Another month gone, another year older....

Hello from jolly old England, where we've been hanging out for the last little while. It's a bit colder, quieter, and a whole lot calmer than Asia, but the sun sets really late and people are pretty nice, and it's not a bad spot at all for a little exploration and some long-overdue reunions!

We've just realized we're now on our 3rd continent of the trip, which has turned into a makeshift round-the-world tour (who would've thought?). As soon as we crossed the equator for the last time (actually in Malaysia this dawned on us), we noticed the crescent moon flipped into a frown, rather than the smile we knew so well from Australia. Weird! It was a loooong plane ride from Kuala Lumpur to London-- 14 or 16 hours we think-- but as soon as we emerged in the far, far north, we realized it truly was goodbye to the warm temperatures our bodies had acclimatized to. At London Stansted Airport, it was a "pleasant" (to use the captain's words) 17 degrees, but it felt like -17 to us. We're still adjusting, in our wool socks and 'jumpers'. It's all a lot more pricey than what we've been used to, and we're missing our daily rice intake a bit, but at least we felt at home again when we ended up in Manchester's Chinatown, surrounded by red neon signs and flashing twinkle lights...

But yes-- first stop on the itinerary was Shoreham-by-Sea, a cute little town on the southern coast of England, not too far from Brighton, where our friend Laura has ended up--with her lovely English hubby Adam and their adorable baby Ella. We had a great few days there in "the south", touring Shoreham, Brighton, and London, and got to experience the 99 Flake on Brighton Pier and some Marmite (which we pretended to eat and then fed to the baby). We spotted our first real Banksy graffiti in Brighton, and got to hop in the back on one of those cliche-but-so-cool London black taxicabs when our sunny day in London turned into a downpour (they're very spacious). In Shoreham, everything was very cute-- even the graveyard-- and chock full of little old white-haired ladies and secondhand shops, and fet a bit like the town in Hot Fuzz. We learned that houseboats are the hot real estate in Shoreham, and there were some pretty crazy ones made out of old buses and general junk.... cool if you like living in the mud that is!

We left Laura and the family to head north-- completely on the wrong train, as we still have no idea how to read the tickets here... got a bit of a scolding from the train conductor but we played the dumb tourist part well!-- and found our old friends Andrew and Krissy in Macclesfield, a cute town a bit south of Manchester. Not long ago they scored a fantastically huge house with many floors and views of the green rolling hills outside town. The local pub (about four doors down) is full of characters and the men's toilet gets a great review on www.pubtoilets.com, and the lady behind the bar already knows us by name. Only problem with Macclesfield is whenever we go for a walk, we always end up in another random cemetery...

Between all of that, there was a day climbing the rugged, impossibly green grassy hills around Castleton (below) in the Peaks District National Park, a day roaming the picturesque streets and free museums in Manchester (left), and a weekend of Gaudi, sangria, and beach in Barcelona (visiting another old friend, Juan). Yesterday we spent Dayle's birthday touring Liverpool, soaking up all the Beatlemania and atmosphere of the old buildings that were everywhere. We're getting a good dose of English pop culture (Little Britain, Top Gear, Fonejacker, Big Brother...) but we're still a long way from understanding the accents. It's hard to believe we have one week left here and that's it!

Playtime in Melbourne

It's been a busy few weeks, but though we've been working a whole lot lately, we're trying our best to make sure there's still time for fun. Although it's gotten chilly and the streets are no longer filled with summertime tourists, and the festival-a-week season is long over, there are still plenty of fun things to do in the city. Here are a few of our recent highlights:

- The Game On exhibition at the ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image): an art show all about video games. How cool is that? We went a few weeks ago and found it to be all about nostalgia, and surprisingly not full of gaming nerds as we had suspected. There were multiple interactive exhibits (sooooo many games to play!) which highlighted just how much video games are part of our generation's (and so many others) growing up. There were write-ups on game genres, historical timelines, international games, music, pivotal characters, and more. And we especially had a good laugh when we noticed how many arcade games had a dad at the controls while their little kid waited anxiously to get a turn! It was kind of a all-you-can-play buffet of games-- definitely worth the $15 admission. Some of our favourites at the exhibition included Street Fighter, Lemmings, Chicken (a much-pixellated game where a chicken/yellow blob has to cross a busy highway and not get run over by trucks/speeding square blobs), Galaga, Wii table tennis, Way of the Exploding Fist, and a Japanese game which simulated driving a slow-moving train.
- Dining out: We are big fans of the Italian eateries on Lygon Street (near our house), as well as the $9 Indian dinners at Funky Curry on Bourke Street (CBD), and most recently ate delicious Chinese cuisine under giant Chairman Mao posters at Post-Mao Cafe in Chinatown (apparently the chef used to cook for old Mao). We've found excellent Japanese fast food in the food court at Crown Casino and some really interesting Japanese treats at Kazen in Fitzroy. Oh... and then there's Chocolateria San Churro (a strange and interesting chocoholic paradise which specializes in, yes, everything chocolate, in drink and in solid form in a cafe setting; although the white hot chocolate is great at first but soon feels like you're drinking a cup of butter). And then there was that lovely multi-course pancake dinner at the very charming and old-school Pancake Parlour... Melbourne has not been disappointing our appetites!
- Drinks at cool spots like the Croft Institute, a science-lab/school-themed bar hidden deep in the alleyways of downtown, past smelly wheelie bins and lots of graffiti; the overpriced but heaps-of-fun Mai Tai, a kitsch Polynesian-themed bar which serves its most popular cocktails by the giant bowl; and at Spleen, a shabby-chic and laid-back sort of place in the CBD which we end up at a lot.
- Possum-feeding in Carlton Gardens: For some reason this activity never gets old. Especially after a few overfilled glasses of wine at the Post-Mao Cafe.

Still to come:
There's still so much to do here (it's starting to look as though we may stay in Melbourne til November or December!)... including checking out the rooftops from the Rialto Tower, the Melbourne Aquarium, dining at a Greek restaurant (the city has something like the second-largest Greek population after Greece itself), and perhaps doing a little shopping for artsy trinkets at the weekly St Kilda Esplanade Market. Not to mention a trip out to Phillip Island (an hour or so away) to see the teeny fairy penguins march in the Penguin Parade!