3rd January!

(Christina)

Today we just wanted to do some relaxing shopping in Oxford to take advantage of the New Year sales.  There were a few shops that we each particularly wanted to visit, so we arranged our walking tour around those stops.

My cold has developed into a bad cough, and now Charles is showing symptoms.  I hope that his cold will not be as severe as mine.  He was a bit grumpy today, which I totally understand - the first day of a cold feels like impending doom.

So the first place we wanted to go to was the Monocle shop - not a shop that sells monocles, but a shop run by the magazine/brand Monocle.  Charles loves reading Monocle, which is a magazine written for super rich, first-class flying, travelling, executive, arty writer types.  Charles is not all of those things, but he does like reading the magazine because it's interesting.  Anyhow they sell stylish things that are mostly collaborations with other expensive brands.  There were Porter/Monocle bags that Charles liked, but that were also all over 200 pounds.  We had a fun time looking but didn't buy anything.

Next stop was Vivienne Westwood!  There were two shops - one for men and one for women.  Charles spent a while in the Mens shop and LIsa and I went to the Ladies' shop.  They had lots of beautiful VW/Melissa shoes but NOT the Dragonball ones that I really like.  They were all on special too… The clothes were lovely, but all were designer prices - too much.  Anyhow it was super nice to visit such an iconic English brand.

Then it was lunch time!  We went to a "Pret a manger" which serves really fresh delicious sandwiches and stuff.  It was really nice!  I didn't feel like eating anything at all because my throat was all swollen but the food was SO NICE I ate almost all my sandwich.  Awesome!  

That was at about 3pm (late lunch) and it was getting overcast and horrid outside.  We walked around for a while and I spotted an Irregular Choice shoe shop - the brand Irregular Choice makes really awesome, sometimes bizarre shoes.  It was an exciting shop and I ended up buying a beautiful pair of shoes that were on special!

Then we went to the Lomography shop that was just round the corner - didn't buy anything but it was fun.

Lisa didn't buy anything all day, because yesterday while Charles and i were at my family's house, she bought TWO JACKETS.  She deliberately didn't go into any tempting shops today!

We went to a bookshop and Charles bought a science fiction book while Lisa and I browsed books about Madrid - she's going there tomorrow while we're going back to Sweden!  Then it was to Marks and Sparks to get some salads for dinner, and then home on the tube.  Since then we've just been watching telly and eating!

It's been a super lovely holiday!

2nd December 2011

Christina

Today Charles and I had arranged to go and see my sister-in-law Natasha's family, who live in Greater London.  First we went to have a look at Buckingham Palace (much more simple than Versailles).  Then we took a Southern Railway train from Victoria to Purley, where Natasha's dad picked us up.  I'm still quite sick today, but my sickness has moved from my nose to my chest.  Bad!  Oh gosh will this awful illness never end.  I hate it.

We had a really good time at their house!  We found Natasha's brother particularly charming, as he is really interested in maths and talked to Charles about algebra for ages.  Lunch was a delicious curry!

After that Charles and I took the railway and then the underground to Camden Town, where we met Lisa and shopped around.  I bought two dresses immediately.  Crazy!  We stopped for a cupof tea when I started to flail, and then took the underground to Chinatown, where Lisa and Charles tried to make me eat something.  Dudes and ladies, I was so not hungry.  I stopped talking because every time I did, I coughed a gross painful cough which was gross and painful.  The restaurant was a lovely Japanese place that was REALLY Japanese and was super nice.  Lisa had Unagi Don (fried eel with egg and onion mixture on a bowl of rice) and Charles had oyakodon (Same as Lisa's except chicken instead of eel).  I had delicious miso soup and some salted beans (sounds weird but is like snow peas cooked with salt - nice).  Then i started to REALLY fail so we took the metro home!  Now it's 9pm - I think I did pretty well feeling so sick.  Charles and Lisa are real blessings, so kind.

Tomorrow - last day of the holiday!

1st January 2011! New Year's Day!

Christina

Today we all slept in because it's new year's day and NOBODY wakes up early on new year's day.  After breakfast downstairs and a Berocca (apparently it helps give you back your B-B-Bounce) and in my case, another Sudafed, we went and took a metro to the Natural History Museum.  I've been watching a series on ABC about this museum and was really looking forward to it!  (plus it was free).

First we visited the Dinosaurs exhibition!  It was awesome!  They had the bones of lots of dinosaurs and lots of interesting facts and pictures and stuff.  It's one of those cool museums that have history facts and information AS WELL AS objects - I guess that's because it's aimed at children too.  There were SO many kids and parents there.  Lots of kids being frightened by the big animatronic t-rex.  Lisa didn't quite understand our fanaticism about the dinosaurs - she doesn't yet understand that dinosaurs are AWESOME.

Then we went to an exhibition about MAMMALS.  It was great.  There were heaps of old taxidermied animals which is sad but also interesting.  I saw how big a moose is!  It's big (not as big as 3 school buses though).  Mammals are often categorised by how many toes they have, which seems kind of arbitrary to me.

