Goodbye London/Europe....thanks for the memories

After travelling around London and Europe for 6 weeks it was time to make my trek back to Perth with a slight detour to Malaysia. I couldn't believe the time had flown by but then again it was at just the right pace. I didn't know how was I was going to fair whilst travelling around but I think I did pretty good, no sickness throughout the whole trip, no delays/missed flights/lost baggage, no missing passport/documents and I didn't run out of money!!!

It was great times to spend with Gav and Christina during our travels, and especially memorable flying in for Gav's 30th. It was a bonus to be able to catch up with Minh and Natasha who I hadn't seen for so long. Also, I made some new friends too, Quyen, Matt, Phil, Chami, Brendon and Christine.

I'm definitely going to be back in London again some time in the not so distant future not to mention Europe. There were many highlights and fortunately there weren't too many lowlights about the trip. I managed to get around on all forms of transport, see all the touristy attractions, eat at some really nice restaurants and experience life in another city. Thanks to Gav/Christina/Quyen/Matt for housing me in their apartment for the time I was in London and letting me be the 5th housemate.

Oxford and Greenwich

In my last weekend of staying in London Gav, Chris and I decided to go for a day trip out to visit Oxford University and Greenwich.

Oxford University is steeped in history, close to half of the British PMs that have held office graduated from there, even former US President Bill Clinton spent some time there too. We decided to join a walking tour of the city and the surrounding colleges. Oxford University wasn't what I expected, it wasn't one giant campus with faculties and giant grassed areas filled with students. The main part of the uni was in the city centre and it was made up of two buildings which are used for the students metriculation/convocation and also their graduation. Famously one of the buildings has been used in one of the Harry Potter movie franchise. While on the tour we visited one of the 35 colleges in Oxford and were able to go in to see their chapel and meals room. The particular college that we visited had many famous ppl, some were former kings or PMs who I didn't know by name, but one person whose name I had heard of before was Cecil Rhodes, who's name is synomous with the Rhodes Scholarship. After spending some time around the college and also hearing one of our tour group members getting in trouble for stepping because they were not a 'fellow' of the college we walked past a few more colleges before ending the tour outside some small apartments where our tour guide named dropped famous ppl who had stayed there. Overall it was a very brief tour of Oxford but something that I enjoyed and it kind of quashed all the stereotypes of the place being of high prestige and only having spoilt rich kids study there.

Another highlight of the Oxford visit was that we were able to eat a Jamie Oliver's restaurant called Jamie's Italian not ONCE but TWICE. We walked past this place on the way to the town centre and saw all this fresh pasta being made. Since it was nearing lunch time it was unaminous between the 3 of us to go back there to try out the food. When we headed in we were greeted by 3 head waiters all waiting to take us to our table. We were seated down stairs in a corner which had graffiti art all over the walls. Initially we were all set on getting pasta since they make their own pasta on site but after going through the menu and reading the specials our decision on what to eat was a lot harder. In the end we settled on getting an entree Linguine with truffles to share, a fish dish, lamb casserole and scallops. Whilst eating the food we decided that we'd be back here after the Oxford tour to eat a very early dinner before we headed back to London. On our 2nd trip back to Jamie's Italian we all ordered entree serves of pasta since it was only 3hrs after we at the first time. This time round we ordered Squid ink angel hair pasta with scallops, taglitelli(i think) with meatballs and spaghetti with prawns in a tomato based sauce. It was quite funny cos the waitress from our first visit whilst serving customers recognised us and couldn't believe we had decided to come back so quickly after our first meal, but to be honest we couldn't fault the service and the food was very tasty, decent servings and the price was pretty good too. Suffice to say that we left Oxford very full from Jamie's Italian and that bit more 'educated'.

On the Sunday morning, we made a visit out to Greenwich to go see/stand on the Meridian Line. I had this as one of my must do's, I'm not sure why but it was something I wanted to go and visit. Anyway we caught the train out to Greenwich and when we arrived we started following the signs to the town centre. I had heard that there were some markets there to have a look around and of course there were a few museums too. First place of visit was the Meridian, it took us a lil while to find the place since the 'spot' where everyone takes the usual photos is inside a museum. So we decided to head straight for the photo spot before some tour groups we had spotted earlier crowded any decent photo opportunities. After taking photos of us standing either side of the line and on the line we went back through the museum to look at some of the old clocks, telescopes and maritime instruments that they had on display. After the museum, we managed to catch up with Natasha, John and Emily. We ended up going for a short walk through the markets and then made it to the Queen's gardens(I think..) where we saw some more artwork and then headed over to the maritime museum. We headed into the main hall where there were rows and rows of tables and chairs, and on the roof was this massive painting. John mentioned that the room had been used in a scene in Notting Hill, but for some reason I remembered this room from some other movies. We wandered around Greenwich for a lil while longer and our goodbyes to Natasha, John and Emily since it was time for us to leave to head back for lunch with the other guys in Chinatown.

