England

With a some spare weeks up our sleeve we picked up some nice cheapish EasyJet tickets from Istanbul to London. After a little hick up where the immigration absolutely would not let us in without a contact address, but did not care whatsoever what it was. It's incredible just how backwards and proud (of it) first world nations can be.

On making our triumphant entry onto British soil we were met by Jacq's long lost cousin Ben (who never quite made it home from his OE), and were whisked away to exotic Woking. I think I would have to be have been born there to work out in which contexts Woking is part of London and in which its not. I think its mostly not as there are a lot of trees and the sense of green is very pervasive, but with decent train service its only a half hour from Waterloo so not nearly so far removed as say Torbay.

We spent most of our time there in good old whanau time, catching up/getting to know Ben, his wife Trixi, and their two kids, breaking only for me and Jacq to run outside and stare at the first rain we'd seen since Morocoo. On Friday we squeezed everyone into Ben's sensible family car and went out for a look about Windsor Castle but with an almost twenty pound price tag for entry we decided we could make do with a look around the outside and a poke around the ships and down to the river Thames for a spot of swan feeding.

The next day was Saturday and Ben, Jacq and I headed into the city to watch an ill-fated game of rugby at the pub. Jacq and I were both terribly excited as the most rugby we had had all year was a highlights package in Bolivia, and the occasional snippet on BBC World. But with a poor showing from the AB's we were left a little bit mopey but went put and visited the queen anyway. Buckingham Palace is actually not that exciting but I quite enjoyed the statue in the roundabout (aka the Queen Victoria Memorial) with its Greco-British angels (in gold or white marble) was quite fantastic not to mention that most of it was covered in people just hanging out on their favourite lion or hippogriff.

Sunday we transferred into Stu and Leah's lounge and then we all rushed off to Yum Cha with a whole bunch of people I used to work with in Auckland (and associates). Yum Cha was pretty good and was served on a floating restaurant in the old Dock district and certainly brought back old times. This was then followed up by a trip for spaghetti shaped ice-cream over at Leicester Square.

On our own on the Monday we headed off to the Natural History Museum along with every other Mum and child in London. The queue was convoluted but involved more exhilarating rain, and was entirely worth it as the (free) museum was pretty damn awesome. Dinosaurs skeletons, life size whale models and stuffed large mammals make for a very good day out. And then to top the whole day off  Jacquie made her world famous lamb cous cous, all be it with inferior British lamb (all the supermarkets proudly declare that they only stock 'fine' British Meats), and we went out for another remarkably green walk around the local park which of course was the residence of  the bishop of London for 900 years, history, history, etc, etc.

The next day we hit up the (free) National Gallery and I tried very hard to make up for 30 years of complete disinterest in art by forming opinions on many fine classical works. I officially like Van Eyck, and some French bloke called Seurat, both of whom must have been teased horribly at school.

We also took the opportunity to spread the misery of hosting us around by turning up at Thomas' flat and we immediately astounded at just how small a flat someone can live in and still be generous enough to let two people crash with him. The flat was built into the attic space of a big old townhouse and so had only one vertical wall with the rest being the inside of the roof and therefore pitched at about 45 degrees. While perfectly adequate to the needs of a young bachelor about town it was a pretty tight fit to get the inflatable mattress down in the 'lounge'.

We made it out the to the British Museum over a couple of days. It is gargantuan but luckily its free (seeing the theme yet) so you can take it all in bite sized chunks. We immediately sought out the supposedly superior Egyptian artifacts but they were pretty similar to what we say in Egypt (I'm not sure why I thought they would be), but the Babylonian stone gates were awesome, I particularly liked the fact that the winged horsey centaur things had extra legs so that no matter what direction you looked at it from it appeared to have four legs.

The subtle problem we found with London was that as the temperature was quite cool we could quite happily walk for miles without passing out from heat exhaustion, unfortunately this meant that we soon learnt we had been avoiding walking in the foreign heat and subsequently had quite sore legs the whole time. The upshot of this of course is that London is a cool town to just wander round, lots of little churches, old buildings, random monuments and the occasional interesting shop too.

Our last couch stop in London was with Mike, another old software development friend of mine. We very generously had a whole bedroom to stay in, and were very impressed with the view from most of the way up a rather lonely apartment building. One thing we had never realised about London is that while it may be densely built up the vast majority of buildings are under 5 storeys so we could see London laid out before us pretty well.

The last cultural edifice on our list was the Tate Modern. I was quite keen as I quite like some modern art but it's fair to say my tastes are not nearly modern enough for the curators and I was lift pretty unsatisfied with the days visit. I was in fact slightly more impressed with the building itself, some kind of old warehouse with a vast space left open for no apparent reason.

We finally had a chance to meet up with some of Jacquie's friends on our second weekend so we packed some filled rolls and headed off to Greenwich. It has a large park as well as the small Royal Observatory which had some very interesting displays regarding the race for accurate time keeping couched in terms of Britain's naval superiority.

Having worn out our welcome in London we took a bus out to Oxford to see Jacquie's old uni friends Shane and Mel and their new boy. We spent our time fairly evenly between just hanging round and talking, eating, and wandering the lovely green lanes of Oxford. With a little side trip into Christ Church, one of the largest colleges that make up Oxford. It was pretty much as advertised, old Gothic stone architecture, and beautiful lawns with the odd hurrying student who stayed too long in yoga class and was late for lunch. Unfortunately with lunch on we weren't allowed into the dining hall which they used for all the Harry Potter movies and is apparently quite something.
Jacquie reminded me that my other first while in England was getting stung by a Wasp. We had been walking by the canals when a large bug had flown into Jacquie's hair which of course fell in my manly sphere to remove. Unfortunately it turned out to be a Wasp and I now know that I'm not allergic and that it is quite a good idea for me to immediately remove my wedding ring from the affected finger as I got quite a good swell going on.

Thanks a heap to all the folk that put us up on our stay. Ben & Trixi, Stu & Leah (and flatmates), Thomas, Mike, Shane and Mel for all putting us up while we were there, we had a fantastic time.