Our Travels Begin

Hi all. It’s now almost a month since Pete and I left the shores of NZ behind us and ventured of to see the world. I thought that it was high time that I sat down and put pen to paper so to speak and “blogged” some of my thoughts so far.

Leaving NZ was sad but very exciting & Singapore airlines was great! I loved Singapore. It was so clean & efficient. Although it was really humid & I struggled to get to grips with the retailers selling style! Highlights would have to be Sentosa Island, dinner by the river & the night Safari.

Our Singapore to England trip (via France) was rather more of an experience than I anticipated. In my cultural ignorance it hadn’t occurred to me at any stage that I might actually be spoken to in French – despite the fact that we were flying Air France!- I experienced a few embarrassing moments when rather than risk offending the steward I tried to guess what he was asking me and respond appropriately. Needless to say it didn’t really work! The food on Air France was fantastic!
Arriving in England was rather uneventful & we haven’t really done much exploring, other than central Newcastle, at this stage. I spent quite a bit of time looking (unsuccessfully) at flats until Pete found the most perfect little place via a work colleague. I’ve enjoyed browsing the MASSIVE department stores and venturing to the Metrocentre (apparently Europe’s biggest shopping mall). Newcastle is a lovely city. I love the mix of really old buildings as some incredibly modern ones. Such as The Sage and the Millennium Bridge.

Our first week here I had a job interview for a position I applied for before leaving NZ and I’m really pleased to have been offered the position but at this stage I don’t have a starting day – just a bit of red tape to get through!

This week Pete an I moved into a flat in Tynemouth. It’s a lovely suburb/village on the coast. I’m enjoying unpacking and settling in. It snowed on Tuesday and Wednesday which was quite a novelty for us. I thought that as we’d arrived here so late in Winter we’d missed the snow as the weather has been quite mild the last couple of weeks. It was really, very pretty. Sad to see the daffodils wilting from the cold though!