Paris and such

Today was mostly a day of travelling. We got up early and met everyone, jumped on the coach and headed for Dover, we jumped on the ferry (Amber loves boats btw) and headed over to France. After a few hours in the coach we arrived in Paris.

Well, first impressions of Paris was certainly....interesting? Honestly it was like we were driving through a slum. People and families sleeping on the streets. It was my first real exposure to the refugee crisis and you can very much see the effect. We got to the hotel, dropped our shit off then back on the bus and did the sightseeing tour.

Some weird tower in the background ruining our selfie.

This one is for you mum, escargo & frogs legs. The escargo was alright, but the frogs legs were divine. Seriously I recommend.

The other side of Paris is the one you see in movies. Wow, Champ De Elysee is crazy, just so much wealth (and the worlds only McDonalds with white arches not gold ones. Once we got back a bunch of us went out for drinks, I had far too many and stumbled back to the hotel and passed out. 

Need 2 of these on either side of my driveway.

And one of these in the backyard for Paige to sleep under.

A low effort blog post because im le tired.

Today we jumped on the hop on hop off tour, which took us all around the London landmarks. Super cool to see new high rise buildings mixing in with the old architecture. I think of all the buildings my favorite was a church from the 600s (amazing structure, and its held the test of time), also special mention to the other church which still had visible damage from WW2.

I think the stand out activity of the day was a tour around the Tower of London by a Yeoman Warder. Ontop of being super funny, he was very engaging and the tour had heaps of cool old facts about the place (damn Tower of London, you been to some dark places).

Eventually we made our way back home, and I in particular am about to pass out (probably for the best because France tomorrow).

There are more photos but I am not going to upload the all now, because I dont want to.

Somewhat of a Tube expert

So day one one the ground, we got up, had some breakfast and decided to go for a walk, we ended up just walking for like 30mins in one direction, ended up at the Albert and Victoria museum so we decided to go in and have a look. Some really cool stuff in there (I love the old school flintlock rifles).

After walking back (jandles were a bad idea) we actually bumped into our friend Chris and his girlfriend Kayleigh on the street. We jumped on the tube and after a couple of transfers we ended up at Camden Town, which was a crazy busy market-type place. All sorts of weird shit. We went into one store called Cyberdog, which was like a rave nightclub but actually a clothing store. There was even half-naked chicks dancing on balconies while people were clothes shopping below, some weird shit.
After mincing around for a few hours we checked out Chinatown (including another ridiculous 4 story M&Ms Store) we went back to the hotel for a bit of a recharge, then headed back out for some dinner. Amber got a bit tired at this point so she headed back to the hotel and Chris, Kayleigh and I jumped back on the tube and headed to Picadilly Circus (which may I add was a pretty poor circus, no clowns or elephants or anything!). After walking around for a bit we headed back to Camden Town for a drink at the worlds end.

Was awesome to catch up with Chris again, was far too long. Next time I recon its his turn to come over!

Wow that was a long trip

We did it fam, 35 hours of transit and we finally got to London. For anyone wanting to travel direct to London I would highly recommend staying over somewhere for a day or 2 in the middle, two 12 hour flights back to back kinda sucks.

We arrived in Shanghai at about 11am NZ time, its not the easiest airport to navigate, but once we found our bearings we were sweet. The airport is fairly massive, but fortunately we were dropped off at the terminal we needed to fly out from. We had like 3 hrs to spare so we grabbed one of those 1 hr hotel rooms (we were offered a 'massage' but we politely declined). Had a shower and a micronap and by then it was almost time for us to fly out.

First time for us flying with Virgin Atlantic and I have got to say, WOW that service is outstanding, that was quite possibly the best flight that I have been on. The cabin crew was amazing (Amber was not feeling well and they were super helpful and understanding). Special mention to Sam, you da man Sam.

Once we finally arrived at Heathrow we quickly grabbed a UK sim card, jumped on the tube which we stopped at just around the corner from our hotel. We then went out to a quaint little Thai place for dinner and then back to the hotel for sleep (by this time we were full on zombies).

Quite the experience so far, and we haven't even hit day 1!

So it begins

Pretty good start to the trip, ended up leaving almost 2 hrs later from Palmy airport (I thought it was 5pm but the flight was at 6:45). Bonus 1hr 45 that we dont have to hang around Auckland Airport. The flight up was one of the sweetest ive had in recent memory. We got here, both pretty tired after quite a long day, looking forward to getting up in the air so I can take one of my sleeping pills and nod off.