27/3/06 New Room

With the two of us both settling into London and starting work, we asked for a new room. Some New-Zealanders moved out on Saturday, so on Sunday we were able to move into our own room. So exciting! It costs £140/week (bills included) which is 350 dollars (more than our house in Kelvin Grove cost), but it seems to be quite reasonable for here. We moved up to level 2, with a lovely view. We can see London Eye, Westminster Abbey, and lots and lots of houses,churches and trains. We love it.

25/3/06 Brick Lane (again)

After our freezing beach experience, we decided to head back to Brick Lane for some more nice hot curry. With Scotty as our spokesman, we got another fabulously cheap and yummy meal with free drinks.

25/3/06 Brighton

With only a slight hangover and the morning being not too cold, we thought we'd catch a train out to Brighton and spend a few hours at the beach. We bought a huge punnet of strawberries and set off. As soon as we plled into the station, it started to rain. We ran down to the beach, and it let up enough for us to frollic in the pebbles for a moment, before the heavens oped up and we got completely drenched in freezing rain. Bought a jumper from an op-shop and sat in a pub for a while, shivering, watching the rain pelt down against the window. We decided to cut our losses, and head home. Once back on the train we hung our sodden jumpers on the seat, and pulled out... just in time to watch the sun come out again. We both came down with snotty colds the next day. Might try the beach again in summer.

20/03/06 Salzburg

Managing to return our skis and make checkout after stroh the previous night, we headed back to Salzburg for 2 nights. After greasy food and a good sleep we went for a massive sightseeing treck around town and up the hills. Everything in the centre of town was so old and beautiful. It was a maze of intricate alleyways. Luckily we were on the map this time. (When we were here a few days ago Gem lead us the wrong way, when we realised we were lost, we were well off the map and ended up trying to understand directions in German off a man with a really big dog).

Salzburg is the town they filmed "Sound of Music" in. You can do day tour to all the places. We found the park they sang "Do Re Mi" in. Mozart was born here too, so there's Mozart souvineers everywhere as well. We went up the hills and saw some beautiful old castles, took in views of the city with the backdrop of the Alps, and threw some more snowballs at each other. It's amazing... spring seemed to hit while we were skiing. When we were here 6 days ago, the snow was about 1 metre thick, and now it was all melting and was the consistency of slush puppies.

We caught the plane back to Stanstead on 21/3, in time for Sara to start work at medical records at a dental hospital on Wednesday. She loves it!

Gem is still waiting for the paperwork to come through (namely the Australian Police check - they lost her file), but hopefully it should all be storted this weekend and she can start AIN work on Monday (for a whopping 6 pounds 70 pence / hr.) The nursing registration shoud be processed within a fortnight, and then she can finally work as a nurse!

Drinking at Bad Gastein

Well skiers, we might not be.. but drinking we can do! The people at the hostel were so much fun. Thanks again Katie and Alysia if you see this. The after-ski starts at 5pm, with a european band doing english 70's/80's covers, in a pub that is packed full of people in ski pants dancing. It quietens down then starts again later on till about 4 in the morning. Then you go home, sleep a few hours and hit the slopes again in the morning. These photos are from the nite club at the hostel. We loved the Austrian beer, and could handle the Jagertea, but everything fell apart after the shots of stroh (80% alcohol)! I admire the Austrian stamina.

18/3/06 Lunch

Couldn't quite understand what they were getting at... but we decided not to eat there.

18/3/06 Snowman

We might not be good at skiing, but we make a great snowman.

18/3/06 Skiing

Spent 4 days skiing at Bad Gastein. (look it up online, it's a fantastic place) The first 2 days mostly consisted of rolling down the hill with skis on. We are both covered in bruises, Gemma has a massive blue one on her bum! We even went for a lesson with a guy called Sven. We were both scared witless. The hostel was right across from the ski field, it was so beautiful.



Angertal was a diffierent place we found on day 3 which is a "kiddy" slope, a nice gentle incline of about 300m which we didn't fall over. We did have to dodge the children though. Some of them could ski better than us and they were barely old enough to walk! Getting on the ski-lift was fairly intereting. Gem stacked it (again) and they stopped the lift. The whole line of kiddies had to wait while the operater helped her get up. Very dignified! Had some well deserved breaks at the ski cafe, to drink lemonade and Jagertea (hot alcoholic drink). Here's Gem with Claire and Jeremy from the hostel (Hi guys if you see this site)

13/3/06 Salzburg

After a ridiculously early start and a Ryan Air flight we arrive in Salzburg (Austria) in the snow. Sara's first time to see snow, there was heaps of it. The cars were buried in it, God knows how they start them in the morning! Salzburg was so beautiful and magical and so much snow! They sell some pretty interesting chocolate bars too.
We stayed at a hostel overnight and headed off early to the ski slopes of Bad Gastein. The train ride through the Austrian Alps was so beautuful. We literally sat glued to the window until our stop.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IMMOGYN, Have an excellent day, we miss you heaps!

12/3/06 St Pat's Day

Headed off with a couple of Irish girls from Mish Mash to the St Patrick's Day Parade. Unfortunately by the time we got ouselves there we missed the parade, but caught the Irish music at Trafalgar Square. Did a spot of Irish dancing and of course.. more pints of Guiness.
Had to cut the night short, because we had to wake up at 2am the next morning to catch a flight.

