The travels of Tim and Megan: July 2007

Monday, July 30, 2007

Emirates Stadium

Fans,

There was excitement mid-week as Tim turned the big two-seven, a very special age, being 3 cubed. Megan took Tim out for dinner to a wonderful French restaurant and then baked (or bought ...whatever...) the fantastic chocolate cake pictured below. As you can see, Tim was proud as punch when he managed to blow out all the candles in one go! Thank you to everybody for their birthday messages/presents.

On Saturday, Megan took Tim shopping in the morning to find some work shirts to go with his new Arsenal cuff links that she had given him for his birthday. The shopping was a major success, as we found two shirts, plus we went to Lilywhites, a massive sports store in Piccadilly Circus, where we found all sorts of bargains. Tim added to his ever-growing collection of Arsenal shirts...

After meeting Anna for lunch, we swung past the New Zealand shop and finally found a NZ flag and then headed for Tate Modern to check out some more crazy art. Tate Modern looks like a fertiliser factory from the outside (not very modern at all), but is fast becoming one of our favourite places to visit. Tim managed to sneak a couple of photos when the staff weren't looking, to show the fans a glimpse of the unusual art...

Sunday was a special day...one out of the box...Tim could hardly sleep the night before, as we had tickets to see Arsenal v Inter Milan in a pre-season tournament at the Emirates Stadium. First though we had find a way to keep Tim from exploding before the 4:15pm kick off, so we took at trip to Chelsea (enemy territory!) to the Natural History Museum. If there is one thing we've learnt about London Museums it's not to try to do everything at once, so we decided to limit ourselves to the dinosaurs. Some pictures follow - don't be frightened fans! Contrary to what one little boy believed, they were not in fact real.

Then it was time to board the good ship Piccadilly for our trip to the Emirates - was Megan's first. Tim thinks she is hooked and will be a "Gooner" for life now. We stopped in at the massive Arsenal shop under the stadium before the game and Megan bought a really cool T-shirt.

We had really good seats, almost on halfway, really close to the action. It was not quite a full strength Arsenal side that took the field, but right from kick-off Arsenal looked in control. The newly signed right back, Bacary Sagna, looked really good, as did the 17 year old Kieran Gibbs making his debut for the Gunners. But Megan's favourite was Cesc Fabregas, a quality quality player, and still only 19, he is sure to be one of the greats (a rather disturbing review of the programme reveals we are well older than almost the entire Arsenal team, another international sporting dream dashed. Soon golf will be all that remains).

The stadium was packed with 60,000 fans and the atmosphere was electric. The much anticipated soccer crowd singing was a bit unimaginative, with "stand UP...for the Arsenal...stand UP..." getting slightly repetitive. Also, if anyone knows quite why this is accompanied with evangelistic type hand raising (as if channelling God) this would be appreciated. Trying to get Him on side perhaps? Anyway, singing was interrupted when Inter scored to take the lead, completely against the run of play, but the stadium went nuts when Arsenal equalised five minutes later and then again when Robin van Persie scored the winner with 3 minutes left in the game. The win meant Arsenal won the tournament, hopefully the first of several trophies this season!

Tate Modern

Squiggly art

More "art"

Attempting to pose
like an ostrich at
the Natural
History
museum

Diplodocus

T-Rex

One of our
favourites

Megs outside
the Emirates

The mascot,
Gunner-
saurus!

Arsenal
pre-match

van Persie

Cesc with
the trophy

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Visitors, Lord's, Arsenal, War, Greenwich and Billy Elliot

What a busy weekend!

Tim's brother, Brendan, and his dad and step-mother were all in town for the weekend. On Friday night we all met up for dinner at a restaurant called Bond's, which was fantastic. It was great to catch up with everyone and to hear stories of their travels, especially Bernie and Margaret's trip to Ireland, where we are heading in a few weeks. It was surprisingly hard to find a bar for a drink after dinner. They all seemed to be closing around midnight. Poor form London. Tim was so upset that he took it out on the washing machine went we got home, turns out the machine couldn't take the assault - oops!

