peteandmegan.com

Maybe I should change my name from Quentin to “Acquisition” as it looks like I’m in the middle of another of HP’s acquisitions, just on the other side of the fence this time.

After being a part of one of HP’s first IT Services acquisitions, CGNZ, I could now be interestingly affected by the possible purchase of EDS.

Having been burned in the past (ask me about that offline if you haven’t heard the story), this time I’m not going to make any crazy speculation on this blog.  However I’m sure employees of both companies and not just me are thinking of the ramifications.

For instance, as regular readers will know, I’m currently in the job market for New Zealand.  I’ve always wanted to work for EDS given they have an office five minutes from my house, but I’ve always been scared off by their poor reputation for employee happiness.  HP is a lot better in this area (but by no means perfect) so it could be a very interesting time to join EDS or HP in the Application Services area.

Breaking news: Done and dusted. Wow a very quick process.

It’s Sunday evening in grey Newcastle and already the pictures of us in sunny Nice seem like years ago, but it was only this morning.

So the story begins last Friday (nine days ago) when we flew from Newcastle to Rome. Arriving at Rome’s Ciampino airport (smaller than Leonardo da Vinci and for budget airlines) at about 9pm at night and with little confidence in the planned shuttle bus arriving, we spent some nervous time waiting (and trying to use the stupid non-functioning Italian pay phones). But eventually we were picked up and were taken to the camp ground (Tiber Village Camping Hostel). I had made the rather unusual decision to camp in Rome for two reasons. (1) We had already decided to bring our tent to camp in Cinque Terre (2) I couldn’t believe how expensive accommodation was in Rome. We paid about 75 euro for three nights, I would have had to pay more than that for one night. The drawback was that we had to catch a free shuttle from the camp ground to the local train station, catch a train to the nearest metro and then catch the metro into town, about 45 minutes all up. But it didn’t really affect us to much, and we actually really like the flexibility of being able to cook our own meals and not having to wander around looking for an affordable place to eat…but anyway.

After a restful night (no problems with pitching the tent or anything else) day 1 began with the Colosseum. After a faltering start trying to buy tickets (unfortunately this is where we realized that basing our plans off a 2001 guidebook might not always be the best plan) we decided to book a guided tour which got us tickets in, skipped the massive line and also got us a tour of the Palatine Hill. I was pretty nervous about being scammed (as we gave up quite a bit of cash and all we got in exchange was a green dot sticker) but by the end we really felt we had got our money’s worth after having two great guides.

The Colosseum was really cool. We had read in some places (I think it was Lonely Planet) that it wasn’t worth going into, but I would disagree. Standing in the stands looking down on a place where thousands of men fought to the death and tens of thousands of exotic animals appeared and were killed is somewhat sobering. It’s also an amazing insight into our distant history. Also it’s incredible that it’s still standing, most places where the Romans were (e.g York) are lucky to have a few crumbling bits of stone to show for the Romans habitation, and here we have a massive stadium.

We were finished at the Colosseum by about 12:15 so we grabbed an overpriced roll from a vendor outside the Colosseum and ate it while we waited for our next tour of the Palatine Hill at 1pm. The tour was great, covering the hill as well as Constantine’s Arch and some of the forum. The guide was a crackup, even stopping to get us all free orange juice from a promotional campaign obviously not targeted towards tourists!

Following the tour we headed through the forum and then walked via Capitol Hill to the Pantheon.

My experience of the Pantheon was fairly unremarkable. Lot’s of people, pretty cool space but more than anything I’ll remember it for the comment I made when entering “I feel like I’m at Mecca” for the weird flow of people entering in a huge, tight packed group and circling the space before exiting. Oh yeah, and we also had REALLY nice Ice Cream at a place on the road just to the left of the Pantheon.

The last two destinations for the day were the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. However because this was a Saturday and at the most perfect time weather-wise for a trip to Rome, both attractions were more notable for the ridiculous hordes of people than their somewhat noteworthy beauty. We picked up some groceries from the excellent superette (called “drug store”) in Termini and headed back to the camp ground for dinner, a drink and a nice bit of rest.

Day 2 was all about the Vatican City. We happened to be in town on the last Sunday of the month, when all museums are free. So we had deliberated whether to go on Sunday and face massive crowds or go on Saturday, pay 28 Euro for entry and face potentially somewhat smaller crowds. Since we were going to have to face some level of crowds anyway, and the exact volume was uncertain we decided to just go as early as we could, plan on queuing for hours and make the most of it.

After two and a half hour of queuing (about 9:30am till 12:00) we got in.

The Vatican Museum is mostly about displaying the Vatican’s massive collection of art in the form of paintings, sculptures and tapestries. As I’ve said before, we don’t have the highest level of art appreciation between us, but we still managed to really enjoy wandering through the galleries and pretending we knew what we were looking at.

