Kew Gardens, London, One Sunday in November

I had always wanted to visit the Kew Gardens and one sunny Sunday in early Nov I decided it was the perfect opportunity to see the gardens before Autumn was over. The gardens are huge (about 300 acres) and contain both field and tree filled areas as well as conservatories and green houses. The gardens contain something like the largest collection of different plants in the world, and I can believe that.

The gardens are beautiful and a great place to spend a Sunday. We visited the conservatories with their amazing exotic plants and freakishly tall ferns. We saw the water lily house with an indoor pond and the most beautifully coloured water lilies.

We took a tree top walk amongst the golden trees (not as great as I had hoped, pretty short and the views were quite limited) but after it was fun to play in all the fallen leaves from the trees.

The most amazing thing was all the colours! Golds, yellows, browns, reds and even slight shades of pinks were displayed in the various trees around the gardens. It was beautiful.

Another greenhouse contained all sorts of great looking cacti, every type of carnivorous plant you can imagine and a beautiful room full of orchids. They had all sorts of other cool things as well but there was just too much to take it all in. It's an amazing place, and a great way to spend a sunny Autumn Sunday.

Lots of photos so some more below.

Bath, England, Sun 16 August 09

We headed to Bath for a Sunday day trip. We got there about midday and after a quick bite to eat at a local cafe, we spent most of the afternoon at Bath's main attraction, the Roman Baths.

The Roman Baths were much more detailed than I expected. I thought it was just going to be a couple of old baths but it turned out to be a large excavated complex with models of what the full baths and temple would have looked like, museum artifacts and excavated rooms. It was really interesting. We spent a good couple of hours there just exploring and learning all the history. It was really well done. You could really imagine what it would have been like in Roman time.


The rest of the afternoon we spent exploring Bath's cute streets, buildings and bridges. It's a cute town. There was this semi circle row of houses next to a park that was a great place to chill out and we enjoyed a nice stroll along the river and a look at the Bath weir.

And of course no visit to a small British town would be complete without ending the day at one of the local pubs :)

Waitangi Day Pub Crawl, Sat 7 Feb 08

What can I say... a day of drinking, walking, catching up with friends, and well more drinking! The pub crawl started at 10:30am and went through to about 5. Nick and I armed ourselves with a bottle of whiskey in our backpack and we were set!

There were some great costumes including kiwis, robots from Flight of the Conchords (and the guys themselves), Eagle vs Shark, Gorillas, 4 Square attendants, sheep, buzzy bees, NZ police and the Mongrel Mob. All sorts! A fun day!

London Snow, Mon 2 Feb 09

London experienced one of it's largest snowfalls in years! It started Sunday night and Nick, my flatmates and I made the most of the fresh snowfall by having a large snowfight out the front of our house and even got our landlord's son Daniel in on the act.

In the morning we were completely snowed in, the entire London bus network was down along with most of the trains and tubes too so no-one was going to work. Nick and I headed out for a long walk early while the snow was still fresh (it was a lot of slush by the end of the day). We ended up down at the river which was beautiful in the snow.

While at the river I heard a siren and waited to see the fire engine or ambulance that was making it... the next thing I know a fire engine boat flys up the river.... definitely one of the stranger things I've seen.

I loved the snow, wish it would snow more in London! Makes winter a little bit bearable.