Look ma, no safety net!

Previously: I flew to London and it took 5eva. 

So after having gone to bed at 10pm in a state of slightly delirious cannot-keep-my-eyes-open jetlag, I woke up at 5.45am with Defying Gravity stuck in my head on an endless loop. So obviously, I did what any self respecting blogger would do - told Twitter about it. Then I checked my emails, read a couple of blog posts, and passed out for another three hours. And obviously had nightmares about my teeth falling out because that's what sleep deprivation does to you.

I went downstairs to find that my little brother had decided that Jetlagged!Kirsti wouldn't be capable of locating the Lonely Planet guide to London on his bookshelf, so instead he'd placed it in the pantry in front of the bread. What, you think I'm kidding? BOOM:

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Yup. That happened.

Then I spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to get the sim card out of my phone. I ended up having to Google it and watch a video on Youtube. You know how you get the sim card out of my phone? YOU PUSH IT IN AND IT POPS OUT. A two year old could work that shit out. But not me. Sigh. Then I realised that if I was going to make it to a 1pm walking tour of the City of Westminster, I had approximately 45 minutes in which to shower and get ready. Obviously, I spent twenty of those minutes on Tumblr, because I make good life choices.

Anyway, because of my EXTREMELY GOOD LIFE CHOICES, I ran out the door at 12.30 with no time to panic about navigating around London on my own, speed walked the 10 minutes to the Tube station, managed to get straight on a train (it was even going in the right direction! Good job, me) to Kings Cross, changed to the Piccadilly Line at Kings Cross (and got straight on ANOTHER train going in the right direction), and made it to Covent Garden station by about 12.53pm. Which gave me seven minutes to get to the tour. That would have been plenty of time to get there AND buy a bottle of water/snack if it hadn't been for the fact that half the lifts at Covent Garden station were out of order and there was a queue ten deep for the lifts.

So I took the stairs. All 197 of them. And it was as horrible as you'd imagine. (It doesn't sound like that much, but it's apparently the equivalent of a 17-ish storey building. So...yeah.)

Still, I made it to the top and found the tour by 12.59pm because I AM A STAIR CLIMBING CHAMPION. However, I had zero time to buy water or food and therefore spent the rest of the afternoon fighting the urge to drink the Thames. My walking tour itself started thusly:

Guide: "Hey guys, how're you going? As you may have guessed from the accent, I'm not from London. I am, in fact, from Melbourne."
Me: "...of course you are."

Anyway, the tour was full of random historical information and one annoying Canadian guy who wouldn't shut up about how pointless royalty is and also the following sites:

• Trafalgar Square
• St. James' Palace
• Buckingham Palace
• St. James' Park
• The Horse Guards parade ground
• 10 Downing Street
• The Houses of Parliament
• Westminster Abbey

After the tour, I quickly found the nearest Prêt à Manger because I was freaking STARVING, and rapidly shoved some food into my face. Then I headed across the road to the National Portrait Gallery where I saw some truly ridiculous paintings:

Disturbingly thin legs for days

WHAT IS YOUR HAT SIR??

Apparently Queen Caroline was the cornucopia
of the Hanovarian line because she had tons of kids. Ew.

Babies wearing stupid outfits make me happy.

Lord Kitchener? OR. David Bowie with a killer mo?

That night, C and I headed to dinner at a Peruvian restaurant near his house. It was a little on the pricey side for a regular Wednesday night dinner, but they had this, so it was a total win from my perspective: 

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And then I collapsed into bed. Because jetlag, yo.

Next up, I try to fit more than one day into a post. And also go to the Tower of London. 

K xx

Ancient History, Volume X

Way back in 2007, Ness and I were emailing each other at work multiple times a day very occasionally because we're both total professionals. And whenever one of us was having a bad day, it was invariably followed by "Ugh, I should just quit my job and run away to South America!". And then one day, we decided that maybe our jokey statement wasn't such a terrible idea after all. (Except that Ness failed to follow through on the quitting her job part... Hmmmmm...) Which is how we ended up at the travel agent in 2008, forking over a bazillionty dollars with every visit. Ness left a month before I did to see Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. I was then to meet her in Peru for a nine week trip through South and Central America, culminating with four days in Las Vegas. These - to paraphrase Law & Order - are those stories.

Flying from Melbourne to Lima is...complicated. And more than a little time consuming. (I'm just going to assume it's the same now as it was in 2008)

I'm pretty sure the flight path to Chile wasn't that wonky at the end. I just can't draw straight lines.

First, I flew to Sydney at stupid o'clock in the morning. Then boarded a plane to Auckland. Arrival in Auckland introduced me to a truly amazing New Zealand quarantine video. I've tried very hard to find a copy of it over several years (read: I occasionally search Youtube for it), without success. Basically, it's talking about the quarantine procedures, and features a woman having her hand luggage inspected. From her hand luggage, she pulls an entire salami, a wheel of cheese, and A PINEAPPLE WITH THE TOP STILL ON IT. I have no explanation for this video, but it was astonishingly brilliant.

Anyway, I eventually made it to Santiago, where I was to meet Ness. By that time, I was jetlagged, starving (and had no local currency), and attempting to work out what the little old Chilean lady next to me was saying when she periodically tried to engage me in small talk. Eight hour layovers in these circumstances = no bueno. Eventually Ness turned up, and spent the last of her Chilean currency shoving a hamburger into me so that I didn't pass out (although I *did* nearly fall asleep at the table!) before we had to board our flight to Lima.

Arrival in Lima brought us to one of the world's longest Immigration queues. Four international flights had landed at once, and there were six queues waiting to get INTO the queue for Immigration. It was insane. And took over an hour to get through. But eventually, we got through Immigration and the bizarre Customs system of "push a button and if the light goes red, put your bag through an x-ray machine that no one's manning", and to our hotel.

