A Little Further North: October 2010

Saturday, 30 October 2010

A weekend in Bath and Stonehenge

Yesterday at 11 a.m. we decided to go to Bath for a long weekend. We both had the day off, and we'd been wanting to go to Bath since we arrived in London. We just knew it would be the type of place, like Queenstown, that we would just love.

And we were right. We LOVE Bath. It's ridiculous. We loved it as soon as we arrived. It's just so cute and so pretty. All the houses are very gothic looking, and it's like there are mini castles everywhere. It's very expensive to live in Bath, most of the houses are over 1 million pounds! But we would love to live here if we won Lotto.

There are lots of cute little shops, and there are tea shops everywhere. It's a really nice town just to wander around, there's lots of things to see.

We arrived on Friday afternoon about 3.30 p.m. We're staying at the Cheriton House B&B, it's about a 10 minute walk from the centre of Bath. It's so pretty and clean! There's a huge King size bed and a freestanding shower. I find this very exciting, since our bed at home is a double and everyone in London has a shower over the bath. It's a huge 3 story manor, the whole street that it's on is filled with these gothic looking manors, it's all very Jane Austen.

We went on a tour to Stonehenge today, it's about an hour East of Bath. We went on a 3 hour tour, which was long enough. Stonehenge is literally right next to a busy main road. We knew this before we went, but it's very different seeing it in person. A huge historic site, next to a highway. Very odd.

An hour there is by far long enough, the closest you can get to the stones is probably about 5 metres. There's a tiny rope fence surrounding the stones, you could step right over it, but no one does. I find this quite surprising...I wonder what they would do to you if you jumped over it. I guess you'd get a very good photo at least.

Yum, Sally Lunn Buns, they were SO yummy. They look huge, but are super light so you don't feel gross after eating them.

The very lovely park below was locked off to the public, I have no idea why, but no one was allowed inside.

Some of the goodies in the many chocolate stores in Bath. We brought some mini chocolate vampires and reindeer, celebrating both Halloween and Christmas on the same day!

I really loved these Halloween inspired teddies, the Freddy Krueger one was my favourite.

A day in Oxford

A couple of weeks ago we went to Oxford for the day. Oxford is about an hour from London on the train. We've become very fond of getting the train everywhere, it's so easy just to turn up and get a ticket and jump on the next train. None of this turning up 2 hours early like for flights.

Oxford is a University town, there are heaps of people in their late teens and early 20's everywhere. It's also a HUGE biking town. We were amazed at the number of people riding bikes, was very strange, as we haven't seen anything else like it before in England. Such a good idea, as the streets are all pretty flat.

We didn't actually stay in Oxford a full day, we were feeling pretty yuck from being sick, so we were really tired, and it was freezing. So we wandered round the streets and then sat in a coffee shop for a couple of hours and used their free wifi. Our flat doesn't have internet until next week, so we've been using free wifi whenever we can.

Recent Events

We've been pretty bad in updating our blog recently due to moving into our new house, and then the dramas that came with that. After moving in we discovered that mold or something else in the house was making us really sick, I've had trouble with my asthma and it's like we've both had a persistent cold for the last 2 weeks, with sore throats and runny noses. It's gross.

So we're currently looking for another place to live, so far it hasn't been successful, but we want to make sure we move somewhere clean and where we will be happy, and not have to move soon after moving in.

Hopefully we'll find somewhere soon as it's making us pretty depressed :(

The good news is, I have a full time job finally! It's doing Credit Control which is different to anything I've done before, but everyone at the company seems nice, so hopefully everything goes fine.

Bradley's still looking for a permanent job, he's going to call some more agencies next week, since the one he's with is pretty slack. They keep calling him saying they have work and they'll get back to him the same day with the details, and then they never call back. It's so frustrating thinking you'll get work that day, and then waiting round and not having any!

There's not a lot of jobs around at the moment, lots of people are applying for every job that becomes available, but I'm sure it won't be too long before he finds something.

Sunday, 17 October 2010

New House!

Hurray, we've finally found a flat to move into! To be fair we only looked at three, so it wasn't that bad, but it's exciting to move into somewhere where we can unpack! We've been living out of our packs for 6 weeks now, and I'm getting sick of not being able to find anything.

We're moving to Shepherd's Bush, which is in West London. Full of Aussies and Kiwis, so we'll be right at home. We're moving in with people we met while looking at another flat in Hammersmith. They were moving out into a flat with their friends and invited us to move in with them, so that was really lucky.

We're going to be living with a Kiwi couple, a Kiwi girl and an Aussie girl. Haven't got any photos yet, but we're moving in tomorrow, so will take some photos when our stuff is all moved in and it looks nice.

Here's a sneak peek of the outside, our room is at the top right, with the windows open.

Stand Up For the Saracens!

We went to the rugby on Saturday night at Wembley Stadium. Suzanne got us free tickets through her school, and we hadn't been to a rugby game in about a year, so we thought it would be pretty fun. The home team, The Saracens, were playing an Irish team called Leinster. Leinster won by only 2 points, so it was a pretty close game.

We had really good seats, level with the field about 9 rows back, so we had a great view of the field. The home team has their own theme song, and it was in my head for ages afterwards.

English rugby is nowhere near as exciting as New Zealand rugby. They seem SO slow, and they constantly dropped the ball and kept tripping over. It was so funny. I can see why the All Blacks are considered the best in the world.

Was cool to be at Wembley stadium. There was 45,000 people there, but it didn't really seem that crowded. Even afterwards when we had to get the tube home, we weren't smushed inside the train at all.