Anyway, it was probably for the best that we headed home when we did, as it was an early start on Saturday morning to get to the home of cricket by 10am. The tour of Lord's was excellent. We had a brilliant tour guide who had a lot of interesting stories to share. The highlights of the tour were seeing the real Ashes trophy close up (although it was encased in glass), the Brian Lara exhibition in the museum, wandering through the famous Long Room and checking out the dressing rooms, where the honours boards showed that a few New Zealanders have succeeded at Lord's. Megan also liked the memorial to the sparrow that got clobbered one day - it lives on, along with the ball in a display in the museum. We were also amazed at the remarkable slope across the playing surface at Lord's. The ground actually slopes 2.5 metres from one side of the field to the other. Insane!!!

After the tour and a pub lunch, Bernie, Megan and Tim hopped on a train to the far north of London to see fourth division Barnet take on Arsenal in a pre-season fixture. After delays getting into the ground, we saw a very strong Arsenal side dominate the first half, but lack the finishing touch. Understandable for the first match of the season. In the second half, Arsenal fielded a youth team. Bernie enjoyed his first live soccer game since seeing Tim turn out for the Marist Under 6's in Invercargill. He was a big fan of Emmanuel Adebayor who opened the scoring in Arsenal's 2-0 win. We think he has caught the bug and will be hooked for the rest of his life. He even bought an Arsenal cat bowl for his cats at a market the following day!!!

On Saturday evening we set a new record for most people in our flat (five). A few drinks in the lounge were followed by drinks at one of our many locals, The Barley Mow, and dinner at an Italian restaurant on Victoria Road.

Sunday we took a spin around the Imperial War Museum which was fantastic. We got to see most of it, other than Megan who spent too long crying over the WWI part and will have to go back another time to cry over the WWII stuff (and the Holocaust exhibition, and the crimes against humanity part...might have to take it in stages). After waving goodbye to Brendan we spun out to Greenwich to participate in a massive downpour - shops flooded in about 3 minutes. We luckily stayed afloat, consumed some fantastic Mexican (plenty of talk of repeating the Tequila shot boat races from Steph's 21st but not action) and bought some goods from the market. By then we had tired the parental folk out so we left them to prepare for Monday.

The final act of our time with B&M was going to see Billy Elliot in theatre. I think we were both a bit sceptical but our fears were unfounded, it was a class performance by some very young (and old!) actors. Recommended for the London fans, will keep you tappity tappity tap tapping for days.

The new media
centre at Lord's

The fans

The famous old
pavillion (Long
Room along the
bottom)

Proud as
punch

Lord's

Adebayor and
van Persie

Not quite
Emirates
Stadium!

Crowd favourite
Theo Walcott

Imperial
War Museum

Big bomg
thing

Monday, July 9, 2007

Tour de France and paddle boats

Saturday was the first day for a long time that felt like summer -it was sunny for most of the day and must have even broken 20 degrees! After some time at the gym and a spot of shopping, we met up with Anna and Guy to watch the Tour de France prologue. This happened to go down Victoria Street, about 200m from our front door, one of the bonuses of living in the same 'hood as the Queen I guess.

There was a pretty big crowd for the prologue although at least three-quarters of them were police and security guards. In true English style, they were standing around taking up space and issuing nonsensical orders -we got told to hurry up and slow down within 20 seconds by two different officers patrolling the bridges over the course. We watched the start from just outside Buckingham Palace on Constitution Hill (which isn't even a hill (or a constitution)) and then we moved through to St James' Park and watched some more on a big screen right next to the finish line. The cyclists were amazingly fast but all that energy made us a bit sleepy in the end, so we decided it was time for a drink.

Since the smoking laws have now come into force (woohoo!) we finally made it over the threshold of another local, the Barley Mow, which had previously scared us away with its overpowering stench. However, the pollutants are now forced outside and it turned out to be pretty cool, other than the useless service from the vacant barmaid. Back at the flat, we had a glass of bubbles for Margaret and Tony who were married in NZ on Saturday - sorry we couldn't be there! Then we had dinner in yet another pub, the Bag o' Nails, which got an A+. Very nice.

Sunday was even better, more sun and warm temperatures. Londoners are astounded by this good fortune - it is all they are talking about today (Monday) at work. Anyway, we headed for Hyde Park to try out the paddle boats in the Serpentine. Having spent half an hour in a Hyde Park paddle boat, we now consider ourselves experts on the subject, so some tips for any fans who might want to give a crack in the future. Fast and furious paddling will lose you speed - maximum speed is gained with about three-quarter strength paddling - and you can do much better donuts with little to no paddling. Our first donut attempt with fast paddling took a little over a minute, not very impressive. Important tips because once the novelty wears off after 5 mins you will inevitably turn to attempting to outgun others/run over ducks to use up the next 25mins and you will not want to be left embarrassed by others (read: small children)/ducks.

