Felicia in London Part 2

BATH

2006-10-07T00:36:00.000+01:00

Saturday 23rd September 2006

Vince's work colleague Dan had to move back to Bath for uni (he was an intern at JP Morgan and had finished his internship). Dan is from Brazil and had lived in England for a few years. He is such a nice bloke... but totally NOT the typical Brazillian. Dan looked very British actually with his red hair and fair skin.

Anyway, he had to move back to Bath and calling a professional removalist would have cost £300 so vince offered to hire a van and drive it down for the 2.5 hour ride.

The first thing that went wrong was that Dan ordered the van for the wrong day. We were meant to get a small four seater van (us and Dan + gf) but when they turned up at the car hire place, the only vans they had left were massive 3 seaters. So we all squished into a 3 seater with me sharing two seats with the lovebirds. I could not feel my butt at the end of the trip, since half of it was not even on a seat!

Anyway, when we arrived, it was already 6pm... and we didn't get a chance to see much of Bath (they are famous for the Roman baths) except walk around the city, and I have to say that Bath is beautiful!!! The town, scenery and cafes remind me a lot of Melbourne!

We also had THE BEST food in England since we landed. We ate traditional Thai at Mai Tai restaurant. The food and atmosphere was awesome! Vince and I thought of just travelling there to eat! We decided we had to go back, especially now that we can stay with Dan! ;)

We drove back to London around midnight - Vince was very proud to have been able to drive a massive van through the middle of London. It'll mean that driving a normal car will be a breeze.

TOWER OF LONDON (YET AGAIN!)

2006-10-07T00:15:00.000+01:00

Sunday 17th September 2006

On a free (read - not holiday) weekend in London, we thought we should visit more of London's tourist spots. We decided to go to the Tower of London and visit the Crown Jewels. We were pretty exhausted from working so we wanted to take it easy.

It was a lovely day in London - hot and about 24 degrees. The tickets to get into the tower were £11.50 but we got a half price 2nd ticket from Oystercard. Once inside the Tower, we saw some of King Henry's possession - his bed, his toilet (yay - not!), statues of knights, and of course the crown Jewels. They were pretty amazing!! The was a travelator in the little room which took you round to see the jewels, once off, we went back again to have a second look! :)

Pic from outside:

King Henry's bed:

PARIS - DAY THREE (LAST DAY)

2006-09-03T22:38:00.000+01:00

Monday 28th August 2006

Our last day in Paris was truly exhausting. To top it all off, it rained pretty much the whole day, and I'm not talking about little spit of rain, it was pissing down!

We started off the day by going to Notre Dame and having a look at it during the day. The Cathedral was grand but it was totally ruined by all the tourists who were walking by (including us). It was crowded, and I mean butt to butt crowded, and I generally don't like anything that crowded. It didn't have the serenity and holiness that was the Sacre Coeur. I don't know why but the Sacre Coeur just felt extra special.

Next we went to the Lourve. We left this til our last day because we knew we would need an entire afternoon to go through it. The lourve building itself is amazing, the architecture was a marvel, together with the sculptures and paintings. We walked through 2 wings of the Lourve and saw the Mona Lisa (amongst others). It was big a disappointment, I don't really know what all the fuss is about. I thought the painting was a lot bigger too but it's seriously only like A3 size. What a disapointment. We went to the cafe next to the Lourve, called Marley cafe (recommended by the Lonely planet) and the food was excellent. Finally our first taste of good food! We were exhausted, so we walked through the Lourve and came out at the Tuileries Gardens and thought we'd take some photos at the Place De La Concorde. Of course it was bucketing, so the walk and pictures weren't all splendid.

We were so exhausted, we went to the hotel an hour earlier than planned and took the train to the station to catch our train back to London. Phew what an exhausting weekend!

