Where did the week go? Not a lot happened, and yet I feel like we haven’t really been home at all!

On Tuesday night, we met up with cousin Louise, and her sister (hence also cousin) Kylie. Kylie is fresh off the boat from Queensland, having only landed in London on Thursday the week before. It’s way cool having more family over here now!

On Wednesday night, both Kristy and I had “after work drinks” to go to, and in both cases, catching up with old colleagues. It’s been ages since I had a night on the turps, and boy did I feel it the next day! It was nice seeing my old workmates again however, so all worth it in the end.

Thursday was a total write off. I feel like I spent the whole day in the wrong place, at the wrong times. I was glad to be home on Thursday night; but more on this later.

Nick and Giovanni arranged a Friday night get together at one of my favourite bars in London – Bar Kick. Unfortunately, since the French were playing the Welsh in the rugby, and since it’s a French bar, the place was absolutely packed out. I left around 10:30 PM, feeling very hot and exhausted. It was too crowded to take any photos inside, but this is the tube that I caught home:

Julian and Shelley stayed over on Saturday night, and amongst a boatload of food, and a game of hearts, we also watched the movie Surrogates. It was ok; perhaps one for the Bruce Willis fans out there, and fairly harmless entertainment for said fans’ wives. gerrod.com rating: 6.5/10.

And that brings us to Sunday, in which our highlights have been gym, salmon fishcakes, and a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother. See? Not a lot happening at the moment, but I guess that’s how things roll in winter in London. Oh, blue skies and sunshine, where for art thou?

I had never heard of the Partridges Food Market until Saturday morning when Kristy suggested we go and check it out. So check it out we did, and it’s awesome!

We turned up around 2 PM, and we were both hankering for a late lunch. The only downside of the markets was that every store seemed to offer something that we wanted, but we only had limited stomach room (let alone cash to burn)! Making a decision was near impossible! We eventually settled on Moroccan Flat Bread filled with lamb and tomato – delicious!

Since we were on our way to Al and Becca’s for the evening, we also picked up a mixed pack of 12 mini cupcakes from Crumbs and Doilies. Their flavour of the week (month?) was “salted caramel”, though I must admit I had difficult working out which ones they were, and which were the vanilla. Not that I was complaining; that was merely an excuse to eat more – you know, to do some more thorough testing…

We definitely want to check out the markets again; next time I’ll be getting a half-dozen oysters (only £5!) followed by a nutella crepe.

It’s been a wonderfully quiet week, in which I’ve enjoyed lots of down time. I’ve been to the gym every day, played lots of PS3 (I finished Darksiders in 18 hours, and have started on Assassin’s Creed II), and got lots of tasks ticked off the never-ending “To Do” list. It’s been very satisfying!

Tomorrow, we leave for a week of skiing in Meribel, France, along with Nick and Suzie, Aubain and Ingrid, Eva and Ali, Todd, Giovanni (who we met at last year’s ski trip), Russell (Suzie’s old flatmate), and Russell’s brother. We’re actually heading off tonight to stay in an airport motel near Gatwick, as our flight leaves very early tomorrow morning.

Once we get there, we’ll be staying at Chalet Laetitia – a brand new, four star, fully catered chalet. Awesome! Just hope the weather isn’t actually as cold as the forecast – I can’t imagine what -26C (after windchill) will feel like, but by Wednesday afternoon, I might know!

See you in a week!

At 294 metres above sea level, Leith Hill is the highest point in all of south-east England. And, at only an hour’s drive (or thereabouts) from Chiswick, it makes a perfect destination for a one-day adventure – so off we trolleyed with Julian and Shelley on Saturday to make the most of the beautiful weather!

At the top of Leith Hill stands the very creatively named Leith Hill Tower, which was apparently built in order to raise the top-most point of the hill to over 1000 feet above sea level. Yes, really. No, I don’t understand why either; but to be fair, it did provide a great vantage point for 360 degree views. Since the day was so clear, you could (barely) make out London City to the north-east in the middle of the top photo (the distinct shape of The Gherkin is the giveaway); and Gatwick Airport was a bit easier to see, at only nine miles directly to the east.

Unsurprisingly, the area is also littered with Geocaches; we managed to find In the Shadow of the Tower 2 which was a great adventure to find, and the very craftily hidden West Side Wandering, which I think was the hardest cache we’ve found to date.

Being a hill, and being in the forest, it’s also a very popular destination for mountain bikers. We (obviously) weren’t equipped with bikes, but that didn’t stop Julian catching some huge air over a jump on the way down.

Impressive!

A few weeks back when it was freezing cold (and our heaters weren’t working properly), all we could think about was being warm. Finally one day, Kristy snapped, and started looking for a hotel that we could stay in for a few nights. She managed to find a deal for a soft opening at a “mystey five star hotel” in the city, and so – treating ourselves just a little bit – we booked ourselves in for a mid-week break.

Mystery hotel turned out to be The Grange Hotel at St Paul’s, part of “The Grange” chain of independent hotels around London. Admittedly, I had never heard of this chain before, but since I’ve also never stayed in a hotel in London before, I guess these two things go together like espresso and steamed milk.

