No, I'm not coming down with some nasty virus, it's just that tomorrow Kristen and I are going to Paris! For this reason, I figure I better do a pre-trip blog and make sure I'm up to date with what I've been up to so far.
Spring is most definitely here and last week was very warm and sunny. If I was still believing half of what I've heard about London, I'd be shocked at the sun and warmth. But as it is, at this point I've decided to make my own mind up about this place. It did get a wee bit colder on Saturday for the big race between Cambridge and Oxford on the Thames, I have to admit.
Now, the race - an annual rowing grudge match between the two rival Universities takes place just down the road from us. The main event was largely missed by all present due to several factors including inebriation, the speed at which the rowers go by and these guys:
Sunday was spent walking down the road to Holland Park, which was interesting, as I never would have gone there if it hadn't been for some random article about things to see in London on Time Out. It's a smaller park tucked away between Notting Hill and Kensington, but it feels like a little slice of English countryside. It really felt like Spring with all the squirrels out and there were even a couple of rabbits hopping about.
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
New Spring
It has been a good two weeks since I've updated here, but there shouldn't be too much to cover. We were both sick with colds last weekend and I was working both Saturday and Sunday, so there's nothing to report there.
I'll go back to Tuesday the 8th, also known as Shrove Tuesday, when Kristen met me after work at the Breakfast Club in Soho for a meal of pancakes, which is apparently what people do on Shrove Tuesday. Afterwards, we had to get over to Camden to see Iron and Wine play at the Roundhouse. They were an eight piece band and worked remarkably well together, sounding different to their recorded material and jamming out a few songs with their saxophonist taking the spotlight a few times. There was even a ten minute long jam in there on one song, which seemed to confuse a lot of the crowd, but I loved it - how often do we get a good jam these days?
Anyhow, that was a couple weeks ago now and life has been sailing along at a fair clip, not allowing too many chances for reflection. The days are slowly but surely getting longer and the trees are blooming already. For the first time in almost 12 months, Summer is on its way.
We were treated to a beautiful day yesterday, Saturday. Kristen and I caught the tube to Holland Park (we were originally planning to walk there) and walked from there to Notting Hill Gate. That area is always crazy on a Saturday morning and bustling with tourists, all speaking a hundred different languages and walking at a snail's pace. Nothing makes you feel like a local more than seeing the tourist you were just a short time ago reflected in these people.
I feel sometimes the only good thing about a market here is the food that can be found. Portobello Road market seems to have a thing for antiques, but I find myself wondering how authentic these all are. Perhaps this market in particular preys on the tourists and in being such a affluent area, the prices reflect that. The clothes market is great, but you have to look very hard indeed to find any sort of a bargain.
I bought myself a nice leather satchel and then we visited the original Hummingbird cafe, which sells those amazing treats undreamed of in Wellington. Seriously NZ, you're missing out on some treats - there's nothing I can even begin to compare with the array of sweet, creamy and sugary patisserie delights to be found here. We also found a very good German food wagon which sold us a massive schnitzel in a bun which was more than enough for two.
We reached the top, quiet end of the road and instead of turning around, we decided to try and get lost. We walked in the general direction of Hyde Park through the twisted warren of streets, eventually finding it - along with half of London. It's no wonder that the park is so popular on a day like that as they really are quite rare. Still, there was plenty of space to sit down on the grass and bask in the sun and relax for a while. Check out these crazy cars we saw on the way over to the park:
We wandered through the park for a while, taking in the Albert memorial and the Princess Di memorial fountain. We made it all the way to Marble Arch where there are some strange new sculptures of Jelly Babies and a horse's head. We walked on down Park Lane and a short way up Picadilly before conceding defeat and heading home.
Today was not quite as insane, though we did head all the way up to Acton central on foot. We've lived in Acton for a while now and never bothered to go over, which makes sense having seen it as it's not a lot to write home about. We caught the 207 bus all the way back down the road to Westfield Shepherd's Bush, which is actually worth going to. I'll post some pictures of the sculptures down below.
[gallery link="file" order="DESC" orderby="ID"]
I'll go back to Tuesday the 8th, also known as Shrove Tuesday, when Kristen met me after work at the Breakfast Club in Soho for a meal of pancakes, which is apparently what people do on Shrove Tuesday. Afterwards, we had to get over to Camden to see Iron and Wine play at the Roundhouse. They were an eight piece band and worked remarkably well together, sounding different to their recorded material and jamming out a few songs with their saxophonist taking the spotlight a few times. There was even a ten minute long jam in there on one song, which seemed to confuse a lot of the crowd, but I loved it - how often do we get a good jam these days?