8/3/06 Brick Lane

Finally in the last week of Gem's course, headed out with her classmates (and Scotty - he's good by the way) for dinner at Brick Lane. It's an entire street with Iined with Indian resteraunts on both side. As you walk up, hawkers stand outside and tell you to come to their particular resteraunt. They all offer free drinks etc. We end up with a free round of drinks, 3 bottles of wine, no service charge and 30% off the bill. And the food was fantastic.

6/3/06 English Beers

We've tried quite a few Englih beers now, Gem's favourite so far is Carling (it's cheap and it rhymes with darling) and Sara's pretty keen on the Fosters (it's much nicer over here) Unfortunately they don't have lite beers, or even midstrength for that matter, and they come in pints. When I did ask for a lite beer, they poured me a pint. I asked what the alcohol content was an they told me 5%. When challenging the barman that this is not in fact lite, he told me that it is low-carb, not low-alcohol! Needless to say, the hangovers are pretty nasty.

4/3/06 Camden and Greenwich

Saturday morning we hit the Camden Markets, excellent atmosphere. Really crowded place with lots of punks. Fun.

Then headed to Greenwich to hang ot with Natasha (Sara's sister-in-law) and Lee. After a bit of monopoly we went out for several pints of lager. Found the laser line that marks Greenwhich mean time (where time began) - if you click on the dark photo and look closely, you can see it. (It wouldn't come out on camera properly). Had a great night, ended up playing poker at Natasha's friends place in the wee hours.

1/3/06 Catching the tube

Met up with Antony (from RBH) for drinks, who explained "Tube Ettiquite" to us.

When catching the tube alone, the overall rule to observe is that you don't exist, and neither does anyone else. You can not make eye contact with anyone, and under no circumstances should you talk to anyone (only crazy people do that). The only exception to this rule is if the tube stops for an extended period and they make a service announcement (usually that someone is under a train), at which point you can say to someone nearby "typical" and start a conversation. As soon as the train starts again however, you stop talking to them and go back to not existing anymore.

Antony is good by the way, we had a fun night. He and Maree ended up feeding us yummy food and letting me ring my mum.

Happy Birthday Mum.

25/2/06 Weekend at Bath

We hired a car, a beautiful 6 gear purgeout (bit different to a lada), and headed off for a weekend at Bath. Getting out of London was a nightmare. We started off on Saturday morning at Mayfair (in the centre of town) and via Clapham, it took 2.5 hrs to get to the freeway heading out of town. Driving in London is so scary, with hardly any street signs, hundreds of big red busses, crazy taxis, lanes that just stop and traffic jams everywhere. Once we got out of London it was great, beautiful green rolling countryside, farms, horses, sheep, fresh air...

Stopped at Stonehenge for a bit of cultural heratige. Pretty impressive, very very cold!

Then headed to Bath which was so beautiful. We stayed at the YMCA (yes they were playing the song), and headed off for a few drinks. Found a cute pub and ended up playing fuseball with a couple of locals.

Walked around town (the buildings were so pretty at night) and ended up in an indian resteraunt overlooking the riverside and city... so nice.

Sunday morning we went to the Roman Baths, it was an excellent museum that has preserved the baths to their original condition. They have heaps of stuff on display that people threw in the baths like old roman jewlelry and weapons. You can't go in them, but for 50p you can drink a glass. It tastes like warm bore water.

After the museum we just waked around Bath for ages. Gem got a cold, so was pumped up on cold and flu tablets. The buildings were so georgeous (did I say that already?), and all the shops were so cute. We went along the river and felt like we were walking along a postcard, it was so nice. We even found some cute little ducks. Got to the top and lounged in the park at Royal Court, then headed back to the car and drove round to some nice vantage points.

Getting back into London was even harder than leaving. Sara did a marvelous job of keeping her cool while we all told her to go in different directions. We ended up following a bus with 345 on it and thought it would lead us home (stops near our house), but after a while we realised it was going in the other direction. We finally got to Waterloo to drop off the car at about 11pm. (Hit the outskirts of London at around 7pm).

We're looking into catching a bus next time we go somewhere.

First week

Down to buisness...
Gem started the 3 week overseas nurses programme. An increadibly expensive and boring way to get started in London. The course cost 670 pounds and covered topics such as the structure of the NHS, basic life support. One session started with "How do you tell if your patient's sick... You look, listen and feel... Looking: what do we look for? ...etc
Sara started the painstaking process of geting bank accounts, tax file numbers, registering with employment agencies.
We had a lot of fun catching big red busses, tubes and trains. The public transport is amazing here. You don't have to wait longer than a couple of minutes to catch anything. I started running for my busses when I saw them coming, but now I just watch them go by and catch the next one in two minutes.
Also dealing with stuff like shopping (no beef sausages anywhere -all pork-yuck!), they sell beer (even home brand) in the supermarkets, and doing laundry (no clothes lines).

19/02/06 sightseeing

Cold and still very jetlagged, we headed to London town to take in the sights...



Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Downing Street, Trafalger square, chinatown, Soho, Picadilly Circus, walking along the Thames, churches, parks, statues, numerous beautiful old buildings, and of course lots of black taxis, red telephone boxes and big red double-decker busses. We got really cold and the day progressed into more of a pub crawl, taking in a few sights along the way. We finished up with a "flight" on the London Eye (a big Ferris wheel on the bank of the Thames) which gave us a veiw of London at its grey and drizzly finest. The capsule was heated so it was a lovely warm 40 minutes.