England

So after being here for the past few weeks, I realized that this place is pretty damn expensive. For people back home, i try to compare it by saying, "..imagine living in Toronto, with the usual cost of living/stuff but cut your salary in half."

Really. That's how i've been experiencing it so far so I made the decision to look for a job and earn some British Pounds. It also helps us do all the things we want to do while we're here and not go broke in the process (travelling within Europe, dining out at nice restaurants, shopping..)

Recruiters. Hate em, love some of em, hate the rest of em more. Seriously, i have had some interesting experiences with recruiters over here and I'm sure its not a UK thing but the whole dog-eat-dog world of recruiting definitely turned me off the last few of them and I was not being very co-operative. But I guess, i should look at it as I have skills that employers need and they recognize that and i could be a good recruit for them. Anyways, i met some good ones and some retarted ones but i can admit that i did need their help.

Anyways, had 5 (apparently) very interested clients, 4 set me up with interviews, 1 i was underqualified for, 1 i was overqualified for and the 2 others gave me 2nd interviews immediately after the 1st round.

Glad to say, that I accepted one of the offers and will now be a working citizen of the UK.

Now to figure out how taxes and how Canadian laws come into play...ugh.

(The working couple..?)

We went to the Cotswold today, a range of hills in west-central England, with towns with weird names such as Bourne-on-the-Water and Stow-on-the-Wold (which we both visited). We met up with Richard, another one of Michelle's co-workers who lived near the area and showed us around and took us for 'clotted cream' (see below).

• Bourne-on-the-Water - first place we went to, and probably the most popular, tourist-attraction one. It was characterized with several small footbridges crossing a little River Windrush that winded through the city center. The weather was unpredictable (again) with rain, sun, rain, sun..all day long.

• Visited the Miniature Village which had a complete 1/9th replica of the town and within that replica, had another mini-replica..lol.

• Had afternoon tea with cream tea. Cream tea is basically regular tea but served with scones and a butter called 'clotted cream'. Cream that was as thick as butter - minimum fat content of 55%!!!!. It was sooooooo good but i believe that if you had this every day or every other day, your arteries would get clogged up mighty fast.

• Stow-on-the-Wold - took a short drive out to this next small town but it wasn't as picturesque as the last one. A bit more mainstream and busy with local traffic. If this were Markham, this would be Markham Main Street and Bourne-on-the-Water would be Unionville Main Street.

• Tried hand-pulled real english ale, Arknell's, for the first time at a pub here. Very flat and served at room temperature. "Real ale is the name coined by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) in 1973 for a type of beer defined as 'beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide'" - Wikipedia. Basically you can tell real ale from lager in that it doesn't go down with that carbon dioxide fizziness in your throat..less carbonated.

So yesterday we headed to the coastal city of Portsmouth (about an hour away) to check out the factory outlets and surrounding sights. It was a windy/sunny/cloudy day (as usual) so check it out:

• We went to Gunwharf Quay's which is a collection of 90+ outlet stores that included most of the usual name brands + European ones of course. Didn't do too much shopping here (Michelle did it all lol!) since I'm still working on finding that source of income to make the prices here much more bearable...

• The Spinnaker Tower was also located here, a big white wind-sail looking structure, that you could pay to go up and check out the harbour view and surrounding area but to be honest, after going up many of these type of structures (CN Tower, Seattle Space Needle, Tokyo Tower, Eiffel Tower, etc..), I just didnt feel like we had to do it..and we didn't.

• Walked over to the Historic Portsmouth Dockyard that contained the 3 famous warships of the British Navy, historically anyway: HMS Victory, HMS Mary Rose (which Lord Nelson commandered) and HMS Warrior 1860. We got to step on and explore the Victory and Warrior but the main attraction here was the restoration of the Mary Rose (King Henry VIII favourite) which was housed in it's own special building. It actually sank during a battle with the French off the coast of Portsmouth and in 1982, they raised it from the water and have begun restoring it (it's the only 16th century warship on display in the world). But the surprising thing to me is that they are spraying it in a coat of wax and it will take 15 years for the wax process to finish! wtf!?

• Also walked to the old city of Portsmouth and saw a nice old church with fields that reminded me of Gladiator. Of course, there was cobblestone paths all around and we walked along the coast but it was super windy and getting a bit cold so we headed back to Gunwharf Quay's for dinner (Tapas at Las Tasca.mmm).

• Oh yeah, and driving here at night is nuts. Seriously, tight narrow roads with NO lights, even on the major roadways. Very tough drive through country roads with about a foot on either side of the car as your 'space'...
  

So we decided to check out the Canada Day celebrations being held in Trafalgar Square in London and although we came quite late (around 8pm), there was still much happening and music playing.

• The place was pretty full with a ton of red-wearing people walking around having Canadian beer and munching on Bison Burgers (that is, after lining up in the huge queues..). The theme this year was in association with Alberta so naturally they had bison burgers...

• The music playing was someone i had not heard of at all (Kim Beggs?) and it was traditional folk music or something, i couldn't figure out what it was and it was nothing you would hear of on the radio except for maybe late afternoon Tuesdays on 88.1 or something..

• We ended up eating at a Turkish restaurant called Ozer, near Oxford Circus, and it was very good! Recommended by the Michelin guide and moderately-priced. I tried a Turkish liquer called Yeni Raki which resembles sambuca, and after mixing it with a bit of water, that first glass already me a bit loopy and hot..lol. All for 5GBP!

• All in all, it was good to celebrate Canada Day even if we were in England, we spent a short time there but enough to say we were proud to be Canadians! Ole!
  

Wowzers..what an adventure today to make it to Wimbledon, one of the major tennis tournaments (part of the Grand Slam) at the All England Lawn and Tennis club. Personally, i'm not a big fan of tennis but I am a sports fan so while we were here, we just had to go check it out...

• Center Court tickets are actually sold the year before in a random ballot and on the day of the matches, there are limited tickets left for people to buy. Approx 500 Center court tickets and 6000 gorunds passes are available but to get the center court ones, people camp overnight. We were not doing that. So we went for the grounds passes but still, it was advised to go early to queue up for them....and then...

• We left our place at 6:00 AM (yes read that right) and caught the train to Wimbledon and finally got in the queue close to 7:45. Let me tell you, the amount of people already there was unreal!!! By the time we got our queue ticket (which you need to prove your place in line), we were already #6437!! We waited outside, luckily it was nice out, for just over 3.5 hours and finally got into the place 10 minutes before the 1st match started!!

• While we were walking on the grounds, a guy accidentally bumped into Lisa. I kept on looking at him since he looked familiar and then when I saw people runnning to get his autograph, I realized it was Rafael Nadal, the current #2 player in the world!! he was just going into the Center Court building but i managed to run in front of him and get a quick snap (see below)

• Extremely expensive there - but had to get the traditional Wimbledon fare - champagne, Pimm's, strawberries and cream..mmmmmmm.

• Watched a few matches (no real big names) of junior girls on the outer courts and one men's match at the end on court 18 (A. Clement i believe was the dude who won it). The junior girls were all pretty tall and lean but i think i could've played with them...lol right.

• Very cool experience but if you can, you must try and get Center Court tickets to get the full experience!