Ahh London… we meet again (: ? 1 October – 18 October

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3rd October, 2011



So back in merry old London! Having a bit of a relax day today because I think if I walk another step today my feet will detach themselves and head to the nearest day spa! Just booked another week in here, far too much to see and do one week just isn’t enough, so many beautiful places! I sometimes just wander around the streets gawking up at all the old buildings… which by the way is a really good way to almost get hit by: cars, double decker buses, cyclists and impatient Londoners trying to get from A to B… (: It just seems everywhere you go, everywhere you turn there is something to look at! Anyway more on that in a minute, back it up like a tonka truck! Back to earlier shenanigans! We can’t skip those!



After a few days recovering from the craziness that was Ireland the fun and games resumed with ‘holidays’ as dear Hilary puts it, which involved the Annual Beer Festival at Ascot Racecourse, followed by a mission on down to Portsmouth; a beautiful seaside town about two hours out of London.



But my oh my, I sure like getting ahead of myself today! First things first – the beer festival! We got all glammed up as these events are sometimes frequented by royalty; in fact there was some there! Sorry British roots but have completely forgotten who… Prince Andrew perhaps? Yeah the racecourse security guards weren’t too impressed when I asked who they were either… awkward… well it’s fun to dress up anyway (: So looking fantabulous we started on the ‘real ales’… which… well look we tried them! But the weather was about 29 degrees and call me an Australian but I cannot drink warm beer on a day that nice! So heathen Hilary and I headed to get something a little cooler, Phil happily galloped off with the beer vouchers… and we proceeded to completely ignore the horse races and spent most the day sitting in the sunshine happily drinking! We saw two races… I’m pretty sure….



I’m devastated that I lost the pics from today because some of them were hilarious! We spent a fair bit of the day harassing the ‘escalator guards’ who made the SS look like puppy dogs – do NOT bring alcohol on the stairs, do NOT ask them for directions to the ladies rooms… and definitely, whatever you do, do NOT ask them if you can borrow their hats… at least the nice man at the door let me have his hat, much nicer than stupid escalator man!



So the next day, we were quite surprised to find that none of us were hungover… believe me we damn well should have been! But happily we weren’t so packed and raring to go we drove down to Portsmouth! The amazing weather continued thankfully and we arrived early afternoon, wandered along the waterfront, went to the pub, went for another walk… into a different pub, checked out the Naval Base… on our way to the pub! Lol, no we actually spent a fair bit of time at the naval base before we went to the pub (: They had restored some of the old ships that were used back in the 1700’s, the Warrior and the Victory! Now I fell in love with the Victory, which was an old school ship, looked like it same straight from Pirates of the Carribean, you could almost smell the ale and wenches… eww… I don’t think you would want to smell wenches… I digress! It was such a beautiful old ship… grrr I wish I had my pictures but ah hell use your imaginations! It even had the old captains quarters at the back with the cool windows… oh it was just lovely so yeah again if lacking in ideas for Chrissy pressies look no further! Emmy would like an old wooden ship to keep my A380 company, ok? Thank you (:



After a lovely harbour cruise we headed back to the hotel (had my own room and everything! Double bed! Own shower! Omg pure heaven! Wuvs to Unky and Hilary sooooo much!) to get all pretty for dinner and then while deciding where to go for dinner… what a better place to have a think than… yup u guessed it! THE PUB! Well there were just so many we couldn’t discriminate against any of the poor little pubs now could we? Yeah that what I thought…. Anyway so we found a place to dine, and as my dear mother pointed out I still kinda suck at being a backpacker as we ended up at Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant!!! We had to wait an hour but we got to have tapas at the bar while we waited… and the wait was damn well worth it! The pasta was to diiiieeeee for!!! We pretty much gorged ourselves and despite a tiny glitch where I attempted to ignore my shellfish allergy by trying Phil’s dinner which just looked too good – resulting in an ever so slight reaction – the evening was perfect! Thanks again Phillary you spoil me rotten you know… and you say you don’t like me… ha ha suckers I’m on to you… (:



So comes another end to my spoildom… hmmm new word… I like it! And I head back into London for a nice long stay to explore and catch up with some friends! Hulio and I head into Russell Square… now Hulio has gotten a little fat… little bugger can’t stay out of Primark (a discount department store that makes Target prices look like Gucci! It’s love….) but we managed to get into town unscathed and no broken spine so looking good! I was a little worried as this was my first time in a backpackers alone really, before this I’d had the tour so people had to talk to me. But this was going in completely solo so I wasn’t sure how I would go… anyway I checked in, wandered up to my room… started chatting to my roommates straight away and spent the next six hours drinking with them! Hee hee I think I’m going to like this… (: Unfortunately they all left the next day (please leave out jokes of me scaring them away thank you!) but I think I can manage this making friends thing just fine!



