and selfies with Big Ben. I was again struck by the size of it ('I guess it's called Big for a reason'), and we both decided the entire building looked like it had been made out of a semi-liquid material tipped upside-down to set, then put back upright. There are just so many drippy-looking spiky bits!

From here we decided to walk over to the Palace. We noticed that a few of the roads were closed off and there were a heap of police officers around. We were starting to become concerned until we noticed the camera crews set up along the roads - we had to ask one of the police officers (those hats look so uncomfortable!) to find out that today is Victory over Japan Day - the effective end day of the war. In celebration of the war ending, there is a parade that runs through the city. Apparently we'd chosen a very good or bad day to explore, depending. We did not wish to view the parade, so we kept to our ever-changing plans of places to see.

Enter St James Park and you enter a world of beautiful big old trees, endless ducks and geese, and adorable friendly squirrels. We stopped many times to coax over the squirrels with the false promise of food, just to get a closer look. This one even nuzzled my hand a bit before running off!

We continued through the park to Buckingham Palace, and quickly realised we wouldn't be getting close to it today. Hundreds of people packed onto the grounds and nearby roads in order to see the parade, so we decided to take a quick photo and continue on our way. We will definitely be back in the next week or two to do a tour (it is open to the public for a short time while the royal family are away for the summer), so expect more pictures later!

From here we walked up toward Soho, stopping in at Fortum & Mason for a quick look around. We only wandered the first two floors before deciding we needed to leave before we bought things (no point buying anything until we have moved in to the new place!). We stopped for lunch at a pub, where I had a burger and Mr had a steak and ale pie - it looked so very British!

We spent the next few hours walking back and forth across the city, seeing random things and nothing in particular. The theatres stuck us by how ordinary they seemed - walk along and all of a sudden there is the entry to a theatre next to you. Compared to Brisbane, where the theatre is a landmark in itself, the fact that they are so common and integrated into the city was quite bizarre. 

After walking over 20,000 steps, we decided it was time to head back to the hotel and rest our poor feet. So here we are, again relaxing on our bed, with the sun still shining strong at 6.15pm. Tomorrow we plan to Skype our families and spend the day doing not a whole lot - Mr has a job interview on Monday, and next week will be very busy with organising things for the new place and hopefully crossing a thing or two off our bucket list.

So far, we love London!

First day in London - got a unit!

Our first full day here started off well - we both had slept almost 12 hours (very much needed!), and we'd had the foresight to buy some cereal etc the day before so we'd have breakfast. I woke up ravenous, which you'd probably attribute to jetlag if it were anyone but me.

We decided that we would call around a few real estates to book in viewings, so I spent a little bit of time going through the properties we had saved. I called two who didn't answer, but on the third call I had success - the lady said the unit we were interested in was still available, and if we were around we could go look at it that morning (along with a few others she thought we'd like). So that was that, our easy settle-into-things-get-over-jetlag morning turned into quickly-get-ready-and-go. We had to again navigate the public transport, but by then Mr was fairly confident with what to do. We caught a train then a bus, and got to our appointment early. Two of the properties the agent had wanted to show us had been let out before we got there (they do go very very fast here apparently!), so we were left with three to visit. As we have no transport of our own, the agent kindly drove us around to look. The first one we looked at was the one I'd called about - it had only been advertised the night before and already had a dozen viewings booked in. We liked the looks of it because it is walking distance to my school and to the train for Mr, as well as walking distance to the town centre. Upon inspection, we liked it even more. The kitchen and bathroom were both lovely, and both the lounge area and bedroom were big enough for us. Being on the top floor meant we wouldn't have anyone above us, and being at the corner of the block meant only one direct neighbour (though the block of units next door were so close we could pass sugar between our kitchen windows if needed). The property came complete with a grassy outdoor area, one we may or may not use depending on the weather.

Deciding we liked this place, we went off to the next one not particularly concerned about what we'd find. What we did find was an absolutely delightful ground-floor unit, already furnished in very pretty furniture (including a dressing table with mirror in the bedroom!), as well as an extra bedroom which would be handy for visitors. Mr was quite concerned about the inclusion of a bidet in the bathroom, and I wasn't too keen on the bedroom and lounge windows opening directly onto the slightly-off-street parking. The furniture was all nice and new-looking, but there seemed to be no room for the TV in the lounge. It had very high ceilings, which theoretically should lesson the noise coming from the people living upstairs. The land lady was there to show us around, but she was a bit pushy. Overall, this property was warring very closely with the first for our choice of favourite.

We viewed a third property, but discarded it almost immediately due to the oldness, smell, damp through the ceiling and walls, and (oddly enough) the fact that it was significantly larger than the first two. We did only want something small, as we're only here for a  year or two and don't need excuses to collect more random stuff we don't need.

