London Pt 2

Heya,

So London Part 2...So last post my intentions for the next day were to get up early & get to Buckingham Palace early for the changing of the guard. We slept in & that didn't happen, but I can say happily that we did go this morning & it was entertaining as hell to watch!


There were far more people around than I expected for something that happens every second day, so it was kind of hard to get a good spot. But we did get to check out the big black hats & horses & guns & stuff...but the brass band played Abba...which confused the hell out of us!

We did check out all the squares & stuff, and that was cool, just more London business, but nothing overwhelming I think, but cool places to check out. 3 Seville row though was a different story. The street hasn't changed since The Beatles had their rooftop concert. The door, just like Abbey Road is written all over & people have carved their names into it, but apart from the cars parked in the street, it was a timewarp!


The other night we also went out for a few drinks. We found a real cool bar to start with that was playing Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, but their stock cheap beer was Fosters... so after 1 we moved on, wanted to check out a band. We then went to Posters, which is a live music venue on Kilburn Rd, just around the corner. It was real cool actually, because the first band we caught the end of were real brit pop rock like, and that was something fun to see. The next however were actually from New York, Hank & Cupcakes. They were different & fun! Loved them. Check them out definitely.

Other than that we have had to give in to the weather & buy a brolley! we walked through Hyde Park this morning in the rain & went to check out Royal Albert Hall. Cannot wait to get inside & see Opeth next week. I am sooo looking forward to it.

We have also attempted to shop for something for Benny's Birthday along Oxford Street...we will find something soon.

The Tower Bridge was astounding & London bridge not so! haha.
Oh & I have been real tempted to take photos of all the street signs/stations etc & make our own monopoly board...Haven't done so, and probably wont. But Maccas are rubbing it in with the Monopoly Promotion! Oh we had the greatest Big Mac EVER yesterday, and yes I am willing to make the call.. and I know, eating Maccas, but I f all victim to the promotion. I love it!

Anyway thats it for now. We are moving further out of the city in a few days, then pick up the car.

Massively looking forward to the th April which is set to be Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury Hill, then Opeth at Royal Albert Hall! MASSIVE!

Anyways, take care! love you all
xxx

London! Finally

Hey guys!

So... I didn't want to bring down the last blog with the story of what happened with our flights, but I may just explain it a little now to fill everyone in. Not to get sympathy or anything like that, but it may just benefit someone, someday, as no matter how prepared you are shit can go wrong!

The long story short is that our flight was cancelled/rescheduled and were not advised. The tough bit though, was that as we had a particular type of agency tickets that means only STA could reschedule us. And they were uncontactable/unhelpful etc. So we were stuck in the airport for 23hours in total I think, & ended up having to wait 2 more days anyway and purchasing new tickets ourselves. We are seeking compensation & all that jazz, but the moral of the story is to check what kind of ticket you have and that the airline can always help/reschedule, because it would have saved us a whole bunch of trouble, and really once you leave, you dont want to be relying on a company in another counrty/timezone etc.

But as you all know, we are now safe & happy in London!


So... we flew into Stansted which is the airport quite a while out from the city so decided we would stay in a little town close to instead of making the trek in late at night. The town was Bishop Stortford. It was so refreshing to be here, the bus driver of the bus we caught ( the bus really? a bus driver? who'd have thought?) Anyway this big jolly bloke was so friendly & helpful we just felt welcome.

The town was exactly what you expect of Britian & cuper cute, we stayed in a B&B where the host asked us what time we would like Breakfast & what we wanted. Was fantastically traditional & I wish we had more time there.

Anyway ,we are now in Kilburn for a week, just to the NW of the city & it has been heaps of fun. We are only a few minutes from everything & have a room with an oven and everything so are eating well again ( anythings better than airport food!) We went to Big Ben & checked out Westminster Abbey and so forth, we went to Lords Cricket Ground, and today we strolled through Portobello Markets. I tell you if I was rich I could have blown ALOT of money, and am still kicking myself for not getting this super cute dress...but anyway...