New City.....Familiar Face Part Deux

Travelling to London brought me opportunities to catch up with old friends who I haven't seen in Perth for quite a number of years. I managed to hang out with Minh in my first couple of weeks in London and in my final week I caught up with Natasha.

The last time I saw Natasha was actually back in Perth when she was here for a brief visit for a mutual friend's wedding. I didn't get to catch up with her, John and their lil bub Emily when they were in Perth but it was great that we were able to organise a catch up in London. I met up with Natasha and Emily at Embankment tube station and we walked to a nearby cafe to catch up over coffee. After a short while Emily was getting bored of all us talking so Natasha suggested that we go for a walk around the city. I'd seen most of the city already so we just wandered around chatting and stopping to browse at any stores we fancied.

While walking around we made it to the British Museum, and I decided to go in for a quick visit. Initially I didn't want to go in based on the fact that all through Greece/Paris/Milan I'd seen enough artwork and sculptures to last me a life time but there was something that I wanted to see. You see while in Athens we visited the Acropolis and also the museum there. However alot of the things we saw in the museum especially parts of the Parthenon exterior were just replicas or moulds. Some of the originals were in fact in the British Museum so I wanted to go in to see the real thing. It was a short visit but it 'completed' my culturedness for the trip.

After the museum we walked around some more while lil Emily enjoyed being pushed around in her pram and we ended up near where John worked so Natasha gave John a call and he popped down from his office for a quick coffee. It was really good catching up with Natasha, John and Emily and it was nice to see another familiar face in London. Then I was headed back to the apartment to meet up with Gav, Christina and Quyen to have a nice relaxing pub meal to end the night.

Ah-whim-bo-weh....in the jungle!!!

One of the "must do's" of coming to London is to catch a show in the West End. So I booked myself a seat in one of London's many theatres to watch The Lion King. I'm not much of a musical or theatre go-er and to be honest I hadn't even watched The Lion King movie...YES it's true I've NEVER watched the movie even though it's one of Disney's all time classics. So I made my way over to the Lyceum Theatre for an afternoon matinee. I grabbed myself a souvenir program and found my seat. While waiting for the show to start I couldn't help but notice how old the theatre was and the amount of character the place had. From the very high ceilings to the very old seats it just had this sense of making my first real theatre experience that much more authentic.

Anyway, the show started and all I could say is "WOW!!". Everything from the muscianship of the orchestra, the set and costume design to the singing was truly AWESOME. The amount of colours and the likeness of some of the animals was soooo real. I couldn't help but grin from ear to ear and enjoy every minute of the show. It's a shame I couldn't take any photos/video during the performance since that would have made the memories last that much longer but it was sooo worth it!!!!

After the performance, I had a hankering for food and as I walked up the street I saw a burger joint. I've been told that eating beef in the UK is quite expensive but me being a burger afficionado I couldn't pass up the chance to try a burger UK style. I grabbed a seat, had a quick breeze through the menu and ordered their signature burger, some onion rings and a root beer. the burger tasted pretty good, this place cooked their patties slightly different though, they only cook their patties to medium rare to medium so it's actually a little bit pinky in the middle. Anyway this blog entry isn't a food review, but the burger did hit the spot and I came away quite the happy lil vegemite.

Milan - F1 Weekend

Paris by day, Milan by night.....not many get to say that catch cry but I did!!! :p

Milan was the next stop on my Eurotrip.

The main purpose of me travelling to Milan was to go and see the Formula 1 over the weekend. I've been watching or following the F1 since I was a lil kid and the opportunity to go and actually watch a race live whilst in Europe was something not to be missed. Luckily for me, the F1 was going to be in Monza and my travelling buddies Gav and Christina also like machines that go around a race track fast!! After a very eventful delay for Gav who was flying into Milan from London where his flight was delayed 3 times we spent the day before the F1 wandering around the city. Milan the city is not very big at all, it's main attraction besides all the fashion shows is the Duomo. This massive cathedral is the biggest of its kind in terms of Gothic architecture and the 4th largest cathedral in the world. To be honest the cathedral was kind of creepy looking with all those gargoyles sitting on the outside but nonetheless is was great to see some interesting architecture and artwork that has stood the test of time.

