The last thing I remember our dear friends Ben and Michelle doing before they left London, was sitting in our lounge room, waiting until it was time to go to the airport for their flight. Ben was investing the time wisely on the PS3.

It seems fitting then, that the last thing that we’ve done in London, was sit in our dear friend’s Nick and Suzie’s lounge room, whilst I wisely invested my time playing Nick’s PS3.

People often ask us, “What’s better – New York or London?” – to which there is no real answer – both cities are amazing, and each one has features about it which make it “better” than the other. In the end though, it all comes down to personal taste.

For me, if I was after a 1 year escape from reality, I would head to The Big Apple. But overall, for a life: I would take London.

It’s been an amazing three-and-a-bit years, and I want to say a huge thanks to everyone that’s been part of it.

Farewell London, it’s been a pleasure!

If you asked practically anyone to list the best things about the USA, I have little doubt they’d say something along the lines of:

1. The Cookes
2. Chipotle
3. Barack Obama
4. Root beer

And given that you can buy root beer at Chipotle, that makes number two a double winner! I know that most of you will be surprised to learn of my love for Chipotle, given that I rarely bring it up in conversation; but alas, I cannot deny it – it will always be my number one (food) love. As such, you can imagine how stoked I was to hear that they’ve finally opened a store in the UK. We headed down tonight with Kylie, to initiate her into the burrito faith.

Now, I consider myself somewhat of a Chipotle expert, having eaten there perhaps once or twice in my time. So I feel it’s my right – nay, my duty – to cast judgement on their flagship UK store. And pass judgement I shall:

They’re not quite there yet.

Yep, the burrito looked good, and it was definitely tasty. But their staff were way too slow on the production line, which meant the tortilla was a bit cool by the time it came to eating. Also, the carnitas:salad ratio was off – not quite enough meat, and a bit too much lettuce. And I had to double check if they had added hot salsa to my burrito, because I didn’t feel any spice on my tongue! Definitely shy on the chilis!

I’m hoping all of these problems are merely teething issues, and that they’ll all improve with a bit of time and practice. And given how packed the place was for dinner (and even more-so at lunch by Weezy’s reports), practice is something that they won’t be shy of.

I’ll give it another whirl in a month or so, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t walk away a little disappointed.

PS: No root beer! What the?!

Almost three years living in London, and we still hadn’t seen the changing of the guard! Well, all that changed yesterday when we met up with Weezy and Kylie outside Buckinghuge Palace to see what it’s all about. It was a gorgeous day yesterday, with temperatures reaching 20 degrees in the afternoon! And yet, I was still quite surprised at how many other people who had the same idea as us, and worse yet, had got there before us and taken all the best viewpoints! Even the cops came out to enjoy the show!

Truth be told; the ceremony was a bit of a non! All that happened in the 40 minutes that we were there, was:

• The new troop of guards marched in to the gates on the left;
• A band marched in to the gates on the right
• Some dudes on horses trotted past

That’s it! Admittedly, there seemed to be a lot of action inside the palace gates which we couldn’t see from where we were, but from what I could see, it looked like it was just people marching back and forward. Whiz bang.

Oh well; no real complaints, that’s one more thing ticked off the list – and watching the police yell at all the misbehaving tourists was a bit of a laugh. Plus, the girls all looked like celebrities in their dark sunnies.

Nice.

Last time that Nick, Suzie and I went mountain biking in the New Forest we had such an awesome time that we all resolved to do it again. And this weekend, to make the most of an amazing spring Saturday, that’s exactly what we did! This time we pumped our numbers up from three to nine, adding Kylie, Julian, Eva, Peter, Anisha, and Kerrie to the group. We were a force to be reckoned with!

The forest was noticeably less green and lush compared to the last time we went. In fact, the ground cover was so brown and dry that I could have fooled myself into thinking we were back in Australia! This made some of the off-track areas a bit treacherous to ride on – one large stick through the spokes and it would have been game over!

Still, that didn’t stop us from trying – some of us more so than others. Predictably, Nick decided that following a track was taking the easy way out, and instead decided to carve his own path. Mostly this worked out well for him, though I think he found some of the terrain a little bit more difficult than he had anticipated.

Overall, we were following the Deer Sanctuary route as recommended to us by the bike hire company, which included lunch at The Trusty Servant in Minstead. It was a lovely pub, yet it was full of polar opposites! For example, the fish and chips were delicious (good!) – but they came with normal peas (which are on my “list of foods that should never be eaten”) instead of mushy peas (which are fine – boo!!). Also, the outdoor dining area was enormous, and just lovely in the sunshine (good!) – however we found the locals a little too friendly, and I for one wished they would have maintained their distance (boo!!). I think Anisha felt the same way.

