London Life, Thanks for the Memories

Perhaps a little late to be reminiscing about our life in London - now sitting at 1 year and 10 months since departing; but better now than never! London - one last tribute, here it is.
Also hoping that this post sparks off a better run of consistent blogging, as we have dropped off a bit. Distracted about plans to revamp this site to be more responsive and search engine friendly; unfortunately the core element - the writing content then dwindled away. Stay tuned for the revamp - it will happen. It was a new year's resolution after-all and those are never made to be broken!

London Life, Time to say Goodbye

Six months ago we said goodbye to London and hello to almost five months of continuous travel around the world (a heap of #5in5months tagged posts will be written about the places we visited). In the rush to pack up our rental place, finalise logistics for our trip and say goodbye to all the London locals whom we had met over the past 4.5 years - we never got around to writing a 'Farewell London' post. So here it is. Better later than never and we recap some of the highlights of the last couple of months in London town, trying not to feel too nostalgic with no regrets. But we already miss a good serve of cod and chips although hold the mushy peas!

London Life, Winter Spring 2015

As we start to wrap up our 'London Life' and begin the phase of moving home to Melbourne, the remaining weeks will be filled with reflection - the places we loved to visit; the non-travel weekend activities and the restaurants and food-related photos that have etched as memories of our time in London.
With a little over four years since we moved to the UK, it is almost surreal that in a little more than four weeks, we will be saying goodbye or perhaps 'see you later London'. Our travels around Europe have opened our eyes to so many new cultural experiences that we are pretty sure we will make it back one day.

London Life, Summer 2014

When the grey clouds gather over London and the sun starts setting earlier each day; flicking through photos of summertime becomes the inspiration to make it through another Northern Hemisphere winter. This blog post sums up the activities we did to keep ourselves occupied in the City - in between watching World Cup games and Mei taking a two month sabbatical from work-life to explore London's museums, public gardens, coffee shops and street markets - pretty much being a tourist whilst the sun shined.

London Life, Winter Spring 2014

After many weekends employing our creative talents to prepare our blog site for its public debut, we had put the development of new content on the back-burner. This left us with a backlog of travel photos to sort through and posts to write. We were also gently reminded by friends and family in Australia that they were keen to read about our latest cultural experiences. Our recurring 'London Life' post series had not been attended to since Christmas. As such, this post is a sweep up of Winter and Spring 2014 activities in London where we got in touch with our cultural side by eating, visiting events and linking up with family and friends.

London Life, Christmas 2013

As the 2013 year drew to a close, there were many days and nights of eating, drinking and generally being merry. However it wasn't long before the kilos piled on and made us pledge to many more New Years resolutions to head to the gym (regularly) to fend off the seasonal plumpness.

The Christmas just passed was our first in London and we soon discovered how the City turns into a ghost town on the 25th - no trains or busses running and Christmas menus have to be meticulously planned as only off-license super-marts are open on the day.

London Life, Autumn 2013

As Autumn arrives we don't look forward to:

- That first morning when you need to locate your scarf and coat that has been hanging in the plastic dry-cleaning bag since last year.

- The clear blue sky that appears early in the day, followed by encroaching darkness in the afternoon.
- Slippery leaves on the footpath and an abundance of spiders that decide the best place to weave a web is across your front door.
- Family and friends in Australia gleefully reminding you via social media of how amazingly warm Spring-time is.

London Life, Summer 2013

Summer in 2013 included a number of exciting personal milestones - our 1 year wedding anniversary and our 5 years as a couple.
Celebrations involved the purchase of a Le Creuset grill and pan as Olie is keen to build up an inventory before we return home to Australia.
As the weather improved we tried our best to spend weekends outside of the house - seeing concerts, catching up with friends and of course plenty of eating. During the past couple of months, we ate out at a number of restaurants in London and therefore this post is full of 'food' pictures. Great food deserves recognition.

London Life, Spring 2013

The 11th of April each year marks the anniversary of our arrival in London. In 2013, we will celebrate our 2nd year and based on our original plans we should have already packed up and left by now. However the best plans are meant to change. We still have a lot of travel destinations left on our 'to do list' and also so much more of London and the UK to explore. So in the first quarter of 2013, we found ourselves with a few consecutive weekends without European travel and therefore we decided to re-acquaint ourselves with some more London activities.

London Life, Autumn 2012

The period of time leading up to a Northern hemisphere winter is filled with anxiety about how cold the upcoming season will be. Around October, the level of sunlight starts to dip, autumn leaves clog up the footpaths and when the clocks change out of 'summer time', the reality check hits that winter is almost here. The upbeat spirit of the Olympics had well and truly passed by and the city's mood had been dampened by consecutive days of rainfall, single digit temperatures and the wholesale buying of thermal clothing. And whilst the sky darkens around 4pm, at least there are plenty of Christmas lights appearing to brighten up our evenings.