Yesterday we also went to Abbey Road Studio's. We walked across the crossing (yay!) but due to all the cars, couldnt get a pic of us doing so...so we shall return!


Loving the history & the stereotypical things to Love ( the cops hats, phone boxes, buses etc)Looking forward to continuing to explore everything! Oh & we got absolutely drenched both of the last 2 days because it seems to like to trick us with sun in the mornings, we will learn!




Tomorrow its Buckingham Palace for The Changing of the Guard, and then Leicester Sq, Picadilly Circus & the famous Apple Building where The Beatles did their rooftop concert.

Every day is full of wonder & fun. Very Happy & looking forward to the rest!

Much love
xxx

Las Fallas and the Epic week that was

Hey guys!

Shit! I actually am not sure how to start this. this week has been both the best & the hardest of my life I recon But screw the bad shit, lets talk about the good stuff!

Las Fallas was something so incredible & amazing that I want to start by saying no words, video's or images are going to show you how good it really was. The city had a heartbeat & it shot right through us, it was by far the highlight of the trip so far, and if anyone can go & experience it as a part of a trip.. Do it, you will never do anything like it!

So now that I have completely built you up, I will do my best to try and explain this to you. For starters its a city wide festival. We were staying a good 15 minute tram ride from the city ( yes they have trams too!) and we still had fallas around every corner. Fireworks outside our hostel & people drinking in the street.

The days are always full on. They start @ 8am by letting off fireworks outside...well shit everywhere they were outside out hostel! There are parades & music. in general people are just out & about. @ 2pm there is the Mascleta which is essentially an audio fireworks display. It is LOUD! if you actually get into the plaza, which we did on one of the days it goes through you...its one of those things that I cannot explain. Its just so loud you think your ears are going to burst & your heart jump out of your chest. And then the 60,000 people that are in the plaza with you all cheer. Its amazing!

During the last few days there is also the Flower offering, which involved alot selected locals from what we could figure getting dressed up in their traditional dress and each carrying flowers to a massive wooden standing Mary monument. Over 2 days this wooden outline is covered with these flowers & the end result is breathtaking

All day there are also paella contests happening in the streets & bullfighting happening at the bull ring.

The nights are topped off by another massive fireworks display each & every night of the festival and parties all over the streets. There are tents & within each community they have their own party tents set up & stages in some cases.

Of course the best part of this whole thing, is the Crema. When they light this shit on Fire!
The Fallas themselves are so beautiful & intricate, it's really emotional when they set them alight. Each one has a fireworks show beforehand & then the whole thing goes up. We even watched one fall on a row of light & bring it down & everyone was just cheering!

Some of the craziest stuff though isn't in any brochure you will read about fallas. The firecrackers that get let off all day everyday are done by kids. I'm seriously talking 5 year olds & up. They throw them on the streets, in the middle of people, avoiding getting blown up is half the fun! on one of the last days when we were out we got to witness a firework war. People had fireworks, ones that go off several times & whoosh in all different directions and were throwing them at people, and in the end into crowds of people! it was one of the most amazing things to watch. I was in a portaloo ( classy story this is going to be!) and i could hear one going off right above me, I'm like shit, what if it aims right at me..I was shitting myself ( at least I was in the right place *badoomtish*) but really. Funny/Scary!

The energy that everyone has is nuts & its so contagious that you just want to be as big a part of it as you can. We ate Paella, tapas, churros & drank a few cervezas. We cheered, sang & ran from fireworks. I loved it! We loved it!

In all honesty though, I've barely touched the surface of what we did and I know the meatpacking brit boys are dying to be mentioned! So as I don't think my literary skills are enough to express the passion we have towards this thing, we will be uploading an audio blog when we get a chance.

Then you guys can evaluate if we still have our accents down too!

