London still

"You know it's okay

I'm kinda happy here for now

I think I've finally grown up

And got myself a love of now

And if I ever come home

And I, I think I will

I hope you're gonna wanna
Hang at my place on Sunday still

Oh yeah, I hope you will

Cause I'm in London still"

--The Waifs--

Nearly a month has gone by since Dan and I arrived back in London from sunny Barcelona. As we flew through the white cloud back into Gatwick airport, I strangely felt that sense of relaxation that travellers only get when they are returning home. Over the past month as we spent more time in London, it feels more and more like home.

As soon as we arrived back and headed to our friend Bron's place, we threw ourselves straight into finding a place to live. As anyone who has looked for a room in London before knows, this pretty much means you spend hours refreshing the Gumtree and Spareroom websites looking for new rooms listed.

We really liked the South West area of London so decided to look for something nearby. The first house we looked at was definitely memorable. While it was a nice house in a good area, our prospective housemate was a 35 year old South African guy who described his social life as "um, I dunno, I spend a lot of time at home but two nights a week I play in boardgame tournaments". That conversation, combined with the whole wall of shelves full of boardgames made Dan and I unanimously decide that it wasn't the place for us. Apparently we made quite an impression on our prospective housemate though, as when I declined the offer of the room, he kindly invited us over sometime "for some casual boardgames". Needless to say we have not yet taken up that offer.

We were incredibly lucky that on our second day of househunting, we met Richard and Laura and saw what became our flat in South Wimbledon. The moment we walked into the flat and met Laura and Rich, we felt at home. Dan and I both left the flat grinning with our fingers crossed that we would be lucky enough to have the room. Later that night we received a phone call from Laura asking us to move in - which we did on the Saturday morning. So all in all, we were back in London for 4 days before we moved into our own place - which I'm told is quite unheard of. As we listened to Rich's phone keep ringing and ringing over the next two weeks with phone calls from prospective housemates for the flat, we knew how lucky we were.

Flat family photo - Richard, Laura, me and Dan

Our room

Just chilling on the lounge. One of the great things about our flat is that it is so new (almost unheard of in London). It is only a year old, and less than 5 minutes walk to the tube.

The view from our "illegal balcony" over the rooftops towards central London. We technically don't have a door leading out to this area, so we climb through the kitchen window - which should prove interesting in the summer when drinking is also involved

Our first weekend back in London was our friend James' final weekend overseas before returning to Australia after leaving in February 2011. We had a fantastic weekend, going out for thai food and dancing in Putney, followed by lunch by the Thames River in Kingston on a sunny Saturday. Dan and I also went to the Lion King on the Saturday night (thanks Jess, Michelle, Nicole and Emma for getting us the tickets!), which was amazing and a great way to celebrate our first weekend in our new home. We sadly said goodbye to James on Monday as he returned home to Brisbane. But, as he knows, we will keep hassling him until he makes the decision to move over here next year. [I think April sounds like a good time James :-)]

Friday night party crew in Putney - James, Lance, Dan, me, Sammy G and Bron

Enjoying the sun in Kingston

A cute little yorkie terrier I met in Kingston - the first dog I had patted since I left Australia. When her owner sat next to me I said how much I missed my dog, so this little one came over for some pats and attention.

Delicious lunch in Kingston

Supporting Australia while watching the Rugby World Cup at the pub - shirts courtesy of H&M

Our second weekend in the UK was spent travelling to Nottingham, the home of Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood. Deciding to travel in style, we splurged and bought first class rail tickets (which were only a couple of quid more expensive than economy) and enjoyed some extra space during the two hour trip. A highlight of our visit to Nottingham was visiting the oldest inn in England, 'Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem', built on the side of the old castle wall in Nottingham. It was very small and cramped inside, which is not suprising considering it has been around since 1068. We also posed for photos with Robin Hood, played drinking games in our hotel and danced the night away in Oceana club in the middle of town.

Group photo outside the oldest inn in England

Playing around with the Robin Hood statue

During our first couple of weeks in London, we also took a trip to the Tower of London with our friend Herb (aka Jesse), and spent an afternoon wandering around the old buildings and dungeons, and also saw the crown jewels, which are on display under tight security.

Dan and I outside the Tower of London

We spent another Saturday looking around Camden Market in north London - one of the cool things about Camden was these seats we found - it's like a big outdoor eating area with old scooters for seats.

Camden market

After seeing our first foxes roaming the streets in London, Dan and I decided to try some 'squirrel spotting'. We jumped on the tube to St James Park where reliable sources (read: youtube videos) told us there would be a good chance of spotting squirrels. We were really lucky - there were squirrels everywhere scurrying around the trees frantically collecting nuts. They were so eager they actually climbed up our legs to nibble nuts from our hands - the result was the cute photos below.

