London Fashion!

Yesterday I ventured back out of the country with my co-worker Kathryn to experience to fashion industry of London... the notorious "fashion week."  We got our catwalk tickets and headed back into the city for one of the best people watching I've done since Disneyland!

We perused through designer discounts and sipped on Chambord and Champagne before taking our seats at the catwalk to see the latest in fashion and design for the upcoming summer.

No, I did not purchase anything, but left satisfied with my goodie bag filled with "real" coffee, mints, gum, hair spray and mouth wash!  Ha!  All-in-all, it was a great day.

Winchester.... In the U.K. not California!

Winchester Cathedral

Today I ventured out to a town not too far away from me, Winchester.  Just about one hour by train from Chichester, I arrived around 11am on a somewhat sunny saturday!  Winchester is most known (at least to me) for being the home of the Winchester Cathedral, the burial ground for well-known author Jane Austen.  Most of you might know, that I'm from a small town in California called Winchester.  Let me just tell you it bears no resemblance of this place! The town was so beautiful!

King Arthur's Round Table

I meandered around to the Winchester Castle, the Cathedral, down High Street and along Weir's Walk where the river runs by.  Then on to Winchester College, Jane Austen's last home before she died and the Roman city walls along the Wolvesey Palace ruins.

Me inside the cathedral

After a lot of walking, I found a quaint little pub with two fireplaces burning warm to sit and have a pint of beer and some yummy butternut squash spaghetti!  I made it home just as the sun was setting and now I'm so exhausted!

Tomorrow its off to London for Fashion Week's catwalk at the Somerset house!

My Bonnier Spotlight Interview

Autumn Publishing Office

I still continue to feel blessed to be on this adventure.  One month in and still two more months left to go, I finally feel as if I'm settling in!  

Today, I was featured on Bonnier.com, spotlighting my GROW experience here in England.  Check it out here:  http://www.bonnier.com/en/content/meet-lauren-machen.

It just so happened to also be a gorgeous sunny day!  According to the news, the warmest day since November!  I can feel spring at my fingertips!  

Portsmouth Harbour, England

HMS Victory

Southsea Castle

Portsmouth Harbour

So I jumped on the train and ventured out to the West about 20 minutes over to Porstmouth Harbour, a port town famous for its historic naval dockyard and the newest addition to its skyline, the Spinnaker Tower.  You can also catch a ferry, cruise ship or hydrofoil here and venture on to France, the Channel Islands or just across the way to the Isle of Wight.  On arrival, it was a beautiful sunny day, very rare for England I've now come to realize, although was lucky enough not to experience until now!  Everyone was out and about and I immediately discovered the port's footpath along the water and followed the locals, tourists and whomever else down the path.  The first place I hit was the historical dockyards of the royal navy.  Here they housed the HMS Victory and Warrior ships and museums for tourists to peruse and photograph.  The ships were amazing.  Some of the oldest boats in the world!  Onward to the east of the dockyard was the Spinnaker Tower, in Gunwharf Quays, a very busy shopping centre filled with shops, bars and restaurants galore...As you can see, it kind of reminds me a little of Seattle.  If you keep heading east along the water, you walk through a small carnival pier and eventually will run into Southsea Castle, where there is a beautiful lighthouse perched on top and you can see out on the English Channel for miles!  This castle was built in 1544 during the reign of King Henry VIII as one of his forts.  I was so lucky to be here on such a gorgeous, sunny day!  I definitely got my walking in for the day and around 5pm decided to finally jump on a train and head back home to relax.