Some pics of our final day:

Just outside the Notre Dame : the spot marked by a star where all distances are calculated from:

Inside the Notre Dame:

The famous Louvre:

The Place De La Concorde famous Obelisk (gift to the French by the Egyptians):

PARIS - DAY TWO

2006-09-03T18:43:00.000+01:00

August 27th 2006

Eiffel Tower:

On the second day in Paris, we decided that we had to go to the Eiffel, after all, that is the ultimate tourist attraction! We were pre-warned by friends to get there early. So after breakfast in another rip off cafe, we trudged to the Eiffel. We weren't really early, so the line was ridiculous. When we got to the ticket booth, we were told that we couldn't get tickets to the top. We could only get tickets to Level 2. We were quite annoyed at this, after all, we've just waited for 1/2 hour and we couldn't go to the top? Anyway, they said once it was less crowded then we could go up. It would apparently be another hour wait. I thought they must have a better system.

We took the elevator up to the Level 2 (this costs twice as much as walking but after a long walk up to the Arc De Triomphe the night before, we were too buggered to take another long flight up). The flight up felt rather dangerous, gave me vertigo from feeling so far off the ground! We reached Level 2 in no time and waited up there for another 20 mins or so and then managed to go straight to the top. The view from the top was sensational!! Paris is very spread out, it seemed to have a better view than London.

Here are a few photos....

View from Level 2:

I couldn't resist an Eiffel Soft toy souvenir, it was so cute...

Views:

Trocadero

Next, we decided we needed some pictures of us with the Eiffel in the background and the best viewing spot is the Trocadero. It is actually a museum as well but we didn't want to go into the museum just yet, just wanted to take photos. Of course, it felt the rest of Paris was also there doing the same thing:

Strangers just cannot take photos - they cut off the top!

Sacre Coeur

After eating Patiserris and coffee at an outdoor cafe, we hopped back on the 'hop on, hop off' bus and decided to take it to Sacre Coeur Church. Everyone said that this was one of the places we just had to go to, so well not knowing all that much about it, we just trotted along.

The church was incredible! It was set atop a hill and has great views of Paris. We managed to get there just as they were having a service (or something) in French. We sat at a pew and just listened and absorbed the holy atmosphere - it felt really serene and peaceful. In fact the only thing that ruined the whole thing were the tourists constantly walking in and out! The best thing about it was that it was also free... that is rather rare, we had to pay for all the churches we saw in England!

Around the corner of the church was an alleyway with painters. The painters mainly specialised in portraits. Some were great, but we were pre-warned that these were a rip off, so we didn't stop. The streets were absolutely everything I envisaged Paris to be... littered with littel cafes, cobble stone street and lots of artists. HOw cute!

Here are a few photos:

View from the top:

Walking down:

Notre Dame, Dinner and others

We hopped back on the bus and went to the Notre Dame. Just as we got there, they closed the door!! Oh well, so we were unable to enter so we thought we'll go in again the next morning. We then walked around to the Latin Quarter and had dinner at Saint Germaine St and walked about until it was time to meet up with Kate and Tam for Moulin Rouge.

Dinner was disappointing, we just couldn't pick the right restaurants I think. The street side crepes and coffees were cheap and excellent but it must've been the tourist areas that were a rip off and untasty. we really needed a true Frenchman to show us around!

The Moulin Rouge was fantastic!! For 61 euros, we got to see the can-can (I didn't know that it was topless!) and some weird live acts, like a ventriloquist and a unicyclist. I think it's probably something we have to do again!

At 1:30am, we called it a night... boy we were exhausted!

Some pics:

PARIS - FIRST DAY

2006-09-03T16:49:00.000+01:00

Saturday 26th Aug - Monday 28th Aug 2006

Monday 28th August was a public holiday - I'm not really sure what 'bank holiday' is, but I didn't care, just another excuse to not have to go to work! yay! Anyway, we booked our visit to Paris a few months ago and got a fairly good deal via Eurostar. I asked all my work colleagues and they said that was definitely the same to go to Paris, the train is only 2 hours and stops right in the heart of the city.

So saturday morning, we boarded the Eurostar from Waterloo station at 8:15am and had a very pleasant 2 hour ride into Paris. We arrive at around 11:30am (France is one hour ahead) and took a cab to our hotel. Just going through the city in the taxi was amazing.