Anyhow, that was a couple weeks ago now and life has been sailing along at a fair clip, not allowing too many chances for reflection. The days are slowly but surely getting longer and the trees are blooming already. For the first time in almost 12 months, Summer is on its way.
We were treated to a beautiful day yesterday, Saturday. Kristen and I caught the tube to Holland Park (we were originally planning to walk there) and walked from there to Notting Hill Gate. That area is always crazy on a Saturday morning and bustling with tourists, all speaking a hundred different languages and walking at a snail's pace. Nothing makes you feel like a local more than seeing the tourist you were just a short time ago reflected in these people.
I feel sometimes the only good thing about a market here is the food that can be found. Portobello Road market seems to have a thing for antiques, but I find myself wondering how authentic these all are. Perhaps this market in particular preys on the tourists and in being such a affluent area, the prices reflect that. The clothes market is great, but you have to look very hard indeed to find any sort of a bargain.
I bought myself a nice leather satchel and then we visited the original Hummingbird cafe, which sells those amazing treats undreamed of in Wellington. Seriously NZ, you're missing out on some treats - there's nothing I can even begin to compare with the array of sweet, creamy and sugary patisserie delights to be found here. We also found a very good German food wagon which sold us a massive schnitzel in a bun which was more than enough for two.
We reached the top, quiet end of the road and instead of turning around, we decided to try and get lost. We walked in the general direction of Hyde Park through the twisted warren of streets, eventually finding it - along with half of London. It's no wonder that the park is so popular on a day like that as they really are quite rare. Still, there was plenty of space to sit down on the grass and bask in the sun and relax for a while. Check out these crazy cars we saw on the way over to the park:
We wandered through the park for a while, taking in the Albert memorial and the Princess Di memorial fountain. We made it all the way to Marble Arch where there are some strange new sculptures of Jelly Babies and a horse's head. We walked on down Park Lane and a short way up Picadilly before conceding defeat and heading home.
Today was not quite as insane, though we did head all the way up to Acton central on foot. We've lived in Acton for a while now and never bothered to go over, which makes sense having seen it as it's not a lot to write home about. We caught the 207 bus all the way back down the road to Westfield Shepherd's Bush, which is actually worth going to. I'll post some pictures of the sculptures down below.
[gallery link="file" order="DESC" orderby="ID"]
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The weekend that was
It has been another long week at work, with the added bonus that I have just been paid. This means that we've been able to plan a trip away at the end of the month to Paris going via Eurostar and staying 4 nights at an apartment instead of the usual hostel experience. This comes with the difficulty that I know next to no French, so communication will be a slight issue, but something I'm sure can be surmounted with plenty of gesturing. I'm looking forward to this!
This weekend we got up on Saturday morning and walked down to the Olympia 2 venue to see the Doctor Who Experience. We got there more than 20 minutes early yet still had to line up outside, then queue again going up a staircase and then again once after we handed our tickets over to enter the exhibition. This did nothing to curb our excitement however, as we waited to enter the 'experience' part there were several sets from the last season of Doctor Who set about, including a WWII dalek, Van Gough's studio, the underground lizard place from Hungry Earth/Cold Blood and the weather machine from the Vampires of Venice.
When we were finally ushered into the 'experience' (in which no photography was allowed) we were placed in front of a movie screen which played a 'catch up' video of the last series focusing on the Pandorica and the crack in time. It ended with the crack in time filling the screen and the screen actually splitting along this line to allow us to step through.
On the other side was the museum on board Starship Earth which contained various artefacts from around time and space which were explained to us by a brilliantly realistic face projected onto a model, before the sirens sounded and the Doctor appeared on the TV screen. Apparently he was trapped and needed us to find the TARDIS, which materialised out of thin air to the side of the room a second later.
We were ushered in (it really is bigger on the inside!) and had to fly it to him, only to be somehow captured and exit onto a strange alien ship. We all gathered and suddenly 'EXTERMINATE INTRUDERS!' Daleks came out and claimed we would be enslaved until the Doctor and Davros' rebel Daleks saved us (we watched a space battle from out the front viewport of the ship) and we rushed down a time corridor with the Doctor's voice urging us on and telling us "Whatever you do, don't blink!"
