The Aussie and Kiwi family in London

We crept out of the house early Saturday morning, and in no time at all were back at Gatwick airport, had dropped of our rental car and were on the train into Victoria Station.

This is where the plans went a little awry. The quickest route to Alyssa's new London apartment was on the circle line train, but whichever way I entered the directions into Google maps, I was directed to an alternative tube line and a bus. Finally, the truth emerged - the circle and district lines were both closed for engineering works. I was too tired to negotiate the alternatives so we opted for option 2, a taxi - that was until we saw the queue! Option 3 was a bus so we walked across the road to the no 52 bus stop and not long after, the bus came along, but once more the journey was thwarted as the bus was full so the driver just waved at us and kept going. There was only one option left, shanks' pony so we set off on foot and walked to Hyde Park corner. Here we were able to catch the no 9 bus along Kensington High Street to Alyssa's. Her apartment is at the far end of a delightful cobbled mews just off Kensington High Street and we were finally inside and making ourselves at home. Alyssa and her flatmate, Saum, were up in Oxford at a careers fair for law students, so we had a relaxing afternoon and Roger put together a nice roast lamb for us all for dinner that night.

Alyssa has recently been offered a permanent residency as a barrister at Essex Chambers after a year of pupeledge, so she now has her own office and is officially working on her own cases, predominately in International Law. Her flatmate, Saum, whom she has known since high school, is completing the final 6 months placement of her degree as a Hand Surgeon at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, so it was a fascinating insight into the world of young professionals living their best life in London.

Sunday dawned a beautiful day and Alyssa was keen to catch up on some work, so Roger and I headed off on an adventure. First stop was Kensington Palace gardens, where we bumped into some of the 17000 + runners competing in the London half marathon. Not feeling quite energetic enough to join in, we opted instead to walk up the Portobello Road into Notting Hill. It was busy with tourists seeking trinkets and snapshots outside the infamous apartment block that featured in the movie Nottinghill, but we managed to find an all day bar with a table in the sun, so we could enjoy a GnT and a beer to keep up our fluids, and do some people watching.

On our walk home we wandered through the little local market and discovered a delightful mother and daughter duo from Turkey making gozlemes on a large cast iron plate. Later in the afternoon, after a quick reconnoitre at Alyssa's, we all headed down Earl's Court Road, home of the original 'Kangaroo Valley' back in the mid seventies, and jumped on the tube out to Islington where we met up with my neice Mikayla, another long term London resident from NZ. She's working for an Interior Design firm and has just accepted a sponsorship from them, which allows her another 3 years on a working holiday visa. It was a fun night - Roger was the token 'father figure' with his table of five young women, and the conversation over dinner was lively and loud.Read more