I thought i should put a few pictures up of life in London over the last few months. I love this first picture which is of me and my good friend Kim. I grew up with Kim in Rome, shes my oldest friend, known her 24years and luckily for me she lives in London too, as well as the rest of her family..We were out at her boyfriends house party after England won one of their rugby world cup games, it was a great evening..
In October, one of my best friends Michael, with whom i went to high school in Rome came to London while awaiting his visa to move to LA, and so he stayed with me for a while.. It was great to see him again, as i hadnt seen him in 7 years!! We had lots to catch up on! One of Michael AKA London's first nights in London we went out with Max and Kim and some friends of London to a pub in South Kensington which was great, and here is a picture of London and Max.. On one sunday, Max and i went to visit London in his hometown of Cambridge, which is only a 40 min train ride north of london. We walked around Cambridge a little, its such a beautiful town, always alot of tourists around there..I will have to go back there in the summer to try some punting, looks fun!! We had a great day, Londons mum kindly cooked us a great roast which was delicious and then we got the Singstar out on the playstation and sang some karaoke with London's little nephew..Singing karaoke is always fun!hehe Anyway, thank you London for a wonderful day out, and of course to your mother as well.. TVB.

New Apartment in London

Ive been a bit slack about updating my blog the last 6 months but im trying to be better!! As most of you know there have been some major changes in my life, firstly Matt and I split up after 5 years together over the summer, and I have moved from Trondheim to London. Its taken a bit of time to get used to these changes but i have now got a cute apartment and a new exciting job! My apartment is in the south-west of london, in an area called Balham. Here are some pictures which were taken in october when i moved in, my friend Michael was around to help me move! I also bought a few pieces of furniture from IKEA (im an expert at putting together things from there after having worked there for 3 years!) but nonetheless took a while to assemble. I am working at a swedish publishing company in central London, just off Oxford Street. We publish special interest reports for the daily and monthly press. Its really interesting, Im a project manager, I get to come up with an interesting topic, then I research, sell, market, design and publish the whole report! Its a world away from working at IKEA in Trondheim, but most of you know i like change and living in new places. If anyone wants to come to london, please let me know!!!

Villa Borghese

I know its been a while since ive posted a blog so I apologise and am trying to update this page with all my pictures that i have. A couple of months ago, mom, dad and I had planned to take a day trip out of Rome to visit some friends of ours who have a house in the country. However, the traffic was so bad on the ring road around Rome that we decided to give up and go into the city instead. It was a beautiful day, so we decided to walk around Villa Borghese, a gorgeous park in the center of Rome. I had not been there for quite a while, so it was great to just wander around, taking pictures like real tourists. We stopped along the way at a local bar in the park and ate some "panini" or sandwiches for lunch and got a great view of Rome. The Zoo of Rome is actually located in this park, along with some other sites such as "Galleria Borghese" which houses some fantastic art work from sculptures and paintings by Raffaelo amongst others. For those of you who visit Rome, i would highly recommend a walk through this wonderful park, its a great break from the chaos and traffic of central Rome.

Autumn in Trondheim

Things have been quiet on the social front for a while now, mainly due to "no funds" from not working permanently.. Autumn came to Trondheim fairly late this year, the summer has been the best since weather recording began! During these colder days, i have spent alot of time visiting friends, as its always expensive to go out to do anything here in Norway! I also decided to start a scrapbook as I had the pictures from my parents visit developed and wanted to create an album, so i have also begun working on my new hobby in the evenings when its raining. Its coming along nicely! A few friends have mentioned that they have various hobbies, knitting, scrapbooking, painting etc and that we should all try to get together one evening to be social and work on our projects, which would be great to do especially as the days get darker and colder here.



















One of my friends Merete and her husband have bought a puppy and therefore she is home alot, conveniently for me means i can visit her during the day when im not working. Here are some pictures taken last week of us and the dogs, who are both adorable..

Mum and Dad´s visit to Trondheim

Mum and dad came to visit me here in Norway from 8th Sept til the 19th Sept. I had been looking forward to their visit all summer and it was nice having them here again. It was their second time to Trondheim, but first visit since
we moved into this apartment very close to town and the university.
Unfortunately,on the friday they arrived, it rained, it has been a wonderful summer here, not much rain, but typically it poured while we had to walk from the bus stop 5 mins up the road to our house! The first couple of days were spent relaxing, wandering into town, eating mums good home-made cooking and getting mum addicted to Greys Anatomy!

On the wednesday we rented a car so we were more flexible and more importantly, we were able to go away for the weekend. Mattis was our chaffeur, and drove us around various parts of the town mum and dad hadnt seen before. We drove to Granåsen ski-jump which has held the World Cup in Ski-jumping. Its pretty amazing when you are actually there looking up at this massive jump and you realise how crazy people have to be to actually ski down as fast as they can! Mattis and i have not yet been to see "live" ski-jumping but its definitely on the list of things to do! We also drove up into the hills near the ski-jump where Matt and i do some cross-country skiing (its not so cross-country as you would think, very much uphill and downhill). I had never seen the area without snow so it was very interesting to see a lake and surrounding area in the sun and warm weather.
We also had a lovely evening round at our friends Morten and Vibeke´s, who live in Trondheim but have been to Rome to visit. They made a traditional dish from this area called "sodd", which is a bit like soup with different kinds of meats and sausages in it which you eat with potatoes and carrots. It was great to be able to taste something local cuz i probably never would have known how to make it.
We also visited Trondheims fantastic swimming
pool complex which is located right down on the pier. You can sit in the jacuzzi looking out across the fjord which is pretty relaxing. Dad especially loved the steambath, so he actually came back by himself a couple of times during their stay..
On friday we packed up the car and drove south-east, around 2.5 hours inland to the old copper mining town of Røros. It is actually on the UNESCO World Heritage List and neither Matt or me had ever been either so it was a great opportunity to see the town with my parents. The weather was fantastic the whole weekend, sunny, blue skies and pretty warm. Along the way to Røros we stopped to admire the sparsely populated countryside of Norway, drank coffee and ate waffles (yummy)!We also had a picnic on the ruins of an old stone bridge just off the road, which turned out to be a great picture taking site!





