Warm Beer Anyone?

Actually the beer isn't warm here. It certainly is expensive though! Instead of getting change from NZ$10 for a big night out, like in China, you're lucky to get change from that for one beer at a pub! Probably a good thing for our livers though. And having said that, we still managed to have a few good nights out without completely blowing the budget, the biggest of which started at a cheap byo curry place.



It's been a while since I've been to the land of pubs, punks and Poms. Quite nice to be back though I must say. Although, thanks to the state of the world nowadays, it was a solid four hours between touching down and actually passing through customs. On this particular day it was a bomb threat causing one of the terminals to be shut down. Unfortunately, this is by no means rare either. All around the UK, and London in particular, terrorist scares cause constant disruption to daily life. Bit of a shame really but everybody just gets on with it.



The rolling, green countryside was a welcome sight after the lack of just that in Asia. And how strange to hear everyone speaking English! At first, I kept expecting every readable sign to not make any sense at all. It does make ordering off a menu a tad boring too, since you know exactly what you're getting!



This was probably the quickest ten days of the whole trip. As well as having all the London sights to see, there was also half of Christchurch to catch up with over here! It was great seeing so many people that we haven't seen since leaving home and several that we hadn't seen in years. Several of the lads managed to get their trips to coincide with ours too so we were able to spend a bit of quality time together, which was great. Expecting the same from the rest of you boys while we're away of course! Managed to see a lot of London with Saunders and Willsy in particular and still find plenty of time to get on the booze. We even bought walkie talkies, purely for practical reasons of course. Awesome. Thanks to the the UK Clifford contingent (Ballantines, Hays and Cowans) for putting us up too. Pretty happy that we didn't have to hand over any of those bloody expensive pounds for accommodation!


Being England we weren't expecting much weather-wise. However, the first few days were stunners, bright blue skies and decent temperatures. It went a little bit downhill after that, just to remind us where we were but, still, it's better than the weather in NZ at the mo!

Cheers Mum!

Yep got to see Mum again, maybe the first and last time for a while! Big ups to you and David for spending the last day of your holiday waiting for us in an airport and hooking us up somewhere to stay for the first night, it was awesome to see you again!

St Paul's Cathedral

Whether you believe in Jebus or not this place is mighty impressive! From the outside it's by no means a small building yet nothing overly impressive. Yet inside the main chamber (after a cheeky 9.50 pound fee) it's just amazing! I'm going to put it out there and say it was more impressive than most of the temples we saw in Asia. The artwork and detail on the walls and ceilings is extremely detailed and ornate, all the big names from the bible are there. You can go up some stairs (433 of them!) to a gallery overlooking the main chamber. It's called the whispering gallery, because you can whisper into the wall at one point and if someone is listening further along the room they can here you. Not quite so effective when the place is packed with other tourists though! From here you can climb even further and get out onto the roof where you can see pretty much all of London. After that we went down to the crypt where there were some pretty famous people such as Lord Nelson are buried.

The London Eye

Even though it's a hell of a rip off it's one of those things you have to do while in London. There's not a lot to tell really, it was pretty much what you'd expect. Queue, get on, go round, make faces and ruin the souvenir photo for everyone else in your capsule, get off. The views were good though and we managed to get up there on a corker of a day.

Le Tour de France

Among the myriad of things happening in London the weekend we were there was the Prologue of Le Tour de France (the time trial stage to determine starting order of the race). The course was in a great place, running through Hyde Park past Buckingham Palace and other relevant landmarks. We got down there early with the promise of free biking gear, but ended up being showered with crappy hats and lollies from various French sponsoring companies. We managed to stake out some good vantage points though and watched each cyclist thundering past (average speed of the winner was 54kph over 9km!). It was a stunner of a day in the sun and it was cool to be at the start of such a world renowned event. Finished off the day with a beer in Covent Gardens watching the buskers. Nice.

Other London Stuff

We made a few visits to Hyde Park, this was nice. There's a cool wee memorial to Anzac soldiers with a bit of goss on NZ, apparently rugby was first introduced to New Zealand in Nelson! Buckingham Palace, probably not as pretty as you would expect I think Kensington Palace is the show pony, but cool all the same and the surrounds are nice. Didn't see the Queen though, she must have been busy. Harrods, probably the ritziest supermarket I've ever seen, as well as every designer clothing label, rinding boot and polo stick brand you can think of. Half the fun is looking at the ridiculously expensive and luxurious cars parked out the front! We brought some pies there. Big Ben, or Medium Ben is probably more accurate. It's an impressive looking structure, just not as tall as I imagined, maybe the same as a 7-8 story building.

Well that was London at first take, we'll be back!