I love Westminster!

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In my tired haze last night I was freezing cold at my shitty hostel and grabbed The blanket of an apparently unoccupied bed. Murphy's law hit back and the person turned up early into the morning. I realized the awkward situation and made a bad decision.. I feigned sleep. However I couldn't actually sleep cause I felt so guilty so when I thought she was asleep on her blanketless bed I sneakingly tried to return it to her without giving myself away. I will never know if she was aware of the situation but I have learned two things from this. The first being Do NOT steal other peoples blankets and the second, don't stay in a shitty hostel to begin with!

I had to get up super early as my bag was supposed to be dropped off to me but surprise surprise this turned out not to be possible as the bag was still in asia! I knew it wasn't likely to turn up for the entire day so I decided to put this little ball of stress to the side and decided to go enjoy London.

Before I left I was skyped by some lovely lovely people. You know who you are! X

I spent a short while in islington and looked around the shops there before taking the tube to Covent garden. A couple of hours was spent looking at the markets and sights in this general area and spying all the gorgeous theatres. Stumbled upon an impromptu opera performance and a lady giving away samples of tea! Mmm just what the doctor ordered!

Brought lunch at a quaint little sandwich house and continued my meandering. I think this was the best part of my day as I just aimlessly wandered round the streets of central London with no map and no deadline. This was mainly the areas of Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, the strand, Waterloo bridge and Whitehall. On my journey across town I came to Sommerset House and the home of the Courtauld Art Gallery. This place was stunning. Although only spread across three small floors it boasts a wide range of medieval, 16th-17th century paintings and impressionist/post impressionist works. I saw works and masterpieces from Toulouse-lautrec, Matisse, Gaugin, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Seurat, Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds to name a few. I recommend a visit here if you are at all into these artists. The architecture of the building is worth a look as well.

As it was only early afternoon I met up with a free walking tour run by some local hostels. This was a great way to meet people and get an idea of the layout of the area. This particular one centered on a part of Westminster. This area is by FAR my fave place in London so far as it is just so pretty and full of fantastic examples of medieval, Gothic and baroque architecture. Unfortunately for me I was reminded at this point that it is in fact one of the most expense areas to live in.

Some of the places we visited on this walking tour included Buckingham palace, st Jamespark, st James palace, green park ( so called as there are no flower beds in this park due to two reasons - they used to bury the bodies of lepars here which caused the soil to become two acidic to grow shrubs and also as Charles II was caught giving flowers to his mistress here and his queen was so enraged that she passed a royal proclamation banning any type of flower to grow here ever again!) we also passed by the houses of parliament, Westminster abbey, downing street, Trafalgar square (again)! Pall mall, admiralty arch and many other fantastic and interesting places I cannot even name.

My feet are absolutely dying right now. Next up food and also some much needed rest. Another prayer will also be sent out to the god of lost suitcases in hope he/she will take pity on me and return my life to me!

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