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Summer sojourn

The trip we had been waiting for throughout the whole of a miserable January was finally here. We boarded our plane to our first in stop in Dubai, very excited to be getting out of the cold and wet European winter. 

Our luxury flight

Emirates was a pleasant change to our last long haul flight with China Eastern Airways, for one there was a wealth of movies and the food was actually pretty good. Thanks to some sleeping pills, Louise got a serious amount of sleep and before we knew it we were in Dubai. We also caught up with Anna who was also heading home and then got back on the bird to final destination of Auckland.

First impressions were that nothing had changed, and also it was very bright. Our poor eyes had been living in darkness for months so we were squinting away. Awesome to see the Mum and Dad Weller, and I think they were a little excited to see us!
Had an awesome summer BBQ at mum and dads with freshly picked corn. Delicious.

Jet lag hit at about 3am the next morning but Hamish had to get up to get on his flight to Nelson so that was ok. He had a great couple of days with Dave and Donna doing all the things that the boys do when they are together, hunting, swimming and drinking.
Louise spent her time in Auckland hanging out with the family and catching up with some friends.

What a man

Kaiteriteri

Me and mum in Napier

We headed down to Hawkes Bay on the Thursday. We spent the next couple of days catching up with friends and family that we hadn't seen for ages and running round doing wedding stuff. Luckily NZ turned on the weather. We had forgotten what heat was like!

Amazing room at Ormly Lodge

Family shot

James could of smiled but was too worried about the dance....

The wedding was great, awesome weather, yum food and some good tunes. Special recognition goes to James for his first dance - ole twinkle toes, Nan would have been proud :)

Hottest people out

First Dance

Hamish's job for the day

Hamish conquered...

We headed back to AKL on Valentines Day, how romantic - in a car with mum and dad for 6 hours....

We hopped on another plane to Melbourne on the Tuesday, so nice having short flights! Very nice to see Tracy and Bennie, especially with the stocked fridge that I am sure we didn't even dent. True to her word, the Christmas decorations were still up and we had a very delayed Xmas dinner and present opening which was great! Summer Christmases are so dam good. We also celebrated Tracy's birthday a few days early and gave her some amazing presents. In particular an enlarged photo from Hamish's photo shoot.

Xmas at the Bennie's

Sunny day at Geelong

Rain at our picnic at the billabong:(

Spent our time in Melbourne eating, shopping and hanging out, So nice to relax after a relatively stressful time in NZ!

Before we knew it, it was time to get back to the Northern Hemisphere. This time to Dubai. We landed bright and early and got a cab to our hotel at Dubai Marina. The city is incredible, its a big chunk of sand with a hell of a lot of unfinished sky scrapers. It seems like every architect was having a competition with the others to build the weirdest shaped buildings. We managed to check in early and score ourselves an upgrade to a poolside villa. We dumped our bags and headed to the beach. The hotels along the Marina were awesome and the sea was such a gorgeous blue. If only it was a bit warmer!! (it was their winter though). 

At the Marina

After a buffet breakfast we got a cab to Dubai Mall. The Dubai Mall is the largest in the world based on total area and and it was pretty incredible, they manage to make the Mall an experience rather than just a group of shops. It was also situated right next to the tallest building in the world - the Burj Khalifa. We didn't think it would look that impressive but we were wrong, it was soooo high - 828m to be exact.

My ride...

Crazy high

Also in the Mall was an aquarium that we went into which again was pretty amazing. Took way too many photos of fish.

Feeding time for the python, eating a chicken!

After trying Taco Bell for the first and probably last time at the Mall we went back to our villa to get into some togs for the beach. Like I said it wasn't that warm, but it seemed all the other expats were taking advantage of the cooler temps to be at the beach as well. We stayed there for a few hours before cruising out for some nice Japanese for dinner. 

We were pretty knackered by this stage so we hit the hay knowing we would have to get up early for our final leg of the trip home.

The flight home was uneventful and we landed to a misty cold day in London. We hoped we would be able to get home in reasonable time but these hopes were squashed when we saw the tube from the airport was closed and there were replacement buses. Welcome back to London public transport.