Roll on the morning of the F1, I got all decked out in my Ferrari gear and we jumped on a train with a whole stack of other ppl who were all decked out in F1 team gear. Monza is about 15kms north of the city and is easily accessible by train. I was very excited that I had the chance to go to F1 and especially the Italian Grand Prix since it's Ferrari's home GP. In preparation for the F1 I hit up the Ferrari store the day before to deck myself out in Ferrari gear. The store has every conceivable Ferrari merchandise thinkable, there was even a Ferrari engine for sale if you have some spare cash lying around.

We arrived in Monza and the town has the F1 weekend logistics working like clockwork. Right from the moment we arrived at the train station, there were buses ready to transport us to the track. Once at the track we had a fairly decent walk to the entrance but you could hear the scream of the engines in the distance which made me more excited about being there. We had prepurchased our tickets online and had to collect them before entering the track. Once we grabbed out tickets we had a bit of a wander through the merchandise section where every major F1 team had their own stand selling their team merchandise.

We found ourselves a decent vantage point which was at the beginning of the braking zone on the last corner with a big screen behind us and we settled in for the start of the race. Having not been to a live race I knew the cars would be loud but didn't expect them to be LOUD. Just the roar of the engine during their warm up was enough to make you deaf, luckily we were supplied ear plugs when we picked up our tickets.

Watching a race live can get quite boring as the cars are going at break neck speeds that in an instance all the cars go flying by and then you sit and wait for them to pass around on the next lap. The race was a standard affair with a few crashes at the beginning and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso pulling a quick pit stop to get out infront of Jenson Button to win the race which sent the Ferrari fans wild.

Once the race finished we high tailed it out of there so that Gav could catch his flight out of Milan back to London. Chris and I headed back to the apartment but not without our own pitstop at Rugatino which was this popular cafe which we had tried to get into the previous 2 nights. It was a case of 3rd time lucky when we made a reservation and were the first customers in the cafe. We're not sure if it was normal but since we were the first customers in the cafe we thought we'd eat early and then get out of there....WRONG. We ordered our meals and then proceeded to wait and wait and wait for our meals. The cafe continued to fill up and we were still waiting for our food. We were served bread not once but TWICE and our wine but still no food, other tables who had arrived after us were being served their food before us. We didn't say anything or really mind for that matter cos we didn't know if it was 'normal' for Italians to have long meals plus we had tried 2 times previously to get in to this cafe I guess we wanted to make our visit worthwhile. When the food finally arrived we weren't disappointed, I think there was a reason why this cafe was fully booked each night we walked past...the food was DELISH and it was probably the best meal we had or tasted for the whole time we were in Milan.

Besides the F1, Milan city is all about fashion. All the high end fashion brands are there and it seems that if you go to Milan you are there to SHOP. Besides shopping we also visited a castle and went through a museum that was attached to it which had alot of Italian artwork. Milan ended up being my least favourite city of the ones I'd travelled to. If the F1 wasn't there I probably would have only stayed there for an even shorter time.

Paris...Oui Oui

After a very relaxing 9 days in Greece and the Greek Islands, Gav, Chris and I were off to Paris to explore the sights and sounds which the 'City of Love' had to offer. Quite literally, after stepping off the plane on a Thursday evening and after a short sleep we were up early the next morning making our way to Kings Cross Station to catch the Eurostar.

I was quite excited about going across the Channel after watching the Masterchef episode where the contestants got to sit on the Eurostar to Paris. I don't know why but I guess it's something you NEED to do when you're in the UK for a holiday. The trip on the train was a pretty standard affair but we did manage to strike up a conversation with a group of ppl sitting across from us. One lady in the group picked up our aussie accents and from there we talked about travels and it seemed this lady had pretty much travelled EVERYWHERE. The startling thing was that this lady had managed to travel to places in Malaysia which none of us had heard of before (which kinda put us to shame).

Anyway I digress, after hitting a tunnel we hit sunlight and we were officially in Paris. There was no fan fare or announcement over the PA to say we had hit French soil, everything looked like we were still travelling through British country side...ahaha but alas we were in France. After checking in to our quaint but very comfortable apartment we decided to explore the city.

