Catching up in London

Oh Hello. Our 6 day stopover in London was predominately about catching up with our contingent of friends living there. We also managed to catch the tube to some of London's more traditional tourist landmarks, including stopping traffic at Abbey Road and browsing at Harrods.



We particularly enjoyed celebrating our engagement with friends in person. Special thanks to Anna and Brett, who lent us their lounge, the use of their luxury air bed and cooked us a special celebratory dinner - champagne included of course. Thanks also to all those who appreciated the weakness of the New Zealand dollar vs the British Pound and shouted us a drink or two.





Our stay in London went relatively smoothly, with the exception of a certain incident on the tube. After watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace we were running late for our prearranged lunch with Anna. As we approached the tube platform, we started running as the tube was preparing to depart. Unfortunately, one of us made it on to the tube before the doors shut fully, not realising that the other hadn't and was waiting on the platform. A couple of people on the departing tube found our situation interesting, remarking that the exchange between us that followed our separation wasn't tense at all and sounded a lot like 'have a good weekend'. To add to our woes, we had jumped on to the tube going in the wrong direction. We heartily apologise to Anna for wasting half her lunchtime, although we suspect that the smile on her face as we arrived separately was testament to the fact that she found the whole situation just a tiny bit amusing.



A few blogs ago we included a paragraph detailing the different ways that we had found to save money as we backpacked around the world. We can now add the old favourite money saver of sleeping at the airport to this list: Despite the fact that we were not checking in for our flight until 5.00am, we caught the last tube out to Heathrow the night before, in order to avoid the expensive taxi ride there. While we cannot say that we had a sound sleep, the floor of the terminal wasn't too bad, particularly as we snuck through the barrier to where first class passengers checked in and used their couches and carpet.



We are now in Lima, Peru starting the South American leg of our world tour. Where has time gone? Got to go, desperately need to learn the basics of Latin American Spanish.

Cheerio
Love Kirsty and Rodney