Heatwave

Wow, it's been a busy few weeks since we arrived, and it's all taken place in the blistering heat and hideous humidity of London's record heatwave. Temperatures outdoors have been in the high 30s and the subways have been even worse, pushing upwards of 45 degrees. Believe you me, it is not the best experience to travel to job interviews in a suit, on a crowded subway carriage, in this sauna-like miasma. Yuck!

Nonetheless, we are determined to try and enjoy the heat as we know it will be all too brief, with an interminable winter to come. However, we spent the last week in a crappy little hostel room with no air conditioning and a broken fridge. We bought a fan from Sainbury's, and in order to get any rest at night we were having to sleep under wet towels. It's one thing to spend a day in the sun when you know you can cool off at home - quite another when your home is hotter than the air outside!

We've now been on three of the famous "London Walks" - guided walking tours with different themes. The first two were less spectacular than advertised, but the most recent was quite interesting:

Darkest Victorian London - a pretty good guide who does nice impersonations, but there's little to see as the city has moved on so much since then. Most interesting was the concrete builder's yard that hides a plague & pauper's burial pit with over 15,000 corpses.

The British Museum Walk - not a bad overview of the British Museum's highlights, but hampered by the massive crowd that turned up and the 'summary' nature of the information provided. Better to just see the museum for one's self, as everything is written up in detail. It was a nice surprise to find many of the 'missing pieces' from our travels here, including a large collection of the frieze decorations from the Parthenon - not to mention the Middenhall Treasure from the Roald Dahl story with the same name.

Eccentric London - quite interesting. Learn the background to a random assortment of monuments and statues around Embankment. Many good stories, but funnily enough, none are those described in the pamphlet...

In other news, we also spent a day at the Tower of London with Connor, went shopping for work clothes, celebrated Anna and Andrew's birthdays with a nice big combined evening at the pub, and did another pub walk with Ian, Nerida and Alison through Spitalfields. Also, congratulations to Anna on finding a job!

Here's an extra picture of us with Alisha at Anna's birthday drinks...

Drinking in London

Drinking is one of the national past-times in England (queueing is another). The poms don't miss an opportunity to sink a pint, and because London is so widespread, people tend to meet at pubs for drinks rather than staying in to drink. All of which means lots of drinking in public - moreso because the pub crowds usually spill out well onto the street. Last night we caught up for drinks with little Rebecca, her new boyfriend Richie and her friends from Netley - another Rebecca, Andrew, fellow kiwi Tony and Judith.

We were seated outside a pub, surrounded by a crowd that only grew bigger as the evening wore on. Picking up a round of beers could take almost half an hour, and the pub ran out of glasses and started issuing plastic cups. We also had a surprise visit from a band, installed on the roof of their car, who stopped outside to play some tunes and sell some CDs. Quite a clever initiative, and one that proved popular with the masses.

After a few rounds we took the subway to Picadilly Circus, with it's famous array of video and fluoro advertising boards (like Time's Square). Stopped for BK and then popped into a nightclub where we catching up with another party of people. Not really our scene, so we eventually left to catch the last subway home - very, very crowded.

I had a sudden inspiration, and wore the kiwi balanced on my head the whole way from the club home. This seemed to attract a lot of attention - I have never seen so many English people smiling. Viva New Zealand, spreading joy among the dour Isles.

Friends and museums

Job hunting continues apace. We've had a few nibbles each so far, but are waiting for something decent to come in. We're getting good feedback from our recruiting agents though, so it appears to be just a matter of time until we have job offers we actually want. It does get a bit depressing at times, but we know the process will take a few weeks so... watch this space.

In the meantime we've decided to get out and about a bit more, instead of sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. We went to our first movie this week - the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel at the Clapham Picture Theatre, with Ian and Nerida. Not much of a film, but a diverting enough way to spend nearly three hours.

More profitably we took a double-decker bus (great for seeing London in the flesh) to the Natural History Museum, where we enjoyed the dinosaur exhibitions but were somewhat underwhelmed by the rest. We were pleased to see a moa skeleton though.

Yesterday we caught up with our friend Connor, who has been here since June. He may be settling down for a bit, but is undecided as to whether he would prefer to return to Turkey for more sun-bathing. He has grown a rather splendid beard.

We went for a nice walk along the Thames, stopping for lunch on a river-boat before ducking into the Tate Modern for an hour or so of quiet, intellectual contemplation. The Tate collection, though a little thin, has wonderful accompanying texts, so we intend to return for a more thorough perusal.

