Day 4 - 30th December

Day 4
We woke a few times during the night but by about 6am we figured this was close enough to our normal NZ wake-up time, so we got up and started the day.  We caught up with the news, made bad instant coffee and generally pottered around until about 8am and headed out to find breakfast and real coffee.  A nice fresh fruit salad hit the spot, topped off with  flat white and we were ready to face the day.
Joe had decided to head north to Hannants model shop, as it was only open today, closed for the rest of our London stay.  So off he went, and I met up with Heather at Liverpool St station. I was originally going to walk to meet her, but thought maybe I should aim for a less vigorous day today to give my body a chance to recover from the shock of yesterdays 24kms.  So I caught the tube and as a result, I arrived early and pottered about taking photos of the station building.  Heather arrived and we headed off to Spitalfields market - somewhere I had not been before, but a place that Julie & George had enjoyed on their last trip to London.  It was great, lots of interesting things to see and some really creative clothing designs.  We wandered around for a few hours, scoffed a donut each and had coffee, then it was time to meet Joe at the walkie talkie building.

Heather had booked us in for a 1.45pm lunch at the sky garden, which has amazing views over London.

We had lunch and mooched around enjoying the view and chatting.
Joe decided he wanted to go back to Foyles in search of another book, so he scooted off to get there before they shut, and H and I wandered back to our motel to wait for him to come back.  Then we walked down to Bermondsey for pizza at Franko Manca, which was awesome.
I had pizza with sub dried tomatoes, roasted potato and onion, mozzarella, stilton and pesto, topped off with spicy lamb sausage.  scrummo.  The place was super busy with a queue forming on the footpath outside, so we didn't linger, and made our way back to our hotel.    We chatted for a bit, made H a very average cup of tea, and she left with us promising to stay up until 10pm tonight.  Only 50 minutes to go - we can do it!  Tomorrow we will be up until at least 1am as we have been really lucky and have been invited to attend the New Year's eve party at NZ House in the city.  The penthouse suite has fabulous views of London and the fireworks display, so we are very much looking forward to that.  We can't disgrace ourselves by falling asleep!

Day 3 - 29th December

Day 2

We managed a good sleep, not contiguous, but in decent chunks, until about 5.30am.  We needed to be up by 6.30am anyway as we were meeting Heather at 8:15 for breakfast.  We set off before 7.30 and wandered our way across London Bridge and up Gracechurch St to meet Heather at the Duck  and Waffle.  It's a very pleasant time of day to be out, the city is quiet (relatively speaking) and there are hardly any people about.  

Duck and Waffle is, as the name suggests, a specialty waffle restaurant, and it has a fantastic view over the city, as well as the food being top notch.  I had the 'Elvis Does Xmas' special, buttermilk waffle with caramalised chestnuts, candied clementines and pumpkin ice-cream.  Delicious !!  All washed down with a very good flat white.

Heather had to go to work, so we caught the tube with her and we got off at Tottenham Court road in search of Foyles, a bookshop, and she continued on to work.  The afternoon was spent walking, walking and then a bit more walking.  I went the length of Oxford St to Marble Arch and back again as far as Bond St to meet up with Joe.  Everywhere has a sale on, with mostly a 50% discount, but it was all a bit average, and there was nothing to tempt me to part with my dosh.  Joe was much more successful, he to Foyles, Forbidden Planet, and then HMV, and has already amassed a few kilos worth of books kits and DVD's.  I met up with him, and we caught the tube home from Bond St station.  Had a rest for a bit and then went out again, this time looking for Waterstones - another bookstore, which we found, but it happens to be closed on the weekend.  Then we wandered back via St Katherines Dock, a place we used to like to wander through when we lived here before.  It's a rather fancy marina for pleasure yachts, that feels like London is a world away.  It would be a lovely place to live, if you had a few million pounds to spend.

We were feeling a bit shattered by this point, so we hoofed it back home, fighting the masses on the Thames walk and had a quick sit down to gather some energy for the next foray.  We couldn't dally too long else we would have fallen asleep, so we went out and grabbed something to eat, and now we are propping eyelids open and trying to stay up until 8pm at least tonight, though that may be a struggle.

My watch tells me I've done 36,495 steps, or 25.3 kms walking today, and my feet and knees would agree with that assessment !  

Day 1 & 2 - 27th & 28th December

Day 1
I was already a bit nervous about only having two hours between arrival in Auckland and our departure to LAX given our recent experience with Air New Zealand (as much as 2 hours late recently) so it was not reassuring to see we were going to be delayed by half an hour.  Then  we read on Stuff that the International terminal in Auckland being evacuated because of a fire.  They did manage to make up a bit of time, so we actually were only about 20 mins later than scheduled and had plenty of time to walk to the International terminal once we arrived.  Our bags were checked all the way to Heathrow so that made life much easier, as we could bypass the usual chaos in the departure area and go straight to through to security etc.
We boarded and left on time for Los Angeles.  The 12 hour flight seemed to go really quickly, and we both managed a few zzzzz's.   We'd pre-booked a row of two seats at the back of the plane, our favoured spot as we don't have to disturb anyone to go to the loo or stretch our legs.  We had nice views over LA flying in to land, including the HOLLYWOOD sign on the hills.  Then the palaver of going through customs, it's made quite efficient, because we are transiting we got given a priority green card which whizzed us to the fast queues, but we were still questioned, finger printed and passports stamped as we entered the USA.  Then the palaver of TSA (security) before we got back on the plane.  I have a lensball, which is a small glass ball that can be used to photograph through to give some unusual effects.  Of course this shows up as a solid disk on x-ray, so every time, they wanted to see it.  J was carrying this for me in his hand luggage, so he was the one held up and quizzed on each occasion.  This resulted in some muttering, and we'll be putting it in the checked luggage for the trip home!  Leg 2 was actually only about 9 and a half hours, and that seemed to drag a bit, I did get some sleep but was quite fidgety the last 4 hours or so.  We arrived at Heathrow to an enormous queue at immigration, and despite having E-passports, were not considered good enough to use smart-gate and had to queue with the rest of the riff-raff and do it all manually.  That seemed to take forever, but eventually we got through and were happy to see our bags on the luggage carousel.  No customs to speak of, we just waltzed right on out the green channel with no-one even in attendance.
Decision time, do we slum it on the tube or spring for an Uber.  Uber won the coin toss, and we made our way to the designated pick-up point.  Just as well I had found out prior to leaving exactly where this was else we would have been a bit tricked.  An uneventful ride through the city, heads on swivels and eyes on stalks looking at a familiar yet different city given it's been 15 years since we were last here.
Arrived at our hotel at 1.15pm, of course check-in isn't until 2pm and the rather unhelpful lass behind the counter made no effort to see if our room was ready, we just got the standard "check-in isn't until 2pm" so we left our bags and went for a walk.   Off towards Borough Market, an area we used to be familiar with, but it was been developed quite a bit and is now heaving with people.  We're trying to work out whether it's just that we're not used to it or it actually has got busier.  We killed 45 minutes and went back on the dot of 2, hoofed it to our room and had a quick freshen up.  The room is small & basic, but the bed is very comfy and it's quiet.  We can see the London Eye and the top of St Pauls from our window on the 5th floor.  Then it was back out on the streets and walking around until we were about to drop.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back to our room, and hit the hay by 6pm !!

A week to go

Setting up the blog.  On the countdown now, less than a week to departure.