Wicked

Fans,

Short blog this week. On Saturday night we went to the musical "Wicked" - the untold story of The Wizard of Oz, in the Apollo Theatre. It was absolutely brilliant.

The fun began when we were picking up our tickets from the box office before the show and the woman next to us was complaining that the seats in the theatre were not big enough for her friend (who she described as "quite a big girl"). The guy in the box office said he was sorry but there was nothing he could do. The theatre was sold out and besides, all the seats are the same size. The woman was either really stupid or suspected the guy was lying. She argued that they would not enjoy the show now because her friend couldn't fit in the seats...we're not sure what the guy was supposed to do, other than remove a row of seats and install a couch for obese people...

Once we found our seats, which we thought were actually quite roomy as far as old style theatre seats go, we noticed the woman and her "big" friend just across the aisle from us. Big was an understatement. She wouldn't have fitted in two seats.

Anyway, the musical was fantastic. It is about what supposedly happened in The Wizard of Oz story before Dorothy showed up. Turns out the Wicked Witch of the West was the misunderstood hero, the Wicked Witch of the East was a paraplegic (before the house landed on her) and Dorothy was a murderous thief. It was a really good story, very funny, and the special effects were top class.

Earlier in the day, we had watched Arsenal on TV, as they got an unlucky draw against Birmingham. One of Arsenal's players, Eduardo da Silva, suffered the most gruesome injury we have ever seen after a horrendous tackle broke his leg and dislocated his ankle. For those of you who are not too squeamish, check out You Tube, type in "Eduardo injury"...Hopefully Eduardo makes a full recovery and can play again at some point!

Work is getting busier again for both of us and winter is on its way out. The days are noticeably longer and the weather has been very mild for the month of February. We are looking forward to Spring.

Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen

On Friday night we bolted from work slightly early and made our way to our favourite place in London, Heathrow. Our arrival in Copenhagen was fantastic. The airport was completely empty, which meant that it took 10 minutes to get from the plane, through immigration and collect our bags! Our hotel's location right next to the central train station also meant that we were at our hotel less than an hour after landing...impressive.

We rose early on Saturday and enjoyed some Danish pastries (who'd have thought?!) for breakfast at our hotel before setting off to explore the city. It is pretty chilly in Copenhagen this time of year and the temperatures hovered around freezing point the whole weekend. Copenhagen is not a city bursting with tourist attractions, especially given that the Tivoli Gardens (massive amusement park in the middle of beautiful gardens with restaurants, cafes, bars and shops scattered around) was closed for the winter months. But it is a very pretty city.

We wandered the streets checking out some of the shops and marvelling at the many statues and beautiful buildings. We eventually made our way to the church in the middle of the town and climbed up the spiral tower to take in the views of the city. Luckily it was a clear day so we could see the huge Oresund Bridge that connects Denmark and Sweden in the distance (see photo below). The bridge/tunnel is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe at 7.8km.

More wandering led us to a big ice rink in the middle of town, where loads of people were showing off all of their tricks. After our mediocre performance on the ice in Geneva, we decided to give it a miss this time around. However we sat and watched the skaters while we sampled the Copenhagen hot dogs we had heard so much about. They certainly were tasty dogs, almost as good as the ones in Prague!

We took a one boat cruise around the harbour and canals of Copenhagen in the bizarre looking flat-topped boat shown in the photo below. We later discovered it had to be that flat to get under some of the very low bridges in the canals! It was an interesting tour. We went past Copenhagen's "biggest tourist attraction" - the little mermaid statue (which, interestingly, has been the subject of several attacks, including a decapitation...crazy old Danes), the new Royal Opera House and through the canals of the "Little Amsterdam" district of Copenhagen.

Next stop was the Guinness World Records museum. Tim discovered he has a long way to go before becoming the tallest man in the world (see picture below). Robert Wadlow of Illinois, USA, was the tallest man in the world at a touch over 8 foot 11 inches... We were also big fans of the life size replicas of the fattest man in the world and also the "metal-eating man".

"Michael Lotito of France is known as Monsieur Mangetout, Mr. Eat-It-All. For reasons unclear, he began eating small amounts of glass and metal at age nine. Over the course of his lifetime he has consumed seven television sets, six chandeliers, a computer, 18 bicycles, 15 supermarket carts, two beds, a pair of skis, a coffin, and a Cessna airplane." Awesome.

After all that excitement, we needed a drink. Luckily we stumbled across an Irish pub near our hotel that was screening live FA Cup football. Sadly an injury-hit Arsenal got hammered by Manchester United. Oh well. We noticed that Denmark is an expensive place, probably the most expensive European country we have visited. Our drinks in the pub and food at cafes and restaurants was quite pricey, much more so than in London!

On Sunday we put our walking shoes on and braved the icy winds coming in off the harbour as we walked right through the city and down to the little mermaid statue. She is a little over-hyped. But a swarm of Japanese tourists would beg to differ. We had to wait a good 5 minutes while they took about 50,000 photos of her, before we could get a look in. Our walk took us past the Royal Palaces - there are four almost identical palaces built in a square all facing inwards to a big courtyard with a statue in the centre of it. It seems that the Danish Queen moves about between these four palaces regularly...quite odd.

