A Weekend in London

Well seeing as we only have a few weeks left in London before we head off on a big adventure we thought we should do the things we've been meaning to do for ages. So we've written a list of things we want to see before we leave. Last weekend was the Saachi Gallery, a contemporary art gallery near Sloane Square and Harrods as we hadn't done that either.

Although in true London style half of the trains weren't running due to the standard weekend engineering works. So one bus and three trains later we arrived a Knightsbridge . We couldn't even get off at Sloane Square because that part of the line wasn't operational! haha.

Anyway, thought I'd better get the touristy shots in too so here's a pic of Nathanael at Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes.

I can't say i was a fan of everything at the Saachi gallery. I'm not much of an art person anyway, but a few things were really cool. At the moment they have some stuff from artists from the Middle East. This one below is all made of aluminum foil. It was really cool but i got in trouble for standing too close to it!

This one I'd seen written about in the paper and it looked interesting. It's a selection of sculptures of aged world leaders in automatic wheelchairs. It was really cool and they looked quite real. And the wheelchairs moved!

This one is called 'The Bed" and is made or paper mache. It was massive. There is a watch you can't see on the ground and the band had door hinges holding it together.

We also managed to check out Harrods and i must say, what credit crunch? The place was pumping especially the food court which was packed with people eating oysters and drinking champagne. There were lines for every food place and it was about 3 in the arvo. Nate and i had a wander around. Checked out the toys and walked through all the designer baby and kids clothes. I mean Roberto Cavalli for babies?! Are you serious. Who buys this stuff? There was every designer brand imaginable.

I stopped by the Laura Mercier cosmetic counter and was served by a really nice chick from Melbourne. I was expecting Harrods to be expensive but it was exactly the same price as buying the stuff online so i made a purchase.

We also went to check out their wine shop. Nate spotted a bottle of red from the Two Hands winery in the Barossa. We've been to their cellar door in Barossa and they seriously make the best red wine we've ever had. Then he spotted the price tag. It was 13 pounds! Which is an amazing price even for Australia but especially when you consider shipping costs etc. Needless to say we bought it and drank it that night. This one is called the Canny Butcher and was a 2005, but they are all good. If you ever want an amazing red wine, then check out Two Hands. Worth every cent (or penny in this case!).

Bruges

What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say 'Belgium'? Chocolate? Chips? Waffles? Beer? Well the truth is, that that's exactly what Belgium's like. Here's some evidence:

Waffles.

Chips.

(That's the sign for the Friet Museum which teaches you all about the history, manufacture and indeed the art of the French Fry.)

Beer. (Bruges Zot, the local drop)
And chocolate
They have quite a nifty little chocolate museum in Bruges too where you can watch a demonstration of chocolate making. To be honest, I was more amazed by the way the chocolatier was explaining what he was doing simultaneously in three languages.


What I wasn't expecting from Belgium was a turn on a Segway :-) The guy behind me in the photo runs Segway tours around the city and let me have a go as a promo. It was awesome. Maybe I'll see if I can have my groomsmen arrive on them ;-)

And speaking of things technological check out this vending machine. Now, we've been to Japan which is the motherland of automated food and beverage delivery, but this takes the cake. It's nothing short of a robotic 24-hour convenience store. And don't think it's just Mars bars and Coke, there was everything from bread to cheeseburgers to kitchen roll.

More Portugal

After Sintra and a bout of serious food poisoning or bird flu or something we headed off in our tiny hire car to the Duoro Valley.

The Duoro is one of Portugal's more famous wine regions and most famous for it's production of grapes for Port. The roads in the Duoro were unbelievably steep and I was just trying to focus on the white line in the middle of the road. Nate advise me not to look at the sheer drop just metres away. The instructions for the B&B said to avoid the first turn off for the winery unless you were used to driving on steep roads. We saw the sign but couldn't even see the actual road because it was so steep! It looked like you'd be driving straight off the cliff. Scary stuff!

Anyway, we arrived there safely and here's a picture of Nate with the Duoro Valley in the background.

After the Duoro valley we headed to Porto itself and I was glad to get rid of the hire car. The driving was fantastic along the freeways but the tolls were pricey. I think we spent 30 Euros on tolls ($55AUD). We also got seriously lost in the city of Braga and couldn't get out! I drove around for about an hour in this stupid town which wasn't much fun seeing as i wasn't enjoying sitting in the left hand side of the car, changing gears with my right hand, driving on the wrong side of the road and basically driving in a busy, maze-like, cobble stoned Portuguese town.

Anyway, we finally made it to Porto and ditched the car. The sun was still shining and this is a picture of the river and Porto city in the background.

And here is a picture of me riding a pig. Yes, it was fun:)

We went off to the other side of the river to Vila Nova de Gaia, which is where all the port is(and the pigs too). Basically until 1987 all the port produced in the Duoro Valley was transported there to be aged. If it wasn't aged there, then it wasn't port. Simple. Things have changed now, but most of the Port producers have tasting rooms there and this is where all the tourism is. In the Duoro even though there was a lot of grapes being grown, very few of the wineries are actually open for tourists like in Australia.

Anyway, we wasted no time. Here is a picture of me sampling some of the delicious port at Taylors. Oh yeah and when they ask you if you know much about port and you say "yes, we drink it in Australia", they smirk and think that's not real port you stupid Australian!!

The next day we headed back to Braga (the Bermuda triangle like city) but this time on the train. I was adamant that i wanted to go and see Bom Jesus do Monte which apparently means good Jesus of the mountain according to wikipedia. So anyway it turned out that the train was a much better idea and we were there within an hour and a half.

