Our other site has had some technical difficulties so we've closed it down and this is our new one!!!!
We're here - what a full-on first couple of weeks it has been - we've met some wonderful people, been in some great situations, and also been through some tough ones too - they do say that it's a bit up and down over here, and they weren't wrong!
After Nikki crying for the first 7 hrs of our flight all the way to Singapore (and Damo sleeping most of the way....) we caught our flight to Heathrow - and once again Damo slept a lot of the time. The flight was otherwise ok, though the Qantas food is terrible, and the service from the flighty's pretty bad too.
Got off at Heathrow and it was absolutely hilarious when we picked up all of our luggage - we couldn't work out how we were going to carry it all..... It was hilarious, and unfortunately we didn't get a photo of us with backpack's on, but here's one with all of our stuff next to us!!!! (which didn't really do it justice....)
Here we are at Hatton Cross Underground station - the only problem was that we came into Heathrow Terminal 4, and the person that was meeting us was meeting us at the Heathrow underground station - little did we realise that there was more than one underground station for Heathrow, and the time to meet our new friend (Tory) came and went with no sign of her - about 20 mins after the time, Damo looked at the tube map and realised that we were probably at the wrong place and we caught the tube to the real Heathrow Station, but she was no where to be found and we had no contact details for her - after some hectic SMS's to Anthony and Claudia (THANKS SO MUCH GUYS!!!!!!!!) we were advised that she would be back to us in 15 mins - absolutely stoked!!!!
So our arrival wasn't without drama, but all things considered it was good - We went the wrong way on one of our tube connections also, but all things considered it wasn't too bad (though that did suck because of how much stuff we were carrying).
Our accommodation was located in London Bridge (a suburb in SE1 - very close to the city and fairly central) and it was bloody great. We ended up dossing with 2 or 3 Virgin Atlantic Flight Attendants, and it worked out great because for about 5 nights we ended up having an entire room and the entire house to ourselves - it was sensational. Tory and Claudine and Anna were so welcoming that it was quite overwhelming really - they really made us feel at home (well as much as they could anyway), and we ended up staying with them for 2 weeks.
We've now found our own place (we're sharing with an aussie at a place called Earl's Court) and the apartment is absolutely stunning and it is only about a 2 min walk to the Earl's Court tube station and about a 5 min walk to the biggest grocery store we've ever seen (Tesco's 24 hrs!!!!!). Our flat mate seems quite quiet which is probably a good thing while we're trying to get sorted out with jobs.
Nikki has had a couple of interviews, but the jobs weren't really much chop at all, and Damo only just today found out that he's got his first interview next week. Unfortunately it's a permanent role, but it's with a company called T-Mobile (any tour de france watchers out there will have heard of them), and it's a position for a SAP Senior Test Analyst, which is the exact role Damo would like to get if he can. It'll be good just to get some £'s coming in even though it's a permy role - which we really, really need at this point in time.
Or a castle/prison/barracks as cool as this:
The best part about this is that from our room in the house, you could actually see one side of the Tower Bridge and also the Tower of London - it was about a block away and the location of the place was amazing. Conversely, the London Bridge may quite conceivably be one of the most boring bridges I have ever seen:
London Eye is cool - we haven't been on it yet, but here are some piccies of it:
(Damo speaking)
Apart from that, all was as expected - Big Ben was not quite as big as I expected, but it was quite impressive nevertheless.
The weather here has generally been amazing. We were here for the hottest day ever (literally)- I can tell you that it has been a lot of fun catching the un-airconditioned tube in weather like this.... not!!!
Actually, now that I'm typing this, the touristy stuff was quite cool..... I haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, do I.....?
(/end Damo speaking)
Sorry we've been a bit slack keeping in touch with everyone but it has been ridiculously hectic, and we've only now really got settled in to be able to start being a bit more feasible - it'll be heaps better when we both have jobs too - our job hunting is keeping us hella busy.
Oh - we forgot to mention our trip to Brighton on the first weekend that we were here - we caught the train down with Tory, her man at the time, Steve (another Aussie), and met up with another fella on the way down, a Pom called Mike.
It was a great day, and we're enjoying the late nights here (sun sets at 10pm) so we went down to Brighton at about midday and were sitting on the beach (the rocks or pebbles - it is absolutely bizzare) drinking Pimms and Lemonade and generally just lolling about in the sun. We went out for dinner etc - it was pretty good all round really - had a great day.
Anyway, gotta go and have dinner, so we'll be posting on here a lot more regularly now, so keep an eye out for it - sorry about the long-winded first post, but had a lot to catch up on......
We miss you all heaps already!!!!!!! Keep Smiling!