The weather wasn't terribly crash hot. It was dark and cloudy and looked like it was about to bucket. But we still thought the best way to see Paris was to take one of those 'hop on hop off' tour buses. So after the hotel, we climbed onto the top deck of a double decker bus and let them take us around Paris. The sights were truly spectacular, the Champs Elysees had a 4 level Louis Vuitton building plus a multitude of other stores. The Eiffel Tower (or Tour Eiffel as the French say it) looked grand and daunting, the Arc De Triomphe and Place De La Concorde was just amazing. The city was just full of sights.... I'll come back to those later!

After seeing the main sights of Paris, we decided to go for dinner and some window shopping at the famous Champs Elysees. Louis Vuitton was 4 stories of glam, and some rather ugly new styles (they have multi coloured bags this season and um, they just look wrong!). We immediately discovered that Paris was expensive! The food ranged at least 20Euros per plate, and coffee was 8 Euros! I was sooo shocked!! Kate later told me that coffee was dependent on where you drink it... ie, if you ordered it at the bar, it's only 2 euros, if it's a few seats away from the bar, it's 4 euros, if it's near a window, it's 6 euros and if it's outside in the sun, it's 8 euros. We kinda wished she told us this earlier!

! Afterwards, we climbed to the top of the Arc De Triomphe and saw the night skyline of Paris. It was beautiful! We saw the Eiffel Tower literally sparkle (they do it every hour on the hour) like a diamond in the sky. It was so tacky that only Paris could've gotten away with it

Here are some photos from our first day:

Atop the Arc De Triomphe: Can you see the Eiffel in the background?

At the Champs Elysees:

UPDATE

2006-09-03T16:05:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone

Boy it's been ages since I last wrote on this website. A lot has happened so I'll try to tell it in coherent bits.

Work
One of the reasons I've been so busy is because I've gotten a new job. I now work at UBS Investment Bank. My official title is Client Relationship Manager. I look after a portfolio of clients (mainly banks) and ensure smooth transactions between us and them. It's been one helluva baptism of fire... been working pretty hard lately and coming home pretty late. The bonuses of this job is that I'm learning heaps; there is really good coffee at work (well good by London standards) complete with chocolate sprinkles, and it's closer to home (takes me about 10 mins to get to work)!

Work for Vince has been looking good also. He landed a job at JP Morgan as an MIS analyst and he's been working crazy hours also. Hard to think that we're going to be taking our careers seriously here. He also works close to me, so we get to meet up after work and go home together.

London Touristy things
Since my last blog, we have also visited Kensington Palace and seen some ballets and dance shows.

Kensington Palace was nice and grand. It was wonderful to see how the royals live. We could only certain wings of the palace which they called 'apartments' and also visit the memorial garden which was lovely. There was also a lovely cafe there called The Orangery which was beautiful and had yummy food!

Firstly, we watched Brasil Basilero. It got rave reviews as Kylie Minogue and Ian Mckellan attended the opening but I didn't think it was that good... the dancing seemed a little ad hoc and unprofessional.

We also watched Bolshoi Ballet's Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House. I was so excited about seeing this as they are meant to be one of the best ballet companies in the world. We got incredibly cheap seats (8.50 pounds) which afforded us the worst seats in the house. We couldn't see about 2/3 of the stage! We couldn't even see what the sets looked like! Apart from that though, what we COULD see was still pretty good! Mental note to get better seats next time.

We also had a long weekend that just passed (Aug 26 - 28th) and so we went to Paris. Paris is fantastic!! I fell in love with Paris... cliche I know, but it's so true. The city is just amazing!

I'll write a new blog for Paris.... coming up!

Meanwhile, here are some pics of Kensington Palace. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the Palace but I managed to take one of King George's staircase!

King George's staircase. His rooms are amazing, all the walls are filled with magnificent paintings and elaborate decorations.

Princess Di's Memorial garden:

The Orangery Cafe:

LONDON MOTOR SHOW

2006-07-31T20:47:00.000+01:00

Tuesday 25th July AND Saturday 29th July 2006

Of course the other thing we had to go to was the London Motor Show. It was the first time in 30 years apparently that it was held in London (I have no idea where it was previously held!). It was quite close to us, but we still had to catch 3 different trains to get there cos there was no direct route.