Highlight: Seeing all friends and family, the wedding, the weather, the food, the break from work!
Lowlight: Prices in NZ & Aus, and not having enough time back home.
Interesting fact #1: The tallest building in the world is 828metres high
Interesting fact #2: The Dubai Mall houses the Largest Acrylic Panel (the aquarium) (32.88 m wide × 8.3 m high × 750 mm thick and weighing 245,614 kg).
Interesting fact #3: There's no place like home...

London January

We welcomed in the New Year with the best fireworks we had ever seen in front of Big Ben. We were so impressed with them, as well as the feeling of the crowd and how surprisingly uncrowded it was. After a great start to the year, many people had warned us that January was the dullest, most miserable month of the year in London. They were not wrong.

Although the snow stayed away, the weather was cold and gray with only 2 days of sunshine in the whole month. After indulging during the festive season, now was the time for being sensible and alcohol free (in preparation for the NZ summer that we were going to hit), which didn't help the mood of misery.

Nonetheless, the Bandits refused to let London win. Hamish got out and about with a new rugby team; Louise focused on her new job and got stuck into some healthy recipes and into the gym.

We also ventured out every now and then. First up we visited the Churchill War Rooms, which are situated in the bunker where Churchill directed British troops in World War 2. The rooms were kept in really good condition, and they had done a great job at putting together an exhibition on Churchill’s life. You could really see why and how he won the support of so many Britons during the war. We leaned some amazing facts, like he was 65 when he was made Prime Minister during the war, and although he lost the election immediately following the war, he was re elected back into Prime Minister when he was 75. I find this amazing; I am already finding that I am loosing the plot a little at 26! (And Hamish definitely is).

This solider didn't move one bit....

Not too happy about this one

Recreation of what it was like 60 years ago

Outside 10 Downing St (the fake one)

We also had a nice afternoon of scones and jam in one of the bunker rooms, which was cool.
Another excursion we had was to Covent Garden Markets. To be honest we weren't that impressed, there were a load of overpriced stalls and very expensive shops with thousands of tourists running around. And we got really sick of the buskers, get a new trick will ya?

The highlight of January (for me anyway) was the long awaited High Tea at the 5 star Claridge's hotel. I booked this in October, which shows how full it gets. We booked the 5pm sitting, which meant we were quite hungry when we turned up (done on purpose).

It looks like Hamish is taking a photo of me, but its actually the car behind me

We got dressed up to the nines, and Hamish didn’t even complain too much about wearing a suit on the weekend. The hotel itself is amazing, the chandeliers and the paintings were incredible and they had open fires and huge vases of flowers everywhere. It was so so classy.

We had a lovely spot in the corner so we could people watch without looking too obvious. We each had to choose the flavour of tea we wanted, Hamish went for traditional Earl Grey and I went for French Vanilla. It actually tasted like melted French Vanilla ice cream, amazing. 

Next came the sandwich course, all on different breads with their crusts cut off, there were salmon, chicken, ham, and cucumber. All YUM. We polished off those pretty quickly, and then the waiter came round and asked if we wanted another plate.  

We said yes.
Next was the scone course, there were raisin scones and apple scones with tea infused jam and clotted cream. My favourite course for sure. Clotted cream needs to make an appearance in Australasia.

Then was the desert course, this was incredible. The attention to detail was out of this world; there was lemon and lavender cake, this weird banana chocolate raspberry tart, this strawberry jelly custard thing and this chocolate brownie. And then the waiter came round and asked if we wanted another plate.

We said yes.

After the second helping of all three courses (and 2 and a half hours later), we felt that we had got our moneys worth. We got a nice gift of Claridge's blend of English Breakfast Tea to take home.  

So, we spent $150 on a cup of tea, but we felt it was well worth it.

It is also worth noting that Louise felt sick with the amount of food we had, but Hamish still felt like dinner when we got home 40 mins later…

HIghlight: Claridge's was high point of January, mainly as it as warm and yummy.

Lowlight: Two days of sunshine in about 40.