Beautiful autumn in London parks

After hearing fireworks every night for the three weeks after moving into our house, we were excited to celebrate Bonfire Night last weekend. It's the time of the year when all of London goes firework-crazy, with temporary shops springing up everywhere to sell fireworks. We went to Battersea park to watch the lighting of a massive bonfire (it was about two stories tall) and a fireworks display timed to music which lasted for about 20 minutes. It was probably the best firework display I have seen in my life - I saw types of fireworks I had never seen before. We then ended up back at the Billabong, our local aussie pub in Wimbledon, where we had a bit of a dance for the last hours of the night.

All rugged up at Bonfire night

Our first month in London has been non-stop - between settling into our home, making new friends and seeing new places, the weeks have flown by. I've been lucky enough to find a good job in Victoria, which is only takes me about 40 minutes to get to door-to-door (less than my commute in Australia). The two things that have really helped us settle into our new town are our housemates and our new friends. They have welcomed us in and made us part of their group, so we have some great new friendships. While I miss certain things about Australia, I definitely will be in 'London still' for quite a while.

Italian adventure

Saying goodbye to the beer in Munich wasn’t as sad for me as it was for Dan and James as we were moving into wine country to begin our adventure in Italy through Venice, Rome, Florence, Pisa and Cinque Terre.

After the rainy Oktoberfest weekend, we were excited to travel through the Austrian Alps (where there was snow already in September) and over the border into sunny and warm Italy. I knew I was going to love this country as soon as we crossed the border, as we could see grape vines everywhere!

We arrived at our hostel in Venice and were very excited to have showers for the first time in a couple of days since Oktoberfest – it was seriously the best shower I have had in my life – as well as sleep in proper beds.

Although Dan and James were pretty tired (*cough* hungover *cough*), my constant demands for ‘wine, wine, wine!’ meant we headed out for a slice of pizza and my first glasses of house wine. I also had my first taste of pistachio gelato, which was the beginning of my once-a-day gelato habit in Italy.

Venice was one of my favourite cities on our entire European trip.  I loved the beautiful warm weather, wandering around the streets and over the bridges and canals, cruising along on the water bus and of course the food – pizza, pasta, gelato, wine and espresso. We enjoyed a couple of days of wandering the streets and soaking up the sunshine.

Bridge over the Grand Canal

Gondaliers in one of the smaller canals

The streets were tiny!

After Venice we boarded the bus again to Rome, and the three of us decided to pass the long bus ride with a bit of competition – the song game. Some of you that know us may also know this game – when a new song begins on the radio the first person to name the artist/singer gets a point. As our busabout driver was playing non-stop Triple J hottest 100 all day, it was a fierce competition. I’m sad to say that I was the loser and ended up buying Dan and James drinks in Rome, which was quite depressing considering I missed out on songs by some of my favourite artists, like Washington. We also watched the movie ‘Gladiator’ on the bus which made us excited to see the Colosseum in Rome.

The saying goes ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and you definitely can’t see all of Rome in a day. On our first day we did a ‘bad-ass’ tour through the Vatican with our Canadian guide Justin. It was fascinating to learn more about the history of the Catholic church, St Peter’s basilica and Vatican city. We explored priceless art in the Vatican museum and finished the tour wandering through the Sistine Chapel and St Peters. Another highlight of the day was visiting Justin’s favourite sandwich shop – he insisted they were the best sandwiches in Rome. We would argue we had probably the best sandwiches in the world – Panini with crushed olives, semi-sundried tomatoes, salami, olive oil, rocket, smoked cheese and chilli paste – snackdown! I also joined a massive line at the ‘best’ gelato shop and wasn’t disappointed!

Inside the Vatican museum

Dan doing a freaky levitation photo in front of St Peters

We enjoyed the Vatican tour so much that we did another tour with the same company the next day to explore ancient Rome. We learned about how Rome was founded and saw Palatine Hill, the Pantheon and the Colosseum. The Pantheon is one of the architectural marvels of the world – no one knows exactly how the Roman’s built the massive cement dome roof, or how it manages to stay up. In fact, even with today’s modern architectural and engineering expertise, it is apparently impossible to recreate.

Inside the Pantheon

I managed to 'ice' James in the middle of Rome - pretty impressive I think. Although I'm a bit worried about the inevitable retribution that will probably occur sometime...

