Cheers for following along from home. This is the eleventh edition of the blogs that we put together to catalog our travel! We hope to share some of the trip with all of you, and in turn have writing we can go back and read when we’re eventually back home.

We last wrote a blog at Christmas 2023, so thought it was definitely time for an update on the last year! When we last emailed, we were planning to live in London for a little while. Jamie had just started a new job and we were looking for a place to live. Since then, we’ve managed to settle in and navigate the ups and downs of living in a new city. We’ve also been on many more short trips and adventures over the last year.

London Life

As mentioned in our last update, Jamie has been working as a Software Engineer at Marks and Spencer, a big supermarket and department store chain in the UK. It’s going pretty well and he’s been learning a lot. We also get a pretty nice discount from the stores which has been very handy!

Baylee is working at the Tower of London, based in one of the gift shops. Being one of the busiest tourist attractions, it’s certainly an intense place to work at times. However working in a 900 year old castle, and seeing ravens up close most days, is pretty cool.

Despite hearing how tricky it was to find a flat in London, we managed to find a nice one bedroom place and were able to move in mid January. Our place is in a suburb called Southfields, which is in the south west area of London, pretty close to Wimbledon. It’s a nice, quiet neighbourhood and it has great transport links into the city. We’re also lucky to have a little patio out the front to enjoy on warmer days, and regularly see foxes and squirrels around the neighbourhood or in our garden.

Trips Abroad 

We’ve made it to a few new countries over the last year. The first being a long weekend in February to Cologne, Germany. Being our first time in Germany, we were expecting beer and sausages, and it certainly didn’t dissipoint! We also visited the spectacular gothic cathedral and the Lindt chocolate factory. Jamie decided to splash out a bit and purchased some traditional cologne, a surprisingly nice aftershave!

Over Easter we had our first trip to Scandinavia and visited Helsinki in Finland and Tallinn in Estonia. We started off the trip in Helsinki, where it was absolutely freezing. So cold that the harbour was partly frozen over and there were heaps of icebergs floating around. Being coastal, Helsinki was a lovely little city to wander around and we were also able to take a ferry from here to our next destination of Tallinn in Estonia.

Tallinn definitely had a post-soviet feel to it, but it also had a very cute medieval old town. We had a couple of days here and finished the trip off with a lunch in a medieval restaurant, complete with a goblet of wine and a tankard of beer each.

We also spent a long weekend in Copenhagen, Denmark. Here we saw the old royal castle and ate yum Danish food such as Smørrebrød, an open sandwich thing, and proper Danish pastries. 

Later in the year, we took a long awaited trip with some mates to Munich in Germany, to experience Oktoberfest. If you’re not too sure what that is, its an annual beer festival held for several weeks, bringing in both international visitors and a lot of domestic beer lovers. We managed to spend time in several of the beer halls and had a great time dressing up, drinking steins and eating pretzels over a couple of days, probably just the right amount of time!

Following the busy summer season at Baylee’s work, we took a late summer trip to Sicily, Italy. We both love Italy, so decided to see more of it and enjoy a break somewhere relaxing. Our trip started in Catania, where we took a great food tour. Sicilians love fried food, and we tried octopus salad, fried stuffed sardines and of course arancini. The other half of the trip was spent just up the coast at a beach town called Taormina, where we enjoyed the last of the summer in the warm Mediterranean Sea and by the pool, overlooking a view of Mt Etna.

For Jamie’s birthday, he was lucky enough to have two celebrations this year. The first was a trip to Dublin with some friends. We have been before, but it was still a great weekend spent in cosy Irish pubs, drinking plenty of Guinness.

The second celebration was on his actual birthday, with a long awaited trip to the Czech Republic. At first we visited Prague where we explored the beautiful old town and even visited the Christmas markets. We also spent a night in Pilsen, the home of Pilsner beer, and Jamie was very happy to have a tour of the Pilsner Urquell brewery and try some of the fresh, unfiltered beer.

UK Trips

Over the past year we’ve also taken a couple of trips around the UK. The first was a weekend at the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Silverstone, which is the British Formula 1 track about an hour north of London. Watching a Formula 1 event in person has been on our bucket list for a while, and with it being so close to us here we thought we should try and make it happen.

We watched the qualifying race on Saturday and then the Grand Prix race on Sunday, with our accommodation being a camping ground 50mins walk from the track. In typical English fashion, it rained the majority of the weekend, but cleared up just in time for the end of the race! however it was still an amazing experience seeing the racing in action! And what a race to watch - Sir Lewis Hamilton winning at his home circuit in his last year with Mercedes was iconic.

In late October, we had a week trip to North Wales and the Lake District, two beautiful parts of the UK and great areas for hiking. We first stayed in Conwy, a cute seaside town in Wales, which we used as a base to access Snowdonia National Park.

Whilst here we completed our first mission of summiting Mt Snowden, the tallest peak in Wales. Although shorter than many of the mountains in New Zealand, it was still a challenging walk made harder by the thick mist from about halfway up. We didn’t have much of a view at the top but it was a lovely view on the  way back down.

On our road trip we then visited Liverpool and a small city called Lancaster, before continuing up to Penrith in the Lake District. Here we had planned to try hike up Scafall Pike, the tallest mountain in England, however the weather had other ideas. It was too stormy and windy to safely attempt the walk, so we walked up a much smaller mountain instead. It was still lovely and had a nice view over one of the lakes once we could glimpse through the mist! Our little road trip finished with a short stay in York, a very cute city with lots of old buildings and pubs.

Visitors 

We were super lucky to have a few visitors from NZ come over in July. Firstly Jamie’s parents were over for a 3 week holiday in the UK, spending time in London and then tripping around Cornwall, Wales, and Yorkshire. It was really cool to see them after a whole year of being away! We also joined them on their trip to Cornwall and Jamie spent time with them in Wales.

Baylee’s Grandad also visited in July, while on a group tour to various places in the UK and France. We caught up for a weekend in Lincoln, which was a lovely break from London. We also visited the small town of Lissington together, where his family name comes from. 

Christmas

Our last trip of the year was to a place called Trondheim in Norway. We wanted to experience a white Christmas, and we were not disappointed. As soon as we walked off the plane it was snowing, making for a magical start. The next day we went for a walk up to a fortress on a hill above the city. Snow had well and truly settled and it was still snowing off and on. We had a lovely view of the city, and at midday the sun had barely risen, casting a beautiful shadow over the city. There was plenty of snow on the ground so we had to make a snowman too.

Christmas Eve is typically the day that Scandinavians celebrate Christmas, so we decided to do the same and had a Christmas Buffet for dinner on this evening at our hotel. It was delicious, with plenty of locally caught salmon and halibut from the fjord. Earlier in the day we also went for a walk alongside the fjord that the city borders. The water was so black, showing how deep it must be, and there was still snow on the hills across the fjord. Christmas Day was pretty relaxing and quiet, with nothing being open in town, we went for a big walk through the city. Unfortunately the temperature had warmed and there had been some rain instead of fresh snow, so it was all melted. 

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It has been a big year full of travel and new experiences, ticking off a lot of bucket list adventures in the process. We’ve made new friends, found favourite pubs, and have quickly come to realise why so many Kiwis make the move over here when they have the chance. We’ve still got more to see and do, so expect a few more posts in your inbox this year.

That being said, we’re starting to figure out how and when we get home. We have a few things we still want to do and see over this side of the world, but we’re looking forward to the comforts of home soon. While timing isn’t set in stone, we know we’ll be back in NZ for Christmas! 

Until then,

Baylee & Jamie