One of the things that Weezy insisted Lauren try while she was here is the very English dish of a baked potato. Yes, we have them in Australia, and yes, you can get them pretty much anywhere in the world. But, do they look like this?

(Yeah, they probably do, don’t they?)

Oh my, that was one filling meal, and I didn’t even get through it all. At least I ate all of the side-salad, which Weezy and Lauren both just ignored! Still, you can’t blame them; look how shocked Lauren was at the prospect of eating so many carbs!

Mmm…. beans….

The Durhams have been nagging us to go to the British Museum since before we had even contemplated moving to London. In fact, it was before we had even thought of leaving Australia that they started harping on about it. Come to think of it, I think the very first thing that David said to me when we first met was, “Hi, have you been to the British Museum?”. They’re just that into it.

However, me having a general disdain for large crowds of people in enclosed spaces, I’ve always stayed away from the place, figuring the only real time I could get there would be on a weekend, when crowds would hit a peak. Well, not any longer! Julian (a long time fan) and I took advantage of a vacant Monday and trundled along there yesterday afternoon.

Holy pants, the booty they have in that place is impressive! As Julian put it so well (he’s such a good writer, you know):

The British are the greatest preservers (thieves) of world culture in history, and this is where they keep all their artefacts (loot): The British Museum.

Take this for example; possible one of the most significant finds ever, in the history of human-kind – The Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone! Sitting right there, in the middle of a hall full of other Egyptian crap items that the Poms picked up on a five finger discount sale! It’s all yours for the viewing, and it’s all for free!

It’s also massive; there was no way that we would have been able to see everything in one afternoon (not that that was ever a danger; my brain can’t absorb more than about 2 hours of museum information at at time). They currently have an exhibition called, “The History of the World in 100 objects”, so we endeavoured to see as many of those as we could. We got through about 20 of them.

This is one of the objects which impressed us the most. It’s a carving of two swimming reindeer, and it’s a mere thirteen thousand years old. How on earth they managed to carve out that level of detail with no doubt fairly primitive tools, is well beyond me. Did I mention it was thirteen thousand years old?

So now I can see why the Durhams are such big fans. It definitely warrants another visit.

Coincidentally, my first week off work overlapped with cousin Lauren’s second week of her visit to London! And so, we arranged to meet up on Wednesday and Thursday in order to tour around London together.

It wasn’t the greatest weather on Wednesday – cold, and light rain – but that’s almost every day at the moment! We met up at Harrods, and then headed out to Canary Wharf, where we had lunch with Nick, Fitim, and Andrew. Lauren was particularly impressed with Fitim’s Russain Albanian accent, even though I’m sure she had no idea what he was saying most of the time.

Next we headed over to Greenwich, and the origin of time itself – the Greenwich Conservatory. I figured that being there on a week day it would be empty, but unfortunately it was packed with school kids! We still managed to find a quiet corner to get some photos of the view, looking back over the Maritime Museum, and back towards Canary Wharf.

By this point the weather had turned truly awful, so we rounded off the day in Covent Garden, where I took Lauren to my favourite coffee shop, and then to my favourite pub. We split a bottle of Bulmers, and then one of Magners, and we both agreed that Bulmers tastes better.

We met up outside St Paul’s cathedral on Thursday morning, and walked across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern. The current exhibit is a giant shipping container (note its size compared to the people on the left), completely closed in at one end, with a ramp leading up and inside at the other end. The further you go inside, the darker it gets, to the point where you can’t see anything. Thankfully, the wall at the end is padded, so you don’t get a headache when you inevitably run straight into it.

We also did a tour of the Globe Theatre, which Lauren was disappointed to find out wasn’t the original Globe Theatre, but instead, the third globe theatre, built in the style of the original, as a tribute to Shakespeare. One of the schemes that they came up with in order to raise funds for construction was to engrave some of the pavers outside the theaters with the names of big contributors.

Apparently, John Cleese paid for both his and Michael Palin‘s pavers, on the condition that Michael Palin’s name was spelt incorrectly. However, as it turned out, Michael Palin didn’t care – he ended up with a bigger paver, and he didn’t have to pay anything for it! Joke’s on you, Cleese!

After an extremely filling lunch at Tortilla, we did a quick lap around Borough Market, where I did the Durham-like duty of introducing Lauren to coffee! She managed to down her single-shot-latte, commenting that it “wasn’t terrible”. A few more shots of espresso before she leaves and we’ll have another addict!

Being a medical student, Lauren was very keen to see the Old Operating Theatre Museum; however since we were their only customers, I suspect they were more keen to see us! I tell ya, things were brutal back in the olden days – imagine having your tonsils removed by this, without anaesthetic!

Ouch!

