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Published: November 22nd 2009
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My flatmate, Amanda, and I went to London for the weekend to visit two of my friends from Queen's who are supply teaching there.
We arrived in London on Friday night and we made our way to my friend's flat in Ealing, which is just outside of London and takes about 40 minutes to get there on the tube. When we arrived at their flat, we just had some dinner and started to plan our next two days in London.
On Saturday morning we first headed over to Leicester Square to buy cheap tickets to a musical for Saturday night. We had all really wanted to see Priscilla Queen of the Dessert, but they weren't offering any discounted tickets for that musical on the weekend, so we ended up buying tickets to see Avenue Q. After getting our theatre tickets we went to Harrods Department Store and browsed around there. The window displays in Harrods were amazing and they all were the The Wizard of Oz theme because of the 70th anniversary of the movie.
After Harrods, we took the tube to Notting Hill Gate and went to the Portobello Market, which is one of the most famous street
markets in the world. The market was awesome and it sold everything from antiques to shoes and clothes to vegetables and prepared food. We also enjoyed the fact that Portobello Road goes straight through the heart of Notting Hill, which is the trendy area of London that was made famous by the movie "Notting Hill" with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. We were fortunate to ask some English police men if they happened to know where the Travel Book Shop and Hugh Grant's house were from the movie...and one of them pulled out this little piece of paper and knew exactly where they were! So of course, we visited them (although we couldn't find the house because they had painted the door black)! By the time we had finished walking through Portobello Market and finding places from the movie, it was time to head downtown for the musical. Avenue Q was really great and a lot of fun to see with a group of friends. It's an adult musical but they use a combination of puppets, like the ones in Sesame Street, and people in the show. It was ridiculously funny!!!
After the musical we went out for dinner at
a great Indian restaurant and then we walked around the main shopping district of London to see all the Christmas lights that were up and the beautiful window displays that the stores had. We came across this crazy street performer in Covent Garden. To make a long story short, he ended up juggling knives on a unicycle, then jumped down and started juggling knives and a chainsaw in his underwear! It was quite an entertaining evening!
We then met some friends for drinks at Porter House and when the bar closed at 11:30pm (even on a Saturday!!) we took the last tube back to Ealing went back to my friend's flat for the night.
On Sunday we decided to do a lot of the touristy things in London and our first stop was to see Buckingham Palace. When we got to the palace there was a little parade going on and then there was the changing of the guards. It was so busy there and so hard to see anything that we just walked around the palace and then decided to leave. I got a few nice pictures as we were walking past the gates of the palace! After
Buckingham Palace we walked through the park and went to Trafalgar Square, where the National Gallery is situated. We then walked over to Westminster Abbey (we couldn't go in because it was closed for religious services on Sundays) and crossed the river Thames to get a great view of Big Ben and the parliament buildings. It was a beautiful day and we were able to take some great pictures!
On our way to London St. Pancras station to catch our train back to Brussels, we were on the tube and someone in the car ahead of us pulled the emergency alarm. We were stuck there for about 30 minutes...everyone was so tense because we didn't have too much time left before our train left. We ended up missing our train back to Brussels, but fortunately, we had a really nice lady from Eurostar help us and we were able to take a later train at no extra cost.
It was an awesome weekend in London and I definitely will be back to visit my friends again in the new year!
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Rum Proast
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Tips for London?
Hello there! I am also an avid traveler; me and my stuffed pig, Humphrey, love to take long vacations every few months. We were wondering where in London the best place to find turnip-filled crumpets would be? Humphrey also was very adamant about not staying in a dive -- do you know of a hotel that is bacon-friendly?