Le Pain Quotidien

Last weekend we had a yummy breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien in Westfield. We had scrambled eggs on toast with prosciutto, with a pain au chocolate on the side! Actually the hugest breakfast ever, those bowls are filled with a mocha and a hot chocolate. One thing London does well is breakfast. Our blog is slowly turning into a foodie blog instead of a travel blog...

Popup fun fairs

There is literally a fair every weekend somewhere in London. They just pop up in some random park and then have gone again the next week. It's exciting. I love going to fairs and carnivals. For me it's more about eating yummy chips, hot dogs and candy floss... the rides are always either hugely massive and scary, or tiny kids rides. This one was just down the road from us in Turnham Green Park, it's the lovely park where we took all our snow photos at Christmas and has an amazing church in the middle.

Bradley's Birthday

Bradley turned 29 last week! To celebrate we went to see Thor at the movies. It was such an awesome movie, definitely on par with the first Iron Man. I hope they make a sequel. I know Thor will return in The Avengers, but it's not the same!

We came home and our flatmates had secretly gone out and got a cake, it was such an awesome surprise. Bradley doesn't really like celebrating his birthday, but he likes cake!

These photos MAY have been staged... I missed the first blowing out of the candles, hehe.

Festival of Britain & The Southbank

We went out for breakfast on Sunday morning at Balans in Chiswick. They do amazing pancakes and french toast, so yummy, and the staff are always really friendly too.

After that we went to the Southbank to go to the Tea & Coffee festival. I love the Southbank. There's always something happening.  I got interviewed at the festival about Coffee, it wasn't that interesting but I posted it on Twitter if anyone is interested. It's amazing how much I notice my Kiwi accent when surrounded by English people!

The Southbank is all set up to celebrate the Festival of Britain, they have a little beach and heaps of little beach huts and a little carnival.

We'll probably go again this weekend, they have a real food market on and a few other free things. We haven't been doing much since we got back from Edinburgh and Munich, just been going to the movies and going out for brunch in the weekends.

We're going to Tuscany in just over 2 weeks, so there will be lots to post about that. Other than that it will just be little random blog posts from us.

We're wanting to do a day trip to Windsor, but the weather has gone all yucky again in the past couple of weeks. The weather people are saying it's supposed to be the warmest May in years. Whatever, today I'm wearing a woollen jumper!

Happy Birthday Bradley!

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Last night in Munich

On our last night in Munich we went for a walk to find some dinner and came across this carnival about 10 minutes walk from our hotel.

It was pouring with rain so we didn't go on any rides, but it was fun watching other people. They had one of those big speed slides, people were racing on them and I thought they were going to smash into the wall, it was so wet! Unfortunately everyone arrived safely down the bottom...

There was a lot of copyright infringement going on. On all the rides they had pictures of celebrities or of Disney characters. I don't know how they get away with it.

We ended up having sushi from the train station for dinner. We were a bit tired of Bratwurst and Schnitzel! The sushi was amazing, definitely the best we've had in a long time.

London may do some great curries, but they have no idea how to make Japanese food. I miss Renkon!

We were bored on the train on the way back...

Neuschwanstein Castle

On Sunday we went to Neuschwanstein! I've been wanting to visit the castle for a long time, so we were excited to finally be going. Neuschwanstein is located in Hohenschwangau, about two hours out of Munich.

We got up early and got the train, the scenery on the way there was incredible. It was so German! Just fields and fields everywhere, and these amazing mountains and lakes. It was just like a postcard!

We arrived just before lunch. There are a few ways to get up to the castle, which is on the side of a mountain. You can get the bus, a horse and carriage, or walk. Walking takes about half an hour, all uphill. Since we're not lazy, we decided to walk. We beat all the horses and buses going up, and it was such a nice walk. You could see the castle peeking through the trees on the way up, so that was cool. They had gift shops and a couple of restaurants just below the castle, we stopped for lunch after we had visited the castle, and had amazing weinerschnitzel and pommes frites. Plus a big glass of house beer.

The views from the castle are stunning, you can see for AGES. You couldn't take any photos from inside the castle, but we took heaps of the outside.

The best view of the castle is from a bridge a 20 minute walk from the castle itself. The bridge is VERY high, and there are no signs as to how many people it can hold or anything. Everyone was just crowded all in one spot! So Bradley was sent out onto the bridge to get the amazing landscape shots of the castle, while I stayed firmly on solid ground, not about to plummet to my death just for a photo! (Though saying that it seems I was willing to let Brad plummet to his??) Well we did get some amazing photos :)

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Hohenschwangau and Fussen, the two towns closest to the castle. There was a completely amazing postcard worthy lake in Hohenschwangau, we could have spent all day there, but it started raining so we moved on. We were lucky we only got a little bit of rain, since the forecast was for thunderstorms.

This was definitely my favourite part about our trip to Germany, the whole thing was just like a fairytale. I can see why it was used as the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty castle at Disneyland.

The walk up to the castle

New Zealand flags at the souvenir stand!

The sheer drop at the side of the castle!

You can see the bridge in this photo. It's so high, and doesn't seem safe at all! But such a good view..

Taken from the Marienbruecke bridge

This is where I stayed while Bradley was getting our amazing photos from the 

Marienbruecke