Afterwards we all caught up for drinks with Ben, Tim and Nina before catching the first half of Corialanus at the Globe Theatre. It's a slow paced play, and our endurance was tested by the 'groundling' experience (ie. standing for hours), so we left part-way through for hot-chocolates instead. Oh well!

Sport, pubs n grub

Anna and I spent the week doing job interviews and hanging out with our hosts. It was Ian's birthday on Thursday - he is now an old fella! Anna baked him a yummy banana cake. We have also been watching a lot of sport, what with the Wimbledon and World Cup matches every day.

I had another day with Jan at Netley Primary - we took the kids to Regent's Park playground, where I pushed them on the swings and roundabout before heading out to the fields for some (barely) organised sports. Unfortunately, we have now lost the fleeting London summer, and were eventually rained out. The crappy weather hasn't really improved since...

Yesterday we did a bit of a pub crawl. We got up early to watch the opening game of the Trinations rugby at a pub full of kiwis and ockers. I'm pleased to report that the All Blacks handed out a pretty sound thrashing (not that we're bragging about it to our lovely hosts).

Afterwards we walked through the Brixton markets, then caught the tube out to Hampstead Heath. This is a huge park in northern London, where the rich people moved their properties to escape the plague. It's still an extremely wealthy area and, en route to the second pub of the day, we did a sight-seeing tour of the houses of the rich and famous including (apparently) Emma Bunton, Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Terry Gilliam.

Pubs n grub for the evening: the Holly Bush (Pimm's cocktails, a pint of prawns and a 'rarebit'- ie. cheese toastie), The Spaniard's Inn (fruit beers, cider and massive quarter-potato wedges) and Ye Olde White Bear (chickpea patties and salad).

Tonight - the Wimbledon and World Cup finals!

PS: cherry fizzy drink round-up: Cherry Coke flows aplenty in the UK, and I have also tried Cherry Tango (too sweet even for me) and Cherry 7-Up (delicious)!

Back in the U.K.

We have returned to London, and have brought the good weather with us. Temperatures here are in the 30s, and I've heard talk of a heatwave warning from the Government. What this means is a lot of white people with pink sunburns (not us, though).

Jan arranged some accommodation for us with friends. We are currently staying with Aussie couple Ian and Nerida (pronouced neh-REED-ah) in Clapham. Very nice of them to put us up, as we were complete strangers. I say 'were' because we are now best friends - they both cook wonderfully, and Ian likes beer and music. Top marks!

Spent our arrival day chilling with Jan, Ian and Nerida, drinking Grolsch (for the lads) and Pimm's (for the ladies) and watching the England vs Portugal game (I won't comment on the results). We then spent Sunday in the Golders Green commons (U.K. speak for park) with Jan, Nerida and Andrew - another of Jan's many friends, whose apartment we will be borrowing for a few weeks in August. We had a lot fun kicking a football around, playing frisbee and looking at the animals in the park's mini-zoo. Jan and Andrew had an OJ fight.

Anna and I will be busy this week finding jobs, buying SIMcards for our phones, and working out just what the hell we are doing here.

Farewell to the Continent

Seems to be a lot of nice shopping in Madrid, and it's surely cheaper than it will be in London. We had a look in a number of nice shops, but our only purchases were a couple of pairs of shoes each from Campers. They have a very interesting and trendy range of pseudo-rubberised and leather shoes %P

Also knocked off the last of the 'Big 3' art galleries, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. This is housed in a very large and impressive modern building - lots of glass elevators - and is perfectly suited to its collection, a veritable who's who of the last hundred years. We were in time for a special exhibition showing Picasso's famous Guernica with numerous preparatory drawings and a couple of contrasting works by Goya and Manet.

We've enjoyed our food this week too, having made a stop at the LP-recommended chain Mallorca, also popular with locals (a good sign). They have several display areas - sweet, savoury, salads, wine, bonbons - and we couldn't resist a few fancy pastries. These were lovingly wrapped in red paper and string, and even survived the journey home unscathed! (Though they didn't last long after that.)

Plus we had an awesome lunch at the art gallery restaurant, Arola. Very fancy, the kind of place Hannibal Lecter might choose to dine, though the cutting-edge modern decor (ie. crap lighting and werid couches) left a little to be desired. Here we had a series of exquisite tapas: mini fish pies, mushrooms gratin, brown rice and vegetables (done like a risotto), fried gorgonzola cubes, prawns... mmm...

Ah well. Tomorrow we will be back in the land of mushy peas and grim meat pies. Old Blighty - here we come!