Home

We are back and I am now 3 days into school. There have been many changes to the area around where I live and at school. For example, there's a new shopping center called 'the well' just up the road. Also, the old buildings at school have re-opened after finishing being re-furbished. I like it when this happens, because you get a strong dose of new things, rather than a scattered one so you can go and look at all the new things straight away. JB Hi-Fi have moved to 'The Well' and have a great new area - much neater and more open.
Jetlag hasn't been that much of an issue, although I went to bed at 4:30 when we got home and woke up 13 hours later! After that I had 8 slices of toast because I had missed dinner! The plane flights back were also fairly good. The first flight (12.5 hour) went fairly well thanks to movies which kept me from being bored, but the second 7.5 hour flight seemed longer because I did'nt have any more movies to watch. luckily I managed to get a bit of sleep. The english sleep pattern is still holding although - I still wake up at 4 but go back to sleep.
The trip to england has been a good experience. I have learnt quite a lot and have been left with a few more good memories.

Last days in London and coming home

I have been really slack on blog posts so I'm going to catch up again now. I am currently in Kuala Lumpur Airport awaiting the flight home to Londo- I mean Melbourne.
The day after Westminster Abbey, we went to Lord's Cricket Ground. The ground is actually not used very often - only a few times a year for the ashes tour and a few other events. The pavillion is used more often, hosting business conferences and various events. The pitch is not actually flat - it has a 2.5m difference on both sides! But the British believe that, having ther been many games played on this pitch, that there's no real need to change it.
The next day we went to the Science Museum. It was amazing - I could have spent over a week there. There were 5 floors with exhibits ranging from a history of mathematics, to plastics to energy to materials... the list just goes on and on and on... There was a damascus steel blade, which was pretty cool. It has amazing properties - it is incredibly strong, yet flexible as well and really sharp. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki had a chapter on it in one of his books.
On our final day in London, Dad met up with us from France - he caught the TVG train from Paris straight to London. It was good too see him again before we went home - he is working at a vineyard in France and will be spending a further month travelling through France, Europe and America. We hired a car for the day and went down to Brighton, where British people spend their summers. Brighton has a pebble beach, which is really good for skipping stones. (un)fortunately, there is no sand, which is a plus for me because you don''t get is stuck in your shoes...

I have had a great time over in sunny England, but it is time to return home. See you all soon!

British Museum, Thames Cruise, Greenwich and the London Eye. Oh and Westminster Abbey too.

I have been a bit slack on Blog posts so I'll try to keep up. On Friday we went to the British Museum and saw an exhibit on Hadrian, one of the emperors of Rome. It was a very big and grand museum, and the exhibit on Hadrian was long and full of information. There were lots of artifacts - Statues, Busts, Pillar tops... the list goes on. There were also free displays which made up the rest of the building. we saw the original Rosetta Stone, which had a decree written in Greek, Egyptian script and Hieroglyphs . It was the first piece of evidence discovered that had Hieroglyphs written alongside another language already known, and as such lead to the cracking of Hieroglyph code. There was also an Easter Island statue which funnily enough was from Easter Island, where these statues were carved and erected thousands of years ago by natives to 'watch over' the island. The statue was about 2 meters tall. Also next to it was a face... a synthetic face with nothing inside as if it were a mask, but it was very big. Weird.

The next day we went on a river cruise down the Thames river to Greenwich. On the way we passed The Globe Theatre (well, a recreation of it - the original was destroyed), where Shakespeare primarily performed his plays. Greenwich was fascinating. For those who don't know, it is pronounced 'Grenich' (like spinach) and is where zero degrees longitude is located. Unlike latitude, which has a position set by the earth's equator, longitude has no real 'origin', so they decided to place it at Greenwich, where a lot of work on time and clocks was done. There was a fascinating exhibition there, showing various developments in keeping time, from pendulum clocks up to GPS systems in the 21s century. There were some amazing clocks on display, but unfortunately we could not take photos.

After the tour we caught 'the tube' (london underground) back to the London Eye, and hitched a ride.

The view was very good. We timed our flight perfectly, getting sunlight when we took off and landing at night time, giving us the best of both worlds.

Finally, today we went to Westminster Abbey for evensong. The choir and organ sounded absolutely spectacular, with an 8 second or so echo. Later that evening we found the TARDIS - see the web album.

London

We are now in London. First impressions - think Melbourne, minus tall buildings, and with almost all shops in old concrete buildings with fancy artwork - for example, the apple retail store has a mosaic above it's entrance. Yesterday we went out and looked around, catching the tube into the city center. Our first stop was the Apple retail store, which was very impressive. There were lots of macs, and many people were in there checking e-mails or reading the news, thanks to the free internet. There's also free wi-fi, and there are seminars every 20 minutes or so explaining a certain feature on a mac, or something like that - I didn't see one. The store also features the worlds biggest iPhone out the front of the shop - it's about a meter high with a TV in it. There was also a meter-high iPod nano. After this, we walked down Oxford street, then round back up Regent street, and then down Oxford street the other way. We then went to Hyde park, and saw people lying out on deck chairs. In a park. Finally, we went home. Today we are going to the Brtish Museum, Kings Cross station and perhaps Charing Cross road where there are lots of second-hand book stores!

Cambridge and Oxford, again

Over the past 2 days we have gone to Cambridge and Oxford, staying with more family inbetween. At Cambridge we saw, among other things, an incredibly strange clock. It had something to do with Stephen Hawking (I can't remember, but it was on BBC News). The clock was a round wheel, with teeth around the edge. A pendulum swung which moved the teeth around. At the top was some kind of mechanical locust, which crawled along the rotating teeth as they moved. Check out the picture on Picasa Web Albums.

We also went to King's College Cambridge, but that was mostly ABC.
We stayed just out of Cambridge with more family. They had a cat called Bubbles who was very cute and cuddly, but she dribbled!
The next day we headed back into Oxford via a park-and-ride. I'm not sure whether this service is available in Australia, but the idea is that you drive there, park for free, and then catch into the town, easing road congestion due to bus lanes. At Oxford we went to go and see the Christ Church where the harry potter dining hall scenes were filmed. Also there was the main staircase leading to the hall, which appeared for the same purpose at the start of the first film.
Today we leave for London, which will be our last destination on our 'journey'. Not to say that it will be minor - we have lots of things to go and see.