Nikki sees some snow!!!!

We finally got snow!

We woke up last Wednesday morning and it was like there was a white blanket over the city. London had an inch of snow overnight, and everything was covered, and the trees were all white. It looked stunning. Damo has seen snow plenty of times before, but never seen it in a city - he thought it was very cool.

Nikki on the other hand had never seen snow, and it was an awesome experience for her.

On her way to work she made snowballs and saw kids having a snowball fight and sliding in it, and she wanted to join in.... :-)

*Nikki speaking* Along my walk this morning from our flat to the station, I grabbed handfuls of snow and just played with it. I never thought it would feel like powder and be so soft.. I found myself wanting to start playing in it and joining in the snow fights with the kids but I was running late for work and had to remain in control and like I was cool and had seen snow before... 'no big deal'. Deep down though..it brought a smile on my face. (if it snows again, the gloves are off and snowball fights are on with the neighbourhood kids!) *end Nikki speaking*

Damo woke up with a bout of food poisoning, so couldn't go to work that day. It was bizarre - we had one night with an inch of snow, and it had melted by lunchtime, but we haven't had any since.

We keep waking up hoping for it, but there hasn't been any more since.



The view out of our dining room window


The tree out the front of our house

Our street....

Sam and Adam come to visit

Last week some friends of ours from Brisbane came to visit London and we caught up with them over a couple of nights (and Nikki with a small shopping trip to Harrods).

Our first night catching up with them we went to dinner at a small pub on Tooley St (where we first lived when we came over here) . Can't remember what it's called NOW, but it used to be called 'The Elusive Camel' when we were living near it. The food was great, and it was sensational to catch up with both Sam and Adam, even though we were still well and truly under the weather from our bout of the 'flu.

From here we went for a quick walk under Tower Bridge and along Shad Thames, and got some nice photos of Tower Bridge from here (we were running a little early....)

Adam and Sam at Shad Thames with Tower Bridge in background


Tower Bridge at night

From here we walked over Tower Bridge and headed towards Tower Hill Tube station for the start of the 'Jack the Ripper' walk - the best part about this is that it was with a gentleman called Donald Rumbelow, and he is pretty much the world's leading authority on Jack the Ripper. He has been consulted on most documentaries that have been made regarding the murders, and he gave Johnny Depp a personal tour around the area for his movie 'From Hell' which he said was about 95% fiction....


The sign where you meet for the commencement of the Jack the Ripper tour

Whilst on the tour, we walked around the London East End, and Donald showed us to the scene of about 4 of the 5 confirmed Jack the Ripper murder sites (there is conjecture about a couple of other murders and whether they were actually Ripper murders or not....). His commentary was sensational for making you visualise exactly what had happened and where, and when we were standing in Mitre Square (the scene of one of the murders), it was very easy to imagine that you were actually back in Victorian times and standing at the scene.

*Damo speaking* I must admit that I didn't know THAT much about the Jack the Ripper murders other than that they were brutal, but this tour was great. I'd definitely recommend that anyone coming to London try and include this into their itinerary if possible - it was great. *end Damo speaking*

We were absolutely engrossed in the tour for the full 2 hours, and at the end of it, it finishes up near where Nikki used to work near Spitalfields markets. There is a pub there called the '10 Bells', which is a pub that has been proven to be a common link of all the victims, and it is still in operation today. We decided that we'd go for a couple of drinks there after the tour.


Outside 'The Ten Bells'


On the wall inside 'The Ten Bells'


The stairs down to the bathroom of 'The Ten Bells'


Adam, Damo and Sam inside 'The Ten Bells'

We didn't quite see this, but it felt like it was close.....

After we'd had a couple of drinks here we decided we were going to go to 'Dirty Dick's' pub for a drink - it was not far from where we were, and apparently the story goes thus:

Nathaniel Bentley was an ironmonger who had a shop in Leadenhall Street. On the eve of his wedding, tragedy struck. His bride-to-be died. So distraught was Nathaniel that he locked up the room in which he had prepared the wedding feast, never to enter it again. A broken man, he neither washed or changed his clothes. When his cats died he just left them. It is thought that Dickens used this tale as the inspiration for Miss Haversham in Great Expectations. The English love an eccentric and his notoriety meant his business flourished. When Nathaniel retired in 1804, the landlord of the Old Port Wine Shop in Bishopsgate bought the contents lock, stock and dead cats. He put them on display at his pub and renamed it 'Dirty Dick's'. In 1870 the pub was rebuilt from ground level, the wine vaults are part of the original building. The 'dirty' contents were carefully relocated in the new pub. Sadly it was decided in the mid nineteen-eighties that a clean up was in order and the dirty artefacts were cleared away.



Unfortunately it was closed, so we'll have to revisit it another time.

We ended up going to Soho and looking for a pub, but they were definitely in short supply on a Sunday night, so we ended up finding some joint and only managed a beer or two and that was it.

We caught up with Sam and Adam again the next night where we attempted to go to Harry Ramsden's World Famous Fish and Chips (We'd never heard of them either....), but unfortunately the location that we were going to go to had shut down (and only recently as we'd been near there just before christmas and it was still open).

We decided we'd just go to Leicester Square and have something to eat there. We ended up at a place called 'Burger Shack'. It was actually slightly classier than the name would suggest. We chatted with Sam and Adam, and then said our farewells and wished them the best for the remainder of their trip - they were off to New York next!

