Amsterdam(age)

Amsterdam…  you’ll probably not be shocked to hear that our general preconception of Amsterdam largely revolved around drugs, porn and windmills.  There was that, yes, but so much more besides.

Gorgeous

We paid the city a visit with Cherie and Veronica at the end of May and in the middle of a European heat wave… Brilliant sunshine and NO wind.  The locals assured us this was not normal and we were very fortunate.  Um, yup!  I’d say so!  Because it was so beautiful, we couldn’t even contemplate doing indoorsy things (like museums and galleries etc) so we spent as much time as we could out in the fresh air (sometimes tainted as we strolled past the numerous "coffee houses") with no need for jackets or cares.  Instead, we…

Mike the tour guide - don't grope her

Rode bikes!
See a pattern forming here?  You should…  We had yet another interesting tour guide too.  This one told us about how she gave up smoking pot at 15 (gave up!!!) and was groped at one of our checkpoints by a guy who she sent away with a mighty flea in his ear! Anyway, to not ride a bike here would be completely irresponsible as Amsterdam is completely overrun with bikes.  By the train station there was a bike storage facility that I swear was four levels high.  I have no idea how you’re meant to remember where you put your particular bike, but I guess they do, somehow.

BEER!

Drank beer and ate!
Even me!!!  Cherie and Veronica introduced me to the wonder and the glory of Belgian fruit beer – so good and it doesn’t taste like beer at all…  WIN!  Liefman’s is good and so is Kriek.  That’s two types of beer!  Kyle was also keen on Belgian beers, but tended to stick to the fruitless and what he would call “manly” variety, particularly La Chouffe.  Sounds like a sneeze, but he liked it.

Mmm, croquettes...

Food wise - we tucked into Dutch delights like croquettes, raw ground beef, asparagus (including the white kind, which we hadn’t had before and doesn’t seem to have the same side effect as the smelly green kind), cheese, stroop waffles, bitterballen (meatballs) and, randomly, some pasta.  If you go, go to Seasons for dinner.  Nom.

Why sail a boat when you can sail a clog?

Rode in a Canal Boat!
This was meant to be a tour as well, but our guide wasn’t overly talkative.  Still he managed to point out the wonky houses (due to either dodgy, swampy ground or dodgy, cowboy builders depending on who you talk to) including Rembrandt’s house.  Apart from being water-bombed by a couple of urchins, we spent a relaxing hour or so drifting down the canals and (miraculously) not hitting any of the other canal boats. 

Went to Anne Frank’s House!

The apartment she and her family hid in above the factory during WWII.  This was interesting, sad, surreal and moving.  We walked through the bookcase hiding the secret opening to the attic and explored.  While sad, I enjoyed the more minimalist approach to the museum (and lack of bronze arrow heads) and the interview footage of the surviving members of the group and those that helped them.  Hearing her Dad talk about how he realised how little he knew his daughter after reading her diary was pretty sad.  Waiting for over an hour to get in was definitely worth it.

And, yes, to the Red Light District…

This was… illuminating…  depressing… and silly.  Kyle learned very quickly not to walk too far ahead lest the women in the windows think he was looking to get lucky.  He had a couple of busty lasses crook their fingers at him, wink and invite him inside!  If I can speak frankly for a moment, I had kind of expected these women to “tout” a bit more…  But, mostly, they just stood or sat there in their underwear looking really bored and texting.  Still, we had fun looking out for the different coloured lights.  Our bike tour guide told us the difference between a red light and a blue light.  A red light is a lady who you can spend some time with, while a blue light is a lady with an optional extra appendage…

So there you go.  There’s still other adventures to update you on…  The Queen waved to us twice and we’ve been spending a significant portion of our spare time around horses.

Until next time,

M&K

Burning up in Barcelona

 Team Reid has now been to Espana and loved it.  Barcelona is definitely our new favourite city (sorry, Paris…).

When we left London it had been drizzling endlessly, cold, and frankly a little depressing.  So we swapped it for four nights of dazzling sunshine, soft sandy beaches, fascinating architecture, endless pitchers of Sangria and plenty of cured meats with Cherie.   