For the record the meatpackers were an amazing addition to the festival, and it was really good to do it with a few others to really take it all in, have a laugh and meet fantastic new friends. As they are a bit quicker than us they already have photos up with us tagged on Facebook so check em out!

We shall add to this as soon as we can be assed! We'll upload a slideshow & all that biz too!


Edit: Keeping good on promises



Much Love!
xxx

Madrid

Ola!

So we have landed in Spain & life is absolutely fantastic!

Our sleep patterns have been highly disturbed Resulting in me right now, at 6:30 not having slept all night ... But we did partake in an afternoon nap.

Madrid is beautiful. We only had 2 days here and in a few hours will be on a bus to Valencia for Las Fallas, so we tried to soak up as much of the atmosphere as we could.


Day 1 we spent just strolling. We are staying in the heart of the City, just off Gran Via, so we were just walking, taking it all in. The architecture is stunning and has us so excited for all of Europe. We walked down to the Parque del Retiro and people watched. There were row-boats & performers & there is music everywhere.


Day 2 was our 2 year anniversary, we spent the morning walking around the grounds at the Palacio Real de Madrid, and the Plaza Mayor d, followed by Spanish sweet pastries & lunch at the park. We had a bit of a nap then headed out for Beer & Tapas at night. We went to a little tapas bar called El Tigre, and for every beer you buy you get a plate of tapas!
Was amazing.


Anyway we are now in Valencia for fallas, but ony have limited net access, so I'm keeping it short & sweet we have a lot to do!


Hope everyone is safe, and we have just signed up for
Skype so when we get to London we'll be able to have chats. So sign up
Much Love!

The Subtle (and not-so) differences between Australia & America

From a first time traveller...