The first time we wandered there was Tuesday. We were able to buy the tickets off the web cos the freebie Metro paper (similar to MX newspaper) had a 25% off special and going on the weekday was half the price (6 pounds) compared to the weekend and they opened til 9pm every night so we figured we would have enough time to see everytime.

Tuesday proved to be a great day to go cos it was really quiet - which meant we could sit in all the cars we wanted. I really like the new Honda's.... beautiful modern interiors. My little lancer back home was also on show and looked exactly like the one that I left behind with my bro. Some of the more luxurious cars: I really like the feel of the new XK Jaguar, X80 Volvo, and the BMW M6. On the more affordable ones, I definitely like the Honda Civics and Ford Focus. They felt nice! The more extreme cars (which were on displays only and could not be touched!) were the Ferrari Enzo, Zonda, TVR, Aston Martins and the Maclaren F1.

My favourite car was 'Lightning' from CARS! It was soooooo cute! (I saw the movie on Friday and it was soooo cute! - not as good as some of the other Pixar films though but still good).

The great news was that the car companies obviously spent heaps of money on the event. We had free icy-poles and cordial from Ford (complete with an 'ice-bar' and ice sculpture), heaps of showbags (though a lot of them said they had run out!), and obviously models galore!! It's always interesting to see the type of chicks and the uniforms the company endorses for the various cars. Eg, Bentleys had beautiful classy girls wearing fine fitting grey suits and white shirts, but Alfa had chicks in black boob tube dresses with a funny red cross that starts at one shoulder and crosses at the waist (complete with black sleeves which looked kinda odd). They were definitely a head-turner! Toyota had dancing events which were fun to watch, and Vauxhall had cyclists on skating bowls.

We had so much fun we decided to go back in the week!! Only kidding, we also bought tickets (separately) for the Motor Theatre. I bet you're wondering, 'what on earth is that?'. Well, it was advertised as 'Romeo and Juliet' with cars. We thought that would be interesting so for 5 pounds each, on Saturday we decided to go again to watch it.

The event was held by Vauxhall (Holden), and it was awesome!! They had cars doing burn-outs, handbrake turns, and some pretty cool 'romantic interludes' dancing with cars. The cars looked so close they looked like they would crash, but thankfully they didn't! The display was amazing with lotsa dancing, acrobatics, and motorcyclists. Wish I knew how to load videos, cos I have some awesome ones!

Funningly enough, the 5 pound motor theatre ticket also enabled us to go into the motor show again and enjoy the cars on display! So of course, we went back inside and had another look at the ford focus (read: got more icy-poles!). We also had a ride on an 'adventure land' with the Landrover (which was actually really good fun!) and Vince was really annoyed that we didn't have a UK licence... cos if we did, we could've had a drive in the Mazda RX-8 around an driving course! Some of the drivers were going crazy, it looked great fun!

Overall, I'd have to say that I thought the motor show was a fantastic event!! We had heaps and heaps of fun and would definitely go back again next year (with an UK drivers' licence this time!)

FARNBOROUGH AIR SHOW

2006-07-30T22:28:00.000+01:00

Sunday 23rd July 2006

Vince was really excited to find out that the Farnborough air show is in London. He had been watching the air show since he was a little kid, so of course this was one of those things that we HAD to do.

The day didn't start off well, the tube station had terrible directions on how to get to Farnborough and the line for tickets were incredibly long! We ended up spending 45 minutes lining up for tickets (I swear, in London, you just have to line up everywhere, it's hopeless!).

When we got to Farnborough, the events were great. There were jets, and some planes on display and a huge hall of promoters etc. The day was also really hot. The best part were the Red Arrows which are London's equivalent of the RAAF air show. They were spectacular! I have to say that the planes on show were much better than Melbourne's Avalon airshow. However, I didn't think the event was as well planned. It was disappointing that there were no signage for toilets anywhere, and no events people on ground to ask for directions. The line to leave the ground was also horrendous and not enough trains to cater for all the people. It was pretty badly organised.

Here are some photos (does anyone know how to load videos on this blog? - I have some great vids of the Red Arrows).

Coming up next.... the London Car Show.