The final outing for the day was a trip to The London Dungeons. I honestly had no idea what to expect from this, and was quite surprised at how scary it actually is! Most of the time it’s extremely dark, and there’s lots of creepy noises and things brushing past your face, to keep you guessing what’s coming next. I wasn’t sorry to walk into the gift shop at the end of our tour!

It was great checking out London with a newbie, as it’s always so refreshing to see things from a new perspective. Lauren’s in town until Wednesday so hopefully we’ll have a chance to see a few more sites this week before she jets back to Australia!

Check out more photos from our travels in the Touring with Lauren album.

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!

It seems, at times, that I have a rather odd job. Some of you may recall my failed attempt at driving a bendy bus in 2008. My equally odd highlight of 2009 was making a guest appearance at Kensington Palace!

I’d been having a series of meetings with a group of potential funders, when they asked me to come and present to their head honchos. Sure, I said! Where, I said? Kensington Palace, they said! (which made me wonder, just how ‘head’ are these head honchos?)

I admitted feeling a little intimidated by the invitation, only to be told that my presentation would be held in the very room that Queen Victoria was born in. I’m not sure how that was supposed to influence my mood, but it was followed with swift reassurances that the room ‘had been cleaned since then’… oh-kay…?

The meeting went very well. I noticed that I was the only person at the table obsessively using my notebook as a coaster so as not to leave rings on the Queen’s furniture (I can hear it now, ‘we are not amused’). The crowd was friendly, and they all spoke wonderful Queen’s English as one would expect.

By the time the meeting ended the Palace and gardens were closed to the public. A very sweet gentleman escorted me out, through security corridors and into the courtyard of apartments currently occupied by royals. It felt quite surreal, passing the security checkpoint and being spat out back into reality on Kensington High Street. It was a very brief brush with fame indeed.

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!

In the lead up to Christmas, Shannon and I were talking about English Christmas traditions and wondering how many of them we could squeeze into December. Carols at Royal Albert Hall, outdoor ice-skating, markets, mulled wine and … pantomime. Now pantomime is something I know so little about that when colleagues talk about it I’ve learned to nod and smile. This after embarrassingly referring to the ‘dame’ character as a woman, only to be corrected that the ‘dame’ was always a man in drag. Du-uh (apparently everybody knows that.) After that, I called them ‘pantos’ for short to avoid further correction, since I wasn’t sure if it was a pantomiMe or a pantomiNe.

So, time to overcome my ignorance and sign up. It’s theatre, in one of the world’s culture capitals, so how bad could it be?

We started looking into shows, and therein lay another lesson. They’re performed at Christmas but they’re not about Christmas. We went to the Shaw Theatre to see Aladdin. Which was set in China. And starred a very large dame called Widow Twanky who looked like he was on day release from prison. Hmmm.

During the course of the performance, we were squirted with water pistols, forced to yell out and then yell out louder (I can’t hear you!), tell a character called Wishy Washy Wishy that ‘we all think you’re dishy’, boo the villain, cheer the hero, tell several people to ‘look out behind you’, and witness a fellow audience member being welcomed into the cross-dressing fold and forced to sing and dance in a tutu.

After thinking how odd all these things were I looked up pantomimes on Wikipedia. And whaddya know, it’s all there. The cross dressing, the audience participation, the sexual innuendo, even the scene where someone was shrunk in a washing machine then stretched out by an ironing press was textbook panto. Why didn’t I do my research before I booked?

The only convention they didn’t follow was this one: the cast often throws out sweets to the children in the audience. Apparently health and safety restrictions have done away with that particular tradition.

It was an eye opening experience. I have no regrets in having tried something new, and the company was great, with Shannon (who apparently knew what this was about and didn’t warn me) splitting her attention between the stage and the increasingly baffled expression on my face.

But it could have been worse.  I could have been seeing Aladdin at the New Wimbledon Theatre. Starring none other than… Pamela Anderson.

We visited St Paul’s Cathedral in December to tick one more thing off the “to-do” list (and also to meet Kristy’s cousin Weezy who we haven’t seen since she came to London – but unfortunately she came down with a stomach bug!). I must admit that I’m a but “meh, one more cathedral” when it comes to seeing cathedrals, but you know – when in London and all that…

Turns out, St Paul’s provides the best view over London that I’ve seen to date! This is the view from the very top of the Cathedral (an area called the Golden Gallery, I think), looking southwest along the Thames, towards Southbank. You can see the London Eye in the background.

One thing that the view really drives home is just how flat the London Skyline is. This is looking northwest – The London Stock Exchange is in the building on the right of the big column statue thingy in the foreground.

There’s a few exceptions to the flat skyline though, such as The London Eye, Canary Wharf, and some of the buildings in the City of London, seen here:

If we get any more visitors, I think I’d have to recommend St Paul’s to them over the London Eye – though it does involve climbing a lot of stairs, so the Eye definitely wins on the accessibility front. Still, St Paul’s is cheaper (though just barely), plus you get to do a tour of the cathedral too, if that’s what humps your camel (skip the audioguide, it’s zzzzzzz).

