I heard New Zealand was nice this time of year

Well, I've just memorized another airport code - AKL. The hard way, one may say, because it sure isn't easy to look at the price tags associated with the magic combinations of LAX→AKL, YVR→AKL or, god forbid, YYZ→AKL. The number next to the dollar sign with the last one is truly hair-raising. For this reason, I am not sure I will find companions for that trip, at least those who would join me outside of New Zealand. Who knows if this plan, which struck me as brilliantly stupid and therefore promptly planted itself in my mind, will come to fruition.

Still, I do believe that the world premiere of The Hobbit in Wellington on November 28th is an excellent excuse to travel there. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, both the films and the book, is important to me; probably not as important as it is to Kiwis and their tourism board, but important nonetheless. It is a very extravagant excuse, but this trip has a potential to be truly magical.

Just wanted to share. Now back I go to researching the destination and planning to buy a guidebook.

London's calling

I liked London. It was noisy, endless, full of crowds, buses, narrow streets and charming buildings. It had Big Ben, the London Eye, the Gherkin and the Westminster Abbey. It had all these tourists, and hipsters, and people saying "wanker" and "gent" all the time. It had cups of tea for 70 pence (pences?). I have a feeling that you can't really not like London, not if you are here for one day.

But it was all very strange to me. Looking at these sights, that everybody knows, that I know and have seen countless times, I could never put them in context of everything else around them. Big Ben was simply a clock to me. I had zero sense of space it belongs to. I had no idea what Piccadilly Circus is really like (it's a circus alright). And the traffic is moving in all the wrong directions: I jaywalked more than I care to admit and jumped away from cars suddenly turning from unexpected angles even more often.

Good thing came out of this very short visit: I decided against wanting to live there. I suspect that it's a thing among young and maybe not-so-young ambitious folks; living in London is cool, it's like living in New York or Los Angeles, and everybody at some point could aspire to it. I'm done with it myself, though, London is much too... New York-ish for me.

Loved the cabs, though. And signs that claimed that "this door is alarmed".