Nice to be back in this lovely city for a few days before our holiday ends.
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!
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.
Home
Return to London
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.
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.
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.
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
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 🙂