13 October, 2011



Oops I’ve been a slack tart! What has been happening… well one of little penguins from the Ireland tour, the crazy little Miss Sara has been roaming around London at the same time so we decided to catch up for some free walking action of this beautiful city! We meet up a Piccadilly Circus, Sara was a little late so I kept myself occupied by photo bombing complete strangers pictures… the problem with digital cameras is they can check them straight away… copped a few glares… oh well it kept me entertained for a while!



Sara and I wander from Piccadilly Circus alllll the way to Buckingham Palace through the park where Sara chases squirrels around trying to feed them Cheds… FYI squirrels don’t like cheds… she was quite insulted by this (: We kept walking past statues and monuments which we didn’t know anything about, so we made up our own history keeping ourselves quite entertained and probably insulting several different religions/historians/great warriors… We arrive at the Palace to catch the end of the changing of the guards (chasing squirrels takes time you know!), as we are both midgets we couldn’t really see anything but had a jolly good dance to the music!



We made our way all over the city, mainly posing for pictures, molesting statues and being general idiots! Saw the Tate Modern Museum which was actually quite interesting! It has a lot of surreal art work which to be perfectly honest went over both our heads, we made up a great drinking game (only thing missing was the alcohol) where every time they used the word ‘phallic’ in the art description you had to drink… we would have been carried out of there… but some of it was quite interesting! I’m just upset that I forgot there was a bar at the top!



Our feet were in AGONY from doing a complete circle of the city so we grabbed a bite to eat and prepared ourselves for a night of awesomeness…. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA!!! I know I have seen it already, but come on! Phantom at Her Majesty’s Theatre in LONDON! It has to be done! The show was just unbelievable! I was so excited I was literally on the edge of my seat the whole show and couldn’t wipe the smile off my face! Sara loved the show and as we left the theatre singing all the songs from the show (badly I may add, she would verify this!) we decided that the night could only go one way… and that way was karaoke (: This is one of the things I love so much about London, when you want something, you get it, we literally walked around one corner and checked two pubs before we found a karaoke bar! So we both busted out some tuneage and regrettably had to call the night an end due to last tube… stupid last tube!



I’ve been so lucky to have so many people show me around who know the area, one of those dear people is my Schmirby, Miss Kirby Woods who has been living here for a while now. She keeps taking me to the coolest places that I would never find with my oversized tourist map… yes I have been doing the tourist thing of standing on a street corner with a map the size of Texas sporting a mildly confused look on my face turning around in circles trying to find a bloody street sign. Anyway I get off track again, Schmirbs and I haven’t seen each other in over a year and meet up at Waterloo… just a warning, peak hour commuters don’t appreciate two girls screaming, jumping up and down and blubbering all over each other, but hey, we were happy to see each other! We head to Bricklane which houses some incredibly awesome Indian food, there are so many restaurants they stand out the front bribing you to come in and you can barter the price with them! We ended up getting a bottle of vino, entrée, main and sides for £10 each! Happy tightwad days!! The food was amazing too… ahh bless the Schmirbs!



I’m in a new hostel now too, this one is much cheaper and much quieter, don’t get me wrong I love a party as much as the next person… but then I like to go home to sleep! Yeah it gets kinda hard with drunken backpackers racing each other down the corridors and as beautiful as their rendition of ‘Sweet Caroline’ was at 4:30am, on the fourth night having only fragments of sleep, enough was enough so have headed to a much smaller hostel still great spot with really nice people, but there isn’t a bar in the building so sleep has been caught up on… slept for 11 hours the first night here! Bliss!



I tell you what, I think travelling on a budget has a fair few perks, one of the things I’ve noticed is if you are all cashed up you generally will sit in a restaurant for meals and not realise what you are missing out on. I’ve been having sandwiches sitting in some of the most beautiful places ever! On the steps outside St Pauls Cathedral, Trafalgar Square and in some of the most beautiful parks I’ve seen! Having said that I would kill for a steak…. Mmmmm… steak…. (:



There are so many little things I love about this place, the wind in the Underground; that rush of warm air as you head towards the platform is one of my favourite things! And everywhere you turn here there is something to look at! You turn around and there is ANOTHER monument or old building with some significance, hence my earlier reference to almost getting flattened by many large fast moving objects, must pay closer attention (:



I’ve had some extreme nerd museum days… there are upsides and downsides to going to museums by yourself… upside, you can spend as much time as you want looking at the same bit of art work but then leave when you are over it… the downside… when you are a particularly juvenile person like myself and tend to giggle and point over silly things that could be misconstrued as rude, you can get some strange looks, also no one to tell you that you are whistling the tune to ‘Walk Like and Egyptian’ over and over again in the British Museum Egypt Exhibit… and have to be asked by security to please stop… It seemed that no one got my graffiti theory either! I was looking at the ancient inscriptions and the plaques say that they are all of significant historical importance when it was probably just ye old graffiti! So I was thinking, if we all get wiped out by a volcano, global warming, steroid enhanced guinea pigs gone mad, and civilization re-established itself and found our old ‘inscriptions’, can you imagine the museums?



