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.

Merry Christmas All!!!! (New and Improved - now with added pics)

First things first - Merry Christmas to everyone - We hope everyone spent an enjoyable time with their families. More on our xmas later....



Finally!!!!! We've got broadband at home, and our BT line. As if it hasn't taken long enough - we applied for our BT line on the 1st of November - it was finally working correctly on the 23rd December - good going BT - love ya work!

So at least now we should be updating the blog a lot more regularly. (Once I get on top of all the stuff that I've got to update - it's all a bit daunting at the moment.....)

We've been up to all sorts of things since our last entry here.

First, Tory decided to abandon us and go back to Australia. We think she may be coming back here sometime in the not too distant future, but we had a pretty big send off for her.... We went out for some Yum Cha in Soho at a place called Ping Pong and then went to a club somewhere near there.


Damo, Nikki and Tory out at the Club....

The weather has finally turned into what we've been expecting it to be - very cold, with very little sunlight - we can see how you could get a bit down with 6 months of this.... At least we're going to be heading off every now and again to check out some slightly sunnier destinations... It's still not as cold as we've been expectging - still no snow yet!!! We did have icy-fog the other day though which was interesting - it was sort of like walking through a thick cloud.

We went to Windsor Castle for the day a few weeks ago - it was great. It was quite easy to get to - we thought it would be further out of London, but it was only 1 train stop further than what Damo has to go to for work. It's a very stunning place - a little fact that we were unaware of was that it is the oldest inhabited castle in the world - something like one thousand years of occupation. Pretty cool really.

There were a couple of rooms in the palace that are so stunning that it is unbelievable - unfortunately no pictures are allowed within the palace, but here are some from the outside....


Windsor Castle


Us outside Windsor Castle

We've had Stevie Lee leave to head off back to Australia a couple of weeks ago too - it's like there's a mass exodus from the UK for all the aussies we know - hope Travis and Nicole don't bail soon or we'll be in trouble. Anyway, we headed out for a night out to the Shepherd's Bush "Walkabout" pub. WOW! What an experience that was! Shepherd's Bush is like Aussie Central over here in London, and the "Walkabout" is 'supposedly' an Aussie style pub - it was more like a zoo..... ;-)


Stevie, Nik and Damo at the Walkie

After they closed (as all the pubs over here seem to close at about midnight - it's crazy), one of the other people that was out at the pub (Olivia) knew of a house party happening at Chiswick Park - we all walked there, and we partied on and we ended up getting home at about 4.30am - it was huge. It must have been about a 4 bedroom flat, and it was packed from top to bottom. There were people flowing out into the backyard, and because we ended up turning up with no grog, we thankfully helped ourselves to some that had been donated by some kind person.... ooooopsss.....


Nik in the hallway of the houseparty

Damo went out to Soho for his work Christmas Party to a Spanish place called Mesa, and it was quite a big day/night, but Damo had been sick for a couple of days leading up to it, so probably wasn't quite as big as it would've been otherwise, which was probably a good thing. It was on a Thursday, and started at 12:00pm, and he ended up getting home at about 11:30pm, so it was quite a long time of boozing up - he ended up going out with one of the blokes he works with (Elliott) afterwards for dinner to a place called Wong Kei, which was a Chinese restaurant in Soho - they had dinner on a shared table with a couple of gay girls - Elliott was hilarious. Damo was the only one who ended up turning up for work on the Friday, albeit at the leisurely hour of about 11am.... No one else even bothered to make the trip and everybody ended up 'working' from home.

Just a couple of weeks ago we headed off to Germany for the Xmas markets - we went to Frankfurt (mostly due to the fact that there were cheap flights, and Damo is crap at research....), but regardless, we ended up having a pretty great time. There was all sorts of sensational food, and plenty of glüewein (which is basically the german name for Mulled Wine - it's a drink that they have over here in the colder regions - pretty much warm, spiced wine).


Us with glüewein

We both had a great time, and waaaaay too much excellent food. We ate Bratwurst and some other sausage that was called something like rhinesrindswurst or something. The grill that they had for cooking these on was great - it was suspended over a big flame, and swung over the top so that the flames weren't in one spot and burning things - here's a pic to illustrate a little better. They tasted fantastic!!!


Grill Pic

Damo eating Bratwurst

We also ate a giant chocolate covered pretzel, and when by giant, we mean giant - it took both of us an entire day to eat it, and it tasted absolutely exquisite.