So as we prepare to fly out to Spain, I figured I’d write this blog based on the things we have noticed that are different between the two countries. No bias opinions, no stereotyping (well limited) and no bullshit. Some that may help you on your travels, some that are well known already, and some that are purely for amusement. After all as it stands there are a lot of similarities. We are both lucky democratic countries, predominately English speaking, however extremely multicultural...and we are both fat.
So starting with the basics.
Taxes are not included in prices & vary from State to State. I.e. something worth 99c may cost you $1.08 in one state, and $1.12 in another. And this price isn’t written anywhere. It gets added at the register. So Beware purchasing down to your last penny.
Speaking of Pennies, obviously the money is different. Duh. But the thing that surprised me is it is not logical in size. Dimes are worth 10c yet are smaller than the nickel (5c value) and although I must say at first I thought it’d e annoying counting 1c coins, I found it refreshing to not just lose money for no real reason. Screw the roundup.
Driving - Now there are the obvious points. Other sides of the road, other side of the car, but other than this all the road rules are extremely similar. The lines are all the same, and the only thing that really confused me is that when you turn right at traffic light, you can turn on the red. Now this is the short corner, so think turning left at home, you just duck round the corner. Here you can do that even on the red provided it is safe. Legal, unless there is a sign saying that you cannot turn on the red. So if the red light isn’t enough there’s a sign telling you that red actually means stop here. Handy huh?
Tipping – This again is well known, but just in case. You must tip for all kinds of service. Cabs, Waitresses, porters, some tour guides, bartenders etc. fast food you’re good without but the average is 10-15%. If you do plan to sit down, this along with the taxes can quite easily turn your $10 bill to $15; keep it in mind is all.
TV. TV needs a category all of its own, or probably one specifically – Advertising
I’ll start with ads for law firms. Constant ads from law firms specializing in everything from getting the IRS off your back to Mesothelioma. And then there are ads for drugs. Prescription drugs that is. We have some at home & late at night I guess, but they just seem incredibly common here. I didn’t know I needed to know so much about so many different diseases & which drugs are available for them. As entertaining as that is are the disclaimers. No fine print here! For every add about a medicine, you have a 3 minute dialogue at the end of it telling you every reason possible that you should not by their product. May cause….heart disease, cancer, swollen legs, itchy eyes, don’t drink etc etc. All those things that are printed neatly on the back of all our prescription drugs are spoken about in every single add.
The other thing highly interesting is that companies will slug each other in their ads. There is an ongoing war between Verizon & AT&T over here, and its classic. They are two phone providers…and whilst at home they will claim to be the best or whatnot. They quite clearly are at each other. They pisstake each other’s products, customer service, quality, speed, and each add then has a rebuttal again.
Service Level
Generally fast food vendors do not give a shit that you are there. We had one guy in Maccas not even say hello or ask what we wanted. Just walked to the register & looked at us. It can be brutal… On the Other hand though, those working for tips will fall over backwards for you, even though you have to tip them anyway, they will always work that bit harder. We had a bartender in Memphis tell us he was working for $4 an hour!! And the rest is made from tips. It’s hardcore.
Food
Bread tasted like sugar. No joke it is really really sweet. We had kind of forgotten about this as it has been so long, but it shocked us at first. Now we have just kind of gotten used to it.
Bagels, Doughnuts, Muffins. All your standard Breakfast food…. Yum.
In their coffee. It’s not milk. They have powdered stuff called creamer which is used. Otherwise it’s a mix of half Half, which is cream and milk, again sweetens everything up But is soo good. We had it on coco puffs one night for a snack and it was like chocolate heaven.
Maccas. Now in all honesty we have eaten a bit of maccas but haven’t ventured from the Dollar Menu. Fast food competition is so fierce over here that they all have value menus. This is generally a host of items from $1-$2 and includes McChicken, Double cheeseburgers, Sundaes, at other places Taco’s, Drinks, Junior Whoppers etc. They are smaller versions I think that the norm, but still a cheap way to get by, so we have taken full advantage of that. Aside from that the drinks are larger. Our small is kid’s size, Medium the small etc, and of course the large is huge. In most maccas bar New York it is also free refills, so the soda is very cheap & free flowing over here. Cans of Coke are still only $1.
There are a whole heap of other foods that we either do not have at home, or we do not do nearly as well. Nacho Cheese Dip, Buffalo wings, Alligator Sausage Chili, BBQ Ribs. I have to say I love Texan BBQ food and they are incredibly good at cooking spicy food and keeping the flavor strong, especially wings. They do however try and do some things…not so well. Steak... not everywhere, but alot of places sell chopped steak. Its steak, but chopped up (oddly enough) til its kind of just a meat pattie. Strange…. Other than that coffee isn’t as good as it’s all dripolator coffee, and there seems to be lot of bad jam, well jelly. As they don’t have our beloved vegemite there are all kinds of assortments jelly’s and some as nasty.



The multiculturalism.
I think its fair to say at home that we have a wide variety of cultures from Europe & Asia. (loosely using these terms) Here it is fairly similar but it has White/Black/Mexican dominance, with a range of South Americans also. Miami had a massive Cuban influence, and everything in LA was in English & Spanish. Everywhere had a Chinatown, and we have also visited little Italy & little Korea here in New York too.
I’m sure there are a lot more differences to mention but these are the ones that come to mind today.. Some of the people we have met have been absolutely lovely, there are of course others though who almost think they need to live up to the arrogant American stereotype, but it has been an amazing journey and we have learnt a lot!
Looking forward to moving on, but America has definitely been an eye opening adventure. From the Beaches of Santa Monica & Miami to the desert we drove through in Arizona and New Mexico, to the snow in Nashville & NYC, and the swamps through Louisiana. Big City New York and the tiny trucker towns we stayed at one the way through. Its over. Its nuts!
Bring on Spain!
Love you all xxx