In the afternoon, we made some chocolate dipped strawberries to accompany the Wimbledon mens' final on TV. In the blue corner we had the 4 times defending champion and world number 1 Roger Federer, supported by Tim, and in the red corner we had the world number 2 and king of clay and biceps, Rafael Nadal, supported by Megan. It turned out to be one of the greatest tennis matches we had ever seen, with Federer eventually beating Nadal to win his 5th consecutive Wimbledon final, Tim attempted to be humble in his victory...

We then met up with Jackie and Simon (Jackie and Megan have been friends since school) for a few drinks and dinner at a good old Wetherspoons pub. They had to dash off to Heathrow to pick up some poor soul who had somehow spent 36 hours getting from NZ to London and we strolled home, reflecting on another great weekend in London, long live the sunshine!

Crowd watching
Tour de France

Big screen at
St James' Park

Definitely
our favourite

Squirrel

Enjoying the first
sun in weeks

Our toast to
the McBrides

Paddle boats
Hyde Park

Excellent
paddling
technique

Better than being
courtside

Tim in his
new T shirt

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Valencia, Spain - Part 2

Monday

Monday dawned bright, clear (and full of wind...). We started as we meant to go on with one of those buffet breakfasts that hotels specialise in. We are very fond of such arrangements! Our hotel outdid itself and we almost outdid our stomachs with fresh fruit, croissants, pain aux chocolats, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, sausages, cereal and yoghurt, the best orange juice you have ever tasted, cold meats and cheeses and chocolate tarts for dessert (?). After that, we rolled out the door to explore Valencia.

We knew nothing about Valencia and so we did what tourists do when they know nothing about a city - we took a bus tour. Our journey through the city on a fine double decker bus confirmed what we had already suspected, Valencia is a very cool city. We enjoyed the historical aspects, and once again marvelled at the feats generations past managed in order to build either city protection or religious houses. Something a bit different about Valencia - the residents got sick of the river running through the city flooding all the time so they diverted it elsewhere and the green riverbed is now an enormous mass of sports facilities, gardens and parks. Very nice...

Valencia's other chief boasting point is the staggering City of Arts and Sciences - a four pronged complex with Imax theatres, a planetarium, a modern science museum and "the largest aquarium in Europe". Megan was extremely keen to see the aquatic life so off we went. The science museum was good, but as most of it was in Spanish only, we struggled to get the most out of it. The aquarium was much better. The sharks, performing dolphins and tropical fish were all great, but the favourite was the beluga whale. He made it all worthwhile (check him out below).

More tapas and more drinks followed that night, including a third night in a row for patatas bravas - fried potato with mayonnaise and chilli sauce (but keep to the Spanish, it sounds exotic and much healthier).

Tuesday

Tuesday dawned bright, clear (and full of wind...again...). Valencians seem to be truly spoilt for sunshine. We sped off to the beach and made a patriotic sandcastle. The beach was beautiful and very popular. It demonstrated something you have to admire about Europeans; they don't let having an imperfect body stop them throwing on some togs (and throwing them off again for that matter - loads of topless Spanish girls, Dave) and having fun in the sun. Of course, this does have a line which constantly gets crossed with speedos and the like.

Then we were off for a final time to the viaduct to wave off the boats and watch the start of the race before heading to the airport. We had a snack and a few beers in the Defender bar - very nice other than the fact it was swarming with Alinghi fans, as you would expect. We got the bad news as we arrived at the airport, pretty gutted all round. More bad luck was to follow including two airport delays, over an hour waiting at immigration and the absence of Megan's suitcase at baggage claim (not the first time) meaning that by the time we arrived home, it was past midnight and we were extremely hungry (1am Spanish time). Not much is open past 10pm in central London but full credit to the golden arches, it made a bad night a little bit better.

So in summary, despite some minor disappointments, one of the best holidays we've had. Valencia is an amazing city. If the next Cup is in Valencia, book tickets, we have an excellent hotel recommendation...