The Trevi Fountain - legend says if you toss a coin over your shoulder you will return to Rome

We spent the next day visiting the Colosseum, Palantine Hill and the Roman forum. The Colosseum is bigger and more spectacular than you’d expect – it only took seven years to build over 1500 years ago and it is still standing. You can walk through and see underground where there used to be chambers and cages for animals and slaves. The activities the Romans used to run in the colosseum were quite brutal – criminals sentenced to death were eaten alive by lions and crocodiles in front of the crowd, gladiators used to also fight and kill criminals. It was the biggest source of entertainment for the Romans as they enjoyed free entry for an all day show.

Inside the Colosseum

Our next destination was Florence in Tuscany. On the way there we stopped at a little Tuscan village, and on our busabout guide’s recommendation, decided to try Panini con porchetta (pork sandwich). Dan and I found a little local deli and walked in to find two older men beaming at us. It was clear they couldn’t speak any English, so we ordered in Italian and watched as one of the men jumped up to make our sandwiches. We realised the other old man was just a local and a customer, and he started patting us on the back and speaking to us in rapid Italian. We started laughing and smiling, and I said ‘l’englese’ (English) to show him we couldn’t understand. Neither this or the shopkeepers laughter and ribbing about the fact we only spoke English did not deter him from chatting to us for about 10 minutes and even following us down the street when we left!

Visiting other countries does show you how much people love Australians. A lot of locals seem to assume straight away we are English, but usually when they ask us and we say ‘Australian’, they get very excited and start chatting about how much they love Australia, even when most of them have never visited. In Rome we even had a shopkeeper tell us to visit his cousin’s restaurant in Lygon Street in Melbourne!

After arriving in Florence we headed out for a night tour around the city, a leather making demonstration and a meal. We had a good night with other busabouters drinking beers and cocktails and watching people from a Contiki bus sing karaoke. For those of you who have been on a European tour, you may know there is a bit of rivalry between passengers on Contiki, Topdeck and Busabout – we busabouters think we are a bit superior as people on Contiki are usually only 18 and get wild absolutely every night (busabout is a bit more independent and chilled out). So it’s always quite fun when we arrive at a hostel and see other tour groups.

While in Florence we also enjoyed a wine tasting tour through the Chianti region, which is wine connoisseur’s heaven. I don’t really like red wine, but absolutely loved the Chianti red wines as well as other farm produce like extra virgin olive oil, bread, jams and cheeses. 

The Duomo in Florence

Beautiful vineyard in the Chianti region

We were excited to leave Florence and travel on to Pisa and Cinque Terre. We stopped for about an hour in Pisa for the obligatory photos of holding up the leaning tour. The number of tour buses that roll into Pisa every minute is crazy, and the footpaths around the leaning tour are absolutely packed.

Doing the tourist thing in Visa

We arrived in La Spezia, our gateway to Cinque Terre in the middle of the day. Cinque Terre is made up of five villages along the rocky southern Italian coastline, and is one of the most picturesque places in the world. Dan and I splashed out and had a really nice room for two nights with a balcony overlooking the ocean in Monterrosso, which is the largest of the five villages.  We spent our first afternoon on the balcony drinking a four euro bottle of wine we bought in Chianti and eating green olives and chips. After feeling a bit tipsy from the bottle of wine, we headed into the old town for dinner where I had another ¼ litre of wine and we feasted on the best meal we had in Italy – pesto pizzas, chocolate pie and espressos.

Afternoon snack on the balcony

On our second day in Cinque Terre we headed down to the beach early in the morning and hired beach chairs and umbrellas. There is a day-long walk you can do through the national park to each of the five villages, but we were more than happy to lounge in the sun all day, drink cocktails and eat focaccia and gelato! We also swam in the Mediterranean sea, which was really salty but so clear. You can see from the beautiful photos below just how clear the water was and how breathtaking Monterrosso is – I promise it is 100 times more beautiful than the photos!  

The beautiful clear Mediterranean sea in Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre was a fantastic way to end our Italian Adventure before we headed onto our last two destinations before heading back to London – Nice and Barcelona. 

Munich and Oktoberfest - Prost!

At this time of year there are crowds of people heading into Munich in Germany for one thing only - Oktoberfest! After leaving Vienna Dan and I joined the crowds streaming into Munich.

We were really excited to get amongst it in Munich but also meet up with our friend James. For those of you that know us pretty well, James is the reason Dan and I met (as he likes to remind us pretty regularly) and we were pretty excited to meet up with someone from home! We spent a few nights staying in Wombats hostel in Munich, before the prices nearly quadrupled for Oktoberfest weekend.