The hotel we stayed at in Røros was great, very central and even had its own sauna and tiny freezing swimming
pool, both of which, of course, needed to be checked out!!We enjoyed strolling through the old streets of Røros, there is basically just one main street which is pedestrianised with lots of souvenir shops. However, we didnt buy too much as EVERYTHING in Norway is expensive.. The atmosphere was great, the town is so pretty, i see why it has been the background in many movies. On the saturday we went into Røros church, which i think is the third or fourth largest in Norway. We also checked out the copper mining museum which was excellent, had many models to show you how the mining of copper occured back then. In fact, the mining industry worked up until the 1970s, so not that long ago! There was also the opportunity to drive around 20 mins outside the town to an old copper mine which has now been transformed into a tourist attraction. It was amazing to see how it all works and how they actually got the copper from the mine back into town using a system of pulleys and huge buckets.

We headed back to Trondheim on sunday afternoon driving back along Trondheim´s fjord, again picnicking along with way. We all enjoyed the trip to Røros and i recommend it to anyone who is travelling in Norway. The last few days were spent in town and around the house. Mum and i did some more shopping while we left dad at the library in town which he loved, catching up on magazines and newspapers. I think mum and dad had a good time, hopefully it was relaxing as it was their summer holiday, and it was great to
have them here in our home.
Cant wait to meet up with them and my brother again soon, somewhere!!

Vacation in Italy

Mattis and I left Trondheim 31st May and flew to Rome and stayed at my parents house (even though they were still in Japan). The first couple of days were spent hanging around Casal Palocco where we live, the weather was not as warm as we expected, it actually rained a couple of days. I got to spend some quality time with Lily, our cat who had been alone for 2 weeks.
Then on saturday 3rd June we drove into town to pick up my best friend Melissa and her boyfriend Scott who were staying at a hotel near the Vatican. They had flown into Rome from San Francisco, to spend a couple of weeks travelling to different parts of Italy with Matt and me. Melissa and i had lived together in Sydney where we met and hadnt seen each other since, which was 4 years ago!!! It was fantastic seeing her again, and meeting her boyfriend Scott, who i had heard so much about,and needless to say, there was alot of catching up to do.
We spent the next couple of days wandering around Rome, the weather was warmer and we were able to spend some time at the swimming pool at our house as well. It was great to be able to show them around my home town, i think they enjoyed it! We saw all the major sights, colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, St. Peters, Vatican Museum, Spanish Steps, Roman Forum, Piazza Barberini and more.. It was great just walking around the city, i think Scott enjoyed taking cool pictures of the city and its many sights. In the evenings we were pretty tired from being tourists all day, we cooked at home, and thank you Melissa and Scott who have given Matt and myself new recipes.. we especially enjoyed those potatoes!!!
On the 7th June, we borrowed my parents car and drove south towards Pompeii and our final destination: the Amalfi Coast. After around 2.5 hours we got to Pompeii, parked the car in a safe parking area "itsa very safe" the restaurant owner assured me! We spent a couple of hours wandering around the ruins of what was once the thriving town of Pompeii, before 79AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the town. It was very hot and very little shade amongst the ruins, so i think we all got a little sunburnt. We continued driving south along the famous coastline, which was beautifully, but the very narrow roads and the plunging cliffs below were a little scary. We stayed at a small B&B in Positano for 2 nights. The view from our rooms was fantastic, we were high up on the hill and could see all the way down to the turquoise ocean below. We were pretty lucky to find a reasonably cheap accommodation as Postiano is an extremely popular town, but i think we still got lucky with the views, and in addition there was a talking parrot at the hotel. The next day we took a ferry from Positano over to the famous island of Capri. This was the highlight of our trip, as after lunch, Scott got down on one knee and proposed to Melissa (i knew about his secret and it was soo hard to keep it from her!!).. She said yes, and we started the hunt for the perfect engagement ring. She found a beautiful ring in a local shop which also provided champagne to celebrate. We celebrated by eating dinner at a recommended restaurant with breathtaking views over Positano, where we had the funniest waiter (Bulgarian) ive ever met! We spent the next couple of days relaxing at home in Rome, mum had come back by then, so she was able to meet Melissa and Scott. Of course we were also able to see quite a few games of the World Cup too.

On the 11th we hopped on a train to Venice for 2 days. We spent the 4.5hours on the train playing cards, it was addicting..Again we were very lucky with our accommodation, right in the middle of the city, canal views and a nice continental breakfast (important we found out!!).. We visited St. Marks square with all its pigeons, Galleria dell' Accademia (one of the italys best museums) Peggy Guggenheim museum, Rialto bridge and walked along many of the small canals. We also took an expensive gondola ride, but it was totally worth it, our gondoliere even sang!! We even got to see sunset on the grand canal in a gondola. One of the funniest moments of the venice trip was while i was negotiating with the gondoliere how much the trip would cost. I had become soo used to translating everything into english i didnt realise when i was translating from english to english, the guy had seen we were tourists and had talked back in english to me!!!) We took Melissa and Scott to a pub in Venice to witness the madness of an Italy world cup game, especially good atmosphere as they won the game!!
Melissa-it was sooo good to see you again, im glad you had a good holiday in my home town. Im so happy that you got engaged in Italy. I cant wait for our next holiday. May it be soon! Matt-for being the best travel partner! and mum and dad-thanks for having soo many visitors stay in your house!