Not long into our return journey, we somehow managed to miss a turn, and we ended up on an off-road path through some swampland. Still, it’s all part of the fun isn’t it? Plus, I couldn’t take Kylie out of London without bringing her home at least partially covered in mud; it just wouldn’t be proper! But with a little bit of compass work, we managed to find our way back to the bike shop in the nick of time – only 10 minutes before they closed up for the evening! Phew!

Once again, an awesome day out, and one I’d be keen to repeat at anytime! I think I need to get me some padded bike pants though; my butt was aching afterwards! (TMI?)

As predicted, we enjoyed a lovely four-day weekend in The Lake District with Stacey and Wes! Our drive up was fairly uneventful, save for the double caramel latte that Mr Fool at Costa thought I wanted. And the look he gave me for using my KeepCup! “You want it in this?!” – yes, Mr Fool – why else would I have given it to you?!

I can’t emphasise enough how lucky we were with the weather. Statistically, it rains 96% of the time at the Lake District, and yes, I most certainly did make that up on the spot. Things weren’t looking good on Friday when we arrived to find it overcast and drizzling on our shnizzles, but goodness me did things pick up on Saturday morning! Nothing but blue skies did we see, right through until Sunday evening! I even got a little sunburnt!

If you’re going on a holiday with Wes and Stacey, you can bet your bottom dollar that there’ll be some walking involved. Not that we’re complaining of course; we’re well into walking now, and even more importantly, I now look like someone who’s well into walking. Check out how technical and well equipped, and yet so wholly nonchalant I look here:

Now I have to give some credit to my new backpack which WeStace helped me pick out; not to mention the new hydration system that they also recommended. But let’s be honest; I make this stuff look good.

Anyway, back to the walks – we covered a fairly decent chunk of terrain over three days! Here’s a few of the walks we enjoyed.

The Grizedale Sculpture Trail:

This supposedly contains over 90 separate sculptures, each made out of naturally occurring materials such as wood and stone – however we only managed to find four of them! Admittedly we were only there for two hours, and we spent a good part of that foolishly following Stacey through marshlands in search of a geocache (well, that’s how I choose to remember it); but I’d be lying if I said that the trail lived up to my expectations.

Still, the sculptures that we did see were pretty cool – I wasn’t sure if this was one of them or not, but you can see one ducking out behind the shrubs on the left (or check out what it looks like up close).

Humphrey Head:

We conquered this one on Saturday morning, and picked up a couple of geocaches while we were there. In order to make it out to the edge of the headland, we had to walk through some fields of sheep, including lots of little spring lambs! And just when you think that things couldn’t get any less chalant after that magnificent display of nonchalantness above – check this out for Mr Casual!

Meathop

This one wasn’t so much of a walk as it was a quest to find the Meathop Mini Maze multi-cache, and OMG was it a challenge. Anything more than a casual glance at the description should have really managed my expectations a bit better:

The final cache has you scrambling up crags so make sure you wear suitable footwear. There are some big drops off the edge so be careful. The crags will be slippery if they are wet.

This really redefined the term “scrambling” for me. Those boulders were steep, and sharp! I even shed a little blood when my left hand collided with one of them! Thank goodness it wasn’t raining!

(Don’t take any of that as a complaint; in fact, scrambling up those boulders was the best stage of them all! Danger? Shmanger!)

Walla Crag:

By far and away the highlight of the weekend! This was a four hour walk over almost every type of terrain – mud, snow, beach, grass, streams, and even a little bit of the lake. And I think you have to agree with me that the view from the top was “not terrible”.

When we weren’t out and about on an adventure, we were back at the apartment just relaxing, and exchanging friendly banter that you’d expect at a gathering of friends. Stacey and Wes were kind enough to explain the meaning of “Gerrod music” to me – “anything with strained lyrics and heavy guitars”. I have to admit – that’s pretty much bang on.

Even the Lake District knew that our holiday was over today, as we woke up to find it absolutely teeming down with rain. Fearing the wrath of London traffic, Kristy and I high-tailed it out of there, and yet we were pleasantly surprised to find the roads flowing quite freely! We made it home only an hour later than Doug (i.e. TomTom) had originally predicted – not bad, given that half-an-hour of that was our lunch break!

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend away, and a brilliant introduction to the Lakes. Make sure you check out the rest of the photos – there’s some doozies in there!