But by far the highlight for us was the Sistine Chapel. Again, with so many people there, it was somewhat diminished, but looking at the photos and hopefully the video you get a real appreciation for how amazing the painted walls and roof really are.

After exiting the Vatican Museum we headed around to St Peter’s Square. After giving some Australian tourists some spurious advice about the length (likely time) of the queue (good on-ya Megan) she joined the queue and I went to fetch drinks and our daily Ice Cream ration.

St Peter’s Basilica was amazing, huge, magnificent…I could pick a hundred words to describe it. It was probably my favorite place we saw in Rome. Looking at it and through it you can’t help but be amazed at the wealth and power of the Roman Catholic Church here on Earth.

That pretty much draws day 2 to a close. At this point, I’m going to take a break, and given we’re only at day 2 of 9 maybe you should take one too. Maybe make a sandwich

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It’s an often mentioned fact that people like to leave Rome. Almost from the start we felt this, we had three full days planned in the Cinque Terre National Park, and while we knew we had to see Rome, we were looking forward to getting to the calm, natural surroundings outside of Rome. So day 3 began by packing up the tent, making our way back into the city and jumping on a train up to Pisa.

The train took about two and a half hours, which is great compared to driving (I think about five hours). The trip was scenic and smooth and before we knew it, we were in Pisa.

After checking our luggage in, we decided to walk to the leaning tower rather than take the bus. We were glad we did, since this gave us a chance to see a little bit of the Italian character, culture and architecture which was hard to absorb in Rome because of the constant mayhem.

Once at the tower, we took a couple of photos and then had lunch. We sat there laughing at all the stupid people and their cheesy posing for photos. Little did I know I was going to be compelled It was only fair since I compelled Megan to do something similar on video…

After another Ice Cream we headed back to the train station and boarded our train to our Cinque Terre home, Deiva Marina. We got to the train station at about 5:30 and were picked up by the camping ground’s free shuttle pretty promptly. There are a bunch of camp grounds in DM but we stayed at one called Camping La Sfinge, probably solely because they had a well maintained web site.

So we spent four nights, three days in the Cinque Terre National Park. Cinque Terre means “five villages” and as you would expect, features five villages tucked into the cliffs along a beautiful section of coastline. The villages themselves are gorgeous, but there are well established walks between them which are what really attracts the tourists.

The five villages (from our direction Southwards) are Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore.

More for our future records than your pleasure, these are the walks we did on our three days:

• Day 1 - Monterosso to Vernazza and Riamaggiore to the Church on the Hill
• Day 2 - Vernazza to Corniglia, Riamaggiore to Botanical Gardens and Riamaggiore to Manarola (and back to Riamaggiore)
• Day 3 - Levanto to Monterosso and Corniglia to Manarola (and on to Riamaggiore)

In case you’re wondering how we jumped from village to village, this is via the train that connects all the villages together. This is handy if you don’t want to do all the walks in order on the same day and also if you can’t find an outdoor restaurant serving Pizza with olives for lunch in Monterosso you can head to Vernazza!

We loved Cinque Terre. Three days is a long time to have there, but we needed the break to recuperate from work. Except for the first day, the weather was great and the temperature was perfect (not too hot for walking, but warm enough to go for a swim…just).

The final leg of our trip was to travel to Nice (France) stay a couple of nights, visit Monaco and then fly back to Newcastle.

Nice was quite a culture shock after spending three days in tranquil regional Italy. We stayed in a relatively cheap hotel just off the main drag a little way away from the beach (everything, including McDonalds is more expensive closer to the beach).

On Friday evening we took a walk along the Promenade Des Anglais and had a take away dinner (burgers) looking out to the sparkling blue Med.

The next day we made a leisurely start to the day and caught the cheapest international bus in the world (1 euro each) to Monaco. We spent the morning and early afternoon exploring Monaco including the Casino, the hundreds of super yachts, all the stuff setup for the Grand Prix later this month and the castle before heading back to lie in the sun on the beach and take a swim.

And so, we come to the close of our holiday. The next day, Sunday, yesterday, we got out of bed nice and late and headed to the airport (again for the insane 1 euro each) for our early afternoon flight and about two hours later were in Newcastle.

We’re not really sure whether there will be any other European holidays before we head home, but if that is it, then we’ll certainly feel like we ended on a high note.

It must be some sort of a roll, but I have another video for you.  Somewhat shorter this one features the video I took when we went to our two rugby world cup games in Edinburgh and Cardiff.

It’s taken a while to get to the point where I felt like I could make and publish this video.  Looking at my “diary entry” at the end I think “how melodramatic am I” until I think back and remember that this is a 100% reflection of how I felt.  I honestly felt like the world had ended.

Anyway, check it out here.

