Karl's first exploration pics of Marseille

11th century church

The harbour taken from the fort

The movie crew

Port area and huge church

Time to get out and explore the ­­surrounding area on foot. Our apartment is so centrally located, there are historic churches (11^th century) and forts (12^th century – I think….) and even Greek ruins from 100AD all within a couple hundred metres of us. 

These few pics were all taken within a couple of hundred metres of the apartment, but no doubt when the family arrive they will document all of this far better, this is just too wet the appetite J. 

Oh also, they are filming a movie at the end of our street, so streets have been blocked off one morning for a car chase scene, and then yesterday the crew were out with the cameras to film along the waterfront.  I’m hoping they might need a handsome foreigner as an extra J

Our abode!

So this is our apartment in Marseille.  We are in a two bedroom apartment on the 5th floor of an 8 story building.  There is a lift!

We are located about 100m from the harbour and can see it from all our windows.  We are also about 100m from the Fort of Marseille and right in among all the things to see and do.  

Karl is super excited about the location and all that is around us! He might become a big city-fan although he says the parking and driving is just crazy!  Not sure now about our idea of buying a car for exploring!

Bedroom one and obviously the one Karl has chosen for us

The floral room for the boys

Bathroom - with a shower thankfully

Compact kitchen with washing machine included............

Lounge and dining area - reasonably large space with room for 'dossers'.

Finally - in MARSEILLE, FRANCE - home!!!!

Finally in Marseille, France which is home for the next 6 months...........

Finally in Marseille, finished my first day at work, baguette in hand as I head home, look at where I have to walk and what I have to walk past…… very beautiful.  Its gonna be a long 6 months hehe.....

Selfie - walking along the port to home
"looking very French honey"

Living by the water......wahoo

I wonder which boat will be ours - yep - dreaming!

Off to Brussels

Karl Off to Brussels in Belgium

Brussels for two days, one day of work and one of being a tourist.

 One great thing about Belgium – the beer!  Another great thing about Belgium (if you like em), the waffles. See pics!

Anyway, started out on another walking mission to see the centre of the city.  My hotel was perfectly located right by the EU parliament, so swung by there on the way first – very flash modern building and huge!  Lots of military around patrolling with their machine guns in full view.  

Found a sports store to buy a pair of sneakers, well that was an experience as the shop assistant didn’t speak English, and my level of French is not up to discussing shoe sizes, but we got there!  

Wandered down past the back of the royal palace and down to Grand Place, which started out as a market place in the 13^th century.  The buildings are absolutely amazing, I sat and had a coffee and admired the buildings and people watched.  

Then on to the next amazing tourist destination (or so they said), a statue of a little boy having a pee (called the manakin pis).  Apparently the heads of states that visit bring clothes for it in their national colours occasional for the statue to wear.  Pretty disappointing statue if you ask me….but it was only a couple of blocks from Grand Place so not too far out of the way.

Then slowly made my way back through the maze of little streets, selling tourist stuff and waffles, had some Belgian fries, very yummy, and took photos of theatres and shopping malls before finally making my way back to the Royal Palace.  

Back at the hotel I noted I had clocked up another 12.5 ks walking, so it was down to the bar to wait for my taxi and have another Belgian beer J

Parliament

The Grand Palace - such impressive gothic architecture

The little boy (Manakan Pis)  peeing!!! Random.....

Now this is more like it - Karl type travelling!!!!

OMG - these look amazing!!!! and cheap!!!!!

Part of the royal palace 

Royal palace again

The shopping mall....found shoes - eventually!

The skyline of old Brussels 

Day 2 in London - Lords

Karl's day 2 in London (a day for the cricket fan)

Day 2 in London being a tourist – still tired from yesterdays huge walk but had to get up early as I had booked a tour of Lords.

Back into the tubes to Baker street and walked up some very nice streets past very expensive houses to Lords.  One of the houses was recently purchased by the King of Oman for 80 million pounds!  See the pic!  

Lords was really cool, amazing to see the slope on the ground, about 2 metres difference in height from one side of the ground to the other! Also got to go into the players changing rooms, and sit in there, looking at the honours boards (few kiwis like Jacob Oram on the hundreds board, and lots of R Hadlee on the bowling one) and hearing all the amazing stories about the place, seeing the long room, sitting in the committee room, and going out on the members balconys.  

