Halloween

Halloween was so fun this year! 

It was the first time I went as anything scary- if you don't count my skeleton onesie from our first year in London.

Our friend Meike was having a bday/ Halloween party. 

I went to eBay about 3 weeks out, just to be organised and brought a few bits, Lots of blood, a frontal lobotomy for Ben, and a latex next split for me.

We headed to Greg's to get ready as we hardly wanted to catch the tube, or the bus in our get ups! 

I was pretty impressed by the realness of my neck- everyone thought it was gross- success! ha.

About 8 of us all walked down to Meike and Joe's place, the place was decorated so well, and it was just so fun being all dressed up and having a good time. 

Unfortunately I left the keys inside so our early departure of 1am turned into a 3am bedtime after having to taxi around London getting the keys of Nathan.

Lon*don

London in general is filled with trips to pubs, birthdays, leaving do's and even our first crayfish party.

I always blog after every trip we go on but I feel like our weekends get a bit missed.

I had a lovely day with Daisy at the Brides Show to get ideas for her wedding, Ben and I went to Jamee's leaving party, and a crayfish party at Elin and Pete's, I went for dinner with my work besties, we had Mike and Nat visit and went to dinner for Rub's bday!

All sorts happens, and while its boring to talk about all the little things.. a collage of good times hits the spot!

And so you see the below..

We have a Halloween party this weekend, and on Friday were going out for a swanky lunch.

The only stress in life is our visa, well my visa, its currently been processing for 3 weeks, out of a possible 6 months. Fingers crossed its back soon, and approved of course so Ben and I can continue our life in the UK!!

x

Barcelonaaa!

3 weeks ago, we went to Barcelona.

We being Ben and I, Katie, Jack, and Emma and Dwyane.

We had an airbnb apartment booked, and met at the airport from our assorted flights and headed to the place.

It was an amazing 4 bedroom apartment, the lift was broken and it was 4 flights of stairs up but it was amazing none the less.

We had a bit of a tapas and wine party the first night, I got pretty drunk and apparently made a bit of a dick of myself but, woke up with the hangover or all hangovers as punishment. 

Jack, Katie, Ben and I went out for dinner too, we went to an amazing little restaurant it was family owned and so traditional. We got 2 bottles of wine, and so much food all for 40 euros!

Our friends Mike and Nat were here for a few days too, so we did some sightseeing, lunching, boozing, beaching and warming our bones with the 28 degree heat! 

4 nights and 5 days saw us going to a rather fancy restaurant for the best paella I've ever had (also my first and if it wasn't so yum I wouldn't be scared to try more).
It saw us going back to the cheap restaurant twice! It saw us eat fresh seafood and Ben and I even went to a market and brought a live lobster, scallops, mussels, prawns and calamari and cooked up a feast!

We went to the beach twice, 3 swims in the beautiful Mediterranean water.

It was a busy holiday with 5-6 personalities and so much to see and do it was more like we needed a holiday after the holiday but it was great. 

Catching up with Emma and Dwayne we haven't seen in 2 years, and seeing Jack again was really nice. Makes us realise there is a lot at home for us when we are ready to go back there!

Holidays over for now though, I applied for my EEA2 permit the week we got back, so the Home Office has our passports until the decide if I can stay in the UK with Ben and we can continue our adventure for a bit longer!!

Fingers crossed!
x

Dinner, night 1

Day 2 wandering around the port

Old Marilyn doing her thing

My delicious Paella 

Fresh market

so much fruit!

and lollies!

finally the beach!

spot the boobies

Tapas for Africa

The festival of Barcelona starting up,

Beach day again!

Me Katie and Emma

Seafood dinner at home

Modelling our jelly's

United we stand...

Pretty excited about the festival

bit of a parade- was cool to see!

cute drumming Spanish boy!

Drinks, fireworks and jelly's for our last night.

heart in my beer

Steve Jobs's boat- designed by Apple- and pretty amazing!

Guests

Last, last week Katie arrived. 
Its been pretty cute having a little bit of family around again.

With my mum visiting, Jack visiting and now Katie moving here to live I haven't felt quite so far from home.

We've taken her out the last two Friday's, shown her a bit of London. Her arriving also meant the count down to our next holiday. 

