We have found a place!

After nearly two weeks of flat hunting - and we were getting desperate by this stage as Rob was coming back soon, we finally found a place.

But it has not all been without pain, and we have come to realise that rental agents are useless and hopeless as well as bastards who want to get as much money out of you as possible.

Anyhow onto the good news, we have found a nice two bedroom maisonette near Clapham Junction station (Britain's busiest train station). This is handy for both of us as Andrew can hop on a train out to Redhill while I catch a train into Waterloo, and take the Waterloo & City line tube from there to Bank.
But as with all good news there is also bad news, while we initially thought that we could move in a week+ time, we have been told that we can't move in till the 21st of Oct. While we had the option of letting this place go and finding another one, we liked it a lot so we have decided to take it. This does mean though that we would have to find alternative accommodation for two weeks as Rob gets back on the 8th.

Grace goes to Coventry for work

Just a short note to say that I have had my first out of London work experience. I went out to a plant in Kennilworth (near Coventry) today to do an inspection of some mechanical plant for a landfill site in New Zealand. This is for a project being done by our office in Christchurch.

It was fun - I learnt a bit about processing of methane gas today.

A week in London

We have now been in London for just over a week. Thanks to Rob for letting us stay in his room while he's away in sunny Greece.

The first few days were spent catching up on sleep and clearing the backlog of laundry - thank goodness for washing machines.

We caught up with a friend who was over visiting from NZ, and we happened to bump into a couple of people from the tour at Earl's Court tube station! We also caught up with a friend who has just moved from NZ.

Grace started work with Beca a couple of days ago, the same company that we both worked for in NZ. Andrew has accepted a job with Black & Veatch (a large American engineering consultancy) and is due to start in early Oct. So he has been landed with the wonderful task of finding us a flat and cooking dinner!

The flat hunting is pretty depressing as there are some rather horrible places out there at some not so nice prices.

Brugge to Paris to London :-(

Today was our last day on tour :-( We had a group photo before leaving Brugge, and then drove to Paris. We said goodbye to a large group of people at Gare du Nord station where we were catching our train back to London. Some were continuing onto Spain, others were staying in Paris. And some were going to London with us!




We chilled out in the lounge at the station before getting our train.

We managed to pass the 2.5 hours on the train pretty quickly by playing the name game, which kept us all rather amused.



We had more goodbyes to say when we arrived in London, but it has been a fantastic tour and we have really enjoyed it.

Amsterdam to Brugge

On our way out of Amsterdam we stopped at a windmill, and more importantly a cheese and clogs factory. Outside was this weird basket. We think it's for throwing rubbish into without having to stop.
















First we saw cheese...








... then we made clogs









We got to taste some cheese, wine and a few other local goodies too.

Brugge:








We tried some Belgian waffles with chocolate and caramel sauce - recommended by Eleni, which were delicious!
We had to get some Belgian chocolate whilst here. Dumon was a nice little shop with friendly staff (and free samples :-) unlike another shop which has a strict "no browsing" policy (go in, buy it, get out - no mucking around or you get kicked out)

Amsterdam

This morning we caught a tram into the city with some others in the group. First we visited Anne Frank's House Museum. It was really fascinating looking through the house and reading all the snippets of information from her diary and accounts of friends of the family. We thought it was a good museum as it had enough information but not too much information as one often finds in museums.



A statue of Anne Frank outside the museum.


From there, we ran a couple of errands - posted some postcards and exchanged some money before heading to the centraal station - a sister station to Liverpool St station in London.

We then headed down the main shopping drag - Nieuwendijk and Kalverstraat, where we found this amazing food "market" which sold all sorts of freshly prepared food for lunch from panini's, baguettes, to hot cooked food like soup, stirfrys and the list goes on. The food was delicious!

Just a nice picture of one of the many canals in the city.

After lunch we decided to check out the flower markets which we were told to be something worth seeing. However we were pretty disappointed as we discovered stalls which while still sold flowers were selling a lot more bulbs and cacti - and wasn't quite what we were expecting which was a large display of flowers of varying colours.



Amsterdam is also famous for its bicycles - check out the left hand photo for a multi-level parking for bikes alone!





We made a quick stop at the library for some free internet and then made our way to the Heineken Experience. It was really good including some history, motion simulator through the bottling process and one on a horse & cart through Amsterdam city, and other interactive activities such as DJ'ing and karaoke. The tour also included free beers along the way!







After that, while passing some time before dinner, we tried some Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Very yummy but very expensive!

Dinner was a Chinese buffet. Following which we had our last party night on a boat cruising down the canals in Amsterdam.

Berlin to Amsterdam

There are a lot of wind farms in Europe, especially noticable in Germany. On our way to Amsterdam at one of our rest stops, we saw a wind turbine being transported. These things are huge when you see them close-up. Just one blade takes a whole truck (quite a long one at that).





We had a brief walking tour of Amsterdam before the group split and got dinner while some others went off to a show (an X rated show as you would expect in Amsterdam).










Following that Eleni took us for a walk around the red-light district. A very interesting experience!

Berlin

First thing today was a group coach tour with our local guide Wilfred. He was a great guide and we drove around lots of different parts of the city, from residental to central city and showed us both East and West and the differences between the two. We stopped at the East Side Gallery, a long strip of the wall that remains and had been painted/graffitied and looks very cool. Across the road was the Grand Chapiteau of Cirque du Soleil.










Next stop was the Brandenburg Gate. Nearby we saw a memorial with lots of rectangular blocks commemorating the people who died in the Holocaust.




We were hoping to stop at the flash new Hauptbahnhof (central train station) but there were so many people outside that we would certainly have lost someone. Further along we could see the Reichstag, Siegessäule Monument, Potzdamer Platz and one of the Zoo's fancy gates to name a few. We finished at Checkpoint Charlie where some of the group went through the museum. Grace pretended to be our tour leader and organised tickets at group rates so we could come back later.

Some others got back on the coach and went to the Zoo. They weather was amazing so a day at the Zoo seemed like a great idea. Having been to the Singapore zoo not that long ago, this wasn't that amazing, but it was good to see the Bears, several Polar Bears, 2 Panda Bears, White Wolves and lots of big cats.



















































Near the Zoo is the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-kirche which has become an icon of Berlin. It was damaged by the war and is a fascinating building.










We then headed off to AlexanderPlatz to go up the TV tower. It was a shame that on such a beautiful clear day our view was ruined by filthy windows. It was a good view though, and in particular we noticed that when you looked up and down the old border between east and west you could see a distinct change.

















We caught the U-Bahn back to Checkpoint Charlie and went through the museum. It was very interesting, describing the wall and showing how people tried to escape to their family on the other side. Some would hide in cars or furniture. There was even a human catapult attempt to get over the wall! We were planning on going up the spiral ramp to the top of the dome of the Reichstag but were too tired so headed home.