The final countdown... 5th January to 26th February 2009

One month to go before we finished our working career in the UK. Dee was starting her new job at Ealing Hospital for a short term contract and James was still working for Her Majesty’s Court Services in his administrative role. London was still cold, with average top temperatures of 5c; coat, scarf and layers weather... Dee needless to say was “over it” (to get by she would envisage herself sunbaking on the Philip Island house decking in the 30c sun!). That month we would visit Oxford. In summary not alot to do in the town, but there sure was alot of colleges (one thing we learned is that there is not one big Oxford Uni, but a collection of colleges that make up Oxford Uni). We celebrated Michelle’s birthday and also said farewell to James’ friend Jase who was returning home.

Next came a West End show “We Will Rock You”, which was a bit different to what we expected but none the less entertaining. A stay in London isn’t complete we believe unless you visit Madame Tusuads! The London one is known as the best in the world and it sure did live up to all expectations, it was incredible. As you can see by the pictures, the waxes were amazingly life like. That weekend we also celebrated Australia Day! There are tons of pubs, bars and places for any expat Aussie to celebrate with other Aussies. We decided to go to The Slug with a group of friends in our hometown Fulham. We can honestly say it was one of the best Australia Days we have ever had because of the comradatory feeling that everyone experiences from being away from home. Snakebite jug after snakebite jug made for a good 12pm start to the day, with some late night Chinese to soak it all up, for a hopeful full recovery the next day for work.

The best venue in London, and quite possible the world, is the Royal Albert Hall. We had both heard good things about it before we arrived and so always wanted to go see a show.... so naturally that is what we did. We saw Cirque du Soleil, Quidam. The show was great, but the hall was even more spectacular. Sitting out on our balcony overlooking the stage was incredible. We had both seen Quidam under the bigtop back in Melbourne, but to see it performed in this exclusive venue was something else. We also toured Lords “the home of cricket” that weekend which James loved, especially the spaceship media stand, best seat in the house.

Our most memorable experience in London occurred on Monday 2nd February, the day London was blanketed with snow and the public transport system all but shutdown. The Sunday night before, our housemate received a call from a mate also living in London saying to look out the window... what we saw was snow coming down on our doorstep. Its one thing to see snow in the Alps, but in your own suburb on your own doorstep is something else. That Monday the entire bus network was terminated, tube & rail services were reduced to 20% operation, Heathrow Airport shutdown and 6million Londoners didn’t show up to work. Dee and I both managed to make it in to work 3 hours after we were meant to have started, only to be told to go home because the snow was going to get worse by the afternoon which meant we would possibly be sleeping at work that night. James managed to get some quick snaps of London under snow though that day, and the rest of the afternoon was naturally spent in the pub drinking cider and outside making snowmen (our biggest was about 6’foot5’).

Ok so if you have made it down to this point of the blog, congratulations we salute you for staying on with us... the next part is a bit of a doozy.

Our last day of work had arrived on Thursday 5th February. That night we were flying to Southern Ireland.... so we thought! Our departure out of Gatwick Airport was for 9:00pm. James had been checking the airport reports and flight departures online at work all day as it was reported southern England was to have a blistery weather front through that afternoon. Nothing eventuated and we made it to Gatwick. As you do when you arrive at the airport you look up the TV screen to see your gate... ours said “report to airline enquiry desk”, which naturally we thought was weird. An attendant was standing out front of the Ryanair desk handing out pieces of paper and mumbling something as we approached... that’s when we discovered it was not Gatwick we should have been concerned about, but Dublin airport. Dublin had had its own snow storm come though that had shut the airport down to all inbound and outbound flights for 24hrs. We were shattered and to make things worse we couldn’t book the next flight until Sunday morning because of the Rugby Six Nations happening on Saturday at Croke Park and all flights being booked until then. So we lost out on our 4 day Shamrocker tour and a nights’ accommodation (luckily travel insurance will come in handy!). So come Sunday morning we were ready to fly out at 10:00am to restart our Ireland trip.... so we thought once again! No it wasn’t snow it was a little thing called “Passports”. On the Thursday night we had them and between us both we can’t decide whose fault it was (Deanne is just being modest here, pretty sure it was James’ fault) but we left our passports back at home in Fulham. If Southern Ireland hadn’t become a Republic some many years ago we would have been fine (you can travel the UK without one), but alas no, we needed the passports. So James had to catch the bus back to Fulham, meet up with his mate Dallas (he was staying with us and agreed to meet with James) to collect the passports. Fortunately the Ryanair attendant allowed us to reschedule our flight free of charge to the 1:00pm flight (she felt sorry that we had already lost out on our Thursday night flight, James put on a sad face). So seeing as though this has been a long story we will make the rest short, in summary Dublin was expensive as they are based on the Euro and not Pound eg. a Guinness pint cost €7.00 ($AUD 15.00) at the Temple Bar! The Guinness brewery was awesome, the city was freezing and we watched on in horror as Sky News reported Black Saturday, something we will never forget seeing on TV ever.

Ok only about three paragraphs to go, hold on tight...