Since it’s a five star hotel, we were expecting it to be both fancy and pantsy, and that’s pretty much exactly what it was. Our room simple and stylish – most importantly, it had a really comfy bed, and it was warm!

Notice also that there are not one, but two layers of blackout curtains covering the windows! When the alarm went off at 7:30 AM, we thought it was still the middle of the night! We’ll definitely be investing in some of those bad-boys when we’re living in a place of our own.

The only thing that we found a bit weird about the hotel was the giant pillar of extremely brightly coloured LED lights that greeted you as you walked into the foyer. As you watched, it changed from images of falling leaves, through to various colours, and then to various patterns, then the whole thing started again. There was nothing wrong with it; but it did feel a wee-bit out of place compared to the rest of the hotel’s décor. Just wish I’d have taken a photo of it!

Anyway, overall it was a lovely experience! Since we rarely go into the City of London, it was really cool to actually go and stay there for a few nights!

On Thursday night – before cooking a midnight pasta, that is – I had been at my farewell drinks from CQS. It was a pretty amazing night – so many people came along to help celebrate! I felt a little bad that I didn’t get to talk to everyone there but I’m pretty sure everyone had a decent time regardless. Given that I didn’t get home until midnight, I know that I sure did.

Friday was my last day at work, so as you can guess it was extremely busy. Everyone had thrown in some money to get me an amazingly generous gift voucher for Amazon. I was very touched! I’ve resolved to spend it on something ridiculously impractical, like a pair of Ugg Boots for Men. Classy.

Saturday we were overdue for a sleep-in, and the rain outside was encouragement to do so. Thankfully, the weather cleared up in the afternoon as I was booked in to go ice-skating at the Natural History Museum with Nick, Suzie, Eva, and Alex, and at £16 for a one-hour session (yes, really!) we were going even if there was thunder and lightening.

Saturday night we enjoyed an amazing three course dinner at Pat’s house, where everything was home cooked and everything tasted amazing. As often happens, I got way too caught up in eating the food to take any photos, so check out Pat’s site for the full scoop.

Sunday we were given the best weather that we’ve seen in weeks – gorgeous blue skies and an amazingly warm seven degrees! Kristy made the most of it by coming down with a cold and lying under a doona on the couch; I, on the other hand, hit the driving range with Aubain and Oscar!

It was so refreshing to be outdoors without wearing 17 layers of clothing; fingers crossed that the weather keeps up like this!

It’s twenty-past-twelve in the morning, and I’m making puttanesca pasta. Is that so wrong? I just wish we had some garlic! It was either that, or stop off for a kebab on the way home.

I think I should have gone for the kebab.

Yesterday I was sporting my new t-shirt as gifted to me for Christmas, by Brother Jason and Sister-in-law Susan. Now, I had thought that the shirt was fairly self explanatory, and yet you’d be surprised at how many people asked me, “what does that shirt mean?”. (Truth be told – it was only three people which isn’t actually all that many, but there were a lot of confused looks. I’m sure they all wanted to ask.)

If you too are in the latter group of people who are a wee-bit confused by the shirt and afraid to make it known to the world – it’s a take-off from the iPhone’s “Battery Dead, plug into power” screen, only instead of a battery, it’s a cup of coffee, and instead of a plug, it’s a pot of coffee.

Thanks Jason and Susan!

The English have a bit of a reputation for a culture revolving around pubs, but really you have no idea what it’s like until you’ve lived here for a while. I once heard someone say, “you can’t trip over without passing three pubs on the way to the ground”, and to be honest, it’s not all that much of an exaggeration.

Don’t believe me? Well, check this out; I’m finishing up my job next Friday, so I thought I’d arrange some farewell drinks with the team. A quick google for “pubs near Victoria” first landed me on the Beer in the Evening site, which by default searches a three mile radius of where you tell it.

Only 1,598 to choose from? Not much of a selection, really! To be fair, a three mile radius is quite far; but even if you narrow it down to a one mile radius, there’s still about 180 pubs on the list. Further narrowing down to a one kilometre radius (which makes more sense; why on earth the poms insist on sticking to the imperial system is beyond me) still yields over 80 pubs to choose from. Blimey!

And so, after “much” deliberation, I decided to go with The St George’s Tavern, which is less than five minutes walk from Victoria station. Come one, come all – Thursday night (14th of January), from about 5 PM onwards. Hope to see you there!

On Sunday, we made a final farewell to Albert – who served us so well over the Christmas season – before taking him down to the Christmas Tree Graveyard at Gunnersbury Park.

Laying him down with all the other discarded Christmas trees was a sad moment. All the hopes and dreams for the Christmas mornings of spoilt children that those trees collectively represented, only to be discarded into a pile with nary a thought for what their future holds (probably a date with a man wearing some overalls, at a restaurant called “The Chipper”).

Well, whatever happens to you Albert, thanks for doing such a swell job at holding up our Christmas decorations. You’ll always be in our memories of Christmas 2009.