London - canal time

This Xmas holiday time in London I discovered the canals. I know that London and England have canals but never gave them much thought. Sam, Mike and I had a day together and first off we went to the Columbia Rd flower market, not at its spectacular best being the middle of winter but I'm always happy to mooch about London and it was a spectacular clear blue sky day. cold but lovely.  

 

some entertainment at the flower market.

    and we found a dairy. Unfortunately, it was closed so we couldn't investigate inside

After the flower market we walked about and then Sam said something about the canal and that's when I 'discovered' the canals - we'd just walked across a little bridge over Regent's Canal so we turned around and went down onto the canal path for a closer look. There were canal boats all along the side and there was a lock just along from the bridge. A boat was coming along so we decided to wait and see it go through the lock, Mike thought it takes ages but I asked the lady, who'd got off the boat and was walking purposefully along swinging a rather large metal key thing, and she said 10 - 15 minutes. Turned out that the big metal key thing is used to turn the thing which lifts up the bottom of the lock gates to let the water out. She also told me to get on the boat and have a ride and so I did. I was on the boat while it made it's way through the lock, it was really interesting and I now know a lot more about how locks work, the canal system, the boats, etc etc etc because the man driving was a mine if information and didn't stop talking the whole time, plus I got to have 1st hand experience.  I took the opportunity to have a look 'below decks' and was surprised at how warm it was down there. I thought that it was a good lot of space for 2- 4 or maybe a family with a couple of young children adults but couldn't imagine a family with older children loving on one of these boats. It was like a long wide hall with little partitions along the side.

   Regent's Canal from the top of the steps

   

the lock

  

Sam on the job

 

 here we go into the lock, there's only a few centimeters between the side of the gate and the side of the boat

    

   we sat here inside the lock while the water level went down about 2.5 meters

    

     on our way through to the other side 

  the intrepid crew about to continue their journey to the Thames Barrier

It was a wonderful experience, so unexpected, just one of those things that happen when walking about.

A couple of days later I met up with friends from Wellington, David and Lesley who were in London for a couple of days, near Paddington Station, which is close to Little Venice  and canals, so  we went off and had coffee on a canal boat cafe. After coffee we wandered around Little Venice for a bit, along the canal, and then it was time to find somewhere for lunch and more chatting until it was time to go our separate ways. It was great to see them and I look forward to meeting up again in NZ.

Paddington Branch coming off Regent's Canal, little Venice. The boat on the left is the cafe.

    crossing a bridge in Little Venice

A few days after that Emma and I visited the Canal Museum, which was very interesting and well worth the visit. Lots of information, history, pictures, models- some working, and a big, detailed map of the canals in London - existing, closed and proposed  routes for canals that never got built. I think that the little specialty museums are great, well, some of them are.  I guess that there'll be some crappy ones, too.  I haven't seen any, yet! Through the doors at the back of the Canal Museum is a Basin which is like a siding or parking area for canal boats. This one was divided into 2 areas - 1 is for boats moored permanently and are residences and there other part was for those just passing through.

 These are some of the permanent boats

   Temporary parking area 

 All in all, my holiday came to have a bit of a 'canal' theme going on. I'd love to do the canal boat ride through part of London, I can't remember exactly where it goes although I think part of it is through Regent's Park, because I think it would be an interesting perspective but I've got no inclination to canal through the countryside. It would be like watching grass grow and I think the locks would lose their fascination quite quickly.

Xmas and more in London

   This was the sky from the balcony outside Emma and Brit's flat on Xmas morning. Cold and sunny with no sign of snow so not much chance of a white Xmas at all.

 This Xmas was certainly a low key affair after the busyness and people that was the previous Xmas when Barry, Thomas and Robyn were in London as well. This time there were 4 of us - Emma, Brit, Sam and me had breakfast and unwrapping presents at Emma and Brit's flat without a lot of fuss and bother but it was a  really lovely morning. Well, a late leisurely breakfast and present unwrapping with lots of fun and laughter. Brit demonstrated her square-egg making skills - 

Yes, it is actually a square, hard boiled egg.

 our little heap of 'loot'

Emma and Brit gave me a fabulous book called 'Letters of Note' by Saun Usher put together from his collection of letters, memos and telegrams which appear on his website. One of the letters is Queen Elizabeth II's handwritten letter and personal recipe for drop scones, as sent to President Eisenhower. It is a fabulous book and I shall be very happy to have it on my bookshelf in Auckland. It is a rather large and heavy book so, unfortunately, I couldn't bring it back to Azpeitia with me so it is with Emma for safe keeping, probably until June when I pack up to head back to NZ. From Sam I got bottles and jars of delicious tastiness - Brixton Pound Sauce, chopped chillies, hot English seed mustard and one other that I don't remember the name of.  The reason why I can't just have a look is because I'm in a bar, Etxe Zuri, White House in English, having a beer while I do this blog. These jars and bottles I didn't leave behind and now they sit on the bench in my apartment kind of like a bunch of flowers except it's like  a 'bunch of deliciousness', and, I'm savouring every little taste of them.