Back when we first visited Ben and Michelle in London, one of the places they took us to was Somerset House.

Back then, we had no real idea what it was, other than a building that had an ice-skating rink out the front. But oh my, how times have changed! Now, not only do we know that it’s a building with an ice-skating rink out the front, but we also know that it shows movies during the summer months! Yes, this really is about as far as my knowledge extends, but I’m sure that if I were to actually click on the link that I’ve so helpfully included in this article, I’d be bombarded with loads of uselessful information on the place. But alas, I don’t really care all that much; I’m happy just knowing that it’s ice-skating-come-movie-cinema building place thingy.

Anyway, Aubain and Ingrid asked us aaaaaagggesss ago if we wanted to hit the rink with them during the between-Christmas-and-New-Year’s lull, so off we went tonight to give it a whirl. London did its best to discourage us with fairly heavy rainfall, but to be honest, I didn’t even notice it while I was out on the ice – it was only when I came back in that I found out my jacket was soaked!

Ice skating was a weird sensation coming only two days after skiing – the skates just felt all too short, to me! However after a cautious few steps at the start, we all managed to find our feet (some more so than others; turns out Aubain and Ingrid are both quite good!). Even better, we managed to make it through the whole hour without a single stack!

We polished off the night with a few well earned cups of mulled wine, in the little bar overlooking the rink. Ahhhhh…… this is what winter should be all about.

What an adventurous 48 hours we’ve had! On Saturday morning, we left Aberdeen with Stacey and Wes for a road trip to Cairngorm mountain for a day of skiing. About 20 miles from home, we noticed something going a little awry.

G: Hey Wes, the slug sounds awesome! Have you had a sports exhaust installed?
Wes: No mate, but now that you mention it, he does sound a little louder than usual.
G: Oh. Maybe we should pull over and have a look at it?
Wes: Good idea mate… lets pull in next to that pub.

Sure enough, The Slug was having some exhaust issues – the exhaust pipe had seperated from the rear muffler. No wonder he was sounding so sporty! Wes called up The AA, then we all headed in to the pub for a burger and chips.

Lesson Number 1: If you ever find yourself broken down in Banchory, do not – I repeat, do not – try to find solace in a burger from The Burnett Arms hotel and restaurant. Their burgers must have been made from Grade F meat (ex-circus animals and old gym mats), which as you may have guessed was rather disgusting. I don’t know if they were surprised when they collected our plates and found that most of our patties hadn’t been touched; hopefully they’ll get the point!

Anyway, a young lad – who I’ll call Angus – eventually turned up on behalf of the AA, and jimmied up a few metal cable ties to hold the exhaust pipe in place. It was only a temporary fix, but he assured us it should hold in place for our journey to Aviemore and back. Sure enough, we made it without too much trouble (save for a bit of car-skiing up a hill on an icy road), and checked in to Cairngorm Lodge, a youth hostel not far out of town where Stacey and Wes had stayed before.

Lesson Number 2: Cairngorn Lodge should be used strictly for summer accommodation only! Sleeping in thermals and huddled under a doona, I was still quite cold all night. None of us slept particularly well, and consequently, getting up for our early start was no easy task. Somehow we managed to drag ourselves out of bed, head down to the kitchen for some Paw Ridge, and then get back on to the road.

We arrived up at Cairngorm mountain by about 8:30 AM, picked up our hire gear and lift tickets, then caught the funicular up to the top of the mountain. Not only was it freezing (-6 at the base) but visibility was horrendous – 10 metres at best. We spent the whole day skiing quite slowly down some very fresh powder and ungroomed runs, most of the time wondering where on earth we were supposed to be going! Ironically, the best run of the day was our last one, because the fog had finally lifted and we could actually see the snow. I tells ya, it makes a huge difference.

Completely exhausted (powder snow is such hard work!), we hopped back into The Slug for the three hour journey home. When we got down the mountain and into Aviemore, we all noticed a rather unfriendly sounding scraping noise coming from under the car. We pulled over at the information centre and got down to have a look, only to find that the entire exhaust pipe (that runs between the front and back muffler) was scraping on the road.

Lesson Number 3: Join the AA.

A dude showed up about an hour-and-a-half after we called him, and rigged up a much better temporary fix than what the first guy did. He also scolded Angus (who was contracted from a third party company by the AA, but not actually from the AA) for sending us on our merry way, rather than telling us to turn back and get the car fixed.

The new rig held for our entire journey back to Aberdeen. Admittedly, we got a few “looks” from passing motorists, clearly not impressed by our superior sounding exhaust system. I think they were just jealous.

We were very pleased to step back into Hotel Bramley, where we cooked up a massive Tomato and Chili pasta feast, then finally hit the sack just after midnight. Suffice to say, we all slept very, very well.