Chichester, England

My Flat

Chichester Cathedral

Only a 90 minute train ride south of London, I arrived bags and all onto the platform of the Chichester Train Station to meet my new boss for the next 3 months, Gwen.  We loaded up my bags into her brand new Audi and drove off to see my new digs.  My place is great.  A two-bedroom, one bathroom flat in a complex across the street from Tesco's, a large super-market type place similar maybe to a super Walmart.  The flat was furnished with nice purple couches, a dinette, king-size bed and a wardrobe closet.  A washer/dryer combo fit snugly into the kitchen just below the electric tea kettle, which would be my new daily morning ritual instead of the good ol' coffee pot!  Figuring out my surroundings was my biggest challenge set before me.  Thankfully my first week on the job, my coworker Amy picked me up and dropped me off so I could get acclimated a little better without worrying about how to get myself off to work!  I later found out that it would be either a brisk 20 minute walk into town to catch the bus or a nice 40 minute walk along the footpath through the fields towards the Appledram"barn," or that which is the offices of Autumn and Bonnier UK Publishing.  I've gotten used to the so called daily commute now and like that I now have three options of transport... (1) walk/bus - 25minutes, (2) walk - 40minutes or (3) bike -15minutes. My only caveat to all of these of course is the weather!

Appledram Barns - Autumn Publishing

Market Cross

Chichester is a quant town, home of the over 900 year old cathedral that sits smack-dab in the center of town.  The Market Cross is also a very beautiful historic structure with a prominent clock tower mounted on all four sides.  There are plenty of shops and restaurants to peruse around in as you meander around on the cobble stone streets.  Just beware that everything closes around 5 or 6pm and on Sundays at 4!  Oh and the bars and restaurants never stay open later than about 11:45pm, so don't plan on seeing much night life here!

97 Days Across The Pond....

Okay, so I figure its about time I write on this blog.  For crying out loud it IS a travel blog, and I'm pretty sure what you would call my 97 day adventure away from the U.S. nothing short of that...a traveling adventure!  

London Eye At Night

For those of you who don't know why I'm spending these 97 days overseas, its because I was one of 18 employees within the Bonnier AB (TransWorld Media's parent company) network chosen to participate in the GROW Ambassador program, where you literally transplant your life to another country, another job and another home!  I am now residing in Chichester, England, which is located in West Sussex, or what most would better understand as 90 minutes south of London near the coast of the English Channel and France.  I will be working at Autumn Publishing for the next 3 months, in co-editions for children's book publishing.  What does that really mean?  Well I've recently learned that it consists of seeking out international book publishers and retailers and inquiring to see if they'd be interested in either publishing or selling the children's books that Autumn Publishing creates, which are comprised mainly of activity and learning books for kids aged 3 - 8 years old.  So you can see now, how different the next 3 months of my life are going to be transitioning from action sports magazines to this!

Tower Bridge

I'm going to rewind a bit since I've started documenting a little late.  I'm already 3 weeks into my trip now!  21 days to be exact!  So whats the countdown at now?  76 days! Ha!  Okay, so 3 weeks ago, on a Sunday, I arrived into London Heathrow Airport at around 10:30am.  It was a nice long travel experience, seeing as though I actually left on Friday morning to Denver for TransWorld SNOWboarding's Rider's Poll Awards show before jumping back on the airplane on Saturday to head to LAX airport and straight on to London! I made it.... barely! Haha.  Upon arrival into London, I met Kim, my fellow TransWorld coworker and also GROW participant.  She was to be heading onward to Stockholm, Sweden for her 3 month experience, but first spent two days with me in London!  It was a whirlwind two days, but we had so much fun squeezing it all in!  We stayed in a small hotel in Kensington and immediately ventured out to Picadilly Circus, rode the London Eye and enjoyed a nice fish and chips dinner and beer at an Irish Pub all in the first day! 

Stonehenge

 The next day we woke up early, grabbed a coffee and headed to what we thought was our tour to Stonehenge, only to find out they cancelled it!  We were rebooked onto a later tour and comped the double-decker red bus London tour in the interim.  This was a pleasant surprise because we ended up having a blast touring around London on the double-decker bus with our guide Sheldon!  We even got to go on a boat down the River Thames!  Around noon we grabbed some subs from Subway and jumped on the bus to Stonehenge.  It was chilly all day, but the sun was out and shining, so we considered ourselves very lucky!  As if that wasn't enough, a quick trip back to our hotel to freshen up, and we were back out to catch Dirty Dancing at the Aldwych Theatre and a late dinner.  The next morning we were both setting off on our own, separate adventures....onward to our new homes and jobs for the next 3 months!