Cherie.  Remember this face.

You should probably start getting used to seeing and hearing about Cherie, she’s going to feature here a bit, methinks.  Veronica will be making her debut shortly too, but I don’t want to give too much away just yet. 

Anyway, back to Barca, as the cool kids call it.  We learned some Spanish! 

-          Hola! (Hello)

-          Me llamo Melissa (My name is Melissa)

-          Quanto est?  (How much does it cost?)

-          No tengo iho (I have no children)

Endlessly useful.  Did we ever use any of these phrases?  Just the first one.

Anyhoo, here is our list of the top five things to do in Barcelona:

1 – EAT!

Nam Nam: it's Spanish for nom nom

This was probably the thing we did most of…  Shocking, I know.  The food here was absolutely amazing.  Kyle and I didn’t really know a lot about Spanish food before we went but, luckily for us, Cherie did.   

We ate screeds of tapas including cured meats, croquettes, bikinis (that’s a toasted Sammie with the crusts cut off…), patatas bravas (potato chunks with a spicy sauce), garlic shrimps and this amazing dish that had potatoes, big chunks of chorizo and smashed up eggs all muddled together.  We also squeezed in paella, churros, gelato.  Delicioso!  Needless to say, when we got back to London, no one was keen to jump on the scales…

Our fav restaurants were Sagardi and Tapas 24.  Buried in the Gothic Quarter, we had dinner at Sagardi and paid by the toothpick.  Seemingly endless platters of delicious morsels were presented on a piece of bread with a toothpick holding it all together.  It meant we could try a bunch of different things and it didn’t matter if it wasn’t a complete taste sensation.  We stood at the bar with a glass of cava and grazed our way around the room.  It was brilliant.  And then we went down the road for some outdoor cocktails.  Perfect. 

2 – Gaudi’s Architecture

Apparently, when Gaudi graduated from university, one of his lecturers said he wasn’t sure if they were giving a degree to a genius or a madman.  Having now walked through a couple of his creations, I guess I can see what he meant.  Discovering religion at some point in his life, a lot of Gaudi’s work is religious, but he also built a couple of houses.  We took a stroll through La Pedrera, in the middle of a random and otherwise normal street.  The roof of that place looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie…

 

Sagrada Familia was absolutely incredible too.  Again, totally bizarre but brilliant, inside and out.  I really don’t know what to say about this place.  It was amazing to be somewhere that had already been a major landmark/attraction for so long, but that was still under construction.  

In the time it took us to wander through the inside listening to the audio guide, some workers installed a whole row of stained glass panels.  The nativity and crucifixion facades took a good 15 – 20 minutes each to absorb.  Definitely a must see. 

3 - Bike tour

Having enjoyed the Fat Tire Bike Tour in Paris, we had to look them up in Barcelona as well.  We’re half way to that free tshirt once we’ve done all four cities…  Just Berlin and London to go!   

We also managed to twist Cherie’s arm sufficiently so she’d come along too.  Turns out Paris wasn’t a fluke, bike tours are brilliant.  This time we had an Aussie guide in a Hawaiian shirt, jandals and white sunglasses called Bill to show us around. 

It was a gorgeous day.  Kyle and I got horribly sunburned.  Cherie, as we found out, is magically sun-proof.

 

Bliss. They fed us too.

  4 – Sangria…  on the beach… 

Ice cold sangria…  Soft, white sand…  Mid to late 20 degree heat…  Loungers free for the taking…  Enough said?  Okay.  I won’t mention the foot rubs we got for a fiver then.  

 Or the bar we found down the beach where you could lie on couches and drink and watch the water…  Nope, I won’t mention that either.

 5 – La Rambla

Apparently our noses are significant...

This madly busy street is apparently filled with pickpockets, although we weren’t troubled, and street sellers, like caricature artists.  It also has a large fresh food market that was rammed with fruit, freshly squeezed juices, cured meat, sweets, fish, eggs and any other food you might want.  We bought peaches the size of our fists and Kyle put away his body weight in fruit jubes.  