“Ah yes, according to this carving, which was inscribed what was commonly known as ‘concrete’, possibly under what we believe to be a ‘bridge’, it would appear than in 2009, Scotty was in fact ‘ere… we believe that this marks a significant moment in the history of the old human race….”



No? Nothing? Yeah the Japanese tourist didn’t like it either… sigh…



So what else… I fell in love with St. Pauls Cathedral, climbed over 500 steps to get to the top, the view was pretty spectacular! Pfft it would want to be for 500 steps… I’ve walked some extreme miles and think I have done London quite well – even caught the tube the other day without checking my map! Yeah impressive eh? Ooooh! And I got impatient with a tourist struggling with their ticket! Such a local… (; Oh! How could I forget? Schmirbs took me to Roadhouse, a pub in Convent Garden, which has ‘rockeroke’, karaoke with a live band! It was a comp and I came runner up and won a bottle of Champagne, good stuff too! It was soooo much fun! (:



18 October 2011



Yeeeaaahhhhh so got a little lazy on the ‘tourist’ side of things, after two weeks in London I guess I got ‘sightsore’… ha ha get it? No? Ahem… Carrying on! After spending so many days wandering around looking at museums and cathedrals and parks I kinda just wanted to veg out a little! Luckily I found a bunch of travellers who had been staying at this hostel for about a month and were feeling just as lazy as me! Evenings turned into the ‘new day time’ as between these Hostel Hermits, Kirby and dear Phillary I spent more time out at night and vegging during the day catching up on good telly, then like vampires as night approached we left the shelter and ventured out… to the bottle shop (:



I caught up with Phillary (Uncle Phil and Hilary for those of you at home!) who were heading into Camden for the day for a concert…. Now how do it put this…? I FREAKING LOVE CAMDEN!!! The atmosphere is so amazing, markets stretching for miles, cheap food of EVERY type, pubs as far as the eye can see (yeah the truth comes out…) but the MARKETS! OMG! See I have to get out of London! It’s trying to suck me in with its awesomeness! Freeeee meeeee!!!!! Oops, off track again! Anyway caught up with Phillary for lunch and a pint and we were chatting away so much I don’t think anyone really wanted to end things so we grabbed another ticket for the concert, grabbed a couple more pints and proceeded to rock out to a band I’d never heard of called, Heaven 17 – apparently they were big in the 80s (: It was fantastic! It was held at the Roundhouse and the sound was just amazing! Loving random concert outtings (:



Schmirbs took me to the best burger joint I have ever been to in my life… GBK… and I will forever be grateful for this! It was as big as my head and despite being filled up with burgery awesomeness we still managed to fit in an epic amount of waffles for desert… thank god I walk so much every day or I would have to buy two plane tickets on the next leg! Poor Schmirbs was feeling a little crook so I headed back to my little hostel for an early night… to find the Hostel Hermits had befriended a whole bunch of French people the night before and were all waiting out the front out to head out to… Camden baby! So of course I politely declined and went upstairs to finish knitting my blanket for the orphans… Baahaaaa!!! Off to Camden we went only understanding fragments of French conversation, learning French swear words and leading the crowd on the tube by calls of “Follow the beer!” Silly buggers were silly enough to follow me! But hey! We got there ok (: Oh and I shuffled on the tube! Not an easy feat and I shall ask for your impressed mmmmms right now……



Ok that’s enough thank you (:



We had such a great night out we missed the last tube (grrr… bloody last tube) but found a bus that took us back… well until this over crammed bus hit a bump in the road (we hope it was a bump…) and busted the hydraulics causing enough damage for the driver to kick us off the bus halfway back until a replacement came to get us…. Now I did want to see Abbey Road, just didn’t think it would happen at 4am waiting for a bus in the freezing cold! (:



The next few nights it seemed safer to stay close to the hostel considering our luck on the last adventure out… ok that’s a total lie we are all tightwads and Tesco had eight cans of Carlsburg for £6 – and it’s probably the best lager in the world… he he! Given we were spread across a few hostels we had to find a neutral drinking ground (backpackers don’t generally allow guests) so we… kinda… broke into Kensington Gardens and drank in there… yeah I know I haven’t done that since I was 15 but you know what, drinking in a park is not so bad! Apart from having to hide every time the patrols came around… ah it added to the fun! And don’t panic mum they only ask you to leave you don’t get in trouble (:



So all in all had an amazing combination of art, culture, history, nature, met MORE amazing people and had an absolute blast! Now heading over to Wales before I get convinced to find a job and a flat… it wouldn’t be hard… do love London… agh no! Ok I’m so out of here!



Off to the land of the sheep-shaggers – see you in a few weeks! xox

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