You know what that means? Weeping Angels. I have to say at this point I was actually kinda freaking out. There were Angels in the darkness on either side waiting for us to blink so they could steal our potential time energy. We almost ran through to the next room which was set up like a dig site with a 3D screen in front of us. This had more Daleks and Weeping Angels and Cybermen all reaching out of the screen to grab us.
The Doctor was saved, the universe was set back to normal and we were ejected into the exhibition area where various props and monsters were set up for us to hang out with. I wont go on about this as I took a lot of pictures which I have uploaded here.
After our time here, we moved on down to road to Whole Foods Market which is a big market in Kensington with the purpose of selling only organic, non processed foods. There is a nice food hall upstairs which had a raw food restaurant and Japanese hotpot, but also a more common food area where I bought a Mexican tostada filled up with pork and beans and, oh so much tasty stuff.
We walked home via Shepherd's Bush, where I finally got my hair all chopped off and the Italian market was set up. We bought a big box of unusual Italian treats which we devoured before we could think of taking pictures of them.
Today we went out for a walk from St Pauls to Borough, only to find the market is closed on a Sunday. Not that it mattered, as we just walked over the river again to Spitalfields market and treated ourselves to some Patisserie Valerie. That place has some serious quality for a chain bakery store. Here's some pictures of the day:
[gallery link="file" orderby="ID"]
This weekend we got up on Saturday morning and walked down to the Olympia 2 venue to see the Doctor Who Experience. We got there more than 20 minutes early yet still had to line up outside, then queue again going up a staircase and then again once after we handed our tickets over to enter the exhibition. This did nothing to curb our excitement however, as we waited to enter the 'experience' part there were several sets from the last season of Doctor Who set about, including a WWII dalek, Van Gough's studio, the underground lizard place from Hungry Earth/Cold Blood and the weather machine from the Vampires of Venice.
When we were finally ushered into the 'experience' (in which no photography was allowed) we were placed in front of a movie screen which played a 'catch up' video of the last series focusing on the Pandorica and the crack in time. It ended with the crack in time filling the screen and the screen actually splitting along this line to allow us to step through.
On the other side was the museum on board Starship Earth which contained various artefacts from around time and space which were explained to us by a brilliantly realistic face projected onto a model, before the sirens sounded and the Doctor appeared on the TV screen. Apparently he was trapped and needed us to find the TARDIS, which materialised out of thin air to the side of the room a second later.
We were ushered in (it really is bigger on the inside!) and had to fly it to him, only to be somehow captured and exit onto a strange alien ship. We all gathered and suddenly 'EXTERMINATE INTRUDERS!' Daleks came out and claimed we would be enslaved until the Doctor and Davros' rebel Daleks saved us (we watched a space battle from out the front viewport of the ship) and we rushed down a time corridor with the Doctor's voice urging us on and telling us "Whatever you do, don't blink!"
You know what that means? Weeping Angels. I have to say at this point I was actually kinda freaking out. There were Angels in the darkness on either side waiting for us to blink so they could steal our potential time energy. We almost ran through to the next room which was set up like a dig site with a 3D screen in front of us. This had more Daleks and Weeping Angels and Cybermen all reaching out of the screen to grab us.
The Doctor was saved, the universe was set back to normal and we were ejected into the exhibition area where various props and monsters were set up for us to hang out with. I wont go on about this as I took a lot of pictures which I have uploaded here.
After our time here, we moved on down to road to Whole Foods Market which is a big market in Kensington with the purpose of selling only organic, non processed foods. There is a nice food hall upstairs which had a raw food restaurant and Japanese hotpot, but also a more common food area where I bought a Mexican tostada filled up with pork and beans and, oh so much tasty stuff.
We walked home via Shepherd's Bush, where I finally got my hair all chopped off and the Italian market was set up. We bought a big box of unusual Italian treats which we devoured before we could think of taking pictures of them.
Today we went out for a walk from St Pauls to Borough, only to find the market is closed on a Sunday. Not that it mattered, as we just walked over the river again to Spitalfields market and treated ourselves to some Patisserie Valerie. That place has some serious quality for a chain bakery store. Here's some pictures of the day:
[gallery link="file" orderby="ID"]
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Just a quick note
I've gone back and added some pictures to Brighton in January and some videos to the Cologne posts in December as well as a video of Sharon Van Etten performing in February. I'll try and post more content as I get around to it.
Update UPDATE: Now with even more pictures! Stay tuned for my adventures across time and space with a certain Doctor.
Update UPDATE: Now with even more pictures! Stay tuned for my adventures across time and space with a certain Doctor.
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