Merry Christmas from Rome

Tour Guide for a Day

We spent this past weekend showing our good friends Jenna and Andrew around London. They were here for the weekend from New Zealand, the first stop on a 5 week tour of Europe.

It was fun doing lots of touristy things, visiting the places I usually stay away from because they're so busy, especially the weekend before Christmas!

The weekend turned out to be pretty sunny, but freezing cold. Much worse for Jenna and Andrew than for us, since we're used to it now. I may have forgotten how hard I found the cold when we first arrived, and made them walk for ages instead of catching the tube...

Christmas Cruise on the Thames

My work had our Christmas function last Friday. Partner's were invited this year and we went on a four hour cruise along the Thames, down past Greenwich and back.

We were originally going to have a lovely flat bottomed boat which glides along the Thames, but at the last minute we were switched to a huge sailing barge, which has a narrower bottom and is MUCH rockier. Needless to say, I spent a LOT of time on up deck seasick, wearing several jackets and my scarf as a hat because it was freezing.

Random photos from last weekend

Here are some random photo's we took last weekend. We went down to the Christmas Farmer's market and got caught in the rain. 

Westfield and Westminster

We went for a walk along the Southbank a couple of weeks ago to look at their Christmas markets. We didn't count on it being super busy, so we didn't really get a chance to look closely at the markets. But we grabbed some Churros, and just enjoyed the sunshine and strolled the full length of the Southbank from the London Eye all the way down to Tower Bridge.

Oxford Street Christmas Lights

Last week we visited Oxford Street after work because we had to buy Bradley a suit for my Christmas party. Usually I try to stay as far away from Oxford Street as possible, but they do have the best Marks and Spencer in London, so we had to make the trip.

It was raining, which actually turned out well, since everyone went home and Oxford Street was the emptiest I have ever seen it.

The Christmas lights on Oxford Street and Regent Street are pretty amazing, they're just huge, and all the huge department stores decorate their stores and windows, so it feels really Christmassy!

Basilicas and Vaporettos

We decided to spend our last full day in Venice visiting some of the more touristy attractions that we had missed over the weekend because it was so busy. Monday's in Venice are extremely quiet, it was mostly just locals, and a few tourists here and there.

On the advice of Alessandro (the B&B owner) we decided to skip the Campanile in Piazza san Marco and catch a Vaparetto (water bus) to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, where you could get a view of Venice in its entirety from the Campanile at the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, without the ridiculous wait time!

We were up early and headed straight for the Vaparetto stop at the Rialto Bridge to take us to Piazza San Marco. This was the first time we took a Vaporetto ride through the Grand Canal, and we saw some amazing sights. The best way to see Venice really is from the water.

A brighter side of Venice

We slept in a bit on our second day in Venice, since we were so tired from the day before. We woke up to a lovely breakfast of Parma ham, yoghurt, cheese and pastries, with home-made cappuccino's. It was so delicious, I definitely love Italian breakfasts.

Alessandro (the owner of our B&B) advised us to leave Venice for the day, and go out to explore some of the smaller islands surrounding Venice. Apparently Sunday is one of the busiest days of the week in Venice, full of tourists. As soon as we left the B&B, we were just surrounded by people. There was some sort of orienteering competition going on, so as well as the masses of tourists, there were huge groups of people sprinting through the streets with maps and compasses.

We decided to visit Burano and Torcello, both of which are approximately 40 minutes from Venice by boat. It's so funny travelling by waterbus in Venice, there are marked lanes, so it's just like on a road. The trip out to the islands is so interesting, there are so many tiny islands with just one or two old derelict houses or churches.

We arrived at Burano first, and hopped straight onto a smaller boat which took us out to Torcello, which is only about 3 minutes away.

Lost in Venice

We spent three lovely nights in Venice over the weekend. Italy is fast becoming our most visited country, though being in Venice is vastly different to anywhere else in Italy. I'd more likely to compare it to Bruges, with it being so small and with canals everywhere.

We picked a great time to visit, the weather was beautiful and sunny all three days we were there, though colder than London. It wasn't as busy as it apparently is normally, as November is the off season. It is also one of the most common months to experience Acqua Alta, when the tides rise too high and flood the city. So we were lucky to have no rain or any flooding at all, though seeing Piazza San Marco flooded would have been amazing.

Sneaky Venice Peek...

Churros Con Chocolate

We had these delicious Churros Con Chocolate at a Spanish cafe called Churros Garcia on Portobello Road. Churros Con Chocolate are yummy hot Churros with amazing thick hot chocolate to dip them in, and then drink down afterwards. SO perfect for warming up when it's cold outside. As it was this weekend.

Christmas Lights on the Kings Road

We spent this weekend doing some rather uneventful things. We're off to Venice next weekend so we thought we'd just relax and catch up on a few things this weekend.