I like to keep  an eye on the games coming out of Wellington based developer Sidhe Interactive, since on a number of times I have talked with guys there about working for them.  In fact ‘my guy’ Jos get’s a shoutout in the pretty positive 1up preview of their latest game, Speed Racer.

It’s a movie tie-in racing game about a series I’ve never heard about.  The game seems kind of cool, and is awesomely going to be just the second game to use the Wii wheel (after Mario Kart) and the first third party developer to do it.

So I suppose if you’re into the animated series you might buy it, and if you’re a kiwi (and it’s any good) you should pick it up.   After all, we need to “buy New Zealand made”.

Our blog was hacked (probably by a tool, not a person) today. Not cool, not cool at all [looks over his shoulder].

Edit: The fix to this seems to be to update the wordpress tool used to run this site. This will involve some downtime, which may stretch to days if I can’t easily fix any issues. I’m sure you’ll all survive.

Edit2: Upgrade is done, very little downtime as super easy process.  I love wordpress.  Hopefully we should be secure and you shouldn’t be seeing any of the random stuff I have stored in draft posts on this site.

By now most of our readers will have worked out (either from the post below, from facebook or from the ‘grapevine’) that Megan is pregnant with our first child. She (Megan) was 14 weeks on Tuesday (to save you the math, the kid is due 29th September) and we had the first scan just before Easter. We’re very excited and looking forward to this new adventure.

The common question from various parts of the world is, “are you coming/going back to New Zealand for it?” The answer, at least 95% as far as we know it at this stage is “yes”. We don’t know whether it will be Auckland though, as we will go wherever I can find work. That may mean Wellington or even Hamilton or elsewhere.

We’re pretty sad to be considering leaving our UK friends, Church and Lifegroup as they have been a great support and have made the time we’ve spent here more than just the typical O.E (overseas experience). I like to think that this child is going to have a fair bit of Geordie blood (not literally) in him/her and is going to grow up to support the Magpies (not the Western Suburbs league team or Hawkes Bay union team btw).

So yeah, I’m applying for jobs in New Zealand now, and am really hoping something will work out so I have a clean cut and can resign here and start fresh there. However what is more likely is that I won’t be able to get anything before I return in which case we will just come back in either late June or early July, but we’ll keep you updated on that.

Thanks for all the great comments on facebook and via email, it’s great hearing from you all and look forward to seeing those of you on the other side of the world soon.

The jetsetting and half (i.e one of us) pregnant couple were in Prague a few weekends ago but for some reason neither of us got around to writing a post on it. We loved being there, so I’m not sure why we didn’t feel passionate about writing a post, but I doubt it will become one of life’s great mysteries.

As has become our habit we left on Saturday afternoon and flew to Prague, arriving in the evening on Saturday. We had been expecting it to be really, really cold (Prague being landlocked in Czech Republic get’s well below freezing in winter) but it was incredibly mild and was in fact warmer than Newcastle.

We were really stoked with our accommodation, we had had to rebook due to Easyjet cancelling our return flight and we had gone from a budget hotel to a room in a hostel. It wasn’t particularly quiet (annoying loud Korean girls next door) but the room was really big, had it’s own bathroom, was situated about 200m from Charles Bridge and was really cheap. Good work Megan.

We arrived in time on Saturday to have a wander around, along some quaint streets and had dinner and a beer (well, half of us had a beer).  A quick comment on prices.  We had been expecting things to be really cheap but things weren’t quite as cheap as we had been expecting.  You could easily eat for the same sort of money as we could in our local restaurants in Tynemouth (i.e. not city prices) but you really had to hunt down the cheap eateries where you could really get some good value.  Also, tourist attractions worked out to be almost exactly the same as what you would expect to find in other tourist cities (i.e. about £12) so they were very expensive in local terms.

On Sunday we got up and just started wandering around.  We explored Charles Bridge and then went up to the ‘castle’.  Megan managed to find something with pineapple in it for lunch and we went home for a nap and for me to get engrossed in my book.

In the evening we decided to go along to a ‘Black Light Theatre’.  It’s not the sort of thing we would normally do, but I figure that’s  what a holiday is all about.

The next day we went in a slightly different direction and took a cable car up a hill opposite to us for a view of the city.  Unfortunately, the observation tower was closed as it’s only open on the weekend, so we had a nice walk through a very peaceful garden, through the monastery and back down to the cathedral (we hadn’t gone into the cathedral within the castle on the previous day as it was too busy).

That afternoon we also explored some more of the city.  We were very fortunate as when we were there the Easter Markets were on.  This meant that in the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Squares there were stalls selling great food, pictures and Easter souvenirs.  Our favourite was the ‘trdelník‘ thin strips of bread coated in cinnamon and baked on a metal rolling pin.

On the final day we went for a day trip to Kutna Hora, where there is a famous church filled with bones.  It’s about an hour’s train trip away, and we found it really easy to get tickets and cheap as well.  We probably would have paid more than five times as much if we had gone on an excursion operated by the hostel.