The tour was well worth it, 18 pounds for nearly 2 hours and our tour guide was like a walking book of cricket facts.  

After all that I strolled back past some more amazing mansions with very flash cars parked outside, and believe it or not, found our house again, or a slightly different version (see photo!) J

                                                                                                           Honours board - 5 wickets - NZ is there

England honours board

Away honours - look for the Palmy boy on here!

England changing room

The ASHES

The slope of the ground - amazing apparently!

The house belonging to the King of Oman

We are popular here!!!!!!!

Karl's day 1 in London

Karl's time in London - Day 1

Saturday in London, a damp and cold day, a typical London day in winter I guess, but still time to get out and get my bearings around the city centre.

Got a travel card (Oyster card) and away I went into the complex system of tubes and trains……. With success too.  Popped out at London bridge, walked down to and then over tower bridge, took plenty of photos of the big castle – amazing the first part of it was built in the 11^th century!  Then strolled back to the London monument, a big tall tower remembering the great London fires.  Think I found our house (or relatives) near there actually – have a look at the photo!  Dived back into the tube and popped up at Waterloo by the London eye, some great big wheel full of tourists!  Then wandered over to Big Ben, and Westminster, lots of police outside that and around parliament square!  Then I was strolling down one of the streets and wondered why there was big gates to a small street and lots of armed police guarding it, and lots of TV cameras down the street?  Then after a minute or so I spotted the street sign, Downing Street, of course……… Finally made it back to near my hotel via the tubes and found a pub for a beer or two before collapsing on the bed – think I walked about 15 or 16 k’s!  Hard work being a tourist. J

Can you spot the gerkin?

Big Ben and Westminster Abbey

Some crazy castle in the middle of London

The Prime Ministers' residence - lots of activity as there was a referendum as to whether
England would stay in the European Union.  

Our place - of course!

Time in Cambridge

A few days in Cambridge, UK

Karl reports that he didn't do much in Cambridge except work work work.  

The institute where his five day course was based was the place where much of the human genome was sequenced.

Cambridge was really cold, with the warmest day  6C and he even got snowed on one morning walking to the course.  For those of you who know Karl - you know he does not like the cold so we thought it was super funny that we are here in Palmy sweltering with one of our best summers ever and he is over there......hehe!

Karl got to dine at Trinity Hall, the foundations of this building were laid in 1350.  Amazing old building and roads in the center of Cambridge. He also had a beer at a famous science pub called the Eagle (right in the middle of all the old buildings in Cambridge), apparently the place where the two guys who discovered DNA (Watson and Crick) had a beer afterwards!!!

In WW2 the pub was used as a headquarters for the American bomber pilots who were based nearby, so there was lots of history on that too.

Here are some photos he took:- 

                                                                       DNA plaque

                                                                 EMBO Sanger
             Sanger Institute–EMBL-EBI Single Cell Genomics Centre, located on the Welcome Genome Campus 

                                                       Hinxton Hall (part of the campus)

A very old building in Cambridge

NEXT STOP LONDON

Davis California

Karl arrives in the United States - 
Davis, California

Karl arrives for a few nights in Davis.  Spending his time at the University of California which is one of the worlds leading cross disciplinary research and teaching institutions.

Karl got upgraded for his flight - jealous much! He get to fly kid free and gets an upgrade - that is like a double bonus!!!!!                                                                                                                                  Right: A random seat outside a vet in Davis

                                                  A squirrel checking Karl out - so cute!

                                  Trust Karl to find this place - awesome! The university of beer.

Karl leaves the country - and us!

The adventure begins - Karl leaves the country - and us!

On Monday 8th February we said goodbye to Karl as he heads off to set up our base in Marseille, France.  Here we are at the airport.......Front: Connor and Lachlan and at the back, me (Wendy) and Karl.  It will be six weeks before we see Karl again - the longest time we have ever been apart - while we are happy here, the boys were in tears as we left the airport! Still - exciting times and adventure we are all looking forward to.  Karl's first stop is Davis, California.