London Life, Olympic Moments

Being in London for the Olympic Games has been an amazing experience. The photos in this blog recollect just a fraction of the memories that were made whilst we attended three sporting events, or watched the online coverage with friends over drinks; cheered in front of a laptop with colleagues (usually for Team GB) or on the iPad at home. We saw some magical moments - Sally Pearson's gold, Usain Bolt's triple gold, Mo Farrah and watched the Boomers take action against the Team USA at North Greenwich Arena.

London Life, Summer 2012 - Part 2

Another entry about London's summer a year ago was filled with news dominated by the riots. This year we are being showered by the glory of Team GB and the unrelenting rain.
The short stint of almost 30 degree weather a fortnight ago is probably the best we are going to get this year.
And to our Aussie friends and family back home, perhaps the glum cloudy skyline has not been noticed during the Olympic Games coverage because either everyone has been too sleepy to notice; or Australia's performance in these Games has been far more depressing.
Our London Olympic adventures are detailed in a separate blog post. This post sums up the rest of the activities we got up to over Summer 2012.

London Life, Summer 2012 - Part 1

With the summer solstice passing by during the week - scarcely noticed as the grey clouds made it difficult to tell if we had reached maximum daylight hours; it felt again slightly depressing that summer would be ending soon and we will once again stare out of our windows as twilight greets us at 3:30pm in the afternoon.

Yes, we have started whinging more about the weather, meaning that we were becoming more acclimatized as a London local.
It was sad to say that the sun decided to bypass London for most of Summer 2012 - even though this was the big Olympic year. But despite this, we found new ways to occupy our time around London during the weekends that we weren't travelling around Europe.

London Life, Our Wedding

"Happy wife, Happy life"
- a piece of marital advice for Olie written in one of our wedding cards.

So true.

This blog post is extra special to us as it covers that important date - our wedding. We decided to get married in London for a variety of reasons, however we also wanted to share this special day with family and friends in Australia. With social media and other technology, this was all made possible. Our wedding day was an amazing moment in our lives and the photos and detail about the planning, ceremony and reception will stay with us as a record of this life milestone - to laugh at and reflect on for many years to come.

London Life, Winter 2012

Winter arrived and so did our first taste of London snow. We had now experienced all four seasons in the northern hemisphere and were really surprised and how quickly things have passed by. The number of months remaining on our visa have started to dwindle and soon we will need to make the decision about renewing our stay or heading back home.
As the weather started to get colder, Mei's UK colleagues are finally admitting that the temperature is low enough to stop teasing her for wearing layers of down jacket, thermals, scarf, hat and gloves.

London Life, New Years 2012

A traditional part of New Year's Eve, besides fireworks, champagne and singing Auld Lang Syne; is to reflect on the year gone by and think back to where you had been the previous 31 December and the resolutions made and how quickly they were subsequently broken.
As the clocks ticked over into 2012, we reminisced on the year that had been - moving from Melbourne to London, kicking off a series of weekend trips around Europe, starting new jobs, meeting new friends and absorbing ourselves into a new city with its culture, food and history.

London Life, Christmas 2011

Our first December in London opened up our eyes as to how seriously the Northern Hemisphere countries celebrate the Christmas period. From October, the department stores have already brought out the festive wrapping paper, decorations and many shelves in Tesco are stocked with different varieties of hampers.
To enjoy the pre-Christmas lead up, we were a bit more active around London - walking to Covent Garden to see the Christmas Tree, drinking 'hot' cider in pubs and we also admired the Christmas decorations and lights put up by our neighbours that gave our street a more Christmas feel.

London Life, Autumn 2011

A Sunday night spent at the Royal Albert Hall with a few hundred patriotic Union Jack flag wavers, singing 'Rule Britannia' - was one that we could add to the list of unique UK experiences.
Just when we thought that nothing could make us 'feel' more patriotically British than wearing silly blue, red and white hats and drinking Pimms in Hyde Park for the Royal Wedding; the Classical Spectacular concert gave us a taste of what the UK will be like in 2012 during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics. Autumn 2011 kicked off a season of London activities that we enjoyed, feeling settled in at last.

London Life, Six Months

It sounds cliched by time has passed by so quickly and we marked our 6 month anniversary in London town. So far the experience has been amazing - we have started to work our way through our 'to do list', booking weekend trips, absorbing ourselves in all aspects of culture - food, people, historic sites and having a ball of fun.
This blog is a reflection on some of the highlights from living six months as Londoners, taking into account our three favourite past-times: great architecture, travel and food

London Life, Summer 2011

Summer is when London comes alive with activity that motivates you to spend every non-travelling weekend exploring this amazing city. We discovered the joy of watching street performers, hunting down festivals, looking out for the hidden cultural gems that may be a sculpture on Southbank or a community landmark that is treasured by locals. When the Summer of 2011 has been dominated by the negative vibe of the 'riots' - it was refreshing to see Londoners pull together and restore that positive community spirit.