 

Jubes...  didn't survive the walk back to the hotel

In short, Barcelona was fantastic.  If you haven’t been…  Go.

Buenos noches, amigos. 

M&K

Deja vu in Whitby

Two posts in one week!  Can you handle it?!?!

This one might be brief though - being the multi talented woman I am, I'm blogging and watching tv at the same time.  (Season one of Breaking Bad.  So far, so good.)

Anyway, the point....  Here it comes:

Returning from Paris was a little sad - we'd have happily stayed there a while longer.  But, no time to wallow, the next weekend was the Easter long weekend.  New friends of ours, also from Aotearoa's fair shores, invited us along on their weekend away to the North York Moors.  

By lunchtime on Good Friday, we were in York.  A walled city with an amazing "Minster", which we stumbled into in the middle of a Good Friday service.  There were some pretty old crypts underneath that date back to when Adam was a cowboy and there was the coffin of a saint down there too.  Well, the bones were saint's.  The coffin came from a Roman Legionnaire.  They turfed him out to make way for the saint.  Nice. And of course there was the Horn of Ulf.

After a lovely pub lunch, we continued on to our little stone cottage in the Moors.  They'd had a really good dumping of snow the week before we arrived, but by the time we got there the power was back on.  

The next day we went down to Robin Hood's Bay (where Kevin Costner washed up after returning from the Crusades, perhaps?).  This really cute bay buried at the bottom of a hill was full of rock pools and people were taking their boats out while kids tried to catch goodness knows what with little coloured nets.  Every other person we saw was chowing down on the most amazing smelling fish and chips...  when in Rome, right?  These F'n'Cs were incredible.  Crispy batter, fresh fish, good chips and loads of tartare sauce.  Excellent.

Om nom with new buds Cherie, Laura and Campbell

 

On Sunday we caught a steam train from Pickering to, would you believe, Whitby.  It did bear some resemblance to the Porirua version - in that it was by the sea.  Captain Cook spent some time here before he was made Captain of the Endeavour.  We had this lovely older gentleman give us the complete rundown of his life.  The highlight of the trip was when, after our guide realised all five of us were from NZ, he asked us if we "knew any real Maoris".  Oh dear.  Total exposure clearly came from history books written in the 1800s...  This marked our saturation point for museums.  Five museums (did I mention the Railway Museum in York?) and two churches in the space of a week is just too much.

Harry Potter cabin!

On the train on the way back, we managed to take charge of a Harry Potter-style cabin.  It had the polished wooden panelling and previously plush, springy seats.  We had to fight some pensioners for it, but we were triumphant in the end.

On Monday we said goodbye to Yorkshire and made our leisurely way back home.

Two sleeps until Barcelona!!  Ole!

M&K

Paris, baby!

The end of March marked a brilliantly exciting time for Team Reid.  Kyle aged.  Luckily for us, he chose to do so in what is often billed as the most romantic city on Earth.  Paris.  These were our first steps on Continental European soil and we weren't disappointed.

Weeeee!  We're in PARIS!!!

We booked our Eurostar tickets quite in advance and then sat back and waited.  To help get in the mood, we watched Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.  I'm not usually a fan of his, but this movie is a lot of fun.  The first 6 minutes show idyllic Parisian scene after idyllic Parisian scene.  The excitement started to build...  

To cope, we put it to the backs of our minds.  Which meant we arrived at Gare du Nord on the evening of Thursday, 29 March, with absolutely no idea about how to get from there to our hotel...  A very nice Frenchman in the ticket office solved all our problems and only giggled a little bit as we bravely savaged his native tongue.