The following day taught us that "el pan tostado con mantequilla y mermelada" sounds FAR more exotic than it actually is (toast with butter and jam), and that supermarkets in Peru sell shrinkwrapped suckling pig. Also that people like to parasail off cliffs in Lima.

The day after that taught us that museum signs that have been translated using Babelfish are HILARIOUS, and that downtown Lima is pretty:

And that taxi drivers in Lima are FUCKING INSANE. The trip from downtown Lima to our hotel in Miraflores took place at speeds between 80km/h and 120km/h (I know, because I could see the speedometer!), with no seatbelts, and periodic almost-side-swiping-nearby-vehicles. There was much screaming.

The day after that taught us that papaya juice smells like vomit, that Inca Kola is the nectar of the gods, that I can't eat a chicken drumstick (Ness found this hysterical. I still don't know how to eat a drumstick. Her description got as far as "slide your knife between the tendon and the bone" and I started gagging...), and that catacombs in monasteries are cool.

While the catacombs were cool, the number of pigeons here
freaked me the hell out. (I have bird phobia.)

And the day after THAT taught us that you shouldn't get your legs waxed at a Peruvian beauty parlour on a whim, because you'll be there for 45 minutes while the wax is melted in a saucepan on a hot plate. And you'll spend the next 24 hours picking wax off your legs (ahem, VANESSA). Also, that if there's an archaeological site within spitting distance, I'll want to go there:

Huaca Pucllana, for anyone who cares.

Oh, and we also left Lima with our tour group, via the first of our many MANY bus rides. This one was to Pisco. We also discovered that pisco (the drink, not the city) tastes like lighter fluid. Mmmm, lighter fluid...

Next up, Peru's answer to the Galapagos, dune buggying, mummies, and the tiniest aeroplane of ever.

K xx

Mmmmm, deep fried goodness...

This weekend marks one of the few highlights of living in Canberra - the annual Multicultural Festival. It usually falls on either the hottest day of the year, or the stormiest day of the year. This year, thankfully, it was slightly humid and pretty overcast, but not too hot and not actually raining. Miracle!

The photos are a bit crap because I didn't want to carry my SLR around while pushing through crowds, so I took my point and shoot. I now remember why I bought my SLR...

Anyway, there's usually a whole group of people from work heading in, but this year for whatever reason, there wasn't. I headed in quite early to try and avoid the worst of the crowds. My first priority was this:

Inca Kola, soft drink of the gods. Or, as Jamie referred to it this morning, nuclear cola. It's rather appropriate, given its fluorescence, don't you think?

Anyway, the past two years, I've been able to find Ecuadorian/Salvadorian/some other kind of South American food stall selling Inca Kola. This year? NOTHING. I got momentarily excited when I came across a Peruvian stall. But they sold nothing but orange juice. ORANGE JUICE!!! *sigh* I was more than a little upset by the lack of Inca Kola. Although the blow was lessened by the existence of a Peruvian chicken shop 10 minutes up the road in Belconnen that sells Inca Kola, it's been the highlight of the Multicultural Festival the past two years. I settled for bottled water instead. Not nearly as much fun...

Oh, and I saw these tiny kids (they were probably between 6 and 8, I think) doing something that looked like the Haka, only Polynesian. They clearly took their performance very seriously, and whenever one of them would do something wrong, he'd freak out and make extra fierce faces to cover up his mistake.

And apparently my camera thought I wanted photos of the people in front of me's heads... Awesome. Shortly after this, I came across a bagpiper in full Scottish regalia playing Scotland the Brave outside the ATO. It struck me as remarkably entertaining for some reason. But then he moved onto playing Waltzing Matilda, which should DEFINITELY not be played on the bagpipes, and I had to run away.

Anyway, after wandering around for 45 minutes fruitlessly searching for soft drink dyed with highlighters and watching tiny children dance like warriors, I gave up and decided it was time to hit the food stalls. I started out with a vegetarian quesadilla from a Mexican stall.

It seemed to have some kind of spinach and potato concoction in it, along with the obligatory quesadilla cheese and red salsa. It was pretty damned good, although I managed to cover myself in salsa by neglecting to pick up napkins...

Then I met up with Leah, and we wandered off in search of more food. She tried some Ethiopian samosas (the vegetarian ones contained lentils instead of potato, but I'm still not sure how samosas are a traditional Ethiopian food...), and then we queued up for these:

Czech potato pancakes. And they were really good, although they could have done with a squeeze of lemon juice on the top to add a little zing. They reminded me quite a lot of latkes, only bigger and crispier. Which reminds me - there was an Israeli food stand there, but it appeared to sell Turkish/Lebanese food. It was all hummus and felafels and tabbouleh. Very perplexing...

Anyway, then we had a wander around some of the stalls and came across this display of folk dancing. I have no idea where it was from, but they appeared to be having a good time!

Lots of jumping and twirling in circles, accompanied by some *very* special socks...

Eventually, we decided it was time to give up on savoury food and move onto dessert. And there was only one thing that we both wanted: churros.

I love churros. These were crispier than most that I've had, but DAMN, they were good. And filling. I'd been planning on indulging in a Polish doughnut (I'm still disappointed that they ran out last year) and some cannoli from the Sicilian stall as well, but by the time I finished the churros (and yes, I drank the leftover chocolate. Stop judging me...), I thought it best to stop before someone (me) had a heart attack.

So this year's Multicultural Festival wasn't *quite* the eating marathon that I thought it would be. Despite that, I still think I consumed an entire month's worth of calories in one sitting!! And it was worth every single one of them. Although I'm somewhat regretting not getting some curry or some noodles. But that definitely would have been overkill!

K xx