Interesting fact #1: You can pay extra at Claridge's for this tea that is hand picked at dawn in some random country. Bet that tastes good.

Interesting fact #2: When you drink about 8 cups of tea at night, you can't sleep that night. At all.

Brussels

To fully take advantage of the Northern hemisphere winter, we decided to take a trip to Belgium - home of some of the best Christmas markets in Europe.

We hopped on the early morning Eurostar on the Saturday morning, Hamish feeling a little worse for wear after going to his work Christmas party the night before and Lou not feeling much better after waking up with a migraine. We got to Kings Cross early in hope of a decent breakfast and strong coffee, and were disappointed – note to self, do not eat in the French café in the station again.

We were slightly delayed in boarding the train due to the late arrival of the train the night before, we didn’t think anything of, and little did we know that this would happen again very soon. 

When the train came out of the tunnel in France, we immediately saw the abundance of snow they had got. It was beautiful countryside with little farmhouses; white trees and frozen ponds everywhere.

We arrived at Brussels Midi station about an hour late; we attempted to navigate our way to the Crowne Plaza where we were staying. It turns out that in Brussels it is perfectly acceptable to have two Crowne Plaza’s in the same city. Our luck being like it was meant that we went to the wrong one. Our luck being like it was that the one we were actually staying in was the poorer quality one.

Brussels has grown from a 10th-century fortress town founded by a descendant of Charlemagne into a metropolis of more than one million inhabitants. Since the end of the Second World War, Brussels has been a main centre for international politics. Although historically Dutch-speaking, Brussels became increasingly French-speaking over the 19th and 20th centuries. Today a majority of inhabitants are native French-speakers, and both languages have official status.

Once we had checked in, we added a few more layers of clothes and headed out to explore this cute little city. The main focus of the city was the Grand Place square, it is a reasonably sized cobbled stoned square surrounded by the guildhalls, the city's Town Hall, and the Breadhouse. The Town Hall has a statue of St. Michael slaying a demon. As it was Christmas, there was the quintessential nativity scene, complete with real sheep and a massive Christmas tree. A nice touch was also the Christmas carols being pumped through hidden speakers.

We wandered on to the Christmas markets themselves, passing heaps of chocolate and antique lace shops. The markets sold everything from waffles and “vin chaud” (mulled wine), to sweets of all varieties, Christmas decorations and gifts. We also saw a reindeer hunting gear and reindeer skins, which was quite un-festive really. There was an ice skating rink and Ferris wheel set up for the kiddies too. 

One observation we did make was that every second stall was one selling a variety of alcohol, from shots of jager to ‘hot mojitios’, people here seemed to come out of their homes just to have a drink.

Moving on, we found one of Brussels’ most iconic statues the Mannekan Pis. This little statue is famous as the legend goes because of Duke Godfrey III of Leuven. In 1142, the troops of this two-year-old lord were battling against the troops of the Berthouts, the lords of Grimbergen, in Ransbeke .The troops put the infant lord in a basket and hung the basket in a tree to encourage them. From there, the boy urinated on the troops of the Berthouts, who eventually lost the battle. 

Well in the true tourist fashion we found that this little statue replicated in so many different ways, key rings, chocolate, cork screws, magnets etc. Great.

Driven inside by the plummeting temperatures, we found a nice little café where we tucked into Hoegaarden and olives and cheese. 

We headed back to the market and sampled Belgian scampi and sausages. YUM. We also bought one of the unrecognizable chocolates to have taste. 

The markets really came into their own at nighttime, the lights were amazing and it had such a nice festive spirit.

The cold is hard to describe, the wind chill makes your face numb and the snow makes walking hard and you just want to drink hot drinks continuously. We got back to the hotel and realized it was only 7.30pm, but a hot bath was so very welcome.

 

Highlight: Christmas markets – you can’t not be in the festive spirit after seeing these.
Lowlight: The cold. And the amount of clothes you have to wear just to walk around.
Interesting fact #1: You can make anything out of chocolate, literally anything.
Interesting fact #2: Hamish was the only person walking around with no hat or scarf