Category Archives: London Experiences

An outing to The Globe

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Last week my friend Jessie and I went to see Troilus and Cressida performed by the Ngakau Toa from NZ. The play was performed all in Maori which was both interesting and near impossible to understand! I could remember a few words from my 10 weeks in high school maori class like: Aroha: Love, Kia Kaha: Stay strong, Kapai: Good, Tena Kotu: Hello/Welcome and that’s probably about it!

Me (left) and Jessie (right)

We met at Jessie’s work and walked a block to have some Thai food for dinner then got the bus to Blackfriars and walked along Southbank to The Globe. With excitement and just a little starstruck with the settings and finding out we were going to see Rawiri Paratene in real life.

We sat just off the side of the stage which was lucky since it did rain in the middle of the show. It was amazing, we had plenty of laughs and a lot of gorgeous boys on show. :) The story of Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy written by Shakespeare. They believe it was written around 1602. The play is based around the love between Troilus and Cressida and ends in the tragic death of Troilus’ brother, Hector. The play rapidly changes from comedy to gloom which keeps you on the edge of your seat and Rawiri played a hilarious Uncle Pandarus. My other favourite character of the night was Thersites who is a servant to Ajax. The actors really made the most of the theatre and mingled in with the crowd which was awesome to see. It was the only time I wished we had bought standing tickets.

At the end of the play Jessie and I walked back over the Millenium Bridge in awe of the lighting of St Pauls at night and parted ways. I had a great night out and I am really pleased to have enjoyed another unique London experience.

 

March – What a month!

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One post in March…one! I am not so good at keeping my promises am I? I think I know what I am doing wrong though and that is all related to the last time I wrote in March.
How much has changed since then? Not much in terms of my personal health but…I have been absent because I have had to be practicing the ‘for worse’ part of my vows I will be saying next March.
Dave went to Geneva last month to visit a friend and do some snowboarding. There was also some fancy car show on while they were over there so they planned to spend a day there as well. After a couple of days of fun and snow I was called by a distressed Dave to be told he had broken his collarbone and was needing to have surgery to fix it! I was a wreck. I spent the rest of my weekend going backwards and forwards between insurance people and Dave trying to get him home so he could be looked after here. They had told him it wasn’t urgent enough to need to be operated on there so he could come back here and see the NHS for the op. By the time he got back and he saw a consultant at a private hospital (gotta love his work having medical insurance!) they told him the bone was fractured badly, not completely broken, and that he could have surgery or leave it to heal naturally which is the path we decided to take. It has been a long month and hard on us both. Dave has just started working from home and I am grateful for the fact that it was nothing more serious! I am certainly not so keen on holidays apart anymore…this was the first one since we moved here 2 years ago…but hey. Onwards and upwards.

On the emergency evac thing at Meribel

We celebrated (well, noted) our 5 year anniversary in March too. It was a few days after Dave got home so it wasn’t so much a celebration but we took the time to say nice things to each other and get excited that on that day next year we will be getting married!!! :)

Takapuna Methodist - The church where we will be married

I had a fantastic month at work and met my target for the first time which was a great relief to know I could do it! My challenge to myself now is to kick butt again and again until we head off home.

My cousin and her Daughter visited from NZ in March. Her sister lives in Bristol so they spent most of their time there but came up to visit for two days. We saw the changing of the guards, did a cruise on the Thames, went to the National Gallery and a few other touristy things. It was great to see them all and I always enjoy the chance to see whatever I can of London with others because I find it adds so much to the enjoyment. I hadn’t been into the National Gallery or done a Thames cruise so that was nice to add into the mix of the ‘standard’ sights.

My gorgeous cousins and Maddy

It was also my Dad’s birthday so we arranged for a yummy chocolate cake to be delivered which was apparently thoroughly enjoyed.

All in all I can safely say I am glad March is over but it was great that we had things to enjoy and celebrate to help distract us from the rubbish stuff that happened.

Here’s hoping I find some more time this month to keep writing, crafting and resting!!!

Monopoly Photo Walk

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It should only take a few hours right? Guess that depends on how many hours is a few! With about 3 hours on Monday and 6 hours on Tuesday it was a much, much bigger mission than we expected. Pretty glad we didn’t think to turn it into a pub crawl – I have no idea how you would make it through a pub crawl…

We used a route we found on the internet (which I would share but I’m not sure I can do that without breaching some sort of copyright. Just google search it and it comes up on the first page) and that started us at Park Lane. Starting at the top!

After a few hours of walking and taking photos we got to Piccadilly Circus I realised my card wallet with quite a few cards etc had ended up in the rubbish in the cafe we had lunch at…so we speed walked back all the way up to Marble Arch and had to get them searching through the rubbish to find it! Eventually they did though so all the stress and exercise paid off. Thank goodness!

We decided that as it was getting dark we would head over to Victoria to the theatre where we had booked to see, go home and get up early the next morning to get it finished.

It was about 10.30/11am when we got into town on Tuesday where we picked up where we left off and tried to pick up the pace. We were aiming to finish the photos and get to Greenwich, Britain at War Museum and/or Britain Museum…let’s just say that was wishful thinking! At 4.30pm we were at Liverpool Street with just four places left. All the Museums closed at 5pm so we had given up all hope of getting to the museums and were just hoping to get good enough photos without tripods.

That London gets dark at 3pm ish in winter time has to be the most frustrating and depressing part of winter. I can handle cold, snow and even wet and windy…but so many hours of dark is just so hard!!!

We just managed to get our final shots of Marylebone and get on the train home by 17.56pm…It was both a rewarding yet full on experience and although I wouldn’t try to undertake it again in any shape or form I am pleased I have done it and hope you enjoy the little snippets throughtout this post.

Hope you are all having a lovely week and I would love to hear any stories you may have of any Monopoly Board photo walks/pub crawls etc!