Zorfling in London

So Friday night marked Amanda’s (of Amanda and Erik salsa fame!) last night at Fiesta Havana before she heads home to Kuala Lumpur.

We started the night at Fiesta Havana in Fulham for a few last dances before making a mad dash across town to Tiger Tiger in Piccadilly Circus to try and beat the £10 cover.. (tried and failed, but jumped the queue on guest list so not all bad).

We were heading to Tiger Tiger to meet up with not 1 but 3 other parties (Mariella’s birthday, Clinton’s leaving and Nathan’s birthday) so we had quite a good crew there.

Good time was had by all (except Beebs who kept getting hit on poor thing).

That’s all for now..

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So I figured a nice recurring feature would be to have a photo of my life and travels in London and Europe.

So here it is, the first Friday Photo!

This is a bit of an old one, but how can I start a photo feature of life in London without going the obvious?
I give you, Big Ben (with black cab), Red Bus (old Routemaster), Red Postbox and Tower Bridge!

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Last night I joined my workmates for the monthly pub quiz at Imbibe in Southwark, South London.

A good turnout, our teams together were at least 20 people and a private party (forced indoors due to the rain) meant it was rather squishy. Nonetheless, we quizzed our best and came an excellent 6th or 7th place (not sure, they kept recounting).

Also mentionable was the barbie for dinner… very nice, burger and sausage! Nothing like a nice English bbq in the rain! 😉 Thankfully we were indoors anyway…

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Had a typical English day today. Pouring with rain when I was trying to get to work, so got absolutely saturated.

Though if I’m honest, this isn’t as common as I would have imagined. Must be only the 3rd time this year I’ve actually got really wet on my way to work. Usually, it just sprinkles with rain, so you don’t get too wet anyway.

Never mind, fingers crossed it’s not raining when it’s time to go home!

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Yesterday marked the end of an era. The last day you can legally drink on the tube. (and in fact all public transport)
(for those not in the know, the tube is London’s underground rail network)

I can remember my awe when I first realised you could drink on the tube. Back home we can’t even drink in the park (technically) and here we were, with our ‘walkies’ on the tube heading out for the night.

But alas, all good things must come to an end, and London’s new mayor, Boris Johnson, has outlawed it. From June 1st 2008, you’re no longer allowed to drink on any tube, bus, tram or train in London.

But is it a good thing? Yeah probably… I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to move carriages to avoid some drunk old Polish blokes because they’ve spilt their beer on the tube… at 11 in the morning.

But this new rule takes something else with it. The circle line tube crawl. This is a pub crawl where you drink at a pub at every stop on the circle line (so called because it’s a circle.. duh). Of course this means, no end…. so you just keep going til you can’t go no more.

My first encounter with the circle line tube crawl was on Waitangi Day (NZ national day) 2006. Me and some kiwi mates experienced the madness that was the circle line tube crawl. The platforms were packed like sardines as were the trains, and they managed to close down a number of major stations including Victoria and Westminster. Dangerous, yes, but an experience none the less.

However, almost to the prove the point of the new rule, many people went on one last tube crawl on Saturday night, advertised on social networking like Facebook. Despite starting out for most as a peaceful protest to show that they could drink on the tube sensibly, mayhem ensued with 17 arrested, four train drivers and three other tube staff assaulted, a police vehicle damaged and two officers assaulted with another injured. A number of trains were also damaged.
So this madness almost helped to endorse the new rule.

Regardless of right or wrong, it’s the end of an era and I for one am glad I had the experience before its time.

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So next morning, we bade farewell to Oracle and continued off on our Greek journey.
Next stop, the monasteries of  Meteora, built high atop natural sandstone pillars.

The monasteries atop sandstone pillars in Meteora

After a little bit of trouble working out how to get a bus ticket, we finally managed, and jumped on a bus down the hill to Amfissa, the nearest big town, where we could then catch an onwards bus toward Meteora.

A little more trouble working out how to get tickets and we were on our way, through Lamia, Karditsa, Trikala and finally arriving early evening at Kalabaka (or Kalampaka), the biggest town at the foothills of Meteora.

As soon as we stepped off the bus, a number of local hoteliers were waiting, trying to get tourists to come to their hotels. As we hadn’t booked ahead, we went with one of the guys to a little hotel which, while reasonable, was nothing much to look at.

We headed back out after checking to check out the place, and were met with the most surreal sight. The town of village is immediately below the sandstone pillars, and at night, there are large spotlights illuminating a number of the pillars. So all we could see were these looming, large, floating rocks in the sky. Fantastic sight!

The rope net was hoisted to here

The next morning, we headed up to the monasteries themselves. What a great place! 

There were about 5 or 6 big monasteries on top of sandstone pillars, some 300 odd metres high. Each pillar only just big enough to hold the monastery at the top.

Apparently, way back when, the only way to get up to the top was in a rope net basket that was hoisted up to the top. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to build! 

Nowadays though, there are steps carved into the rock, so tourists can enjoy the monasteries. (which are still in use, I might add) And the view from the top was fantastic, looking down over the plains of mainland Greece.

