Category: Background

Hot here. Redondo Beach.

Good flight from Anchorage to LA with nice views of glaciers as we left and a distant view of San Francisco from the air (look hard in the cloudy photo in link below and you will just see the tall buildings and the Bay Bridge).

Chilling this time in LA in the South Bay area, with a lot of warm before back to NZ and the wet and cold being enjoyed there!

At Redondo Beach, the largest of LA  County’s beach cities. Huge performing arts centre here and recreational waterfront with 2 miles of sandy beach. Medium waves today, swimmers but not much surfing. Many are enjoying the huge artificial beach area. Plenty of other activity for a Saturday morning as we wandered out onto the pier and around the King Harbour Marina..some serious money tied up there and interestingly most boats were in the marina most of the day. Bit choppy out out to sea but not that bad. There is a huge seawall protecting the bay from the ocean and plenty of paddleboards, jetskis, paddleboats and sightseers on the water in the protected bay. Also lots of sealions on a pontoon barking loudly. Expect that the beach and waterfront gets a pounding when waves are really crashing in here. Biking is popular and well catered for with a wide double lane exclusive cycleway. Every type of bike and rider.

Enjoyed a long cool drink and some seafood in the shade overlooking the pier. Fishing off the pier seems popular and saw a couple of little fish caught.

Very happy to have air conditioning working well when we got back to hotel. Great dinner overlooking the marina with lovely sunset colouring the boats and masts.

NOPI

P1140001Lunch treat today – last day in London and a visit to Ottolenghi’s flagship restaurant NOPI.
If you are a foodie you will know who/what this is.
Scrummo.
Wish I could have bought Yottam’s book back personally autographed – he was there.

(Just a bit too heavy for the rest of our travels).
Special early “Christmas Dinner” and pressies with the family. Sad to be leaving tomorrow – time goes too quickly – always.

NOPI photos

Home

RiverboatSafely home after the usual long flight. Great times were had and we will miss the early morning grandies visits, stories, games, family outings, baby chinos and pretzels! Enjoying beautiful sunny weather today and catching up. Lovely to see family here and catch-up on Amelia cuddles. The gardens at home are very lush and some serious work is now required.

Return to London

SaffronwaldenA quick visit to Saffron Walden on our way back to London.
A market town since 1141 in north-west Essex. Saffron was grown as main crop and source of prosperity in 15th and 16th centuries until into 19th century when malting and brewing took over.
Beautiful old buildings with decorative moulded plasterwork called pargetting.

Did not have time for the largest surviving turf maze in Europe thought to be about 800 years old, nor St Mary’s Church also notable. On the comeback list.

Link to Photos

Nice to be back with the family. Catching up on photo posts too – keep a look out over the next few days on previous posts.

Catch-up

In a belated summary – 2013 was big year for us with the arrival of two more grandchildren,  trips to Melbourne, London and a cruise (won’t be retiring any time soon!!)

Work rolls on for both of us and we are still love country living and beach weekends. We are so enjoying our three grandies and are very thankful for modern technology so we can chat with everyone around the world and keep up with milestones, family happenings and developments. We’ve partied on-line together and the lads have had a few baking contests – highly subjective judging of course but good fun.

No talk of the overseas domiciled family in London and on Hamilton Island (Great Barrier Reef) returning home (except for visits) so we are off to London again shortly because the grandchildren are growing up too fast! We will be away 6 weeks  – based in London (for 3 weeks) with detours on the way there via Las Vegas and a cruise from Copenhagen to Lisbon.

Trip2014

Zero Longitude

Outing to Greenwich today. Lunch in the lovely park area with food from Greenwich Markets. Markets very very busy – beautiful sunny day.

Walked up the hill to the Royal Observatory, Planetarium, Altazimuth Pavilion with telescope for viewing the sun, Shepherd 24 hour Gate Clock which always shows Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), The Time Ball – one of the world’s first visual time signals and of course the Prime Meridian Line. Stood with my feet in the East and the West at the same time. Just cause its what you do! The boys visited the Clock Museum.

Also here is the National Maritime Museum – outside is the world’s largest ship in a bottle – a scale replica of Nelson’s ship the “Victory”.

Some great views of London from the top of the hill.  Photos Greenwich

Off to Barcelona

Heading off to Barcelona soon for a couple of days before we join the cruise. See previous post for map of journey.
Have had great week in London with the family and more to come after cruise.
London looking set to have some nice weather in next few days (Murphy’s Law eh!) but we will have heat!
Not sure how often we will post in next few days but will do our best. Have posted photos of London and Brighton-links in those posts.

Google and Tate

Trained in to Waterloo Station this morning and walked to Google offices to have lunch with Matt – walked down The Mall, past Buckingham Palace to office in Buckingham Place Avenue. Spotted a few horses on the way to the Palace – the Queen not in. She’s been entertaining John Key at Balmoral. Got caught in a nasty little hail storm on our way to spent a few hours at Tate Modern Art Gallery- photos will give an idea of wide range of art to be seen.  Photos London and Kingston

Lovely sunset tonight- weather supposed to be improving for rest of the week but we are off to Barcelona tomorrow!

Hong Kong

A brief stop over in Hong Kong – changing airlines mean schedules do not match – checked into Novotel Citygate near the airport – opportunity in the morning for a ride on the gondola across the bay with great views of the airport and through peaks to a village and back again. Very pleasant way to spend an hour or two.

Checking in for flight back to Sydney with Cathay Pacific and on to Auckland with Qantas – and now Cathay have very helpfully offerred a seat on the direct flight to Auckland – arriving 7 hours earlier which is a great way to finish the travels. Fourteen flights in the whole safari become thirteen 🙂

Hong Kong Photos

Dubai

Arrive in Dubai around midnight – the busiest time apparently for the airport. The Emirates flight is parked on the tarmac miles from the terminal and 15 min bus ride to the terminal! long queues at customs! a shouting match between some Arabs when some people made a mistake and were perceived to have jumped the queue. Hotel is comfortable but not 5 star on the beach – couldn’t afford that – sigh! Welcome sleepin in the morning. Visit to the gold souk – well out of my depth there!!

Afternoon went on a desert safari – turned out to be 45 4WDs from the company met in the desert – our driver a Pakistani been in Dubai for 30 years was intent on giving maximum thrills – was an excellent experience – defintely exciting and not for the faint hearted. Some people tried boarding down the sand slope and others of us had a brief camel ride, then a decent BBQ dinner and bellydancing show. Overall was a great experience – clearly Dubai needs more than one day to do it justice! Never got to the beach, the waterfront developments or the malls – last on my list anyway…   Dubai Photos

To be fair the new Emirates terminal is very impressive – the check in hall was huge and no queues – the whole process was very quick even though I was finding my way – kiosk terminal to print boarding pass – no queue at bag drop – no queue at immigration or security – maybe 20 mins at most to get from entry to airside, and there were lots of flights going in a short space of time. Had an airbridge to flight this time – the first time in 4 landings/takeoffs. Overall I am impressed by the new Dubai airport and Emirates as an airline. Bound now for Hong Kong.