Across the ditcH

We arrived at the idea of a week of London fun because of several circumstances... As a teacher I have several compulsory holidays throughout the year. These a normally a joyous occasion of sleep ins and time to take a whack at the pile of paper work which has normally built up. However, at this stage as a supply teacher the time off is shadowed by a compulsory pay cut! :( However this drive as the main bread winner of our little family has been eased as a few weeks ago Mike accepted a job! But as his first day is Tuesday 14th we had a week overlap of free time! (and a few pounds in the bank) So we launched our London week of fun, and attempted to get our head around all the tourist attractions in London, and as you can guess we barely scratched the surface! (being a tourist is exhausting!) We were also motivated by the fact that so many Kiwi and Aussie friends over here have been here for years and are yet to do some of the basics!
First up we hit the Tower of London. Which I thought of only as the major torture centre of England where it was only a one way bridge in and you never came out. Well we discovered as more of the old castle that it is (with one or two scary dungeons to be sure) but had an amazing few hours trying to get our heads around the history that had taken place there, where we were walking. We then wandered down to the pub where my Mum and Dad worked (and lived?) during there time in London. We were there before the 5 o'clock rush and the bar tender even let us behind the bar to take some shots of us serving!
We did a huge amount of walking, getting an overview of where everything is, Tower of London, Tower bridge, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey... and had a look around the Tate Modern Art Gallery (realising we don't really like very much modern art...) The British Museum (realising how much of the Parthenon is actually in London not Rome) and the Natural History Museum (seeing the Wild life photographer of the year exhibition... Mike was very inspired... with all the gear he 'needs' to buy that is :p ). We also got to see the Princess Diana memorial and have discovered a shared passion for royal history and are determined to get our selves immersed in some history while here! We also did a walking tour around the the old square mile of London city. This was really interesting with a very animated and classically English guy taking us around. So at the end of a huge week of tourist stuff we have concluded that.... we are going to try and fit a few more of these in while here.

So it is now Easter weekend, and also our first wedding anniversary :) So Mike has a few things planned in town and we are looking forward to when we are up to being dual income and will do our first long weekends away over the public holidays in May!

Check out our film clip of our week of fun and we will endeavor to make more short clips of our trips into Europe!



Karyn & Mike