our new place

After months of nomadic wandering from friend's flat to short-let to friend's flat... we're finally settled down back in West Hampstead! If all goes as planned we'll be at in this place til our visa (or money) runs out and we go back to Aus.

Our rather spacious living room 

The long hallway from living room looking to bedroom

 A good kitchen, despite no dishwasher.  As it is winter now and we can't be bothered going outside much, we spend a lot of time here experimenting with casseroles.

Messy bedroom. 

The view from the front windows. We're quite surrounded by train tracks but amazingly you don't notice or hear them.

View from our bedroom window.. the left side of the fence is the downstairs yard... which is really an overgrown strip of waist-high weed (kinda nice to see some wild greenery in London really.) The neighbour's cat is pretty cute.

cambridge commutes

My first job in london wasn't in london at all, for about 2 months I was commuting for 45 minutes north east to cambridge. Well the express train was 45 minutes - with all the cycling and connecting trains it was more like 2 hours door to door on a good day!

We had been to Cambridge before, so I knew that it had more of a country attitude to it. For me, it was nice to get away from London every day. I noticed this graffiti from the train on my first trip, setting a nice tone for my interview, and the rest of my contract actually!

My bike was doing well for me. On a good day I would ride from home to kings cross, then from Cambridge station to work, then work to Cambridge station, then I'd usually get a train for the last run home.

Riding in Cambridge was very easy and very nice. Especially coming from Australia where cycling is a generally dangerous activity. Riding in Cambridge is much like our time riding in Kyoto or Amsterdam - only nicer and roomier. On the road, cars actually give way to you and seem genuinely aware of you (holy shit!), and quite often there are very comfortable bike paths.

A river! Sort of. I've cleverly angled the camera to see as much nature as possible on my rather plain suburban biking route.

One of the annoying parts... train delays. Especially annoying when you just raced all the way to make it to the station on time (after checking the website for delays before you left, I'm so organised!) to then find out your train could be more than an hour late, and you'll be having dinner on platform 1 tonight.

Actually after 2 months I was really starting to feel fatigued by the whole thing, maybe it was a touch of crunch time at work, but more so I felt like I was spending my life on a train, and people do this all the time. The fastest train was 45 minutes, but often you're stuck with the 90 minute ones that stops at (what feels like) every town along the way.

But, it was nice enough. At least the train provided 2 time allocations for naps, which I frequently used for just that!

Short break in Alicante

It's been awhile since we last blogged.. and what have we been up to this last two months? Well concentrating on the tedium of having to earn a living mostly. We also found a nice one-bedder in West Hampstead but the lease doesn't begin til mid November. So in the meantime we're staying with our friends Wen and Margot near SoHo. Living strolling distance to Oxford st, West End and Regent Park is simply quite fantastic!

So yes, we did manage to find a bit of work, but that has finished now (we both had two month contracts.) And before launching into another round of job-hunting, we took a 4-day break to Alicante, Spain. 



Alicante is about the cheapest destination you could fly to from London (£100 return) that has a beach and isn't cold in November. We also scored with the hotel, getting three nights for a grand total of 69Euros! Yay for off-season travelling!!



Here is like the Gold Coast of Spain with stretches of lovely sandy beaches and multitudes of hotels and resorts.  There is also an old Roman fort on top of the hill with great view of the harbour.





You could tell by the decent sized airport and the number of hotels around that this place gets crazy busy during summer. But in November, despite still being still sunny and warm, the place was almost TOO quiet and peaceful! Our hotel was right by the beach not too far from town. In the morning, there was people exercising on the beach; by 3pm only a few persistent pensioners are still on the beach - with leathery tans, tilting their deckchairs towards the sun like sunflowers to catch the thinning rays. By late afternoon the beach promenade resembled a ghost town and pretty much all restaurants were closed. Our only two choices of places to dine at night were to eat at our hotel, or a 15 minute walk to McDonald's.

Although there isn't much sights around town, I highly recommend off-season Alicante for a peaceful break by the beach. Bring plenty of books.

london update

We have been in London for nearly 8 weeks, survived the riots and are more settled in now. (Actually we didn't see any rioting at all. The closest we got was seeing some dodgy looking people on the train...) To great relief we have found work... albeit only temporary positions. Joe's working at a games company in Cambridge which requires four hours of commuting each day. I've found some contract work in Hoxton, an "edgy" (dodgy) part of London - It's a bit like the Valley in Brisbane, but with lots of public housing. All in all, it's a relief to start working again - although a painful step to take after months of holidaying.

  

We've also been buying lots of stuff. Bought a folding bike to add more fun and exercise to Joe's daily commute; pot plants, a big teapot, and this smoothie-blender-in-a-cup to better enjoy the abundance of cheap raspberries and blackberries here.

We made a few day-trips with friends to nearby towns...We went to Brighton - the quintessential English seaside on a beautiful cloudless day. There were throngs of tourists even though it was a weekday. We had fish and chips with mushy peas, which tasted like red beans, and spent hours lounging in colourful deckchairs that line the beach and pier.

Free deckchairs (to borrow)! Very relaxing on the pier.

The beach was not quite the Gold Coast, but still nice. 

We also went to Cambridge - beautiful town, lots of tourists everywhere, including surprisingly, a great number of Chinese tourists.

As expected, many beautiful posh colleges with pristine lawns you're not allowed to step on.

This cool mechanical thing has a cricket 'running' on the round bits.. i think it's suppose to tells you the time...

We went punting, which is a flat boat where you steer and move the boat by pushing a long pole against the river bed. It was fun, although the small river was pretty packed with boats.