I've often heard friends and colleagues who have been to Paris say "It's a beautiful city" and have wondered what they meant by it, but whilst walking around Paris I came to understand what they meant. Paris is a BEAUTIFUL city, the awesome architecture and parklands generate this vibe that I can't really put into words but you sense it and it makes you love the city more and more.

We managed to cover a lot in the week I was there. We visited and climbed Notre Dame, saw the amazing stain glass windows at Saint Chappelle, spent a day at Chateau de Versaille, visited Napoleon's tomb at Invalides, trudged through the WW1 and WW2 museum, gazed at artwork by Picasso, Tanguy(my favourite) and Matisse @ the Pompidou Centre, saw The Thinker at Museum de Rodin, was blown away by the size of Monet's Water Lilies @ Museum de La Orangeries, climbed the Arc de Triomphe at dusk and looked down the Champs Elysees and also that crazy roundabout, saw the Effiel Tower by day and at night and of course hung out with the Mona Lisa and Venus Di Milo @ the Lourve. We did heaps more but these are the ones that come to mind as I'm typing this.

I didn't know that there was soo much to do in Paris and Parisians are soo friendly, I've heard that French ppl had a reputation of being unfriendly and almost to a point of being arrogant towards tourists but in the week I was there that 'reputation' or myth was busted, the ppl I encountered were friendly and very helpful which made experiencing Paris even more enjoyable.

I know this is a long post but there's one more thing I need to write about this french connection...FOOD. If Paris were to have an item of food that would symbolise its cuisine it would have to be the baguette. Yes this long stick of dough was our staple for many meals while staying in Paris. Baguette for breakfast, baguette for lunch and YES even baguette for dinner too!!!! Besides eating baguettes, I had other french dishes like terrine and confit duck. One culinary highlight of being in France is that you get to try sooo many desserts too but the one dessert that kept us going back for more were the MACAROONS. Chris and I stumbled across this unbelievably awesome macaroons store after a gluttoness meal. We only intended to 'look' but when the look and hopeless attempts to stop drooling whilst looking through the front window turned into a "we'll only go in to buy one each to try". Well that thought was a fail and we both ended up with coffee and two macaroons each!!! They were the BEST macaroons I've tasted and their flavour combinations were sooo perfect. Needless to say Chris and I made a point to go back there on our last day to grab a sample pack for Gav.

Paris has left an unforgettable experience in my memory, I'll definitely want to go back again and again and again....heck I want to take up French!!!!

Greece: Athens, Mykonos & Santorini

Firstly apologies for the lack of posts as I've been travelling around Europe for the last 3 and a bit weeks. This is the first entry of a 3 part series of the places that I've been to.

First off the rank was Greece, M; Gav and Chris' housemate organised a trip for our touring posse to Greece for 9 days. We had a very early start but we were all pretty excited to be holidaying. We arrived in Athens around mid arvo and checked into our hotel which was only a short walk from the Acropolis and quite close to all the other historical and cultural sights of Athens. We visited the Acropolis/Parthenon the next day, the ruins were amazing. Without a guide to fill us in with all the information it was still a good experience to see these ruins that have stood the test of time and to also see the many artefacts that have been preserved.




After Athens it was off to Mykonos for some sun, beaches and relaxation. The amazing thing about Mykonos and also Santorini is that everywhere you look it is a postcard moment. The amazing contrast of 'eye blinding' white buildings against the brightest blue skies and the many colours you see at sunsets really make you think that you're in some virtual world and the pictures you take look like you may have photoshopped the colours. After hiring a couple of cars we hit up a few beaches and ate at this shack of a place that sat about 100m from the beach that served up some of the best meals our group had had so far and views of the water that rival any waterfront restaurant/cafe.



After 4 days in the Mykonos sun we moved onto even sunnier Santorini and our accommodation in the CAVES!!!....yes we were living in caves for the next 3 nights. Santorini was uber picturesque, our cave dwelling was very comfortable and the view from our room when we walked out each morning was PRICELESS. We had a pretty relaxing time in Santorini spending most of our time by the pool although one of the days we were there we visited an active volcano. A short boat ride and we were on the on the volcano headed by a guide we called "Mama Joy". We trekked for about 25mins to hit the top of the volcano where we had 360 degree views of Santorini and other neighbouring islands.