Nikki with "The Pretzel" and mulled wine

We did a tour of Frankfurt on a bus - the tour guide was an Italian fella, and we were chatting to a South African bloke, and also another young Italian guy who was a designer. It was a pretty quiet tour - and there's not a lot to Frankfurt - thank god there was a Christmas market on - it would've probably been as boring as sin otherwise - it's a pretty picturesque place though - it's on the banks of the Rhine river, and has quite a nice foreshore, and a few really cool old churches, but little did we realise before we headed over there, it was 80% destroyed in the war, so it's a lot newer than we were expecting. It's also the investment banking capital of Europe and also has the 2nd largest airport, but unfortunately thanks to our fantastically cheap airfares, we actually flew into Frankfurt-Hahn airport, and not Frankfurt airport. Frankfurt Airport is about 10 minutes outside Frankfurt - Frankfurt-Hahn is about 2 hours outside of Frankfurt..... If we were going for a week, it probably would've been worth it, but for a weekend, it definitely wasn't. To make matters worse, we're pretty sure that Frankfurt-Hahn is closer to Köln, which would have been an infinitely cooler place to go to than Frankfurt - but with all of this said, we still had a great time anyway!


The main square


From an angle showing the Christmas tree.....

On our way out on one of the nights, just around the corner from where we were staying we noticed an Aussie pub! In Frankfurt!?!?! Surely we had to check this out..... There was bugger all Aussie about it apart from an Aussie flag hanging precariously from one corner of the room, a couple of pieces of currency sticky taped to the wall, and a poster of Ayers rock - oh well, if it drums up business.......


Damo having a VB in Frankfurt!!!!! (Apparently it's export quality now..... In your face, Hendry boys and Daz....) heh heh


Nikki found the weather in Frankfurt to be a little chilly..... here's how much clothing was worn, and there was still the odd whisper here and there about how cool it was....

Since we got back from there, we went to a Christmas party at Claudine and Anna's place in Tooley St (where we were dossing when we first got here), and it was lovely - quite a bit more sedate than we were expecting, but it was good. And even better was that Damo got to 'work from home' the next day..... ;-)

We've just spent the last week or so getting ready for Christmas, and we ended up spending Christmas Day at Travis's and Nic's place - it was great - we got over there at about 11:30, and we didn't end up leaving until about 9:30pm. We watched a few movies on Sky, and sat around chatting and just generally having a good time!


Damo's beers on the windowsill in preparation for the big day....


Our great Chrissie tree with all the prezzies under it.....


Trav and Damo just before Chrissie lunch


Our huge Chrissie spread.....

We also spent a fair bit of time catching up with Family and friends on Skype on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day/Christmas Night and Boxing Day - it was great to see and chat to everyone, and we only wish we could've chatted for longer.

We leave to go to Hogmanay (Edinburgh, Scotland) tomorrow (Saturday) for New Years (Hogmanay is the largest NYE party in Europe), and we're travelling by high-speed train. We've got a few last minute things to do before we leave today.

Anyway, we really hope everyone has had a sensational christmas and we want everyone to know we were thinking of them.

Early November Stuff

We have finally moved into our own place - well it actually happened ages ago, but Damo is busy at work these days and doesn't generally get a chance to update the blog from there, and we don't have 'net access from home yet.

We should finally have a BT line (telephone line) installed at home now (only happened yesterday and we're waiting for it to be activated.....)

The place is great. Here are a few piccies of it....


Lounge/Dining Room



(Another different angle)

Our balcony!!!!! (YAY! You've sort of got to be a bit lucky to get a balcony in London!)

Our kitchen - That's about the full size of it too!!!!

So that's our humble little abode! We're pretty happy with it, and it's in a great location - we're equi-distant between Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush - we're really happy with it.

So after much rig-marole getting into the place and then having a few things not sorted out properly when we went in, it's turned out great - the landlord seems to be pretty decent - he bought us a new bed just because we asked for one, and pretty much everything else in the place was new/pretty new....

The kitchen is tiny, and the bedroom isn't huge (though bigger than one of the other ones that we almost took), but the lounge room is a great size which is a good thing.

We're just going through the finishing touches of getting utilities sorted out, but thus far it's turning out pretty good!

Moving was quite an interesting experience though - we couldn't believe how much crap we had accumulated in such a short period of time since we've been here - but it was a lot!!!! We ordered a taxi (we asked for a people mover), and they sent a small-ish one called a VW Sharam - the driver looked at us, looked at our crap and shook his head - we convinced him we'd make it worth his while, and he gave us a hand to load the car up - we weren't going far, but his car was packed to the absolute brim - Damo ended up riding with him to show him the way, but the car was so full that Nikki ended up having to catch the tube.... :-)


The shamozzle that was our apartment when we first moved in....

Damo had his birthday a while ago and ended up having a great day. Nikki really spoiled him with lots of nice gifts, food and drink - he enjoyed it immensely - there was Beer, Pizza, Chocolate Cake, much F1 artefacts and numerous other gifts which made his day really special.