New York City Pt2

Hi again
Once again I write to you from our apartment *cough “shoebox” cough* above 14th Avenue. It has again been a crazy few days. Since the last update we haven’t left New York, still just taking it all in, and we only have 2 days left to do so before we are off to Spain.
We have probably not covered that much more ground. The areas we are right near are amazing. We are right around the corner from Greenwich Village so have walked a lot around this area. The other night we went out – not to do much really, we had to find somewhere with free entry, but we just chilled in a dingy bar for a while listening to a couple of bands, drinking our coke. We did go down to Café Wha? But couldn’t afford to pay to be seated, they let us look in though.
We have been up the Empire State Building and overlooked New York. It was really interesting actually, Manhattan is huge, that’s no surprise, but because we could see the ends in all directions it was a fascinating way to take it in.

We have also taken the Ferry to Staten Island. We were going to do the traditional Ellis/Liberty island but as we didn’t want to spend all our money on the generic tourist attractions, we looked around for other ideas. The Staten Island ferry is Free and takes you right past it, so we were close enough and it was a nice trip across the water.
We have had a few hiccups in the road since we have been here. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame @ Annex had closed and we didn’t know, so we were all excited to go down there. The posters for the Lennon Exhibit are still up and everything, but it has been closed for a few months. So that sucked. Was disappointing, but not much we could do!

We also noticed while checking our flight details that the car hire in the UK was booked for the wrong day, well month. So we had to email the Travel Agent who took care of that. We also had a mini heart attack when we looked up online what to do if we lost out 1-94W form. I can’t remember if we explained this earlier but we had issues on the Bahamas cruise, and customs told us that we had to have one, and wouldn’t have gotten into the country otherwise. Originally both me & Benny couldn’t remember having one at all but after 2 officials telling us the same thing, I guess we were talked into thinking we had lost it, so while Benny searched, I looked up what to do. It was going to cost over $300 to file for a new one, and we would be able to leave, but it would affect us returning to the states as until the form was returned they would see it as an overstay on our “visa”. We were freaking. Luckily Benny found his white slip explaining that as we had filled out our online forms & had the chip in our passports that we were part of a new trial on paperless 1-94W submissions. Phewf!
Its interesting how no matter how hard you try and be organized, things always go wrong. Luckily this all panned out but there were a few stressful moments.
Aside from all of this I should get back to talking about New York. We have also visited Wall Street & Battery Park, both iconic. And yesterday we went to the Rockefeller Centre/Plaza & Grad Central Terminal. It was huuuge.
Today we plan to revisit Central park as we have had some decent weather & hope that it is green, and also plan to finally get a slice of ‘New York Style” pizza. They are also ridiculously big, hopefully as tasty as well.
I have been trying, very hard to learn bits & pieces of Spanish & bought a phrasebook the other day to help us while we are there. We are looking forward to getting a new stamp on the passport & moving on, Though it is a little sad. We’ve been in the states for nearly 3 months now, so it has got a comfortable feel, especially in New York. We know we will have new challenges ahead with the language barrier & not understanding everything, so we are excitet, yet feel completely under prepared.
Well that’s it for now, hope everyone at home is well & happy.
Blog Soon
xxx


Once again - we will upload Pics. We may wait til Spain though where we ave internet in the room, its too frustrating this way!