 

Our bike tour group

Friday was pretty much all about the Eiffel Tower.  Five minutes down the road from our hotel, we got our first glimpse.  Brilliant.  The world's most famous radio transmitter is pretty darn impressive.  On a solid recommendation from a friend, we wandered underneath Le Tour Eiffel to find Fat Tire Bike Tours (yes, I know that's spelled wrong, but what can you do) for a four hour bike trip around the city.  I started to panic on the way as I realised I hadn't ridden a bike that would actually move for about 10 years, but it turns out it's true what they say about riding bikes.  Bike tours are the way to sight see, we've found.  We got a great potted history of all the main sites in the central city and got to blitz through the streets with the wind in our hair.  It was a really beautiful day too, which didn't hurt (a quick shout-out to the European ozone layer - you rock).  We had lunch in the Tuileries Garden, where we learned about French gardening...  and were all done by 3pm.  A quick coffee and patisserie and back to the hotel for a quick rest, we were back into the city to forage for some dinner.

 

Picnic spot of awesomeness

Buying picnic ingredients was a real highlight.  We'd been told to expect French people to be rude...  but we didn't get any of that.  Apparently, so long as you give the language a try, they're lovely.  We wandered down the Rue Cler, a street filled with boulangeries, charcuteries and every other 'erie you could want picking out various things.  We got very good at saying "Bonjour! Je voudrais quatre (hold up four fingers) sa (point vigorously at the thing you want).  Merci!"  Worked a treat.  We bought a swag of stuff and a bottle of wine and made our way back to le Tour.  Kyle's birthday dinner was the best picnic ever underneath the Eiffel Tower.  We found a patch of grass, spread our stuff out and nibbled happily as the sun went down and the lights on the Tower came up.  God help me it was just like in the movies.  Guys wander around trying to sell you bottles of champagne or a tiny (tacky and probably purple) miniature tower, couples stroll and canoodle, people walk their dogs, play football and so on.  We made our way back to our hotel very full and very happy.

Just don't think about the power bill...

Le Tour Eiffel - super photogenic

Saturday's weather was sadly less fabulous.  Some might even have called it grim.  But, not to be deterred, we wandered up the Champs-Elysees to have a look at L'Arc de Triomphe.  Then we wandered back down to Place de la Concorde to get a closer look at the Obelisk "on loan" from Luxor.  During the French revolution, that spot was were Madame Guillotine was set up... For lack of anything better to do, we popped into the Musee d'Orsay to get some kulcha.  Kyle decided that this was the museum for everything not considered good enough to get into the Louvre...  Ouch.  But perhaps fair.

Beautiful day at L'Arc de Triomphe

Kyle with the Louvre's cast-offs

That night we went to a restaurant for a dinner.  While we waited for the place to pick up a bit, we popped into the Saint Sulpice church.  Those playing at home will remember this as the church Silas gets sent to in the Da Vinci Code where he bops that poor nun on her noggin trying to find the holy grail.  It was pretty atmospheric and beautiful in there and, thankfully, no nuns were harmed in our presence.  

Everyone loves old Mona

Sunday was Full.  On.  All museums are free on the first Sunday of the month, so we went to two.  First up?  The Louvre.  Our bike tour guide had told us about a secret entrance mainly for locals, so we went there and shot straight in, rather than waiting to go through the main, pyramid entrance.  HA!  Straight to the Mona Lisa.  There she was.  Tiny.  But still impressive and definitely the most popular piece in the whole place.  We spent a good couple of hours in there and only managed to cover one of four or more wings.  After a quick and sadly disappointing lunch, we were off into the Orangerie.  This place used to be where the French Royals grew their oranges, but the building has now been purposely revamped to house eight of Monet's giant waterlily paintings.  They were beautiful.  And large.  

500ml - French for "medium"

One last walk through the city (under the Eiffel Tower again, of course) and it was back on the Eurostar to return to London.  We can't wait to go back.  We didn't get to Notre Dame, the Sacre Coeur, Napoleon's Tomb, Monet's Gardens or the Catacombs.  Next time, Paris, next time.

Au revoir 

M&K xxx

A Brief History of Nearly Everything

I know, I know...  I've been really slack with the updates.  I've been reminded no less than three times.  Which is cool!  Because it means people are actually reading this!  And only one was one of our Mums.

So!  Jan and Feb have both bitten the dust for 2012.  What have we been up to?  Heaps!  Let's see if I can remember it all....

