PAUL

Well we thought we'd better write some stories to go with the pictures we've put up so here comes the next chapter of our trip…

We arrived in Manchester around 6:20am GMT and managed to get through customs with relative ease (definitely glad we flew into Manchester and not Heathrow now). Having come from Abu Dhabi I guess you could say we weren't all that well dressed for the climate we found ourselves in. So after quick change of clothes we loaded ourselves up with our travel backpacks and suitcases and headed off for the train station.

Our tickets to Leeds cost around $40 each and after waiting on the platform inside the nice heated little area that seems to be at all stations here, we caught the train Li said not to hop on (though it was the right train) and left exactly on time, to the second (just like Brisbane trains really). The train trip to Leeds took 1hr 20mins and gave us some great views of the English countryside as we passed farms with their stone walls and a number of little towns along the way each having a bunch of identical looking houses lined up along the roads.

Having arrived in Leeds, we found the taxi rank and eventually made it to the front of the queue (and don't they love doing it) and climbed into a taxi to find a taxi driver who spoke very little English, fantastic, here we go again. We did manage to find our way to the University of Leeds Accommodation Services Office, sign the paper work for the keys to our temporary accommodation, Tetley Hall - Moor Road House and get another cab to take us there (and now that we know the area, are sure he saw our masses of luggage as permission to take the rather circuitous route to our accommodation). With some pain, we hauled our bags up the two sets of stairs and soon discovered two things: we were the first people in the 13 room temporary accommodation house (not for long), and we were expected to provide absolutely everything other than the carpet and curtains including toilet paper. And so, we forayed out into the unknown in search of the most supermarket-ish place we could find. Success! We found the shops in Headingly, a very student dominated area north of the city centre, and bought the various cooking equipment and household items we thought we might need to survive.

Our second trip to the shops that afternoon was to buy food and find a phone to call the Study Abroad Office in Leeds to find out what we needed to attend that week (hadn't planned on having no internet and no internet cafes around where we were staying). So we called the office first and were press-ganged into hiking into the uni for our "Welcome Briefing". Due to our helpful cabbie's round-a-bout way of getting us to our accommodation we didn't really know how far the uni was from Headingly at this point. After a bit over half an hour, we arrived at the uni and found out that the Study Abroad Office wasn't on campus and was actually across the road (I'm not convinced there isn't room for them on campus given the size of the place but anyway). We had our all important briefing and then caught one of the blue, pink and purple buses back to Headingly to buy our food and walk home.

Despite the frozen fingers and exhaustion upon arriving "home" we manage to cook up a pretty delicious spaghetti bolognaise and then collapse on our beds, with sleeping bags and inflatable travel pillows as we hadn't bought bedding yet, after one of the longest days ever (we did have a little help from the time zones on stretching this one out).