We will be spending our lovely four-day weekend in a lovely cottage called Orlestone House, which is in the lovely area of The Lake District. Our lovely friends Stacey and Wes are going to double our fun by joining us too, because the drive time from our place is almost identical to the drive time from their place! Lovely!

Here’s hoping that everyone has a lovely Easter, and that you don’t pork out on too much lovely chocolate. That wouldn’t be so lovely.

It’s with much sadness that we say “Farewell” to our dear friend Shannon, who has headed back home to the lovely warm beaches of Australia. After the winter that we’ve had here, we can’t say that we blame her, though choosing Perth instead of Brisbane as her hometown is somewhat of a questionable decision. She went with the excuse of, “My whole family lives there! And I already have a job there!”, but all of those reasons seem a bit weak to me.

Still, we’ve never been to Perth, so who are we to criticise? And now that we know a local, we’re looking forward to visiting!

By the time this gets posted, Shan should have already landed and be well on her way to getting over her jetlag. Better yet, her pasty white London skin should already be starting to fade under a glowing warm Australian tan – the lucky devil!

Farewell Shan – we’ll miss you! But we hope to see you again soon!

England has quite the collection of murals of horses on hillsides, and the oldest of these is the Uffington White Horse. No-one seems to know precisely how old it is, but Wikipedia puts it at over 3,000 years! We ventured out on Saturday with Julian and Shelley to have a close-up look at it for ourselves.

As it turns out, the close-up look isn’t quite as impressive as the Google maps top-down approach, but it does give you an idea of just how big it is. Pretty big.

Right next to the white horse is Uffington Castle, however this one is a bit of a conundrum. See, all that actually remains of the castle is the site upon which it was built – a huge circular landmass surrounded by a ditch (most likely an old moat). But, there’s really no signs of anything actually having ever been constructed there. What’s more, apparently it wasn’t even a castle, but instead just a hill fort!

Still, a huge ex-moat-like-ditch can be rather entertaining, as Julian proved to us. See, he has this great trick which you can use to traverse from one side of a ditch to the other, by simply running down one side as fast as you can, and then expending your built up momentum to effortlessly ascend to the other side. Sadly for him, the uphill journey proved slightly steeper than he had anticipated, which threw all of his calculations off, and saw him running face-first into the grass. Oh, if only I’d been videoing…

While we were in the area, we also took a short wander down to Wayland’s Smithy – two words which when combined somehow mean, “old tomb”. Apparently there were 14 people buried in there, but they’ve long since departed (heh heh) and now it feels more like a man-made cave.

Truth be told, it wasn’t all that exciting, but the walk in the sunshine and fresh country air was delightful! The company wasn’t too bad either, though we had suspected that would be the case when we started out.

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.

Believe it or not, the last thing on Lauren’s “to-do” list for London was to visit Ripley’s. Though I’ve never had a desire to go there myself, I’d be lying if I said that I’d never been a little bit curious. And, as Kristy so rightly pointed out, this may have been my only opportunity ever to go along with someone that actually wanted to be there. As such, I seized the moment, and tagged along.

(Un)fortunately(?) for you, I didn’t have lovely camera with me, and although I did have little camera, I had it on all of the wrong settings. So, we came away with barely any photos to show for ourselves – this rather grainy shot of me sitting in a unbelievably large rocking chair is about the best that you can hope for here.

The highlight of the visit – for me at least – was the gigantic mirror maze. We should have packed a meal before entering, because we got lost so many times inside that we almost had to camp overnight. Had we have had to turn to cannibalism to survive, I reckon I could have overpowered Lauren and at least had me some tea. Then again, she’s small and nimble, and being a university student, she’s probably quite crafty too; I’ve no doubt she has some tricks up her sleeve. Not that it mattered in the end, as we eventually found the exit; though it was only after we were foiled at least five times by re-finding the entrance – including once using my “guaranteed, fail-safe way of navigating out of a maze” (i.e. keep your right hand on the wall). Maybe it’s the left hand that’s guaranteed…

There was also one of those suspension-bridge-through-a-tunnel-surrounded-by-spinning-lights jobbies for the punters’ pleasure. Oh my goodness, it was so disorienting! I couldn’t believe how off balance it made us! It was only about five metres long, but that was more than enough – I was happy to emerge from the other side (albeit feeling a little sea-sick!).

I had expected that there’d be more displays that erred on the “not” end of the “believe it or not” scale – like more optical illusions, and things of that nature. But overall, the walk through was very entertaining, and there were a number of exhibits that extracted an “oohhhh!!” type of reaction from me. But, at the rather outlandish price of £20 to go in, it’s probably not something that I’d recommend to anyone who didn’t have it on their “to-do” list to begin with.