Boo hoo, a big plane ride to come...

Wednesday 11th of July

Boo hoo. Today is the last day of our holiday. We are now beginning to brace ourselves for the big trip back to New Zealand.

We have spent the last four days having a lovely time in London. Marty’s sister Ngaire and her husband Paul have been extremely kind and generous hosts and we have had a great time seeing the sites in London-town.

On Sunday, we went for a drive to Windsor and saw the castle (along with every other tourist in London, I think). We then had a genuine pub lunch and enjoyed a stroll along the lake at Virginia Waters. We continued out London pub crawl in the evening and went to a pub quiz not far from Ngaire and Paul’s house where we managed a respectable fourth!

Monday and Tuesday were spent exploring the city and I feel like I have spent two days playing Monopoly (Oxford, Regent, Whitehall, Bond etc…)! We successful negotiated both bus (yes, red double decker) and train and so are beginning to feel like locals. The real highlight of the last two days was a trip to the Tate Modern Art Gallery. It is the sort of place where you really could spend the whole day. Marty particularly enjoyed the current Dali and Film exhibition. I tried to go to the Globe theatre but unfortunately arrived right in the middle of a show which meant that I could see neither a play nor the theatre. I guess I’ll have to come back! Sadly, we forgot to take our camera both days in London, so I don’t have any pictures to show for it all!!

The weather in London has been much more like New Zealand’s (read: colder) so we are feeling like we are in the process of reacclimatising, although we hear that it has been really quite rotten in NZ. We’re certainly not looking forward to getting the winter woollies out again.

Anyhow, in 48 hours time we will (all going well) be back in New Zealand and looking forward to catching up on all the news. Thanks to all of you who have emailed and kept in touch… it’s been nice to have some contact J See you back in NZ!!!

xxxr