During this week, we went out to a place called Cafe de Paris in Central London one night during the week to see a production called "Benobo Presents...." - Now this was an interesting experience.

We went out with some people from Damian's work, and while that was all fine, the show itself was positively strange - there was a mixture of stand up comedy, some of which was good - some not - there was a burlesque performer who was strange and came on far too often, there was a particularly old trapeze artist who looked like she had been in cirque de soleil about a hundred years ago and had developed a crack habit in the years since - there was a mime who gave birth to an extremely large balloon - and the pièce de resistance was a guy with a mohawk wearing no shirt and leather pants with a whip, and a chick wearing a dress made out of red crepe paper - he proceded to whip the dress off her - now this sounds like he may have been some sort of master with the whip, but alas - NO - he just whipped the shit out of her - you should have seen the welts on her afterwards - she was bleeding and everything - it was full on - Nikki saw her before the performance up at the bar downing drinks at an alarming rate, which is no surprise considering what she was about to put herself though.....

Anyway, we went downstairs after the show and continued having a few bevvies, and we ended up catching the night bus home (we were still at earl's court at this time), and we got home at about 3am - which wouldn't be that bad except that it was a Thursday night and we had to go to work the next day - we were wrecked.... but all in all we had a good night (albeit strange...)


Mime giving birth to a balloon


Our group at the table (Left to right - Brendan, James, Wendy, Angela, Elliott, Damo, Nikki)

Soon after this was Guy Fawkes Night - this is the celebration of a complete failure, which is quite interesting. Apparently Guy Fawkes was the guy (pun intended.... *groan*) who tried to literally blow up British Parliament a couple of hundred years ago. He failed, and bonfire night is the result.

We ended up hooking up with Elliott from Damo's work and went on a road trip down to Lewes where there are about 8 different bonfire associations (true!!!) to watch the fireworks and bonfires. So we met up with Antony, Karolin and Ian, along with Elliott, Nikki and Damo and started off on our road trip down to the south coast.

We ended up having a scheduled departure time of 18:30 and ended up leaving at about 20:00. These guys drove like maniacs - it was hilarious - it was like we were 17 again! We were in a Rover Metro and the other car that had Elliott, Antony and Karolin in it was a Peugeot 307. About halfway down there we noticed that the Peugeot was blowing a bit of smoke, so after they continued revving the ring out of it for a while, they decided to pull over and find out what was up.

Antony decided that it was probable that he'd forgotten to put the Oil Filler cap back on properly and that the smoke was probably just some leaking onto the exhaust.

But alas, it was not to be - turns out that he'd fried the head gasket.


Nikki standing in ABSOLUTELY FREEZING conditions next to the broken car!

Anyway, after a while of stuffing around with filling up oil, filling up water, waiting for the car to cool down, driving a couple of mile, and repeating it was decided to call the AA guys (RACQ/V/NRMA guys) to get sorted. He suggested that there was a pub car park not far down the road that we could park the car in, and we could continue on our journey.

Only problem here was the fact that we had a two-door Rover Metro, and there were 7 of us - oh well, no matter - we'll just shove Kate in the boot, Nikki on the floor in between Damo's legs and the other 5 in normal seats.

We continued like this and made our way to Lewes - quite a few of the boys were quite drunk by this point in time, and unfortunately we'd missed most of the bonfire/fireworks by this point in time. We made it for about the last half hour - it was still pretty cool, and made for a good story!!!! :-)


PINK!!!!!

GREEN!

So we enjoyed our short time watching the fireworks from the top of the hill instead of actually being amongst it, but then we decided that we might as well head into Brighton for some fish and chips on the beach and a few beers in the pub.

And this was at about midnight. So we ate our fish and chips, we went to some club in Brighton called 'Hayes' (or something like that) and we did it all while 7 of us were piled into a Rover Metro.


(Antony, Elliott, Karolin, Damo)

Now if this didn't already sound like an interesting night, it only got better from here - on the way home from Brighton to London (about 2 1/2 hr drive) we managed to get pulled over by the local constabulary.

EXCELLENT!!! We're buggered now, we thought - so Ian the driver jumps out, marches up to the police car, and explains the situation - the police open the boot and find Kate looking out at them and so they announce that they understand our situation, and rather than issue us with a traffic offence, he will just take our names and addresses and say that we were pulled over under the Terrorism act so he doesn't have to fine us.....

So he proceeds to get all of our names and addresses, but the funny thing was that Nikki was in a black jacket with her hood over her head crouching down, and he didn't see her, so he thought that there were only 6 people in the car - we reckon they would've thrown the book at Ian if they had have realised..... Glad that they didn't because he seemed like a really nice bloke.

We ended up getting home at about 5 am - it was a huge night, but we had a ball!


In the club in Brighton!