I'm back. :)

[aworldinside]

I'm hooooome.

Well I got home yesterday after 38 hours of airports and flights - including a lovely 11 hour stopover in Incheon Airport in Seoul. I got a few things done (wash all the clothes, actually have food in the house) before sleeping for 11 hours. So needed that.

While I'll miss people I left in the UK a lot and in some ways being back in London felt like I never left - I'm happy to be back. It's nice to be back in my own bed and Wellington is looking pretty gorgeous in the sunshine. Also positive job things happened while I was away. I had a semi-interview via skype while in Barcelona and got offered another job too. I am still trying to finalise some things but it's looking positive.

• Flights over were eh. Was in the middle seat for both Auckland ->Seoul and Seoul ->London and had a lovely dash through Incheon airport when my flight was late only to find that the boarding time for the London flight was pushed back.
• Upside: Avengers on the plane! Also saw Fast Girls with Bradley James - which is sort of Bend it Like Beckham with running but a really good movie to be honest.
• Did the Harry Potter Studio tour and even for someone whose HP geek has waned a little it was an awesome experience. Great Hall! Diagon Alley! And an awesome model of Hogwarts at the end. Well worth going to if you've ever been/are still a big HP fan.
• Jet-lag hit me really hard this time but it eventually settled down. I don't sleep well on planes but I thought arriving at UK night time would be easier. It wasn't.
• Wedding was awesome. My friends' got a lovely day and they held the ceremony in a gorgeous stone church overlooking the sea. The reception was a lot of fun and overall it was just awesome to have so many friends all in one place.
• Went for a solo London walk and did some shopping. Now own an Arsenal away team jersey and a blue and white polka dot dress I've been wanting forever. H&M I miss youuuuu ...
• Met up with nishatalitha on the South Bank for a drink/pub lunch which was very cool.
• Went back to the Tate Modern. Had to. One of my favourite museums. Didn't get quite as much time as I wanted back there but it was great.
• Also met up with Enigel for dinner, a fellow AO3 volunteer who I've known since I started volunteering in 2009. So great to finally meet her. :D
• Finally made it to St Pauls which I didn't manage to do while living London. OMG the dome. Climbed all the way to the top. Glad I've finally seen it.

Oktoberfest

• About as messy as you'd think. This came at the end of a week when I'd been drinking every day (not to excess but drinking) and was the first time I'd had two hangovers in a row in ages.
• Friday we wandered around Munich and had our first introduction to drinking from steins (1L beer mugs). Yeah.
• The Saturday (opening day) was fun but involved queueing in the rain, and maybe the most ridiculous queue for a womens' bathroom I've seen in my life. We were in one of the more traditional beer tents with lot of Germans and it was calm enough until the beers were served at noon and then there were people standing on tables skulling steins (and being cheered or booed by the entire tent of 6,000 people depending on their success) and pretzels and toasts and oom-pah bands and ... it was something.
• Sunday was quieter. It was sunnier and we wandered around the fairground part and I went on a crazy Olympics themed rollercoaster. We did end the day in a beer tent but it was definitely a quieter day. Also have to say the food at Oktoberfest is on the whole excellent, although somewhat challenged my 'almost vegetarian' way of eating. The strudel, the goulash, the pretzels ... really good.

Barcelona!

• A++ would visit again. Sad I only had two days here. Weather was warm but not too warm. Visit was very Gaudi-centric.
• Visited La Pedrera and Sagrada Familia on the Tuesday. Amazing buildings, especially the SF. The rainbow stained glass just blew me away. Spent a few hours lying on the beach (because the beach is so, so close to the city, and I'd never actually seen the Mediterranean) and had a seafood dinner of paella with lobster.
• Tracked down the Lichtenstein statue which was really great and ended up randomly in a beautiful church called the Santa Maria del Mar in the Gothic Quarter. It was free to enter and so peaceful .
• On Wednesday I started getting a cold but did make it up to Park Guell which had beautiful views of Barcelona but OMG so many people.
• Flight was delayed going to Rome but there are worse places to spend time that Barcelona Terminal 1 to be honest. New and spacious.

Rome!

• In a word: hot. I'm very happy I've seen the Colosseum, Forum, and especially Trajan's Column and the Pantheon but OMG hot. I was reunited with two of my friends who I went to Oktoberfest with which was cool, but also a bit weird because of Things Going On. I ended up drinking with one in an Irish pub watching the Pirates/Mets game which was fun but not incredibly Rome-y.
• The second day was the Vatican and hotter than the first. Again, I really liked seeing the Sistine Chapel, and School of Athens and some of the amazing ceilings in the museums, but it was hot and stuffy in there and I was a little hungover, still had a cold and had cramps ... so I could have been in a better mood to be honest. I feel like I'm being unfair to Rome because I did like it, but I definitely preferred Barcelona.

• Back to London for lunch with friends where I yelled at the Chelsea vs Arsenal game and then dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Embankment. Nice way to end it. Lots of goodbyes that I did very quickly. :(
• Had an entire row to myself between London -> Seoul. <333 I wanted to do a transit tour in Seoul but I was so tired I didn't know if I could face it. Seoul has places to nap and free wi-fi so killed time there and had good kimchi udon. May have watched Avengers on the flight back as well ... Also finally saw the F1 documentary Senna. Such a good sports documentary. Learnt things about Senna and Prost and just OMG the moments leading up to his death. So well done.

There will be photos. Eventually. These things always take me time.

Let the tv catch-up begin. Being in the UK meant I mostly kept up with The Thick of It (Malcolm I missed you so) and Downton Abbey but other than that ... ahaha no.

Why I started with H50 I'm not quite sure, but I did.



I liked 3.02 better than 3.01 but still, it's really not that good.

I am quite amused that they made Steve's mum a big ass spy with an attitude and I like Christine Lahti so I'll probably keep watching even though the plot-line is more than a bit crazy. Also happy to see Catherine back. :D

While I do feel for Chin and liked Danny and his moment on the beach in 3.02 ... it really is just killing a female character off to give drama and it was badly done.

Even the Steve/Danny feels a little stale even though I liked the "this marriage has gotten predictable" line. Maybe I'm just getting over it.

I also haven't really kept up with LJ/DW so that's another thing on the online to-do list. I uh ... sort of kept up with Tumblr as my queue of pictures of Gabriel Macht's face might attest. *cough*

Also just in time for Get Together this weekend! Very much looking forward to seeing everyone but I really need to do my Sportsnight pimp. I need to channel my feelings about Dan Rydell .... <333

And uh Yuletide noms are happening already? Dude. Time flies.

Crossposted here (
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