As most of the shops were closed on Sunday, we checked out another church (this one was circular!), explored another museum, bought some local Danish chocolates at a supermarket, had a hot chocolate in a cafe (Copenhagen is very much a cafe and bar kind of city!), and then found ourselves back in a pub sipping a Sunday afternoon Guinness.

Our flight back to Heathrow was going far too smoothly when we landed about 10 minutes early. It was too good to be true, as we then sat on the runway for 40 minutes while the ever-efficient Heathrow staff tried to find us a gate to park at. Surprisingly, the queue at Immigration was fairly short and Tim made a new friend at Immigration:

The Immigration officer asked the stupid question of "What will you be doing in the UK?" - (loads of things, you muppet).
Tim replied, "I'm living here".
She checked his passport and sneered, "No, you're on a working holiday visa".
Tim: "Yes, which means I'm living here for two years."
Officer: "No, you're a visitor here."
Tim: "Call it what you like, but I am here for two years."
Officer: "The definitions are quite different."
Tim: "Shall we go through the definitions then?"
Officer: [angrily stamps passport] "No I don't have time."
Tim: "Thanks."

Welcome back to friendly efficient London!!!

Bear hits
Denmark

Centre city

Beautiful
old church...
with a clock










View from
top of church
tower - Oresund
Bridge in
background










Ice rink












Hot dog for
elevensies!

Pretty buildings
by canal












Ditto














Our crazy
flat boat












Tim (6'5") and
Robert Wadlow
(8'11")

Monsieur
Mangetout












Fat guy












Ice rink
again











One of
four Royal
Palaces













Little Mermaid
statue

Cabinet War Rooms and Notting Hill

Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum

We have had a magnificent spell of weather in London these last few days. Saturday was a cracker, so after Megan had done some shopping on Oxford Street, Tim met her in Trafalgar Square for some lunch and then we headed to the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum.

The Cabinet War Rooms were amazing. The large underground system of meeting rooms, communications centres, offices, bedrooms, kitchens and dining rooms was the reinforced bomb shelter from which Churchill and his War Cabinet led Britain through World War II. It was very impressive. Dozens of people (Churchill, his family, his War Cabinet, military leaders and advisors and of course plenty of typists and office clerks) basically lived down there for months on end, working long hours, sleeping and not doing much else.

The whole complex remains almost exactly how it was during the war years, so it is easy to imagine just what it was like to live and work down there. You can see the 6 foot thick concrete slab reinforced with steel above the ceiling, which was (they hope) strong enough to protect the complex if it was hit during the bombing raids. Luckily it was never tested.

Connected to the Cabinet War Rooms, is the Churchill Museum, which was absolutely brilliant - we fully recommend it to anyone visiting London! One thing London does extremely well is its museums! We were fascinated to discover that Winston Churchill first became an MP at the age of 25, was a member of the government by 30 and a government minister by 33! He eventually retired as an MP at the age of 90, just months before he died. We also decided that we would both have got on very well with Churchill, as he loved drinking, casinos, horse racing, books and painting...

Waitangi Day pub crawl

After our museum visit, we wandered over to Parliament Square, where thousands of (mainly drunken) Kiwis had converged to perform / watch a mass haka to commemorate Waitangi Day. It has become an annual tradition for Kiwis and whoever else wants to tag along to do a pub crawl around the "Circle Line" (one of the underground routes) on the weekend following Waitangi Day, the highlight of which is the haka in Parliament Square. It was a perfect day for it too.

We had decided to save our livers and avoid the pub crawl, but we turned up to watch the haka. As it turned out, we couldn't see the haka. We are not sure if it actually occurred, but we did see a few people we knew - surprise, surprise - and thousands of very drunk Kiwis. Amusing.

Juno

After a few drinks at our new local, The Famous Cock, and dinner, we went to see Juno at the cinema. It was awesome - again, we fully recommend seeing it. We both thought it was great. We also saw Sweeney Todd last weekend and that was excellent too.

Notting Hill

Sunday was another beautiful day, so we made our way to Notting Hill to check out the shops and grab some lunch. There are plenty of little shops (many of them are antique or craft shops) along Portobello Road, which sell all sorts of crazy things. We also stopped by the travel book shop that appeared in the movie "Notting Hill" for a photo!

On Monday night we are going to the Emirates Stadium to see top of the league Arsenal play Blackburn and on Friday night we are off to Copenhagen for the weekend. Exciting times.

Sir Winston
Churchill

Megan in the
Cabinet War
Rooms tunnels

A bedroom

Communication
Room

Love the
old phones

Megan by
St James'
Park

Big Ben
looking
splendid

Drunken Kiwis
everywhere

Notting
Hill

Bookshop
from the
movie

Portobello
Road