Here's Joe the gondalier. 

It's a most picturesque town.

Food highlight - I finally experienced an English high tea as part of a friend's Hen's-do. The traditional high tea consisted of delicate crustless sandwiches, cupcakes, tarts, elairs, and my favourite - scones with jam and clotted cream. Clotted cream is this immensely thickened cream that spreads like butter. It was absolutely delicious and much better on scones than normal/whipped cream. Unfortunately I had a bit too much of the good stuff for my lactose-sensitive stomach.... gotta remember next time to enjoy in moderation!

We haven't really done many touristy things in London.I would have liked to have seen lots of West End musicals, but wasn't in the mood pre-working (spending money feels more painful when unemployed) , and don't have time once-working. We did see one play - "Journey's End", set in the trenches of WW1. It was a bit too serious and boring for my liking... basically men chit-chating for three hours and then they all die in a end raid. Heavy stuff. I think next time I'll see "Mamma Mia" or some frivolous musical number.

Anyway, that's about it. We're still looking for a more permanent place to stay, and longer-term jobs. But looks like we'll be in London for a while longer...

cemetery jogging

Hampstead Cemetery is a beautiful old cemetery five minutes from where we live in West Hampstead. It is a lovely small place full of mostly old crumpling graves. It is a great place to go for a jog and I try to go whenever I can. 

Cemetery jogging is great! Peaceful setting, wide paths, very little foot traffic around (only some dog walkers) Only difference with running in a cemetery is I try not to spit (Saliva tends to build up when I jog), as I don't want to ever be mistaken for spitting on a grave or anything. 

This plot stood out as it is near the entrance and is totally surrounded by roses. On the gravestone marked "In loving memory of my dear wife..." and underneath it is a lovely poem. One Sunday afternoon while jogging, I saw a well-dressed old man at the gravesite with a bunch of flowers. He cleaned around the grave, and with a watering can, slowly tended to the roses. I could only conclude that this man must be the husband of the lady buried here; she died in 1998 - 13 years ago, and yet after so many years he still lovingly tended to her grave and the roses surrounding it.

 It is quite romantic really!

settling in in london

It was bit depressing the first week back in London after our sunny holiday... London was chilly and so damn grey all the time; And flat hunting and getting one's resume up to scratch was much less fun than holidaying, as you can imagine.

We stayed with friends for two weeks and then moved to a studio flat in West Hampstead where we will live for the next two months. Our flat is cramped but cute! I like the neighbourhood a lot -  lots of shops and tube is nearby. I even found a good jogging spot - a beautiful old cemetery up the road.

Here's Joe at our new dig with his new (not very good) job-hunting haircut

Not much headroom above the bed, cramped but got a skylight which is very nice.

 Our entire kitchen is contained in that cupboard.

I like the leafy courtyard 

And thankfully, after a couple of weeks in London, the weather is either getting better or is growing on me. It is usually mild and breezy, and it never rains too hard, just gentle drizzles really. The sun is beautiful when it's out. Even the grey's not so bad - gives me a chance to rid of my hideous sunglasses tan. 

Thanks to our friends who gave us great tips on choosing where to live, and warned us away from bad neighbourhoods.

cherry on top dubrovnik

A nice Italian lady told us when we were in Nice, that the Dalmatia coast is beautiful, and Dubrovnik is the perfect cherry on top. I couldn't agree with it more! We arrived in Dubrovnik after a relaxing seven hour cruise. Dubrovnik was to be the last stop in our nearly 3-month holiday, and I think we saved the best for last!

With the mountain on one side and the sea on the other, Dubrovnik is famous for its beautifully preserved old town fortified by two kilometres of city walls.

The view of the old town harbour is amazing!

Inside the walls is a charming old town with lots of tourists.

There are many alleyways that run into the steep hillsides. BIRD!

 Squid risotto and fried small fish for lunch! I thought it was pretty good, though Joe wasn't too keen on it. 

We took a ferry to the Lokrum island, a tiny island with no cars just off the coast of Dubrovnik. From the ferry ride we could see swarms of fish in the crystal clear water.

Lokrum island is much more peaceful than the tourist filled Dubrovnik old town. The leafy island has shady parks, a botanic garden, a small lake, and plenty of swimming spots.

In the evening back in Dubrovnik, we climbed the famous city walls where everywhere you looked were spectacular views! I must have taken hundreds of photographs! 

View from the walls of the old town harbour and Lokrum island in the background. 

The big round thing is the Onofrio Fountain, which has water drawn from a spring 12km away.

Here you could see damages from the shelling of Dubrovnik during the Croatian War of Indepence in 1991.

On our last day in Dubrovnik we hired a kayak.

We paddled to Lokrum island and did a loop around the island. 

We stopped on the island for a swim, where Joe stepped on a sea urchin. It was funny because the whole of our time in Croatia he kept telling me to watch out for sea urchins, and then he stepped on one, and had about twenty spines stuck in his water shoe. Two urchin spines made it through the shoe and are still embedded in the heel of his foot. 

After sea kayaking, we had a most excellent seafood platter for dinner. The serving was massive - it came in a bucket about 70cm wide! There was squid, fish fillet, baby octopus & squid, prawns, sardines and mussels all cooked to perfection!

We had a great view of the harbour too! 

And sadly, our holiday is drawing to a close. We have visited so many awesome places over the last few months. We must thank our wonderful friends who have shown us a good time and let us crash with them on our journey. From Dubrovnik we go back to London where we will attempt to start the "working" part of our working holiday.

We plan to keep updating this blog with other adventures of our time in the UK, travels and otherwise.