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.

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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.

Nathanael's Birthday

So it was Nathanael's 24th birthday on the 14th of January. As part of the celebrations of his birthday month (or so he kept telling me) we decided to go out to dinner on his actual birthday. We went to Restaurant Sauterelle in the Royal Exchange Building in London. Fantastic building. Here is a pic from the mezzanine where the restaurant is.

As per usual i felt compelled to embarrass everyone by photographing all the food. Here's a selection of things we ate.

My entree - Beetroot salad with goat's cheese mousse


Jon's main - Cod and chorizo


My main - Jerusalem artichoke risotto with truffle oil

Nate's dessert - chestnut parfait with sorbet and some delicious chocolate hazelnut thing that tasted like a ferrero rocher. yum!

Here are Nate and his parents at dinner. They had a waiter that brought around a selection of breads. That's my kind of restaurant.

And here is the pocket watch that my parents and I got Nathanael for his birthday. It's the official Swiss railway clock.

And finally here's the birthday boy with his cake... and yes, he's had a haircut since these photos. haha

Being a tourist in the Arctic

Ok, so we didn't actually go to the Arctic, but the weather certainly came to us here in London. Nathanael's parents, sister and her boyfriend arrived on boxing day and for about two weeks after that the temperature didn't get much higher than 4 degrees. It also snowed a few times, but not really enough for any more awesome snowmen.

Here's a picture of the Reinertsens and James at the Borough Markets, drinking hot cider:)

We went to Hyde Park to check out the Winter Wonderland which had Christmas markets, rides, ice skating and a giant snow globe for people.

We also went to check out the Tower of London. I can't believe how many people were there even though it was freezing cold. We had to line up to get in and even line up about half an hour to see the crown jewels which we were whizzed passed on a conveyor belt thingo so we just managed to catch a glimpse of them.

Here is a picture of me trying out one of their helmets.

And here's me and Nate with a Beefeater. Apparently he didn't like camera flashes. Oops...

We also went to the British Museum, London Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Camden Market and Spitalfields Markets! So we certainly were busy, but we still made sure to be home by 5pm because it was so cold.

Nate and I are now back at work. Hannah and James are now on a Contiki around Europe and Nate's parents are in Berlin. So we will see them again before they head home in February.

Ok, that's it. Sorry for the boring post!

Strasbourg et la Suisse

Merry Christmas everyone!

We decided to get away for a few days before Christmas, and Laura found some cheap flights to Basel. It's a city in the north of Switzerland and is a stone's throw from France. Because of its proximity, and because I hadn't yet been to France, we did a day trip to Strasbourg:
La cathédrale de Strasbourg. In la place de la cathédrale were some fantastic Christmas markets, you'll find some photos on Laura's flickr.

Laura in "Petite France". You might be a little confused as to why a French city has a place called "Petite France". Well the short story is that Strasbourg is so close to Germany, it actually has historically been a German city. This part of the city is architecturally quite French, hence the name.

We then spent a day in Basel, before heading to Luzern/Lucerne. Here's a picture of the chapel bridge; apparently it's the most photographed monument in Switzerland.

After a day exploring Luzern, we headed up Mt. Rigi. The weather above the cloud layer was fantastic, but down in the valleys it was very dark and dull. Here's me on a toboggan. Not being familiar with snow at all, Laura and I hired one and decided to ride it down the toboggan track. Despite the four year old chidren screaming down it at ridiculous speeds, we approached with great trepidation. And it was in fact rather scary. As you can see, there's no steering as such, so a change in direction if effected by a combination of leaning and dragging your feet. This is all good fun except for the unfenced drop-offs on the outside of a few of the corners... But what a view huh?