We had lunch at the yummy Japanese restaurant across the road from us, we both got the 'Special' sushi set, which means we had no idea what we were going to get. Everything was delicious... except the Octopus which still had its suckers on and looked unappetising! Needless to say I didn't try it, but Bradley (who is much braver then me) reported back that it was too chewy and tasteless. SO glad I gave that a miss!

We had a wander around Chelsea on Saturday afternoon, because I wanted to get some new winter boots I'd been looking at for ages, and discovered the King's Road has put up all their Christmas Lights. Peter Jones has decorated their entire store with lights, it's pretty dazzling to look at.

Devastation in Cinque Terre

I've just been reading about the horrendous flooding that hit the Cinque Terre last week. It has devastated the small towns of Monterosso al Mare and Vernazza, they are both completely cut off as their train lines have been destroyed.

I find it really hard looking at the photos and watching the footage, since we were only there a few months ago, and the people and towns are so lovely. It's just awful seeing these beautiful towns almost destroyed. Hopefully they are able to clear away the debris and re-build, so tourists are able to visit and bring in much needed revenue again. I'm so glad we got to visit before this happened.

I've attached some photos from various news sites below to show the extent of the damage and I've also attached some photos we took of Monterosso, which is the town we stayed in, and Vernazza.

Remember Remember the Fifth of November...

So we spent our actual Guy Fawkes day at home, spying on our neighbours awesome fireworks. The good thing about living in Chiswick is that the neighbours are rich and can afford good quality fireworks! Plus, they don't seem to have banned any of the ones that have been banned in New Zealand, so that's a plus too! Most of the ones around our neighbourhood seem to be those huge booming ones that always scare Piper under our bed at home, and are enough to make me jump every-time we hear them too.

We did however go and see a huge fireworks display on the Thursday before Guy Fawkes. There was a free display at the Chiswick Business Park down the road so we decided to go along. Apparently it gets better and better every year, and it's one of the best displays in West London.

It had been torrential raining all day, but it cleared up about half an hour before the fireworks began. The fireworks were amazing, probably some of the best we've ever seen, including the ones at Disneyland! A bit hard to capture on my camera, but I promise you they were spectacular.

Hope everyone had a fun Guy Fawkes weekend :)

Bed-bound on Halloween

I spent most of last weekend in bed sick with a cold, so we didn't get up to much except catching up on TV shows like Nikita and The Vampire Diaries and eating gingerbread and Halloween chocolates!

On Thursday I spent the day at home because I was too sick to go in to work. Unfortunately it was my turn to provide morning tea at work on Friday, so I had to pull myself out of bed long enough to go to the supermarket and buy ingredients to make scones... I didn't really HAVE to do this, I could have brought something and taken that in. But I had promised to make something homemade and I possibly do not make great decisions when I'm sick.

So I ended up making three batches of scones. The first was with the recipe from The Edmond's Cookbook, which did not turn out well at all.. the second and third batches were with my Uncle Len's recipe, which uses almost 400ml of cream in the mixture!

These turned out way better, and were much appreciated by everyone at work. Though I did get told off by Bradley when he got home, and sent to bed while he made the third batch.

The second batch

Joint Holidays

On a recent trip to the very posh King's Road in Chelsea, (which has some great shopping, if it weren't for the snobbish people who shop there) we stopped in at Peter Jones, a huge department store similar to Smith and Caughey's.

Despite it being the middle of October, they had all their Christmas decorations up, and had dedicated an entire floor to Christmas merchandise. The decorations were amazing, similar to the ones we saw in the Galeries Lafayette in Paris at Christmas last year. 

Enjoying the Autumn Sunshine

This is a little late, but at the same time, seems kind of timely due to the strange weather we've had this last week or so. 

A couple of weekends ago we spent the day relaxing in the sunshine after picking up some treats at the local farmers market. We weren't too impressed with the market last time we went, but this time there was fresh sushi, great coffee, home baking... and birdseed (which Bradley mistook for muesli). So we grabbed some salmon and chicken sushi, and a couple of cappuccinos, and found a nice spot in the field behind the market.

On our way to the market, we detoured through Chiswick House. We've walked through the grounds before (in the depths of winter), so it was nice to wander around in the sun and enjoy all the Autumn colours.

Last day of our Greek Odyssey

We left our bags at the hotel the next morning and went to explore the rest of Athens. We headed towards the Roman Agora and the Monastiraki Flea Market first. The Roman Agora was actually a marketplace, and is currently right next to one of the biggest open air markets in Athens. The Roman Agora is also the location of Hadrian's Library.

The pretty streets of Plaka, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Athens

Revisiting Ancient History in Athens at The Parthenon and the Acropolis

We spent the last day and a half of our Greece holiday in Athens. It was more like one full day really. We arrived in Athens from Paros at about 4.00 p.m. Our hotel was a 3 minute walk from the Akropolis Metro station, and about a 5 minute walk to the Acropolis and the Parthenon.