And then it was time to be off to the Clapham North pub, in Clapham Clapham North not so far from Brixton, for a slap-up Xmas Dinner with Holly and Stacey, Holly's mother who had come over from NZ to have Xmas, and an extended visit with her lovely daughter. There is no public transport in London on Xmas Day, good for them I say, however taxis are running. It had been decided that we'd taxi to the pub so this had been preordered but it didn't come and after some time we finally decided that it wasn't coming so Emma telephoned, was told our job wasn't on their list. Emma kept her cool and they despatched one and we waited and we waited some more and then Emma got a call - from the taxi driver. He couldn't find our place so Emma gave him directions and then he called again saying 

the same thing so we ended up telling him to stay where he was and we walked to him. He was just on the other side of the estate! Anyway, we got to where we needed to be in time so it was ok in the end. The same company was booked to take me to Heathrow to come back to Azpeitia and the same thing happened so it's a cab company to be ditched, in my opinion. 

We'd booked for 2pm and had preordered our food when the booking was made so we just sat and chatted and drank wine while we waited for our food to arrive in front of us. Oh my, there was so much food on our plates - entrees, mains and desserts and we were all stuffed to bursting by the time we'd finished. No shopping, cooking or cleaning up - certainly it was a different (for me) and very relaxed Xmas Dinner. Eventually we headed back to the flat, on foot, to finish off the day lolling about enjoying each other's company.

Just remembered - on the night of the 23rd we all went to China Town for dinner which was not up to the Canton Cafe's deliciousness I'm sorry to say, and then guess what we went to see ..... Yes, you're right .... ' LOVE ACTUALLY' ..... apparently this is what has to be done at Xmas time and I must tell you that I went with good grace. This film is not one of my favourite movies, not even close and Hugh Grant is definitely not one of my favourite actors, again not even close, and this has become a bit of a joke with my family who all love Hugh Grant and that movie. We did the same thing the year before and what continues to surprise me is that the theatre was, again, full and most likely it will be full of people next xmas watching Love Actually again! We got given a cup of mulled wine and a xmas mince pie each to go into the theatre with so not all bad, well, actually it was a lot of fun.

On Xmas Eve London time/Xmas Day morning NZ time we had a skype chat with Barry, Thomas and Robyn. Believe it or not, the night before, they'd had Chinese food for dinner, at the Canton Cafe, and then the'd watched 'Love Actually' so there was a bit of a 'snap' family thing happening on either side of the world. We didn't have a long chat because they were heading out to meet up with Robyn's family, but, short as it was it was still wonderful to talk and laugh with them. Skype is simply great. 

On Boxing Day we met up with Holly and Stacey in Islington to eat more food, drink more wine and to play Cluedo which was made from the Christmas crackers which Brit had bought. The reason we went to Islington is because it's where friends of Emma, Brit, Sam and Holly live with their two cats. Their friends were away but the cats were there and needed feeding so the 4 Londoners were cat feeding for the time that their owners were away. The cats were fed and we enjoyed our food, wine, a couple of games of Cluedo and some good fun in the Islington flat until it was time to wend our way back to Brixton. I've never played Cluedo before so I was fairly useless. 

Cardiff, London, and a new Year

Arrived in London without a hitch, through Heathrow and onto the train, changed at Greenpark to the Victoria Line to Brixton, up the steps, along the road to The Ritzi and there was Emma. How great it feels to feel comfortable in this enormous city and  how wonderful it is to back here with Emma and Sam.

On Saturday Sam, Emma and I were off to Cardiff for the weekend .... because we'd never been there, it's only just over 2 hours on the train from London. We were hopeful that the journey would be problem free, unlike our train travels over Easter last year when we had train fires, people wanting our seats, being on the wrong train, breakdowns, cancelled trains etc etc. Happily we chugged our way to Cardiff without any problems whatsoever. 

and now some time has passed and it is actually mid January 2014. I hope you all had an ok Xmas, that is, those of you who celebrate Xmas, and your New Year was just what you wanted it to be, and for those of you who celebrate the 6th January - I hope it was a good one for you all.

And now to catch up - Cardiff! 21st and 22nd of December 2013

  

almost in Wales

Well, Cardiff is a much smaller city than I thought it would be. Mind you, I think that my prior impressions have all come from listening to, watching, and reading about the All Black games played at Cardiff Arms Park. We found our hotel which ended up being a little further from the center than the website  had us believe. Probably no big deal when the sun's shining and it's not dark at 4pm but when we were there, being almost the middle of winter,  it was really cold, dark and on Sunday - wet.

