chasing the sunset...

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...only it goes lot faster than us, i guess, because its now very dark outside this aeroplane. But the sunset did last for like an hour, and was pretty impressive. Also it seemed to be upside down... guess that makes sense since we were above the clouds.
Our flights were fairly uneventful and not unpleasant - we got the cool leg room seats near the emergency exit (from KL to London) so that was fun.
Day 1 - London... Upon landing in London we were surprised by how not cold it was - very nice change from Perth and Melbourne (where I had been just prior to leaving for Europe). After leaving our luggage in the hostel luggage room (since we couldnt check in at 7.30am) i checked my facebook and found that Tim had suggested we meet at Trafalgar Square at 11am. Hooray! we had some direction... something to plan and somewhere to be. Even if we did get there an hour too early...
I'm still not over the fact heaps of the streets and places are names in Monopoly - so it amused me to be sitting at Trafalgar Square looking towards The Strand. Less amusing was my encounter with Oxford Street, but we'll get to that later...
After meeting Tim at 'Nelsons Column, on the road side' we wandered around and ended up in some garden or other. We happened to pass by Buckingham Palace at the right time to see the end of changing of the guards- namely two pompous brass bands, some nice horses and some marching guys carrying scarily large guns.
Then it was on to Hyde Park and Kensignton Gardens. Tim informed us that there were in fact black swans in England, that had been brought here as a present or something. Seems a little odd to me. Surely species translocation shouldn't been taken so lightly 'Hey want some black swans? Sure! We'll gift them to you, whats the worst that could happen?'. But thats clearly just my ecology mind talking. And its not like they are taking over or anything, so I guess they are forgiven. Mind you, we didn't actually see any white swans.......
Whilst we're on this topic, I HAVE TO MENTION THE SQUIRRELS. oh. my. god. they are so ridiculously cute!! Until we found out they are actually American (?) grey squirrels, that have displaced the red squirrel native to the area. Ok to be honest this didn't make them any less cute, but they did lose some of their charm. People who know me won't be surprised that I took a lot of photos of ducks and geese and got distracted by trying to find the tiny birds I could hear in the shrubbery (hehe shrubbery...).
The parks and gardens are all beautifully manicured and colour coordinated - and its nice to see those flowers and plants growing in the COUNTRY IN WHICH THEY ARE MEANT TO BE GROWING, instead of next to the chemistry building at UWA (yeah thats right, i went there... i mean with the comment... not that i went to the chemistry building at UWA...er...)

moving right along... Having had enough of walking and being too warm (yeah, i know, what a novelty...) we dropped Mum back to the hostel and Tim and I started our beer finding adventure. If you could actually call it beer. We went into a 'typical London pub' in Covent Gardens (i think... I was pretty tired at this point and just following Tim blindly. I know, terrifying right?)... anyway the 'English beer' we ordered wasn't too bad but it definitely seemed as if we had bought some pints, left them sitting for about 45mins and then started drinking them. Flat and warm. mmmm mmm. I will never take coldness and bubbles for granted again. Promise.

Day 2 - Hostel bed. Yeah, I got sick - some sort of stomach upset, rather unpleasant - and so spent the entire second day in the hostel room trying to stop feeling like I wanted to die (nah i'm definitely exaggerating, but it certainly wasn't fun).

That's all for now.

Next entry: introduction to our mighty steed (hire car... its a Ford!), why do I keep on hearing 'Summer of '69' on the radio?, and the Lakes District

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