We headed up the stairway which is actually much longer than you can see in this picture. At the top of the stairway is a church and on the way up there is a fountain on each level representing the five wounds of Christ, the three virtues and the five senses (there's some more detailed pics on flickr). At the top there was a fantastic view so we stopped to have an ice cream. There was also a park with a lake and yet another grotto. All in all it was worth the visit and I'm glad we finally made it.

And last but not least we ate this delicious starter on our last night in Porto. It was at a restaurant called Black Coffee and luckily for us Nathanael spoke French because the waiter only spoke Portuguese or French. Anyway, he suggested this. It was goat's cheese, possibly deep fried and then covered in honey and walnuts. YUM!

Engaged!

While we were on holiday in Lisbon Nathanael proposed to me on Valentine's day. My answer was yes of course!

Here's a pic of my ring, that Nathanael chose:) It's at the jewellers getting resized at the moment. Apparently Nate's pinky finger is still bigger than my ring finger. haha

We won't be back in Perth till the end of June this year so we're saying May 1st next year as the date. Hopefully I can get everything organised by then as I'm still organising our travels for this year.

And here's a picture of the gorgeous flowers my work mates bought me when they found out the news. They are absolutely stunning and they smell amazing. The entire flat smells like flowers!

Portugal Pt. 2 - Sintra

So there's going to be a whole lot of photos in this post; you have been warned.

Sintra is a picturesque town close enough to Lisbon to be a tourist destination for just about everyone looking for a day trip to do while on holidays. Even the Portuguese visit Sintra. Lord Byron even wrote a poem about it. It's that good.

Below you can see the building that is the icon of Sintra: the Sintra National Palace

But that's not what I loved about Sintra. There's a couple of castles up on the hill and stuff, but they're not what I fell in love with either. The Quinta da Regaleira is an absolutely amazing neo-romantic palace and garden full of absurd follies, astonishing architecture, sinister alchemical allusions, a smattering of Templar and Masonic references and just a hint of eccentricity.
This is the main house as seen from the current tourist entrance:
And this is a view from the inside of the Labyrinthine Grotto, one of the many grottoes and follies in the gardens.

And one from the outside so you can appreciate the artificial lake outside the grotto:The Gate of the Guardians. This is a folly which guards the entrance to an underground tunnel with a mysterious destination that I will reveal later on in the post...


A closer picture of The Guardians.
Opposite the Guardians is the Terrace of Celestial Worlds and reservoir. The Terrace has its own homage to the Moorish ruins on the hill that overlooks Sintra (hiding behind a tree in this pic unfortunately):Now, the other end of the underground tunnel that is guarded by the Guardians. The Initiation Well (Dum-dum-dah!!) a 27 metre inverted tower with 9 levels of spiral staircase, a huge 'Templar/Ordo Christo' cross at the bottom and replete with not 1 but in fact 2 underground tunnels (the one from the guardians meets halfway up, the one from the bottom has two exits...) that were once the home to introduced colonies of bats. Unfortunately the pictures don't do it justice. Oh and did I mention that there is a hidden entrance through a revolving stone door in a dolomen?

I honestly could go on and on about all the iconography that is spattered around the estate (I haven't even posted pictures of the chapel!) but I fear it would get tiresome too quickly. Suffice it to say, that I'm a sucker for the eccentric, the esoteric and am prone to the flights of fancy that the builder of this estate must have also been subject to. The imagination and vision simply takes my breath away. No doubt I'll get around to posting more on the Quinta da Regaleira at another point.

N

Portugal Pt. 1 - Lisbon

Impressive, no? This is the 'Padrão dos Descobrimentos' in Belem, an outer suburb of Lisbon. It's a monument to the age of discovery. I thought it'd be a nice way to start a post.

Well as you may, or may not, know Laura and I picked Portugal as our destination for mid-term break. There's a lot of photos, so I thought instead of just picking a few, I'd pick a few from each city/town we stopped at and split it up into a few posts.

Up on the hill you can see S. Jorge castle. It's on one of the high hills around Lisbon and has variously been the sight of settlement by the Iberians, Visigoths, Romans, Moors and Christian Reconquistas. We went up there and there are some great city views to be had, check Laura's Flickr stream for those.

This is the Elevador de Santa Justa, designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel. It's kinda steam-punk with the neo-Gothic arches, and is really more of a tourist attraction than a practical public transport these days. There's a walkway from the top which is hidden in the photo, and some great views too.

This is one of the more practical 'elevadors'; there are three of these funicular railways in Lisbon. I think Laura did a great job with the lighting in this photo. She's quite the budding photographer ;-)

And here she is from a lookout near Bairro Alto, with the castle and city in the background. (linguistic aside/quiz question: bairro is related to the root of our word 'borough', so what's the translation of that part of Lisbon? It's easy I know, I'll try and find something harder for you next post.):

Snow Day!!!

I think this photo pretty much tells the whole story. Apparently London is incapable of doing anything when there's a few inches of snow on the ground. I must say that this photo isn't outside my school, but it's one of the 1000 schools that was closed in London today. In addition to the schools, all the buses were cancelled this morning (though a very limited service has been restored this afternoon), and all but two of the tube lines are closed also. Basically, we stayed at home because we couldn't go anywhere.

Well, we did go out for a walk. Or in Laura's case, a slip ;-)


But here's her after she regained her feet. This is a street around the corner from us.


No snowmen today though: we couldn't quite get the hang of rolling the very light snow into anything like a decent size snowball. I settled for making a snow angel instead.