Any way,bwe had fun exploring the castle and the tour of the interior of the 'residence' part of the castle with a guide. I swear that there's a special school for special people who aspire to being 'guides' - they certainly are 'special'.

 

the castle from outside the walls

 This is  the 'residence' part of the castle, which we went through with the guide, from inside the castle walls

 

  the 'keep' which was really interesting and had a lot of steps to climb to get into it! Unfortunately we had to cut short our wanderings around in there in order to get to the start of the tour on time.

 

inside the 'keep'. The view from the top would have been fantastic but we didn't get up there. Once upon a time there were rooms  inside the walls of the 'keep' where the grass is.

The top most part of the castle residence 

I have no photos of the interior, I don't think photos were allowed. That's the problem of putting off writing, memories fade - speaking for myself only. 

By the time we came out of the castle it was truly dark and we decided to walk to Cardiff Bay which, according to the lady at the hotel, was a short walk from the city centre and we would find lots of bars and restaurants. So we wandered our way through the center

 Some of Cardiff's Xmas street lights 

And on we walked, on and on and on and on some more. We weren't sure just how long it took but we all thought that it was a long time and, according to Sam and Emma, we were walking through the 'bad lands'. It was so dark and cold and not another person to be seen, nothing except the back of the railway and a number of what looked like warehouses and factories., and empty streets.

Finally we got to 'the Bay' and were greeted by this brightness

The hotel lady was right about the restaurants/bars - there were quite a few but all of them are chain restaurants. We were disappointed because we were looking forward to having a Welsh food experience not just the same hash that a chain  restaurant puts on. We had a determined look to find  a decent one but eventually we just picked one so we could at least eat something. It was ok, nothing to write home about. At least we were out of the cold. We couldn't be bothered traipsing through the 'badlands' again so we hailed a taxi back to the hotel, up the 3 flights of stairs to our room and that was that day done.

Sunday was looking pretty good when we woke up, blue sky and sunshine, still really cold though. After a full on breakfast at the hotel we set off to the center to get on a city tour-bus ride. Turned out we'd just missed one so to fill in the time before the next one we explored a shopping arcade over the road. I'd hoped to maybe find some christmas presents but didn't. However Emma found a shop dedicated to board games with a shop assistant who has a passionate interest in her shop's stock. She was a mine of information and we had quite a nice time in her shop. Emma bought a game called 'Gloom' for Brit so she was happy.

Time for the tour bus trip - we ignored the  dark clouds that were gathering and went up to the top deck. Not much point to sitting below. Well, turns out that there's not a lot to see on a tour of Cardiff. So little in fact that included in the tour is the bus station, a drive past the John Lewis department store no less! Plus, we went past a statue of, to quote the tour guide,  "Robert Scott who hset out from Cardiff Bay on his ill-fated journey to the SOUTH ATLANTIC" oh boy these tour guides are special!

 We did at least see Cardiff Bay in daylight albeit rather dim daylight. The gathering clouds gathered over us and sent down a deluge which had us scurrying for cover at the front of the top deck. Fortunately, some people abandoned their top-deck-under-cover-seats for the more sheltered 'below seating' so we were able to stay on the top. It just got colder and colder, no snow though, and I was mighty pleased to get to the end of it. 

We crossed over the road to the arcade to find somewhere warm to have lunch and to thaw out. Luckily we found a cafe which fitted the bill. To finish lunch we had hot chocolate for Sam and Emma and a coffee for me. We were a bit taken aback at the size of the hot chocolates!

After lunch we decided that we'd had enough of wandering about being cold and wet so we walked back to the hotel to have a beer or two and wile away the time until it was time to collect our bags and get to the station for our train back to London. We found a scrabble game so got going with a game of Scrabble and all was going well, or not so well, depending on who you talked to, when Sam put down 'dojo' - triple letter, double word etc etc - lots of points BUT guess what - turns out that Emma was about to put down the exact same letters in the exact same place. Well, that caused a bit of mayhem and then, according to Emma, it was time to get to the station. We taxied to the station which it took all of 10 minutes so we had heaps of time to wait at the station - Sam and I decided that it was Emma's way of ending a game that had suddenly  lost it's attraction! mmmmmmmm

 To fill in time we got a coffee and wrote out some post cards and happily, there was a post box right there so they got posted as well.

another interesting language. We heard quite a lot of people speaking Welsh.

Eventually the time came to say goodbye to a wet and cold Cardiff and be on our way back to London and the delights of Brixton, Xmas shopping - NOT IN OXFORD STREET- . Not a snifter of a problem on the way back to London either.