Daytrip to Durham

Last Thursday I had a meeting up in Durham.


Durham is way up North, almost in Newcastle, which is almost in Scotland.  It was an early meeting that would have involved getting a 6am train from London.  So a better idea was to go up the night before and stay in a hotel up there.


But the night before was the night of a work trip to Lords to watch some county-level Twenty-20 cricket. I wasn't about to miss that! So my colleague and I went to the cricket. An innings and 4 pints of lager later, it was time to head to Kings Cross for our train.


We found our way there, stocked up on more alcohol, bought some greasy dinner and boarded our train.


The next 3 hours was spent drinking on the train.  Once we arrived "up north" at about midnight, we battled the rain and caught a cab to our hotel.


The hotel had already given away our rooms and offered us a drink to make up for it. By this time I had had certainly enough to drink, but surely I cannot say no to a free drink. After all, it was to make up for the inconvenience of losing a hotel room! "A whisky and coke, please," my colleague led.


An apt summary was this email I wrote while I was there:

My trip has been eventful. When we got here last night our hotel had given away our rooms. So they drove us to another hotel which wasn't anywhere near as nice. They did give us each a whisky and coke to make up for it though.

This morning our cab driver didn't know where he was going and we drove around looking for where our meeting was. Eventually I pulled out my iPhone and guided him with GPS.

But in the process I managed to drop my blackberry.  Realised just a bit before getting on a train back to London. I called the cab company and they said they'd drop it off back at the hotel but when I got there he hadn't come yet. Apparently it will be an hour till he does.

So Colleague and I are sitting at a cafe waiting, watching the world go by.

Yes, it was an eventful trip. Durham, overall, was a very picturesque little city. It was a great place to spend a few hours just sitting around!

World Cup 2010 in London

Back in 2006 when I was living in England the first time, I went on a trip of a lifetime to Munich for the Australia vs. Brazil World Cup football game.

Now it is 2010 and the World Cup is back, and I am in London once more. No trip to South Africa planned but I did manage to head out to the Australian stronghold of Shepherd's Bush last night to watch Australia try to take on Germany.

On the way there is saw lots of Aussies all kitted up and ready to support their team, as well as Germans. The great thing about London is there are samples from all nationalities around.

I watched the start of the game at "Shé Bu Walkie" which provided a magnificent atmosphere.  I watched the rest of the game at the Pavillion, where they had stadium seating set up in front of a massive screen.

Overall, London is going football crazy. Productivity at my work has dropped to a low, ITV and BBC streaming coverage is clogging up the bandwidth, and most conversations are based on how our predictions are going.  The English take their football seriously, and it's great to be a part of it!

Weekend up North – The ‘Pools

In England, at the end of each may, there is a long weekend for “Spring Bank Holiday”. If you think this is a stupid name for a public holiday, then there is also the “Late Summer Bank Holiday” at the end of August. Not that there is an “Early Summer Bank Holiday”.

But I digress. The point is that for the last few months I had been trying to figure out what to do for the “Spring Bank Holiday”. My girlfriend was going to Berlin with a friend, and I didn’t want to join them. I had already been to Berlin, and let’s face it, three’s a crowd. So I decided to go to Spain. But didn’t get around to organising that. So I decided to go to Pink\pop, a Dutch rock festival. But I didn’t get around to organising that. So I decided to go to Southwest England, and check out some of the country’s best beaches. But despite it being 30 degrees on the weekend before bank holiday weekend, the long weekend weather was forecast to be, as they say in England, rubbish! So on the Thursday I finally organised something. I decided to go up north to one of the regional centres I had never been to.

On Saturday morning I caught a train up to the city of Liverpool.

When I arrived, it was pouring. So I sought shelter in the shopping centre across the road from the station. I thought I had arrived in the ultimate Hicksville. To be fair, I did enjoy watching the teenage girls walking around in short skirts and knee high socks, but the environment left much to be desired. The shopping centre consisted predominantly of cheap shoe shops blaring out bad music. The food court didn’t have anything I wanted to eat. What have I done? How am I going to spend a weekend in this hole?

As it turns out, once the rain had mostly subsided and I ventured out past St John’s Shopping Centre, I was actually pleasantly surprised.  The Liverpool city centre is actually a clean, pleasant and architecturally pleasing place. There is a mix of old buildings and very new ones, trendy docklands, big new shopping centres and lively, bustling streets.

