United Kingdom HERE WE COME!

---

After our 40hrs of travel from Sydney Australia to London via Bangkok, Thailand AND Dehli, India we finally arrived in London smelly and absolutely buggered! It was the longest flights that both of us have ever experienced! Both myself and my boyfriend Corey are heading to Ireland for some serious study, work and drinking! When we arrived in London we were quite surprised by how huge it was and how many people were there! I was expecting it to be just like Sydney but it was about 10 times busier!!

The next day after a long and well needed sleep we went for a nice long walk through London. We walked down to see the famous "Big Ben" and the Houses of Parliament. We saw Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye. We walked through St James Park on this quite hot humid day. That was pretty much it for the day as we were still trying to recover from our 40hr flight! Corey missed out on seeing the International Womens Volleyball tournament which he was quite distraught about :-D
We had our first banana in a long time as they are really cheap here - as they were up to $13.00 per kg back in Sydney. That night we met up with Coreys Tafe friend John and had a few beers and dinner whilst John told us all about his awesome jewellery job on old bond street ( a really rich jewellery shopping street!!)

The next day in London we went to Ripleys Believe it or Not (which was pretty cool!!) We headed up Oxford Street (the main shopping street in Soho) that night we caught the tube to Heathrow Airport and headed up to Edinburgh in Scotland. The flight was quick as we slept the whole 1.5hrs and thought we had only dozed off for a second to realise that we had arrived! We arrived at night so we got the airport to city bus into the centre of town. After a few hours of walking around town and trying to contact uncle Cam on the wrong number (i still blame Corey for typing it in wrong but hey..) we finally found some accommodation as everything was booked out for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I still cannot believe we paid roughly $350 Australian bucks for the night... but it does beat sleeping on the street on a freezing night! We were glad that we had a comfy bed and some actual privacy for a while - it was also good not having to wear thongs in the shower! (the hostels are so grotty!!)

The next day we set out to find Uncle Cam and have a beer and find some decent cheap accommodation! With Uncle Cams help we did achieve these things! He took us to our Hostel and showed us the local pubs and some of the local sights. We were staying in old town (which is way better than new town!!) nice and close to Grass market (where all the cool pubs were!!) We had a nice refreshing beverage and lunch (corey ate haggis - GROSS! ooh also just to embarrass Corey he dropped his pie in his lap!) with a sweet view of Edinburgh Castle from our seats. What more could you ask for?

Later that day , just for irony sake we heading into "Ozbar" the Aussie Backpacker Bar where Corey and Cam enjoyed a Boags and me a Smirnoff. Was quite fun as we took a pic of Uncle Cam beside the "i love cock" sign. Which i will post the pic - so true! After having a few drinks and Cam giving mum a 3am call her end (sorry mum!) and watching a bit of AFL and corey stating that the "tribe has spoken" that Pie was in order for dinner and then a fan made sign on the telly saying "the tribe has spoken" sign (quite creepy!!) we decided to head off and get dinner and get ready to go and see the funny Jason Byrne comedy show at the Fringe (which was quite good!)

The next day we hung out a bit round town - we did a hop on hop off bus tour and did a little bit of shopping ( we bought our cool hats!!) and a little bit more drinking. We headed to the World End Pub (Which the locals used to think was the end of the world as it was tight near the gates of town) That night we headed up to the Royal Mile (main street) where alot of the Fringe Festival was happening to see my Uncle Bruce's Magic Show with Corey and Uncle Cam. It was such a great show and alot of mysterious magic occurred leaving me stunned on how brilliant my Uncle Bruce was! We then headed back down to the Grassmarket area for dinner and a few drinks and said farewell to Uncle Cam and Uncle Bru.

The next morning after a 1.5km walk with our heavy backpacks ( and yes i was wrong corey) in the wrong direction to the bus stop we got a taxi to the correct one and made it with plenty of time to spare we caught the bus up to Inverness ( a 4 hour trip ) We headed to the Hostel which was conviently right next to the big bus stop. That night we had our first dominoes pizza over this side of the world which was a rip off and a never again experience..

Tune into our Diary Entry 2 for the next part of our trip!

---