Our farewell Friday 13th February! Great night spent pre-drinking at ours with friends and then moving on to “The Fez” club in Putney (only a 5 minutes bus ride from our place in Fulham). It was great to see out our time in London with all our friends at what can be said as a great venue. The light-up dance floor had everyone going till the early hours of the morning. Our time in London had come to an end. We have had such a great experience and nothing will ever take it away from us. People have asked us how we have done so much in such a short period of time, and that comes down to how long we knew we had and also what we wanted to achieve with our experience. We never expected to further our careers while over here, we wanted to work to earn money but still travel to all the countries and cities we had set our mind to. So we left London via Heathrow on Monday 16th February to head to the U.S.A. on our world ticket...

“Start spreading the news, we’re leaving today, we want to be a part of it... New York! New York!”. Yes if you hadn’t picked it we were flying into NY. We had organised a Big Apple Contiki tour that ran for 4 days. What we experienced was beyond belief; NY is a great city, safe, clean and so much to see and do. Our contiki guide Matt took us on the first day for a sightseeing tour of the city... as you drive past places like Rockefeller Centre, State Empire Building, Ground Zero & more, it’s pretty surreal to see it all. The following day did a trip out to the Statue of Liberty (you may notice Dee wasn’t in these pictures as she was a little crook in the morning when we went). Come the afternoon Dee had caught up with us as we visited the NY Stock Exchange and as we walked along we experienced snow in the big apple! That night we saw Shrek on Broadway, which we decided was much better then We Will Rock You. Quite possible our most memorable moment of NY was our final night. We went up the State Empire Building to see the skylights, it was freezing mind you. After that we had the option to catch a limo to our final end of contiki celebrations at a Cuban Lounge in Uptown. Drinks it hand, we caught the limo around the sights of NY, passing Times Square, around the Financial District and arriving at the club (yeah it did kind of feel like a cheesy Year 10 formal arrival). Fortunately for us, at the end of our travel time the funds were a bit low, this club has happy hour from midnight to 1am... we loaded up needless to say.

From NY to LA on the 6 hour flight. Los Angeles was the final stop on our world leg and after travelling most of Western Europe still left us with the biggest Wow! We arrived at LAX and decided on our budget plan to catch the metro to our downtown hotel... I think Dee literally froze and James had to actually tell her to relax once or twice. Dee said it was more the fact we had the contents of our lives from London in our suitcase and backpacks and that we stood out like a tourist that made her uneasy. There were a lot of strange looks coming from the people on the metro, as we discovered most tourists don’t take the metro from LAX, so it was quite unusual. So anyway we did arrive to our hotel, The Milner Ritz, and were greeted by a young Elvis lookalike who enjoyed the wacky tabacy (just the start of our out there experiences in LA). The first day we did a tour of Hollywood, what’s more it was the day before the Oscars! We saw it all being setup to the news reporters in practice, Oscar statuettes going up and that big red carpet. Pictures were taken in front of Kodak theatre, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and El Capitan Theatre. Of course the stars walk of fame got a drubbing from James goggling down his favourite entertainers. James also bought some random rappers album, that turned from free to a $5 donation, only to find out his whole story of how he is going to make it big someday was the same as the other dozen rappers that were flogging there albums further down the strip... ahh Hollywood. Our tour of Hollywood Hills was amazing. First up Mulholland Drive, housing the homes of the likes of Jack Nicholson, Jennifer Lopez and Matt Damon to name a few, down through Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills past the Paris Hilton pad & Elvis’ old home, then moving on to Sunset Blvd for the like of the Viper Room and trendy cafes & shops.

The following day we hit up Universal Studios. The studio tour, rides and pictures with Eddie Murphy & Beetlejuice were the main events of the day. The best ride was The Mummy, without doubt as it twisted its way through the dark maze within the massive film studio ending to a sudden climax of screams and well mummies of course! On Sunday night we moved on to our next accommodation (we took the Flyaway bus to LAX this time, as our hostel had free pickup from there). What greeted us was one of those stereotypical American look motels, it was a classic. Good size pool in the middle surrounded by double story building & the buzzing neon light signs out front. The reason we chose this place was because it provided free breakfast, free afternoon tea, free buffet dinner & free shuttle to LAX & Venice Beach... all for a good price. So naturally we took advantage of all that and went to Venice beach the next day. Venice beach is where all the roller bladders, skaters & muscle jocks who lift weights on the beaches hang out. It was quite an experience because there were also alot of bums and homeless people begging on the strip, alongside the tourist shops & stalls. We had some great Mexican for lunch which is also as common around the streets as the homeless. The final day we ventured further up the coast to Santa Monica. Santa Monica is where the rich also hang out, because the houses and streets were incredibly clean and well rich looking. Dee got her shopping fix & James got his riding fix by hiring bikes and riding down the coast. It was a great way to finish of our time in the States.

After a 23 hour flight via Auckland, we arrived back in Melbourne at 3:00pm Thursday 26th February. That was it for our trip of a lifetime, and yes Dee’s dream was satisfied the following week as we write this final update from the Phillip Island decking in the well 20c sun, but good enough...