London sightseeing, the first few weeks

Highlights from the first few weeks in London (yes we’ve visited lots of museums but the weather was cold!):
London eye (thanks for the thoughtful gift of tickets Megan!) - well worth doing. We were lucky enough to be at the top when the RAF did a flyover trailing red, white and blue smoke to celebrate their 90th anniversary.


London museum - an excellent background to the history of London including the fire, the plague and roman settlement.

Science museum - Dean’s favourite (of course). Plenty of interactive displays but quite a lot of kids, not surprisingly.

Tate Modern - I even remembered some of what I learnt in Art History.


War cabinet rooms and Winston Churchill museum - the only museum we’ve had to pay for, but well worth it. They preserved the rooms the cabinet worked from (and sometimes slept in) during WW2 underneath the Treasury, and have tacked on a really big museum of Winston Churchill’s life.

NZ memorial, Hyde Park - we visited the day after ANZAC day so plenty of wreaths about.

Camden Markets, Borough Markets and Portobello Markets - great to see some of the food we don’t get back home. Looking forward to having a dinner party as an excuse to cook some of it.

Les Miserables at the Queen’s Theatre - our first show, Dean got tickets and didn’t tell me what for until dinner beforehand. Apart from the tweenage girls sitting behind us singing along (despite my dagger eyed looks over my shoulder), we really enjoyed it.

Oxford v Cambridge rowing race - terrible weather but we got a good position right on the muddy bank * being the kiwis we are, we weren’t afraid to get a little wet.

Exploring Queen’s park, close to David and Hannah’s flat - we went for a few runs here and loved spotting the little grey squirrels. (Sidenote from Dean: They are evil little squirrels though, having invaded from America and taken over the habitat of the native red squirrels by passing on a virus that only the red squirrels are susceptible to. The red squirrels are not found in southern England anymore and are now mostly found in Scotland.)


Have also played pitch and putt, a great nine hole golf game, played on smaller greens (par 3-5 sort of holes). NZers would love this game, someone should take the concept back to NZ.

National Portrait gallery - was nice seeing Prime Minister Massey in an imgainery painting of WWI leaders sitting around a table, I thought of the Masseys back home!

Dean has also visited the Imperial War Museum, HMS Belfast, and "Firepower", the Royal Artillery Museum. He even got to a game of the Black Caps v England A, and proved that it is possible to get burnt in the English sun. (It did take him 8 hours with no sunblock to bring home some colour though).

We also enjoyed the changeable weather, with the photo of Dean and Zac in the snow only about a 2 weeks before a veritable heatwave of 20 degrees plus days.

He also took a tour of Lords, and was amused by the "entry" and "exit" signs on the doors (below).

Los Angeles - Downtown

We were stoked to find how flash our hotel in downtown LA was. A good choice was made.

We made full use of the gym and the pool after all the food we’d eaten at Disneyland.

On Saturday we went on a bus tour of LA which we highly recommend. It is such a huge city that without a tour we wouldn’t have known where to go, or seen half of what we did. Highlights include Venice Beach, Beverly Hills and Hollywood. We saw various buildings used in movies (eg the Daily Planet and a few action blockbusters) and a number of locations used in Pretty Woman which Lou enjoyed. We were a bit disappointed not to see any stars’ homes, but got a good feel for the city and learnt some interesting trivia.

We’d booked tickets to a basketball game before leaving NZ so had a great time watching the LA Clippers v Portland Trailblazers that night (the Lakers were playing the next night but were way more expensive!). The stadium was huge and the entertainment amazing * cheerleaders, kids dance squads and the spirit crew (guys and girls, like off the cheerleading movies).The home team lost the game but it was really fun to be part of it. We reckon that if you are going to a game, try and go to one where the crowd will be closer to sold out than 1/2 full, would really add a lot to the experience.

Sunday it was back on a plane and onto London. After such amazing hot weather we were a little shocked to arrive to snow!!! Dean foolishly decided to arrive in shorts and a tee-shirt, but we survived.

Anzac Day - A tourist's perspective

Back home ANZAC day always meant an early start to the day getting up for the dawn parade at the cenotaph by parliament. The benefits of living in Thorndon meant that it was an easy walk down the hill.

Not so here, I thought it was going to be quite tough to get down to Hyde Park for the 5am dawn service given lack of tubes etc, so didn't arise for it. Felt rather embarrassed after Helen and Josh got there from Clapham Junction, and Helen is working at the moment.

