Our house....in the middle of our street

So as you can see here, this is how we eat dinner. And breakfast. Every day in our wonderful little room. While one of us is getting dinner/breakfast ready the other sets out the blanket (towel actually), cutlery and beverages for the meal. ahhh London!

Sightseeing in London

Well, to start with, we found somewhere to live! Nothing flash but it's lockable and warm. Sharing with 5 other people in a 4 bedroom house! AND only 1 toilet and shower! We'll see how we go, we're there for the next 3 months.

So after finding that we decided to relax and go sightseeing. On our first day we visited Buckingham Palace, pretty cool place but the guards are boring. They don't really do much, I feel sorry for them! We also spent a few hours in Harrods, most of this was trying to find the gift shop in that maze of a place but we did stop for some Crispy Creme donuts..mmmm delicious! Harrods is just huge, can't really afford anything in it but nice to look at anyway. We also took a walk in West End to look at the theatres and what musicals I'm going to drag Liz along to hehe So many!! On our second day we went to Westminster Abbey which was just beautiful. I can't believe how much work and detail is in that place so amazing. My favourite so far. Also went to Big Ben, London Eye and tried to walk to the Tower Bridge but only made it as far as London Bridge before our feet and our bellies began to complain. Am enjoying the pub life over here, especially the food! Pub meals rock! Another place that I'm sure I will frequent alot is the Camden Markets, oh. my. goodness. So much stuff you cannot walk it all in a afternoon! And it's so close to our house....so convenient, a little too convenient!

London is cold.

Yes yes. I know you all told me it would be cold but it is so much more colder than I ever imagined and it's not even winter here! how am I ever going to survive come December?? We've stayed at Liz's sister's place for the first few days. So nice and warm. Now we're at the hostel which is not too bad. We went room hunting today and have come to the realisation that we are not going to be able to afford anything nice as it is all so expensive here!! 100 pounds for a room...ridiculous i tell you! We haven't done any sight seeing yet so hopefully once we've found somewhere to live we can do a little bit before getting serious and getting jobs! Still having issues with uploading our photos so we're hoping that at least you'll get some joy out of the written blog...

DISNEYLAND!!!!

oh my goodness! Disneyland really is the most happiest place in the world!! We just loved it! The weather was so perfect we got to wear shorts and thongs and our hotel was literally right across the road from the park. so great, especially since we'd had a shite day. Leaving San Fran we had to be at the airport at 6am which we did. Only to find out our flight had been cancelled so we were reschedulled to a flight at 9.15am. When we spoke to the staff we specifically asked if our bags were being transferred and we were told that they were already on our next flight. Yeah, they weren't. Well, Liz's was and mine just happened to get left behind. This happened to a few of the passengers so after revving the staff at LAX we were told that my backpack MAY be on the next flight which was due to land at 1.15pm. We had 3 hours to kill. Bag got their ok finally. Skipped the LA hostel because we were now very cranky at LA and headed straight up to Anaheim. Had a good nites sleep in anticipation for our first day at the park.

Our hotel offered breakfast, and while we were dining on some donughts and waffles (only in America!) a man came up to us and asked if we were Australian, we said yes and then he offered us his Fastpass cards as he was leaving that morning. These passes allow you to skip lines for some of the more popular rides in both Disneyland and California Adventure. SWEET! Canadian's are lovely! We had the best day and the ride skipping allowed us to see all of disneyland in one day and not be cranky for lining up for more than an hour on the rides! I bought some Mickey Mouse ears and they stitch your name on the back and I wore these proudly for the whole 2 days. They are so cool! The parade, which we saw at nite had to be our highlight. It was just beautiful. On the second day we went to California Adventure and as we thought, the rides were a bit too scary for us. However we did go on the River rapid type one and got completly soaked and then decided to try the nice calm looking ferris wheel which turned out to be the ferris wheel of death! It swung as you went around leaving Liz and I clutching each other and not looking at anywhere but the floor of our pod. Never again!! Went back to Disneyland where the rides and people were much nicer and calmer!!

