London and Eastbourne

Strangely enough after one year of blogging about my time in Finland I am getting a bit sick of it. I've never really been one for writing letters, emails etc that have no purpose besides conveying random peices of information, while my blog has more of a purpose than this, writing in it "constantly" so that it can be a true reflection of my traineeship is becoming a bit of a drag, but there are a couple more that I should post before I say "that's a wrap", and it may very well be that they are a lot shorter than anything else I've ever written, the following is one of them...

On Friday evening I arrived back in Tampere after just over 1.5 weeks visiting London and Eastbourne. London is a great place with lots of cool things to see and do and places to visit. I arrived early afternoon there and by the time I got to my hostel from the airport it was going on late afternoon so it was just my intention to go for a walk around the area I was staying in and have a bit of a think about what I was going to do while there. In the end however I ended up in Hyde Park and sort of kept going and one of the first things I came across was the Princess Diana memorial, when I first saw it I wondered what the heck it was, then discovered it was her memorial and then I started wondering what on earth they were thinking when it was decided that that particular fountain would be the memorial, it is in my opinion fairly terrible, well the fountain is ok, but as a memorial, it fairly sucks. Moving on, I then found myself at the back end of Buckingham Palace and decided well why not, so I went down to the front and discovered that the Queen was in, then walking down The Mall I went to Trafalga Square, up to Picadilly Circus and then along Oxford Street back towards the Marble Arch and back to Paddington where I was staying, so it was a pretty long walk.

The next day I went and visited good old Big Ben and he dinged his dong just after I got there which was pretty cool, the House of Parliament looks like a prison with its high black wire fencing and security cameras along its perimeter, but it still looks very nice, the London Eye looks slightly out of place, but Westminster Abbey and St Pauls Cathedral look stunning as does all of the old architecture in the city. Oh and I visited Harrods, no trip to London is quite complete without this!

The next day I went to Camden Town and the changing of the guards and then spent a good portion of my day trying to find an adaptor to charge my camera which had quickly run out of battery, I thought this might happen but didn't think it would so soon. Why did I spend most of my day doing this??? Because the first adaptor wouldn't work as I could get the plug in, I took it and the plug back to the store and trying the adaptor that I brought and another one, the stupid plug just wouldn't go in, I then had to go to another store, the first store pointed me in the direction of a proper luggage store saying they would have more variety so I went there only to find that they had only the one, theis being the one that I had already tried, but low and behold when the plug was put in this time it worked perfectly, how annoying... Having wasted a good portion of the day doing this one thing and subsequently doing a bit of window shopping, I then decided that I would spend my evening out taking night photos of areas such as Harrods and its thousands of lights, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London etc I also went and visited Picadilly Cricus and Leister Square which are both quite different in the evening compared to during the day.

Friday I went and saw the Changing of the Horses Calvary guards thing which is pretty much just two sets of soliders on mounts standing around for about 15min, but the horses were beautiful! I then went to Kensington and visited the Palace, gardens, Royal Albert Hall as well as the Museum. I have to say that the memorial that Victoria built for Albert is mighty impressive, sort of puts others to shame really. I also went and saw the Lion King and it was absolutely amazing how they managed to turn an animated film into a stage production and do it well, I started crying within about 1 minute of The Cirlce of Life song beginning. Covent Garden at night is also very lively.

On Saturday I went and had a look through Westminster Abbey, had a look at the British Taite, went to Westminster Cathedral and then went back to Westminster for the Evesong service in the afternoon, then I jumped on a bus and went to St Pauls, my intention here was to just take some photos but discovered that their evesong service was just about to start so I went in there to, now i can say that I have been to services in two churches that I have admired since I have no idea when, ages ago! And I went back to covent garden to look at the markets and the various buskers around and then I went out to Greenwich.

On Sunday I caught a train to Eastbourne to go and visit my relatives. I was sitting in Paddington Station and looking at the train departures board and was wondering where on earth the train to Eastbourne was as my ticket said I was leaving via Paddington Station, I finally got annoyed enough to go and ask the ticket office who told me my ticket included the underground and that I actually needed to go to Victoria Station, so with 40min to spare I waited for the underground and then managed to board the train to Eastbourne with about 4 minutes to spare which is a good thing as I told my relatives I would be on a particular train and didn't want to be late.

Eastbourne is a town of about 94,000 people in East Sussex on the English south coast, it is a very pretty place and it is the first time I have ever visited there. My grandfather came out to NZ in the 1950's working his way over from Australia, he ended up staying in NZ and marrying my gran, but he left behind 6 younger brothers and sisters in England, up until last week I had only ever met grandpa's sister, Great Aunt Ruby and her husband George when they visited NZ around 10 years ago and then only for an evening, but being in this region of the world, I had to go and visit, I was supposed to go at Christmas but went home instead and then I was going to go at easter until one of my other aunts husband died, so it was really a case of now or never.

Anyway, Aunt Ruby was great taking me all about Eastbourne and showing me the sights and also telling me all about my family and where my grandpa comes from because he doesn't talk about these sort of things. Throughout the week I met everyone of my grandpa's siblings (except one who died a number of years ago, but I met her husband) and their partners or spouses, I even met some of my second cousins and their children, it was nice if a bit weird. It is funny how everyone in the family, including most of the children live in Eastbourne still. Tuesday's are girls night for Aunts Pearl, Ruby and Margaret, last Tuesday dinner was at Aunt Ruby's so I cooked yummy Morrocan vegetables and rice with garlic pitas and then for dessert we had this chocolate and vanilla Swirl mousse that I made, I have to say I am a great cook, but people who have tried my cooking know that already! I'm not modest am I? I had so much fun laughing with and getting to know my Aunts, there was no weird silent moments or anything.

On Wednesday Aunts Pearl and Margaret took me on a tiki tour around the surrounding villages of Eastbourne and we had a nice day visiting the Long Man, Alfriston and the Michellin Priory. In the evening we wnet and visited uncle George (brother) and his partner Rose and stayed for quite a few hours. By this time I was getting a bit antsy to be by myself again, meeting my family is great, but I need space and Aunt Ruby just wanted to come everywhere with me and I didn't want to be rude, but I think she got the idea that I needed some time to myself so on Thursday I went to Brighton for the day, the bus trip there was nice if not exceedingly annoying, it was over an hour late getting in! But walking along the pier and see front were nice and the Lanes were great with all the different varieties of shops. I had a really nice day.

On Friday morning I left eastbourne and went back to London and spent the day just wandering around different areas in the central area I hadn't spent much time looking at before and then got the train back to the airport to come back to Tampere.

What i find most interesting about my trip to eastbourne was the fact that by the time I had been there for a day I was making myself right at home and knew where everything in the cupboards was located etc it felt like home and within a couple of days Aunt Ruby was acting just like my grandma did towards me- fussing over me, but letting me be enough and treating me like an adult, she even tried to ply me with alcohol on my last night having bought a new bottle of sweet wine which only I like and deciding that I really should try to drink as much of it as I could before I left, thank goodness I could beg off with the excuse of needing to pack my bag before going and seeing Uncle Bill and told her she should just save it for Aunt Pearl! It was really nice that she and my other Aunts were just so welcoming, even one of my second cousins who I talked to for 20 minutes was like it. It was nice coming away feeling that these people were not just my family in name, but that they really were my family and it didn't matter that i had never met them or that we live thousands of miles away from one another, they are there and that's what matters.