In the end, we decided we liked the first property best, even though it was unfurnished. We filled in the paperwork back at the real estate then headed off to explore the town centre. We discovered a delightful second hand furniture store (which we will return to next week to choose some pieces for our new home - they deliver!), and had lunch at a burrito place. By the time we'd finished lunch, we received a phone call to say our application had been accepted!

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the town centre (which is surprisingly huge), then relaxing back at the hotel. We'd bought some spaghetti bolognese for dinner to avoid eating out again, and ate that while watching random British TV.

We never expected to secure a place to live on our first day, but we move in on Friday!

The Flight

From the time we left to go to the airport in Brisbane, to the time we got to our hotel, we had been in transit for 30 hours. A whole lot can happen in 30 hours, but for us it was a long time of rush then sit.

We arrived at Brisbane International Airport with a bit of spare time, which we spent just being with our families. Checking our luggage was amusing - both of our large suitcases were 29.5kg (with a limit of 30kg), and our carry-ons were 6.5kg and 6.9kg (with a limit of 7). Apparently we packed well!

Saying goodbye to our families was very difficult. We all did very well pretending to be cheerful until it was time for us to go through to customs - then the tears came. They started of course with the mums, then migrated to the dads, which set both of us off, which in turn set off the siblings. It was very surreal to realise I might not see those faces again in person for a year or more (thankfully we have Skype and FaceBook and Facetime!). I did fairly well at holding myself together until we reached the terminal, when it all came crashing down. Nevertheless, I pulled out my excitement at the journey ahead, and we boarded the plane to our back-of-the-section seats. 

Having no one behind you on a plane seems relatively pointless as there are so many people everywhere else, but it turned out to be very nice. We could lean our chairs back as much and as often as we liked, and didn't have to worry about noisy people/children behind us. We synchronised our entertainment for the first part (watching Furious 7 - a very emotionally confusing movie, as much of it was about Paul Walker's character needing to return home after 'one last job' to be with his family). I chose the chicken for dinner (in an oyster sauce - tasted like hospital food, though the little nibblies that came with it were nice), and Mr chose the chilli beef. After the movie finished, we both decided to try and sleep - this turned out quite successful, with us each getting about 5-6 hours of broken sleep. When we woke, we both messed around with games and shows/music for the remainder of the flight. For our onboard breakfast we both went with a frittata, which I didn't particularly enjoy, though again the other things on the tray were nice.

After this enormous time sitting, we were very pleased to stand and disembark in Dubai. We arrived there at 5.30am local time, but even so it was already 35 degrees Celcius outside the airport. We did a few laps of our terminal, looking through the duty free and having a free meal at McDonald's (supplied by Emirates because our stop-over was long). Then it was back on to the plane for the next leg of our journey. As it was day time, we were able to see the Dubai landscape as we flew out of the country. We were both struck by how brown and dry it was. There were large dust clouds covering much of the city and outer parts of the country. But it was also incredibly beautiful - I've never seen anything like it.

The next few hours were spent watching The Kingsmen - a movie I thoroughly enjoyed. It has loads of ridiculous humour mixed in with action and dapper-looking men. We both chose the chicken option for lunch, this time with a wine or two, and enjoyed it more than we did the dinner. The rest of this flight I spent listening to music and playing games or staring out the window, while Mr watched Galavant - a show he said is a whole lot of 20-something boy humour mixed with a musical. I enjoyed watching the changing landscape, and seeing which countries we were flying over (that we will hopefully visit some day soon!). We also both managed to nap for about an hour.

Soon enough it was time to depart our flight, and Enter London!

We are staying in a hotel a bit out of the city, which meant navigating the public transport system with our luggage and very little sleep since the first flight almost 20 hours ago. We decided to take the Heathrow Express train (even with the utterly absurd £25 charge each), which got us into the city in 15 mins. From here we swapped to another train for about 15 mins again, then we had to negotiate with a bus driver to let us take our luggage on his bus. In between all this, poor Mr had to haul all 60kg of our large luggage up and down train station staircases where escalators and elevators weren't working (thank you!!). We spent the next 40 mins struggling to keep our luggage from rolling all over the place, while staying upright ourselves and not falling asleep/passing out. In the end, we got off the bus near our hotel, went up some very dodgy elevators, and collapsed onto our bed.

Unfortunately for us, we had to keep ourselves awake a little while longer - it wasn't even dinner time yet, and if we slept then, we wouldn't sleep that night. So we both had a long awaited shower, and off we went, staggering along trying not to pass out (even though the exhaustion was so real that it continuously felt like the world was tipping over), for a walk around the local area to find some food. We ended up at the local chippy, where we had our very first, very nice, British Fish & Chips. 

Then, thankfully, back to our hotel and to the first proper sleep we'd had in about 50 hours.

Today, we fly!

So today we fly out of this wonderful country in search of adventure.

We are trading ample sunshine for probable cloud; constant family for specially-timed Skype; various friend circles for new strangers; comfort and familiarity for the unknown.