New York City

Hello again,
So we have a fair bit to catch up on. It’s been a very very busy week. We have moved from DC to New York in Harlem, and then went to Philly for Muse, staying in New Jersey, and then moved back to New York, and we are now staying on the edge of Chelsea & the Meatpacking District. So we have moved over 4 states.
Arriving in New York the first time, we were dropped right near Penn Station in the middle of it all, right near Madison Square Garden in a bustling part of the city. It was a little overwhelming to say the least. I think New York’s one of those places that just has a feel...it’s really hard to explain, but I felt a part of something big the second we got here.
For the first 3 nights we stayed in a dingy hostel in Harlem. It was highly amusing up there and the characters we came across were priceless. A few were students studying & staying in the hostel as it was all they could afford, others were just New Yorkers that hit a hard patch, and then there were of course a few internationals as well. I was very glad we were there as it was an experience I am glad we had, but it was on the end stretch of a lot of Dorm Beds, so I have to say it is nice to be back in a private room.
Harlem was really interesting, we got to go visit the Apollo Theater, The Seinfeld Restaurant (Tom’s) and we just spent a bit of time walking around.
We walked down to Times Square both days walking on each side of New York. The first day we went down the Westside. We spent time strolling through Central Park, watching the kids sledding on their snow day, building snowmen & having snowball fights. It was awesome, I love the snow. If I could be somewhere that was only summer & then snow, and skip the whole messy rain bit I would love it. Snowball fights are soo much fun.
We visited Strawberry Fields & the Dakota building which was absolutely overwhelming. I may leave this incase Benny wants to elaborate, but to be where John Lennon died was really bizarre and kind of surreal.
When we went down the Upper Eastside it was definitely not what I expected. I guess it has all been highly glamorized and the names of Park Ave, Madison & 5th strike certain images in your head. The designer stores were all still there, and I could imagine it at its finest, but in the winter with all the trees leafless and snow being piled up on all the pavements & melting, it certainly wasn’t the high end images I had envisioned thanks to SATC & Gossip Girl. Still I was so happy to be there.
Times Square is everything it has been hyped up to be. It takes a few minutes to look around & take it all in. It’s bizarre actually the billboards are just everywhere. We noticed some that just seemed ridiculously placed. On the top of buildings miles away, just because they are viewable from Times Square. That said I guess we saw it, so maybe not so silly after all.

Times Square has a few specialty stored that we also saw fit to visit. The M&M store was somewhere I could have easily, and quite unreasonably spent a lot of money. You can make your own M&M mix. With colours that do not exist anywhere else. Being budget conscious we made a tiny mix of green and gold M&M’s to snack on. Go Aussie! There is also the Massive Toys R Us store that has its own Ferris wheel, and leggo replicas of the Empire State Building & the Chrysler building.
We have also visited Broadway, as it’s in the same place of course. And I would absolutely LOVE to go to a show, but it doesn’t seem like even with the half price tickets that they offer that it is within our reach. One day though. I shall return with moneybags!
Yesterday we spent the day on our feet. We strolled through Chelsea, Soho, Little Italy (although couldn’t find much that screamed Italy) Chinatown (which is huge) and ended up crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s massive & from there was good to look back into Manhattan & take in its size. It really is incredible. We also took notice of where the twin towers would have stood. From there we also got a nice view of the Statue of Liberty from a distance.

Once we realized how close we were to the World Trade centre site, we decided to fit it in to the day’s events, so we continued walking. It was full on. They are only now just starting to build on it again, so it is still just a massive gaping hole, 8 and a half years on it was not something I expected. I know that they hadn’t built much yet, but as it is in the opening stages of construction it resembles a wrecking yard. Was definitely a time for reflection.
Aside from these sights we have also visited Trump Tower and Trump International Hotel, we had a look around Madison Square Garden, but didn’t get into the arena, and we went to Radio City Music Hall.
New York is amazing. There is still so much to do and it has this magical way of making me want to spend, to eat out to see shows, to do so much more than we can. At the same time I’m kind of enjoying how we are living we have moved into a hotel on 14th Street as I said earlier in Chelsea, it’s on the fourth floor so we have to climb these killer stairs to get up here. It’s cramped, with only a microwave & a fridge to eat from and we overlook 14th street. It’s never quiet. There are always sirens, and right now I’m sitting up here typing on the laptop, telling my story. I feel like a New Yorker. O doubt I’ll have a lot more to say, but this is a novel in itself, so time to say goodbye.
We have a shitty cold, but are very happy & loving NYC.
Peace
xxx

Once again I dont have the patience for the pics to upload so sorry, it's just the novel for now xxx