We went to Camden Town markets on Sunday. They were great. Unfortunately we were a bit broke at the moment, so we'll have to go back there once we get paid. It's a very eclectic mix of things there, even though you can tell that they were probably better a number of years ago, there is still the odd cool thing there, but unfortunately they are priced accordingly.

Apart from all this, we've still been recovering from the flu and haven't been up for much else. We're off out to dinner tonight at Olivia and Paula's place (Paula is Stevie Lee's cousin - Damo worked with Stevie Lee at uSwitch), so that should be nice, and then on Saturday Night we're off out to dinner with Adrian and Rachel (once again, Damo worked with Adrian at uSwitch) which should be nice.

We hope all is well with everyone, and we've been missing family and friends a lot at the moment.

Feel free to drop us an email - sorry if we haven't emailed. We know we're slack..... :-)

Superhero Quiz

Apparently Damo is the Hulk - go on Hendry Boys - give it your best...... ;-)

Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk 80% Superman 70% The Flash 60% Supergirl 55% Spider-Man 50% Iron Man 50% Green Lantern 45% Robin 42% Catwoman 30% Batman 25% Wonder Woman 10%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength. http://www.thesuperheroquiz.com/

Damo and Nikki's NYE was CANCELLED!!!!

Happy New Year everyone!

Well we've just spent the last week recuperating from the flu that we caught up in Edinburgh, Scotland. We're still fairly crook, but we'll survive (hopefully!).

New Years on the other hand, didn't survive. We caught the High speed train up to Edinburgh on the 30th December, and we had the option between a 4 and a half hour train trip, or about an 8 hour bus ride - it didn't take a rocket scientist to work out what we would pick....

The scenery in the train on the way up was stunning - the UK really is quite a picturesque place. The coast of Scotland up near Edinburgh was breathtaking. It was quite difficult to get pictures of it out of the train, but here are a couple of our efforts....







We arrived in Edinburgh Waverly station at about 3pm and went to our hotel room, unpacked a few things and went out for a bit of a look around - it looked like this was going to shape up to be a great few days.


Damo outside the train station


Scott Monument with fair attractions nearby

Later on that evening we went back to the hotel room and got ready to go out to the nightclub that had been organised by our tour group - it was called Espionage, and it was 5 stories high (well actually, 5 stories below ground....) We'd had a few drinks in the hotel room before we left, and Damo was carrying a traveller in his jacket pocket - he'd been in the club a grand total of about 5 seconds when Nic went to the bathroom, Damo cracked the tinnie precisely at the moment that a bar staff walked past, grabbed it out of his hand, and kicked him out.... Ripper - this was shaping up to be a great night - luckily we were'nt staying too far away, so we went back to the hotel and Damo got changed and we went back to the club and we got in fine... Damo is keeping up fine tradition - he's now broken the law not only in England, but Scotland also..... Idiot....

Woke up the next day (New Year's Eve day) and went to a place called Jonglese for the PP travel countdown of the Australia/Kiwi New Years eves. This was at about 10am local time, so we went along (feeling a bit shabby from the night before) and had a few bevvies to toast in the New Year back home with you all - so even if we couldn't be there to celebrate with ya's all, we were definitely there in spirit (well, cider as I think the case was.....)


Nikki and Damo having 10am boozing celebrations with you all back home...

It was after this we decided to go for a bite to eat at the Slug & Lettuce not far away from the place where we were having a bevvie or two - we ended up settling in for the afternoon, and as it turned out, so did the weather - it was about 1 degree celcius, absolutely pissing down, and blowing about 120 km/h.


Damo's bite to eat..... (and he ate every last mouthful....)

After this we headed off to try and find an off licence to buy some tinnies for the street party, but we'd already been warned that Hogmanay may be cancelled because of the particularly bad weather, but while we were walking around trying to find an off-licence, we began to understand why it would be cancelled - the rain was coming down horizontally, and it stung when it hit your face. It was blowing over port-a-loo's and there was a tv-camera stand that blew over just near us, and as soon as we saw that happen, we knew there would be absolutely no way that Hogmanay was going to go ahead. We went back to the hotel and came up with a plan - it was a crap one however.

We decided to go to the 'Walkabout' and spend our NYE celebration there - that was interesting.... We've been to 3 Walkabouts so far, 2 on big nights out, and both times it has been an eye-popping experience, to say the least.

Unfortunately Damo had come down with the beginnings of the flu on New Year's Eve at about 3pm and by the time the night came around, he wasn't up for the gigantic night as expected, and only ended up having perhaps half a dozen beers or so. We did stay out until closing time of the pub still (which was about 2.30 or so), so we still had a pretty good time, but it certainly fizzled about as much as the Hogmanay fireworks.....



Anyway, we woke up early-ish the next day to go to Sterling Castle which was about an hour and a half bus trip away from Edinburgh.

What can we say - it was an old castle - there's not much more to it than that..... and I'm sure there'll be plenty more of them along the way on our visits around Europe. It was however better than staying sick in bed, which probably would've been the alternative.


Damo in front of Stirling Castle


The view of the Scottish Highlands from Sterling Castle

Anyway, we were supposed to go out to another nightclub this night when we got back from the castle, but we were partied-out phil, so we decided to catch up with a couple of people from London that we knew were going to be in Edinburgh, so we rang them, and they were feeling similar, so we ended up catching up with them for a bit of a quiet dinner at a pub, and hung with them for the night, and then headed back to the hotel.

Hogmanay certainly wasn't what we were expecting, but it definitely was an experience anyway.

Hope everybody else had a sensational NYE. Saw some of the superhero piccies from the Hendry bash - looked great - wish we could've been there.