We have a little flat now, just down the road from Dean and Lou, which is great because we can catch up with them weekly, and we're nice and close to the train station, which is good for commuting and me for work (I'm helping revamp our poor, sad, little station that hadn't been done up pretty much since trains were invented).  It's a little one bedroom place with all new fittings and central heating.  Yuss!  For the first time ever, we live somewhere that's warm all the time.  Even when it's snowing outside.  Which has happened.  Twice.  BRRRR!  

At the end of Jan, we celebrated our first anniversary and popped off to Bath for the weekend.  To get there, we caught a train from Paddington Station, so got to say hi to this little fella...

Bath was beautiful.  The weather was pretty good, so we were able to wander around the streets a bit and have a good look.  We visited the Roman Baths, as you do, and had afternoon tea in the Pump Room.  There was a string quartet playing and it was hard not to think about how Jane Austen had sat in there once upon a time too...  

 

If I can get my inner-nana out for a second and talk directly to my Mum - Mum!  They had the most AMAZING quilt in there of all the royal houses going back to whenever, check it out!

Of course, all the talk about Jane Austen made me decide that we should go to the Jane Austen Centre.  Whoops.  Let me save you 7 pounds - basically, Austen lived in Bath twice.  The first trip she liked, the second she didn't.  We also went for a walk up to the Circus, where the streets are curved, rather than straight.  Then, when we got back to London, we went to see Wicked, which was SO much better than the book (really clever too).

We spent a day freezing our tender bits off in Cambridge with our friend Mina, who knows the place quite well.  No, we didn't go punting - are you crazy???  It was snowing!  But we did go into the "chapel" at King's College...  it was a bit fancy.

I also got to pretend a little that I'm not just some muggle... and that I'm still school-aged...  Fail on both counts, but that's okay.

We've also been for high tea at The Ritz - our wedding present from Dean and Lou.  Talk about luxurious!!!  and filling!!!  We dined on little sandwiches, fresh scones, petit fours, creme caramel, lemon drizzle cake, raspberry and almond tart and washed it all down with pot after pot of tea.  The waiters wore tails.  Yes, Mum, I used my napkin.

 

 

Last weekend, I test drove the Olympic Aquatic Centre and went to see the Men's 10m platform diving champs semi-final as part of the lead up to the Olympics.  Great fun - there was one belly flop which, contrary to popular opinion, was not funny.  This poor Mexican guy slipped or something in his run up and smashed into the water at a great rate of knots.  Like in the movies, the whole stadium gasped in unison.  I apologise for not having better shots of these guys' fit bods, but the iPhone couldn't handle the distance.  Anyway, you can't be an awesome diver and super good-looking, apparently.  The Brazilian guy placed last :(  

We also hit the Imperial War Museum, which was interesting.  Most interesting for me was how the curators managed the undoubtedly difficult balancing-act between an accurate and honest portrayal of the Holocaust without being too graphic and without encouraging further hate.  A tough ask, but well done.  The trench exhibit was pretty cool too - quite atmospheric.

In other news, Kyle is also back in the land of the gainfully employed!  He's been working for Eisai for a week now and quite happy about it.  We went out for a lovely tea to celebrate too.  So life is settling back into a more normal rhythm.  Work, sleep, eat - rinse and repeat.

Right!  That's pretty much everything!

Until next time,

M&K xxx

A Week in Marrakech

Marrakech.  What to say.  This was a real eye-opening experience in so many ways.  

Cobras loose in the square?  Didn't bother me at all....

Of the few places we've been already, this was the first place we'd been where English was the third or fourth most common language used - School C French was a looong time ago, as I found out.

This was also the first place where the locals weren't always friendly.  Some of them knew some very colourful English phrases indeed...  and they weren't afraid to use them if you didn't buy from their stall or changed your mind about buying something. 