We headed into one of the monasteries and saw the quarters and the chapel. There wasn’t a whole lot of space, and I couldn’t imagine living there for any long period of time, but I guess, that’s what monks do. And we even saw where the rope net hoist was housed. “Sure, occasionally the rope snapped…” the monk happily noted. Yikes!

Australia Hotel and a Tabepna (or Taverna for you and me)

All in all, it was truly a unique and inspiring sight, and a great experience!

On the way down the hill, we stopped at a little restaurant for lunch and had gyros. Gyros is basically like a Greek version of a kebab, with tzatziki. Yum yum! 

And on the approach into town, we even hit a little touch of home, with the Sydney Hotel, complete with map of Australia, and a kangaroo!

Next stop Igoumenitsa, for the ferry to Italy!

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View over Delphi to Gulf of Corinth

So onwards to Delpi. On the bus the jet lag hit a little and I slept for quite a lot of it, lucky Beth was there, otherwise I would have slept right through our stop!

Found a nice little hotel in Delphi to stay at and then after a quick shower, we headed out to grab some dinner! We had tzatziki, red wine and I had Moussaka! (gotta have something greek hey) It was really nice!

After dinner, headed back to our room and straight off to sleep! So tired, I slept like a log!

Woke up this morning to the most gorgeous view out over the mountains and the Gulf of Corinth.

Really nice.

Headed down for breakfast of bread and jam and juice. Mmmmm.

Went out exploring this morning, wandered the town, and then probably going to see the ruins later this afternoon! (the oracle and all)

Plans at this stage are to stay in Delphi tonight, head up to Meteora and then across to the Igoumanitsa where we’ll get the ferry across to Italy! How very exciting!

— time passes —

So we headed out today to see the ruins. It was about a 15 minute walk down from our hostel along a ridge with more glorious views across to the Gulf of Corinth.

Amphitheatre overlooking the ruins

The ruins were really quite cool. These were my first real ruins since I’ve been over here. I’d glanced at the Parthenon in Athens through the rain and the smog, but we left pretty quickly after that so I missed it.

It felt quite surreal to be at the “Oracle of Delphi”. I felt almost like it’s wasn’t real. Like Athens and the Oracle are just mythical, mystical, far off places. (which from Australia they are!)

We wandered around the grounds of the ruins, seeing where the Oracle used to be, as well as the amphitheatre. We also headed into the museum there, to look at the recovered artifacts, however all the captions were in Greek! It was all Greek to me as they say! Nevertheless, it was awesome to see these artifacts on the same mountainside where they were discovered.

Afterwards we wandered back up to Delphi town and had some more tzatziki and wine and looked at some souvenirs in the local shops.

Tomorrow we’ll head off to Meteora to see the monasteries on top of stone columns. Sounds strange but cool!

Until next time…

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Well! I’ve done it. I am now across the other side of the world, northern hemisphere! CRAZY!!!! 

This email from Singapore sums it up nicely: 

Hi All,
Just a quick note to let you know I made it safely to Singapore. 
Almost missed my flight due to my slackness and not being ready in time. 
But never fear, I made it there with a few moments to spare.

The flight was excellent. They just kept bringing drinks (orange juice all the way mmmm) and the food was quite good. Chicken with tomato and olive sauce. Yum! 

With a Magnum Mini for dessert!

Playing on the free internet now at Singapore airport and talking to my bro on MSN. Little Amy was on earlier with me also! Thanks guys! Appreciate the company!

I’m getting very tired since I’ve been up since 6am and only got 4 hours sleep last night (again, I’m a slacker).

But all in all, apart from some craziness this morning (I was stressing badly), I’m travelling well and am very excited.

Might try get some sleep on the next plane (11 hours) at 3am (QLD time) so that i can wake up fresh for 7:20am Friday in Athens! (2:20pm QLD)

Then who knows what the future holds! I have no idea, and I love it!

Yep, after almost missing the flight from Brissie (geez I’m slack), the Bris to Singapore leg went off without a hitch.

4 hours at Singapore, I discovered that I love travelators (the moving walkways) cos I can walk twice as fast, I bought some lollies at seven eleven! And I talked to Dave and Lizzie!

Singapore to Athens, also no problems! I had someone sitting right next to me for this leg unfortunately so it was a bit more crowded, but nothing too bad. Managed to sleep the first 5 hours or so. Woke up in time for supper (most important!) and then started playing with the games again. Learnt a few languages (well tried to anyway 😉 ) and watched Spanglish for a few tips in case my linguistic skills didn’t hold once I got off the plane. (they didn’t! :p)

So landed in Athens and after a few confused moments, found my luggage and my way out to meet up with Beth! Really good, and a little surreal to see her again in person!

Unfortunately it was rainy but we headed off and jumped on the train back to Monestiraki(?) to get Beth’s stuff and then after a couple of crazy taxi rides (and 45 minutes trying to find a cab that would take us) into the city to send some of Beth’s stuff off, we managed to get to the bus station and onto a bus up to Delphi.

More soon!
 

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