Given the planning we had put into getting to Munich for Oktoberfest, we decided to really get into the swing of things and buy lederhosen and a durndle for me (for the uninitiated, that's the little dress that females wear while the boys wear lederhosen). We spent a whole day trawling the city, looking at both new and secondhand traditional clothing. We were offered lederhosen from the 1800s costing about 1500 euros, but decided to go with the cheaper option of outfits from C&A (similar to Target or Myer). Stoked with our purchases, we headed to an Augustiner beer hall that night where the boys had beer and I had a radler (aka shandy) as well as pork knuckle, roast chicken, potato salad, apple strudle and more traditional Bavarian food.

We also planned to visit Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, and jumped on a metro train one morning and headed to the town just outside of Munich. While it could never be described as an experience I particularly looked forward to or enjoyed, I think everyone who visits Germany should visit one of these memorials just to commemorate the atrocities that were committed there, to ensure we never forget and never let it happen again. It was so sad walking through each building and reading all of the memorial material, and disturbing seeing the preserved crematoriums and gas chambers.

On a happier note, we also did a fantastic free walking tour of and learned the full history of Bavaria and Munich. It was creepy to hear that one of the beer halls we walked through is considered the "birthplace" of the Nazi party. The roof used to be covered in swastikas which has since been painted over.

Munich's most famous beer hall

The day before Oktoberfest began we moved to our campground and into our tents to join the world's biggest festival. Having not camped since high school, this wasn't an experience I was particularly looking forward to. Coupled with the fact that it rained torrentially for two full days meant the overall experience was quite wet and dreary! I did really enjoy getting dressed up in traditional clothing, the opening parade on the first day and and the atmosphere in the beer halls. We also had a pretty good time on some of the rides like the dodgem cars. Overall, Oktoberfest is a must-do, once in a lifetime experience full of Bavarian culture.

All dressed up in our traditional costumes

Some of the floats from the opening parade

In the beer halls

From Munich we moved away from beer-country into wine-country in Italy, which is a lot more my style...to be featured in my next blog.

Lapping up the culture in Vienna

After leaving behind Prague we arrived in Vienna in Austria, back into German speaking territory. Knowing we were heading to Munich the following week to meet our friend James and spend four nights camping at Oktoberfest while consuming copious amounts of German beer, we decided to take it easy in Vienna and relax and enjoy a bit of the culture.

On our first night we did a tour with our fellow Busabout-ers throughout the city. After seeing all of the sights, including the cathedral, town centre, Hapsburg palace and the museum precinct, we headed to eat our first schnitzel and strudel. As you can see from our photos below, the schnitzels were absolutely massive, but we managed to get through them and enjoy apple strudel for dessert. Dan also enjoyed his first one litre stein of beer, which he was really excited about.

Giant schnitzel and salad

We were really excited to find out that our wombats hostel was directly opposite the main food market in Vienna, the Naschmarkt. We spent a few days in Vienna relaxing around the hostel and wandering across the road intermittently to devour falafel, hommus, fruit and veges. Due to the awesome kitchen in the hostel, we also made some really cheap home cooked meals - with the markets across the road, all of the ingredients only cost us about five euro - bargain!

There were two highlights of our time in Venice - an awesome wine-tasting tour we did to the Wachau Valley and our trip to the opera.

The weather on our tour to the Wachau Valley was absolutely perfect. We headed on a bus out of Vienna to the valley and enjoyed hours of chatting with our fellow tour mates while drinking white wine in picturesque vineyards. Wine from the Wachau Valley can only be bought locally in the region, with specialties including varieties of white wines, especially Riesling.

The guys at wombats hostel reception insisted that the number one thing to do in Vienna was visit the opera - and with standing tickets only costing four euro, there was no excuse not to head along. We pulled out our best looking clothes (nice to get out of our dingy backpacker clothes for a while!) and headed to the opera house two hours before the show to line up for standing tickets. While it was a long wait, it was definitely worth it, as we enjoyed a 90 minute opera for only 4 euros each. We were also excited to find we had picked a lighter, more romantic-comedy style opera, rather than the dramatic and tragic style that I was expecting. The standing stalls also had small screens translating the opera into English, so we could understand the whole show. We had an absolutely fantastic night, and topped it off by visiting an Australian bar where I enjoyed some Vegemite toast and Dan had Australian beers. It's really funny to notice the little things you miss when you are away from home - the vegemite toast tasted like the best I had ever had!

Inside the beautiful opera house

Vegemite toast at the Aussie pub!

After four days in Vienna, we were keen to jump back on the bus and meet James in Munich ready for beer-drinking, pretzel eating and beer halls - you'll have to wait until my next blog to read about this!