After a nice lunch at the cafe and another Sudafed, we walked over the road to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  I'd heard they have a lot of interesting fashion stuff.  This is a HUGE museum and has one billion exhibits.  Unfortunately, the fashion exhibits were closed for refurbishment, but that still left plenty to look at.  At one point we found ourselves in a huge gallery with only wrought iron stuff, like gates and fences and keys and stuff.  My favourite was a room that was just full of lace.  There was also heaps of fabric and embroidery samples from centuries ago.  I loved it (lisa got a bit bored i suspect).  There was a big amount of theatre stuff, like costumes and sets and advertising and stuff.  Fascinating!  There were also big paintings by Raphael and lots of giant sculptures and a hall of jewellery.  We didn't have time to look at everything and we would have been there for 6 hours if we had tried to.

We were pretty tired after that, and there were no shopping places open (being new year's day), so we came home and watched TV for a while.  I started to feel really awful and decided not to go out again.  Lisa and Charles went out to Sainsbury's and bought me tissues, a greek salad, and 3 different types of cold medicine.  They are so nice!  Now they've gone out to have dinner in Chinatown (wherever that is). I await their return with bated breath to see how it went.  I feel bad for staying home tonight, but I think I would've felt much sicker if I went out.  I've been having a nice time playing on the internet.

31st December 2010

(Christina)
Today is the last day of the year!  Gosh!  We woke up in our lovely big triple hotel room and had breakfast downstairs at the hotel.  I have a really bad cold (terrible runny nose) but decided to soldier on.  Unfortunately, we don't have free internet here in the hotel, so we trooped off to Starbucks around the corner to use theirs.  We had to buy special membership cards and charge them with money to get a login!  Crazy.  Annoying.  So we did that.  My cold decided to get worse then and so Charles took me to a pharmacy and we asked for some medicine.  I  was given some sudafed (the real stuff), which is nice.

We took the underground to Notting Hill, where we went to Portobello Road markets.  It was super fun!  We didn't buy anything, but had a great time looking at all the interesting shops.  There was a shop that sold both Hunter gumboots (lisa wants some) AND Melissa shoes (I love them).  There wasn't much there to interest Charles particularly, but he had a good time too.  We had lunch at a SUPER DELICIOUS gourmet burger place, which was totally filling and awesome.

After lunch, we headed back to the station and trained to St Paul's Cathedral.  But when we wanted to go inside to have a look, we found that it was 12 pounds!  12!  That's expensive!  I was super cross because I think it's WRONG to charge to see a place of worship.  It would be okay if they'd asked for a donation.  Imagine how many other people are turned off by the price!  I think it's not in their interest to charge so much.  I have opinions.


So we walked to the Tate museum of modern art, which was just over the river.  The best thing was a huge room with what looked like gravel on the floor, but was actually porcelain painted to look like sunflower seeds.  Hundreds of thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds!  We watched a documentary about it and it looks like the artwork is more about the people who made the seeds rather than the work itself.  It was really interesting and heartwarming.  It was made in a small town in China which had become a bit bankrupt so the business really helped bring the town back to life.

Other exhibitions were on surrealism and other modern art.  Surrealism is cool, but other modern art seems to mostly consist of guts and creepy stuff.

Then we were hungry again!  There was nowhere to eat near there so we randomly took the metro to Green Park station, thinking it might be busier.  It wasn't, and we walked for ages not seeing anywhere to eat.  Finally found a "japanese" place which was really disgusting but we ate there anywhere and it was okay.  Then we continued walking in the same direction and began seeing millions of eateries and NYE revellers.  It was a happening part of town!  Lots of big lights and big city.  It kind of went to my head, and I started to feel horrible so we went home.  Now we're home watching Die Hard 4 or something, listening to the police cars zooming around outside.  We're right over the road from a police station, it's not a bad part of town or anything :-)

PS every time Charles and I hear sirens or see a policeman, we just immediately think of the theme from the Bill.  Dun-nuh, dun-nuh, DAH!  

30 December

(Charles)

Today was our big day to go to London! So when we woke up we organised our things and moved out of the room. We left our bags at the hotel and went out to walk around Paris for the day. 

Our favourite bit of Paris is the Marais Quarter, near our hotel. So many interesting shops. We just walked and walked and found nice things to look at.

Towards the end of the day we wandered around St Martin's Canal which was also interesting. We found a shop there called "Mutant Mutant Mutant Mutant" which looked awesome and WAS AWESOME. It sold super cheap bright tights and socks which are Chrissy's favourite thing. Lucky us for finding it.

Then we met Lisa to get the Eurostar to London, our seats were a group of four facing each other so we could have intelligent conversation all the way.

In London we found our hotel in the west end, near victoria station. It's nice area, not very far from the queen. so that's nice.

The room is big and comfy, BUT the "internet in all rooms" is expensive! 2 pounds per hour! Ridiculous!! 

So we can't upload the blog yet! Bad alert. 

So, time for sleep now and walking around tomorrow!!