London Week 5

This week started well. We packed up our bags again in readiness for our last journey carrying everything for a while. This time we were off to move into our flat. We were unsure how we would cope with carrying our plethora of bags through the tube again, and this time there would be quite a lot of walking involved. Luckily Tom came to the rescue and offered to carry Jess' pack which freed her up to carry some of the smaller bags. So what could have taken us several trips and several hours only ended up taking about 45 minutes and one trip. Thank you Tom!
So off we went to our flat in Vauxhall. Moving in with our new flatmate Jen. It was fantastic having such simple things as drawers and coathangers again. After all that Tree and Katie came around and then Jen and her boyfriend Liam cooked us up some tasty vegetarian pizzas. I think we made the right move.

This week was Marcus' first full week at work and Jess' first full week by herself. She filled in her days with a mixture of job hunting and plenty of walking. Wednesday she journeyed in to the West End to meet Marcus after work for a nice picnic in Hyde Park (altough we only skirted the edges of the huge park.) Then it was a good walk home. Not TOO far but not too close either. Thursday was also Marcus' first proper after dinner drinks with his workmates for St George's Day. We expected it to be like St Patrick's Day with people our celebrating and drinking ales all day. It wasn't...The pubs were maybe busier after work than usual and there were a few more English flags around, but otherwise the day passed relatively uneventful. Good chance to spend some social time with work people.

Saturday, being ANZAC Day we had planned to sleep in, but Tom suggested we should go to the ANZAC day dawn service, so up we climbed at 3:30am and onto the bus with the other antipodeans and off to Hyde Park Corner where the New Zealand and Australian war memorials were. Unfortunately Tom and Gini slept in and then missed their bus, but we were there along with hundreds (or thousands...we couldn't tell in the dark) of Kiwis and Aussies to pay respect to the soliders of our respective countries. This year it was an Australian service, but they shared between Australian and New Zealand speakers and prayers and then a quick trip across to the NZ memorial for a karakia and haka.

Tom and Gini arrived just as this was all ending, but they at least had plans to head off for
ANZAC breakfast at a local cafe owned by Tom's dad's friend. Unfortunately it wasn't open for several hours so we journeyed to the only cafe we could find for the butteriest croissant we had ever had along with extra butter...No worries though, we were then off to the Borough Market under London Bridge. This is officially Marcus' favourite Market. It is quite small and it is all food...no dresses or jewellery in sight. We had a brilliant morning sampling tea, sausage, cheeses and breads. All artisan and tasty. By the time midday came around we had had our fill and managed to buy a few things too and it was time to head home for a sleepy nap.

Refreshed from our nap we had to get dressed into our NZ gears and head down to Clapham for Tim and Emma's ANZAC day party. BBQ on the deck, beers in the chilly bin, jetplanes and pavlova. It was the quintessential NZ experience (there were some aussies there too). Was also good to catch up with the likes of Ben, Reuban, Katie and Chris. Alas we failed on the photo front for this party so we will have to steal some from Tim and Emma.

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