However, made up for it by doing a double header, first leg was in the crypt of St Paul's cathedral at 9.30am. Figured I needed to seeing I am still a tourist. A short service, with no hymns or songs, just the Last Post, Lament with a bagpiper and the Reveille. A small but dedicated crowd. The crypt was a very interesting place, with the middle being dominated by Lord Nelson's tomb, hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. Also around the crypt were a large number of other Admirals of the Navy, other important persons including Winston Churchill.

Post service, called home to Dad, to sadly hear that my god-mother had died the previous day. She had been been pretty good to me, and I am always grateful to her, as she took her role as god-mother very seriously. She was always there for occasions like the first communion, and as an English teacher really helped me to pass School Certificate English. She had been suffering from cancer for about the last year. However, in the last months before I left New Zealand, we were able to spend some good quality time with her, including a great night with whitebait fritters on our deck at home.

In a more somber mood, headed down to Whitehall for a march past and service at 11. Had been suggested to arrive at 10.20, to secure a good spot that I diligently followed, but would have been lucky to have even 1 or 2 thousand people in total, bolstered by a number of tour parties walking along the road. The highlight was the Irish Guards band who were top notch. The crowd was fairly strongly Australian and English with only a few Kiwis, so much so that I felt I was the only one singing the NZ national anthem in my area. Given my lack of singing ability, it wasn't loud either. One down point was the chaplain for the service was a representative from the RNZAF, whose attempts at Maori were disappointing and embarrassing, but hopefully only embarrassing for the NZers in the audience.

Of interest to me, was finding a bit more about the Gallipoli landings, and I was surpised to find that of the more than 500,000 Allied troops involved, less than 10,000 were New Zealanders, with more than 80% being British. I have always found it hard to compare Winston Churchill's involvement in the Dardanelles offensive and its subesquent failure with his more widely celebrated success in WWII. Also, it still puzzles me though, that a main point of success of the campaign was the successful withdrawal of the troops without further loss of life. Another celebration of a great withdrawal like Dunkirk, perhaps to paper over the failures that neccesitated the withdrawals.

So the day felt a lot different to it at home, where I view it almost as a second national day, but here no-one apart from the Antipodeans and involved English and Turkish officials really knew what the day was about. The lack of interest probably stemmed from the weekday aspect, but a few Kiwi building site workers managed to sneak away, but I guess the office workers were well chained to their desks.

Los Angeles - Part 1 - Disneyland

On the way to the UK we stopped into Los Angeles for a short break and a chance for us to do some of the things we had always dreamed about. Lou was pretty keen on doing Disneyland so 'Happiest Place on Earth' entertained the von Yarralls for 2 days.

Without a doubt, Disneyland is a well organised place, with some of the friendliest staff you could find. In the week before Easter we thought we would escape most of the queues. Hmm, not really, one day saw a crowd of 58,000 go through the gates out of a total capacity of 68,000.

All in all the park is really well laid out and the queuing is done efficiently, and you don't really mind waiting too long. What was disappointing was the large number of "obese" yanks on their mobility scooters who bypassed the queue, with their large family in tow, only to spring out of the scooter into the ride. If only I had no morals, I would have hired a scooter in a flash :)

It is a pretty amazing place, with lots of nice touches. The fireworks at 9pm each night are cool, with the music taking you through some of the more famous rides around that park, and then a suspended Tinkerbell comes across the top of the massive crowds.

Adjacent to Disneyland is the California Adventure Park, run by Disney but with a California theme. The rides are slightly more adventurous, but still have the familiar Disney efficient queues. Nowhere near as crowded as Disneyland, but still some rides saw queues of up to an hour.

Disneyland hint and tips:
FastPass is an absolute must. Keeps your sanity by avoiding most of the queues on the big rides.

On the strong NZ dollar, eating isn't as bad as you might expect, and the portions are typically generous so don't worry too much unless you are looking for a healthy option.

If possible try and get 2 days at the park. We got 1 and 1/2 days which was pretty much spot on, did all the major rides once, and got in a couple of double rides.

Independent world travel

Hi There

This blog is about Dean and Lou Yarrall's travels. We used to reside in Wellington, New Zealand, but moved to London, United Kingdom in April 2008.
We travel a lot, mostly independently, and often on a budget. Hopefully this blog is a useful resource for anyone wanting to travel to the places we've been. Feel free to get in touch for more tips if we can be useful.

Dean and Lou