I enjoyed walking around Liverpool, and was glad I came. That night I had a few drinks at my hostel, watching the hen party have a few pre-going out drinks all dressed up in their burlesque gear, and chatted to an Argentinian backpacker who was stuck sleeping on a mattress on the floor in my dorm.

I decided that night to hit Mint Casino.  The casinos up north are great. They have roulette for a 50p minimum bet and blackjack for £2. Back home in Melbourne the cheapest games you can find at the casino are $2.50/$10 respectively.  I asked the roulette dealer whether he knew of anywhere that had a poker game going, and he directed me to Circus Casino further in the centre of town.

So I cashed in my chips and headed to Queens Square and into the Circus. It turned out Saturday night was the night with no poker games, but one of the staff gave me a tip of a casino in the suburbs that had a good poker tournament on that night.

So I jumped in a black cab, which drove me through a long tunnel and into some quiet, industrial Merseyside town. The driver didn’t even know where the casino was, but upon asking an old man on the street, we found it.  The poker game had already started when I got there but it wasn’t too late to buy in. So I paid my 33 quid and joined the game as the 28th player.

After re-buys and add-ons (none of which I could afford, I decided) the prize pool was £1350. Wow, I was in a real poker tournament.  And I ended up making it to the final table, to the last 10. I pusehed all-in with my short stack of 6,500, and unfortunately my pocket jacks ran into a pair of bullets and I was out. It was  a fun way to spend a night in Liverpool though. Too bad I couldn’t understand what half of the dudes at the tables were saying!

The next day I walked to the station, taking in the biggest Anglican cathedral in the world and the “famous” Albert Dock on the way, and caught a train up to Blackpool. The Northern Trains service was the shittiest train I had ever been on. But it made for an interesting train ride.

Blackpool was interesting. Blackpool is England’s most popular seaside tourist destination. Like other English beachside towns, it consists of nice coastline with water which is too cold to swim in, lined with tacky shops, bars and amusement centres. The difference is, though, that Blackpool actually pulls it off. This original beachside resort has some real character to it.

I did a lot of walking and took in the atmosphere. I had a go in the amusement arcade, tried out the local casiono there too, wandered along the beach (after the violent 2 metre waves crashing onto the streets had stopped) and just chilled out a bit, making the most of being out of London.

The place I stayed, the Mayfield Hotel, added an interesting element to my visit. It was a small bed and breakfast type place but advertising itself, amongst other places, on Hostelbookers (a site that I use regularly to book my hostels).  The proprietors like putting up backpackers, and prefer this to the stag do’s coming out of places like Liverpool.  Although it wasn’t a typical hostel atmosphere (it was much quieter and nicer) , the owners made a real effort to make their guests feel at home.  They even made sure to introduce guests to others. In fact, while I was out on the Sunday night the owner called me and asked me where I was. I thought perhaps something was wrong. But apparently Lucy, a Swiss girl who was staying solo, was in the hostel and bored, so he wanted to send her my way so we would each have someone to have some drinks with.   A somewhat strange role for a landlord to play, but I thought it really showed he cared for his guests’ experiences.

The next day I had had enough of this seaside attraction (partly because it was cold!) and I headed back to Liverpool (1.5 hours), and then back home to London (another 2 hours).

Business Trip to Paris

I am currently zooming through the sunny French countryside at some 300 km/h.

I was just in Paris for a business meeting. Just a day trip. Caught the Eurostar out of London’s beautiful St 

Pancras station this morning and in less than two hours my colleague and I were walking the streets of Paris.

It was a sunny 23-degree day. We arrived near the office where our meeting was, and had half an hour to spare. 

So we went into the nearest restaurant for some lunch. We sat outside and looked through the Mediterranean-style menu. We each ended up ordering essentially what was a kebab. For the bargain price of €20 each!  Yeah. In Paris €50 gets you two kebabs (though each with a mountain of hummus on the side but no salad) and to “Coke Lights”.

Walking around the streets of Paris you really do appreciate why it’s one of the world’s great cities. The architecture is amazing and the city has a real vibe about it. 

We had a good business meeting and then headed to a street-side café for some beers. We jumped on the metro back to Gare du Nord and jumped on a train back to London.

I love it when my work entails days like these.