Begin: wanderlust.

We made the decision at the beginning of the year to actually fulfil a dream I've had since childhood - go live in London for a while. London for me is what New York is for many - that elusive, mystical city of wonders that you just simply have to experience. The one that has been calling to you, pulling you toward it with every scene on TV, every passage in a book, every vicarious experience through friends. And now, incredibly, I'll be part of it.

In between house-hunting-visits, we plan to explore some of the city in the two-and-a-half weeks before I start work. We're hoping to cross off some of the more traditional tourist-y things during this time, simply so that we can move on to the slightly less tourist-y things more quickly. Of course, London Zoo will be one of the first places to visit once we're over the jet-lag enough to spend a full day out, so expect a picture-filled post about that sometime soon! (Along with the generic This-Is-Us-In-London posts)

See ya later 'Straya!

Packing is (not) fun

Today was a stressful day. We had brought with us to my parent's house all of the belongings we wanted to pack and take with us. It was all roughly thrown into various suitcases and bags, just needing to be sorted and packed better to fit it all in, surely.

Then we actually started packing.

Turns out I didn't really want those extra clothes, and Mr didn't really want those extra shoes. We had already donated a dozen bags of clothes and shoes to charity, and put into storage anything that wasn't going to be needed with us for the move, so we thought we only had useful, necessary items to take. Space wasn't an issue - I am a master clothes roller so everything fit in quite nicely. The problem, of course, was that the weight of our items was much more than we had anticipated. Even though our airline allows us 30kg of luggage each, plus 7kg of checked luggage each, we still ended up culling even more of what we were taking with us. In saying this, we did manage to pack the XBone, a re-wired Aus powerboard with a UK plug, and most of my make up collection - like I said, we packed the essentials.

We are not taking with us our Australian Summer Clothes - we are arriving in the UK at the end of their summer (which is currently the exact same temperatures as our winter), and heading fast into winter. We have packed a couple of pairs of shorts each, and a couple of summery tops, but the rest is more suitable for the weather we will be facing (endless pairs of jeans, pants and jackets = endless weight in the suitcase unfortunately).

So our coming-with-us possessions are now contained within our suitcases, and I realise how much crap we really had. First world problems and all. If I weren't so materialistic, I'd try living like a minimalist while we're in the UK, but realistically I think packing to come home again in a year or two is going to be even more of a nightmare than packing to get there.

From Home

I write this from the comfort of my couch in my living room in Brisbane. I have my husband beside me playing Destiny, our birds clambering over their cage talking to each other, a cup of tea on the table, and a small book at my side.

The book came with a card, and the words in the card made me tear up a little bit. Both the book and the card were gifts from two special colleges of mine - they were both members of my small staffroom for my first year of teaching, one was also my boss-lady for day-to-day happenings. Book and card were handed to me surreptitiously at the end of a goodbye dinner, with a furtive "We thought this was perfect".  We then laughed at the possibility of me getting home, unwrapping it, and having to send a high-pitched, forced smile "...thanks!", while putting the gift somewhere to be conveniently lost.

I then get home and actually unwrap it. I read the card first, and can hear the words actually being said by these two incredible women. Their way of writing brings across their personalities perfectly, and I am touched and amused by what they have written. The card mentions the desire to  have something physical to write in while travelling, in contrast to the '15 blogs, a wiki, a Facebook, probably a Twitter and all sorts of electronic stuff', and I immediately know what the brown-paper-wrapped gift is.

What I was not prepared for was the wash of emotions as I unwrap and flip through the notebook (with obligatory attached pen - in pink!). There are beautiful illustrations of birds and travel icons spaced throughout outlines that desperately called to be coloured in. Every 10 pages or so is an illustration accompanied by a quote about travel, not one of them the typical, well-known ones. As I read through these, I realise that they now all apply to me. I realise, with crashing clarity, that I only have two weeks left in the only country I have ever known. Two weeks left with my family and friends. Two weeks left in comfort, familiarity, and convenience. Two weeks left of 'known'.

In two weeks time, almost to the minute of writing this post, we will be taking off from Brisbane International Airport; bound first for Dubai, then on to London. It will be both of our third long-haul flights (if you count there and back as separate flights), and we will be travelling with a suitcase apiece and our emotions locked tight.

A suitcase. It seems such a bizarre yet common thing to store your life away in.

This realisation, that this is a thing that is happening, brings with it such a plethora of emotion that it's a little hard to comprehend. All of the obvious ones are there - excitement, nervousness, sadness and happiness - but there's also the ones like stress, apathy, independence, betrayal. All of the side-emotions that tend to be pushed away in favour of the obvious ones. But it is these side emotions that hit me the hardest when I flipped through that book. These side emotions that I've been ignoring for weeks, months, because they are related to 'an event', one that is 'happening in the future'.

But, at risk of being extremely corny, that future is now.

And it has finally, truly hit me.