In the square/night market

But, Kyle and I are now much better at haggling in the Souks, or markets.  We've decided it's a real compliment to be accused of being a Berber (means you're not being taken for so much of a ride, price-wise).  Especially if, once you've agreed a price, the seller says "oh but Americans would pay THIS price".  Someone may have said that meant they had more money than sense, but it definitely wasn't me.  We got all our souvenirs from the Souks (two tagines - one for cooking, one decorative, a camel hide foot stool pouf thing, a leather bag, the obligatory fridge magnet, and some other stuff).


We had two Hammams while we were there.  A spa experience where you get mostly naked, get washed by a woman, scrubbed practically raw, then maybe have a back massage, before getting washed again, shampooed and rinsed off.  It was actually pretty good! 

In the desert.  Honest.

Especially after spending two whole days in a bus that would never pass a WOF going to and from the desert (it was as much a desert as Petone is a beach) where we rode a camel to get to our Berber tent that smelt of camel and man-musk.  Mmmmm.


The food was a mixed bag too.  The tagines were generally pretty good and you could get roti as well (filled with soft cheese... nom).  Everything came with flat, hard bread rolls, which I personally got sick of incredibly quickly.  Kyle happily disposed of any leftovers though.

Living like a Berber

Am I glad we went?  Absolutely.  Would I say you should visit?  Um, maybe. Ask me again in a couple of months.

Christmas in London!

Firstly, Merry Christmas everyone!  Hope you've had a wonderful time with your families and friends. We had a wonderful Christmas lunch in Basingstoke with Dean's aunt, uncle and cousins - first ever roast turkey!  Delish.  and filling.  Still. 

Gosh - we have done a LOT in the past four weeks (hence the lack of blog updates).  We were obviously knackered when we arrived, but started sight seeing immediately.  Our first day involved a walk past a lot of the main London landmarks (Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, London Eye, the hippies sleeping on the steps of St Paul's etc) and gave us our first experience of catching the tube.  We were asleep by about 9pm that night, whether we wanted to be or not.  Dean and Lou found us nodding off all the time quite humorous.  Took us a week to be able to last past 9.30...  pathetic :)

We made it - see!  Proof!

  Since then, we have visited/watched/ whatever (and in no particular order):

• the Natural History Museum - mild snore
• the Museum of London - much more interesting
• the production of Driving Miss Daisy with Vanessa Redgrave, Jame Earl Jones and some other guy - Darth Vader was.  right.  there.
  
• Westminster Abbey - major highlight for me!  We were shown round by Jeremy Irons (well, his voice) and I trod on CS Lewis by accident.  The place has... a feeling... about it.  Utterly breathtaking.  Loved it.
• the Changing of the Guard - chilly and also slightly boring.  Mostly they stand around a lot.
  
• the Wimbledon Christmas Pantomime of Dick Whittington starring Dame Edna Everage - soo much fun!  No plot, awful singing, but hugely entertaining.  Oh no it wasn't!  Oh yes it was!!!!
• shared a huge ice cream sundae at Harrods and walked down Oxford St looking at all the Christmas lights

Nom nom nom



Harrods!  Has a purse I want with no price tag...  uh oh!

 

Christmas lights on Oxford St

• Windsor Castle - also incredible.  We arrived late, unfortunately, so had a thorough and absorbing guided tour round the grounds, which meant we had to blitz through the castle itself and the chapel before it shut.  So, we'll be going back for round two.  This was also Kyle's first castle.  He's hooked.

The keep at Windsor Castle

• been to the World Darts Championships - yep...  Darts...  who knew that'd be fun??  Not me (back then)
• befriended squirrels - they like peanuts more than walnuts more than berries

Harold.  Likes his nuts.

I've also managed to go and get myself a job.  I can hear Big Ben chime as I walk to work.  Which is cool, but means I'm late...  Gainfully employed once more, Kyle and I are now flat hunting so Dean and Lou can have their spare room back and we can carve out a wee part of Londontown and mark it as our own.

Tomorrow we go to Morocco for six nights, including one in the desert under the stars like the Bedouin.  Awesome.  Goal of the trip is to not get fleeced by savvy market sellers and to come back with a tagine.  Which I WILL use.  I will.  You watch.

Catch you all in the new year!

M&K xxx