Seven days in: cars, golf and...sunshine!

Well we have arrived! Actually we arrived a week ago, but jet lag has severely claimed both of us despite getting bumped up to Business Class for both legs and managing to sleep for a massive nine hours in total! This is huge as I normally only get about four or five hours sleep on the journey to Oz. Business Class was something else; I'm not sure I'd pay for it (a whopping £5000 each) but to get it for free (well, the cost of two premium economy seats) was amazing. The best thing is having a double bed when both seats are lying flat and having the privacy from screens so it almost feels like you're in your own private room. We stopped off at Singapore for an hour (photos below) and arrived in Sydney at 5am last Thursday.

Steamy in Singapore.

Not looking TOO bad after 13 hours on the plane.

So here we are. We haven't done too much in the last week - waking up at 5am and falling asleep at 3pm and again at 8pm has put a stop to most things. But the weather has been fantastic. I don't think I've ever seen the Mountains so sunny the last few times I've stayed here. By Mountains I mean the Blue Mountains, which are about 100km west of Sydney. It is absolutely freezing (we are about 950m above sea level), but the sun has now been shining for seven days straight. Coming from the UK after such a washout of a summer, this has been a welcome change.

We have managed to get one thing done though - buy a car. This was a bit of an adventure yesterday as we set off for the ominous-sounding 'Car City'. Our brief was a medium-sized car (it's a struggle to find a small car round here!) that would last us about 12 months without breaking down, with a budget of $7000. Sounds simple? Not at all. Car City has hundreds of cars but we only found about three that we actually liked and that we could afford. Cars here are not cheap, and having been brought up on European cars (particularly German ones) I was finding it difficult to consider Holdens, Fords and Hondas. In an ideal world I wanted a 4x4, but those in our budget were pretty scruffy and needed a bit of work. We will hopefully get a newer one next year when we have both been working for a few months. The other half finally convinced me to look at a Holden Commodore which was at a good price and was in surprisingly good condition for its nine years on the road. I took it for a test drive and it drove just like our Audi A4 which was nice and familiar. So we are now the proud owners of a good old Aussie Commodore.

Apart from that, I had my first experience of a golf course this week as I drove around on a cart with my father-in-law while my husband played 18 holes. It was fun to start with, but three hours of watching Steve line up a golf ball, look at it for ages, sigh and then move it again, got pretty tedious. I think it will remain as something he can go off and do on his own or with his Dad/cousin/uncle, while I amuse myself with something I am interested in!

So that's about all our news from our first week down under. We're off to Sydney tomorrow which I'm really looking forward to, as we'll be catching up with other members of Steve's family and some friends too. And it's a lot warmer down there! I also have my first AFL (Aussie Rules football) experience on Sunday so I'll be blogging about that next week. 

D-day

This is just a quick post as we are about to set off for Heathrow. In typical fashion, the motorway gods have decided to close the motorway to Heathrow so fingers crossed we make our flight in time. It has been a week of mixed emotions; sometimes excitement, but more often there have been tears as we have said farewell to some dear friends and family. The hardest goodbye of all is still to come at the airport though. So I will see you on the other side! When I can get to an internet connection I will blog about our arrival in Sydney and our first few days in the Blue Mountains. Farewell England and to all our fabulous friends and family. I will miss you all so much.

14 days to go: packing, cocktails and emotional farewells

That's 14 days until we leave the UK; there are only six days until we move out of our flat and leave London. The boxes for the shipping container left this morning - I really hope we see them again in Sydney, and with no breakages would be even better!

We treated ourselves last night to a bottle of champagne as we had finally finished packing the boxes and the sun was out! It's evenings like this I will miss about London and our flat - sitting in the lovely garden with a drink as the sun goes down.

('scuse the lack of make up!)

We've also been doing more rounds of saying farewell to people. I've been out with friends quite a bit recently and it was my last proper girls' night last week - lots of cocktails, yummy food and a bit of dancing in Camden which was perfect.

The Mr and I also had a leaving party for our London friends last weekend, which was pretty emotional but great fun. I knew saying goodbye to our friends would be difficult but didn't realise it would be quite so traumatic. This has made us realise how much our friends mean to us, and the big part they have played in our lives over the seven years we've been together.

The calm before the storm...

So now we just have our last few days in London to look forward to, including more dinners, drinks and golf (for Steve; I will hopefully be in the spa with my friend and her mum!).

Moving to Oz: 22 days to go...

Apologies AGAIN for my lack of blogging, but we've been rather busy booking flights, packing and beginning the long rounds of (emotional) goodbyes.

That's right, we've booked our flights. We leave the UK on 10th July - that is only 22 days away.

To compound this matter even further, we leave our flat (and London *sob*) in 14 days. If you were seated where I am right now, you wouldn't think we had to leave in two weeks. Everything in our kitchen looks like it always has done. Magnets still on the fridge, cookbooks and spices still on the shelf and the washing is going round and round in front of me. I think it still hasn't sunk it yet that I need to vacate this place in 14 days, and during this time I have various lunches, dinners, girls' nights and galleries to attend, so time is precious.

The boxes from the removal company were sent to us last week, and we spent most of Friday and all of Saturday cataloguing CDs, DVDs and books (actually I catalogued everything on a spreadsheet; I think I miss wedding planning!), and packing them. Our living room looks like a bomb has hit it - Exhibit A...

So I'm feeling slightly better that at least we've started in one room... I have a whole day free today which should be spent sorting out clothes, shoes and filing paperwork, but what am I doing? Blogging, spending hours on Twitter and Instagram, and catching up on my favourite blogs. I am taking procrastination to a whole new level...!

Now the plane tickets are booked and we're starting to say goodbye to some incredibly dear people, it has hit me that we are leaving London and the people that mean the most to us in the whole world (except those in Sydney of course!). I've found myself becoming quite sentimental about all things London when I'm walking around town, and my followers on Instagram and Twitter are probably getting bored of my pictures and ramblings about this beautiful city. I spent a fabulous day with my Auntie last week in town, having lunch, drinking too much wine and having a wander around Marylebone High Street.

The beautiful St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. You must go if you're in the Kings Cross area.

Jubilee decorations still up in Regent St. The patriotic side of me is still alive and kicking!

With my Auntie - fab day, with great company, lovely food and good wine (as you can probably see!).

So I think the next few weeks are going to be pretty traumatic and I'm not really looking forward to the goodbyes - I even got misty eyed at my last hairdressing appointment! But I have a lot to look forward to when we finally touch down in Sydney. We Skyped some of the family last week and it got me really excited just seeing how excited they are, and they have already booked us in to do lots of things - 30th birthday parties, AFL games, book clubs, gym sessions(??)...we are going to be pretty busy people in the first few weeks!

I will try and blog some more as we get nearer to our leaving date. At the moment I have a leaving party to plan for our London friends this Saturday, and various lunch and dinner dates with so many dear friends. I just know I'm going to be an emotional wreck at the end of these two weeks!