We are off to Barcelona in 2 sleeps, and I cant wait!! We have an amazing apartment booked right in the city close and close to the beach. Its a bit of a Bright clan holiday with Ben, Katie, Jack, Emma and Dwayne and me.
Jack is coming to the end of his holiday, and Emma and Dwayne just starting theirs, it should be interesting! 5 days of sibling love :)

Once we get back from Barcelona its crunch time, its time to post my visa application so we can stay. Here's hoping they let me back into the UK to apply for it though, will have to look for the friendliest border officer when I land. 

London has been pretty good to us lately, the sun has been shining, and the weekends have been great, so we've been making the most of it before the snow and cold comes. 
We had Jared and Pip here last weekend so caught up with them on Saturday for lunch and a few drinks with Mike and his gf Christina.
Yesterday Ben and I rode around London on the Barclay's bikes- played half an hour of tennis and rode home. 
And last Sunday it was a boozy brunch with a beautiful friend, with wedding planning chat. 

I often swing between wanting home, and not wanting to leave. They say London takes a piece of your heart when you leave, and though my heart is at home in NZ, I can tell you I will be leaving some of mine here.

2 years since we moved us just around the corner, and though sometimes hard I wouldn't change a thing.

Brugge

Brugge is the most magical place,

Ben and I went there for a weekend 2 weeks ago, and it was so special.

After 3 short hours and 2 train rides we arrived in Brugge.

Our taxi dropped us off at the hotel and we were transported to another era. The entire place is cobblestone, and there are horse and carts everywhere.

We checked in to our quaint little hotel and decided to explore. There was so much history and everything so authentic. Unfortunately it decided to rain- hard! So we headed back to our hotel for a little nap- the hangovers from the night before were the reason for it, and it worked out perfectly.

After our 2-3 hour nap we woke up and the sun was shining! We got ready for dinner and headed out to a beer cafe we had seen good review for t'Brug Beertje. It had over 300 Belgium beers on offer, so we got to tasting.

The first beer I had was my favourite of the whole trip- a peach and honey 9% beer that was absolutely delicious. We chose of the Flemish menu not really knowing what we were in for but chose well! After about 5 different beers each we headed off for dinner suitably drunk!
There is no such thing as a 3 or 4% beer over there so we had a great time getting a different sort of tipsy- one I recommend to all!
We headed to a restaurants in the Market Square and had mussels, a pizza and 2 giant beers. Brugge is bit on mussels and they were delicious, the entire kg of them!

We wandered around for a little bit, enjoying the Belfry and other gorgeous buildings at night.
We got a bit lost, found our way and went home to sleep off the beers.

Day two after our yummy hotel breakfast we headed out to explore, we started with a canal cruise which was a beautiful way to see the city. We saw the old fish market, went to an antique market, where I fell in love with a copper pot, that I went back for later but had been sold!
Early afternoon rolled around. So we headed to the Beer museum, we spent about an hour learning all about the history of beer and other facts, then used our 3 tokens to sample what they had on offer.
We would have been impressed if we hadnt have gone to Beertje's the day before as they didnt have the unique flavours we had tried.

So we went to the Half Moon Brewrey and tried some locally brewed beer right from the tanks. Once we had tried their beers, we went off to another little beer cafe which has 12 beers to offer. It was a cool little place, if not for the rowdy English tourists making scenes.
Having enough beer there, we went home, booked a restaurant, got ready and headed back to Beertje's to try some more beers- notice a theme here? ha
We sampled more- not wanting to drink the same beer twice the whole weekend we were doing a pretty good job at it.

We headed to the restaurant, I had a delicious seafood pasta, and Ben more mussels.
during dinner I had my only glass of wine! Was a bit odd to have some after all the delicious beers.
After dinner, realising the extent of our afternoon we headed to a waffle shop for a bit of a drunken waffle and wandered around Brugge getting lost, exploring and slowly making our way home to pass out.

We woke up to our last day- Sad we had to leave after such a fun weekend, we brought our favourite beers to bring home with us, we brought some chocolate, another delicious waffle and headed home back to the hotel to make our way home.

It was the best holiday we have had- Palma, and Brugge are definately our top holidays- for different things, but equally amazing.

There's nothing like a weekend of fun away to make me fall in love with my amazing boyfriend more and more.
Travelling and having fun with him is what life is all about for me.

Here's a few photos to show you what fun we had!

View from the beer museum



 



 





 







Outside Beertje's



Waffles!

Doggie in the window from the movie In Bruges