We checked in, dropped off our things and went straight to the Acropolis. We were really lucky, because the weekend we were there, a lot of the sights in Athens were free! So we saved lots of money by getting into the Acropolis, Temple of Olympian Zeus and Ancient Agora all for free.

It was much hotter in Athens than on the islands, probably because it was sheltered from the sea. In the city it was about 30 degrees even at 4.00 p.m., so it made the walk up the Acropolis a bit harder than it would usually be.

The Parthenon and The Erechtheum are just amazing up close, they are surrounded by scaffolding, but they still look stunning, and it's just amazing they have been standing there for hundreds of years. It was also really awesome visiting places we learnt about in Classical Studies at school, and trying to remember all the old Greek myths!

The South slope of the Acropolis

Pounda and Piso Livadi Beaches on Paros

We spent our last day on the Greek Islands at the beach. The day was much nicer than the day before, but it was still pretty windy.

We went to the beaches on the South side of the island since the wind was blowing from the North, and we were able to have some shelter on that side of the island.

We stopped at Pounda Beach first, this beach is packed is July and August, with a party scene to rival Mykonos, but we were there in the off season, so everything was closed up and deserted. We only saw two other people, so it was nice to have the beach to ourselves. I can't imagine sharing the beach with a thousand other people!

Watching Bradley swimming in the distance

Exploring Paros

We started our first day in Paros with a huge breakfast by the pool, it was a bit windy but nice and sunny... until it started bucketing down with rain with no warning! We had to grab our food and run inside. It was crazy.

I wasn't impressed that we'd come from lovely hot Santorini, to rainy Paros! 

Luckily it had started to clear up, and was fine again by the time we were ready to start exploring the island. We had thought about going to the beach, but were concerned it might start raining again, so instead we decided to visit some of the other towns on the island, Parikia and Lefkes.

From Santorini to Paros

We arrived at the port to leave for our ferry to Paros about an hour and a half early. We were told to allow an hour for travel since traffic around the port can sometimes be super busy but then our driver was half an hour early and there was no traffic!

So we spent our last hour on Santorini sitting in the sunshine watching the tourists come and go on day excursions around the island. You can always tell the American tourists!

It was so windy and the sea was really rough, I would not have wanted to be going out on a smaller boat that day.

Oia and Amoudi Bay

We spent our last morning on Santorini in Oia. We slept in a bit and caught the bus from Imerovigli to Oia at about 10.30 a.m.

We were catching the ferry from the port to Paros at 3.00 p.m., so we had to be back at the hotel for our port transfer at 1.30 p.m.

The bus was pretty full, but we managed to get on and we arrived in Oia at about 11.00 a.m. We wandered around for a while, and decided to wander down to Amoudi Bay. Amoudi Bay is located 300 steps below Oia. It's a long way down and it was so hot, and pretty slippery that it took a good 20 minutes to walk down.

Perissa and Kamari

We spent our third day on Santorini on the opposite side of the island to where we were staying. After breakfast we wandered down to Fira to get the bus to Perissa. Perissa is about a 40 minute bus ride away from Fira, because the bus goes on a really long random route to get there, but it was a good way to see some more of the inland of the island.

Perissa is a tiny beach town popular with British tourists on package holidays. However since we were there at the end of the season, it was pretty much empty. There are a few shops, but the main attraction is the beach, with cafes along the beachside, and loungers up and down the beach.

We stopped and had an iced chocolate at one of the beach side cafes and watched the boats departing for other beaches on the island. It was nice to get out of the hot sun and do some people watching.

After stopping for a cold drink, we did some shopping in some of the little stores in Perissa, it was mostly jewellery and beach wear, but I got a cool top that I'm wearing in these photos. It's similar to one Kylie brought me back when she was overseas, but that got too big for me and I had to give it away. So I'm glad I got to find another one similar.

The Ridiculously Picturesque Oia

So after spending the morning in Fira, we hopped on a bus and headed to Oia. Oia is about 40 minutes by bus from Fira, and about 30 minutes from where we were staying in Imerovigli.

Oia is the most famous and most photographed place in Santorini. It is very famous for it's stunning sunsets, houses perched on the cliffside and the many churches with their blue roofs. If you Google Santorini, the images that come up are most likely of Oia.

The drive to Oia is pretty scary. There is one road in and out and that is on the side of the cliff. There is a HUGE drop on one side, and it does not feel safe when you are going around corners with no guard rail on a packed bus that feels like it might tip over!

But once you get there Oia is stunning. The bus drops you off in the parking lot, and you follow one of the many winding lanes that lead you up through the town up towards the cliffs.

Like Fira, Oia is very touristy, especially in the late afternoon when everyone flocks to watch the sunset. However, you don't need to go all the way to Oia, any village on that side of the island will give you amazing sunset views.

There were lots of tour groups in Oia, a lot of people from the cruise ships only have one day, so they do one big tour of the island, and it's funny to watch them all walking around together with their matching stickers.