I forget the exact history, but basically they had too many bones for their graveyard, so they decided to dig them up and put the in the church.  It was quite fascinating, and quite a nice way to spend the final day, though it was really cold waiting at the train station to come back.

We picked up our bags (which we had left free of charge at the hostel) went and spent the remainder of our money on a picture and too many trdelniks and headed for the airport.   Another very enjoyable extended weekend.

I  figured I was getting further and further behind with my editing of videos, and now we have proof.

Anyway, we now have the video from our trip to Germany in July/August last year done and here.

Well, it may be late, but what else is new?

You may have worked out from the previous post that we were in Paris a couple of weeks ago. The time has come to give you some info on what we did and to publish some photos for the world.

We left Newcastle on Saturday morning and arrived in Paris in the afternoon. The weather was beautiful and after a few events made it successfully to the hotel, ate and went to sleep.

We were up ‘relatively’ early the next morning and after a croissant filled breakfast at the hotel we hit the road, first to La Defense to get our three day transport tickets, Paris Visite. They were great value and I would recommend them to anyone who is in Paris for three days or more (although it was very strange spending so much time underground and just popping up at the various attractions).

First on the list for day 2 was the Arc De Triomphe. It was very cool, much bigger in real life than when you see it in pictures (this is going to be a recurring theme). It was also cool to see the crazy roundabout, I’m glad I didn’t have to drive through it, or walk across it.

We then went for a wander along the Champs Elysees before diving back underground and heading for the Louvre.

We spent a while looking at the buildings and admiring the ugliest, most out of place glass pyramids I’ve ever seen before heading over to the Eiffel Tower.

Day 2 was kind of a reconnaissance day. So our trip to the Eiffel Tower was only supposed to be a look-and-see and we planned to come back another day to go up it. When we first saw it, we were blown away again. Pictures just don’t do it justice. Since we didn’t exactly have a packed schedule we bought lunch and lay on the grass in the sun, under the tower and just relaxed. In fact, that was probably my favourite part of the trip (very expensive snooze). It’s worth noting that this was where we first came into contact with the industrious “gypsies” who go around with notes and scam tourists out of their money.

This is how it goes:

Gypsy: Do you speak English?
Pete: Yes.
[Gypsy gives note to Pete]
Note Reads: “My name is X and I’m from Bosnia. My husband has left me and my son has Leukaemia. Please give me some money for food for my family.”

In this case I gave her some money, not because I believed her, but just because I wanted to get rid of her. The fraud was proven later in the trip when a different woman came up with the same note and at most attractions there are ‘gangs’ of these women waiting for unsuspecting tourists.

When we had managed to rouse ourselves from relaxing in the sun, we went and saw Notre Dame and the Pantheon before heading back to the hotel.

For dinner we had a really nice meal at a local restaurant. It was Moroccan and I think I ordered the token ‘British’ meal of Steak. However Megan ordered a Couscous based meal and was richly rewarded with a huge feed of lamb, couscous and vegetable stew. It was very reasonably priced as well. I had to get by completely in French, which was rewarding, but I’m not sure that reading straight out of a guidebook actually counts.

Day 3, Monday. When we managed to get ourselves out of the hotel (this was a holiday after all) we headed over to Eiffel Tower again and after queuing for a while (maybe twenty minutes) went up.

It seems that as I get older, I am getting more and more uncomfortable with heights. Like I was with the London Eye, I think I’m going to enjoy looking at the video more than I enjoyed actually being there. But I’m glad we did it.

For the afternoon, we only had to achieve one thing which was to head over to Montmartre. It was quite picturesque and again, was a lovely place to spend a sunny winter/spring afternoon.

On the final day (Tuesday) we spent a few hours wandering around the Musée d’Orsay (modern art museum) and caught up with a friend living in Paris for lunch. It was another beautiful day, and we headed back out to the airport quite satisfied with what we had achieved and happy at having had an enjoyable and entirely successful weekend.

After a fairly laid back day, I’m happy to report that we’ve made it to Paris.  We had a nervous start this morning after planning to catch the metro to the airport and then finding that it was not running along one section due to maintenance work.  Fortunately we had left enough time and we had no issues getting on the plane.

Having made it to France we had to negotiate the RER (one of the metro services).  Luckily they have colour-coded everything, so we didn’t really need to understand too much, and getting to our hotel couldn’t have been much easier (thanks also to our Navman SatNav).

We had a nice wander around the area (La Defense, a reasonably modern business area) and came back to the hotel to relax before heading out to eat.  An added bonus is that the hotel has free wifi.  Knowing this, I bought my laptop with me and so I can blog and research any obscure facts we might want to know about our trip.

I don’t plan to write every day, but just wanted to mention that we had made it and you can look forward to a more detailed post with some photos next week.

Au Revoir!