The ride over to London was ok, apart from the fact that I ate a ham and cheese sandwhich in LAX which gave me some food poisoning which had me vomiting for the second half of the flight into London. It is official....we hate LA Airport!!!!

The remainder of San Fran...

On our last day in San Fransisco we decided to hike out the The Castro. Rather boring actually. But did by a rainbow fridge magnet and had some delicious bagles! The I decided that I would like to head over to Haight. Which from our map, didn't look far at all, and it wasn't. It just happened to be up and over the BIGGEST hill we had had to climb so far!! We reached the top, few, only got to get through a park and where there. Turned around and there was the park....another hill and so steep! But, we did climb it and the view from the top of the park was fabulous. You could see all of San Fransisco from the Bridge all the way to the peir. So of course once we trekked down the hill and walked around the town for a bit we stopped for surprise surprise.....a hot beverage!! We also went and looked at what used to be The Grateful Deads House...not really interesting but thought when in Rome....haha

Dinner that nite was at an all American diner called Lori's. It was ace!! It was just like the 60's diner in happy days, red vinyl seats, juke boxes on the table and Rock & Roll playing the entire time. I was in heaven!! and dinner was great, such huge meals tho, I ordered Roast Turkey with gravy and vegetables and it was sooo good that Liz ditched her meatballs & spag to share mine!!!

Bike ride over Golden Gate

What an amazing day! Yesterday after talking to our British room mates, we decided that it would be a great idea to Bike over the Golden Gate Bridge. Getting up at 7am, we headed down to the kitchen to make some delicious waffles then walked up and down the many hills to retrieve our bikes. Locals may have laughed at us all rugged up in our jackets, scarves and 2 gloves each but it has been a significant drop in temps from humid Brisbane to 8 degrees in San Fran. Reaching the bike shop feeling very excited and energetic we set off on our 13km ride to Sausalito, via the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge was fantastic, we've never seen a bridge so huge! It would be 4 times longer than the good ol' Story Bridge! Such an amazing view of Alcatraz and San Francisco from the top. Once off the bridge we had a leisurely (read: painful) journey to reach Sausalito. Such a cute little town, with so many expensive restaurants that we didn't even breathe in their general direction. So we settled for a hamburger from this tiny shop on the main street quoted by a local man as the "Best burger in the world" . And we totally agree! Delicious! We then ferried our way back across the bay as by this stage our glutes and legs were feeling rather tender. As a reward for riding ANOTHER 15 minutes from the ferry terminal to the bike shop, we stopped by a Starbucks for a delicious hot beverage. Great way to end the afternoon!

Brisbane to San Francisco - Wednesday 5th February

After a long flight and lots of sitting around at airports we finally made it to San Francisco! But unfortunately our bags did not arrive with us. They were put on the wrong flight which didn't arrive until 2 hours after us, so airport staff kindly arranged for them to be delivered to our hostel in the middle of the night. So we went to bed in our stinky plane clothes and woke up to find my bag had been delivered safe and sound, but alas Liz's was still not here. We called the airport and they assured us it would be here later in the morning, so we decided not to let this ruin our day. Had a fantastic day exploring, made even better by the fact that when we got home Liz's bag was here and she was no longer wearing the stinky clothes! We started the day off at Alcatraz - the ferry ride across the bay was nice and chilly, I was kind enough to give Liz one of my gloves so we both looked very stylish! We did an audio tour of Alcatraz that walked us through the jail giving us information from guards and prisoners - was way cool and interesting! Went to Pier 39 for lunch, and visited some lovely sea lions which bask in the sun near the Pier. Fun to look at, but god they smell!!!!! Walked home through Chinatown, what a crazy town that is!! People everywhere, no English spoken, and the smell of dried prawns wafting through the air! Decided not to stay long, went on to the much more civilized area of Union Square - home of Macy's, Saks on Fifth Avenue, and Victoria Secret. Everything way out of our budget but nice to look at. Couldn't wait to get to bed as jet lag was kicking in....