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Hello all!!
Sorry, been ultra lazy with the updates since we've arrived in England as I've slipped into relaxation mode since we have been staying with family for the last three weeks which means putting clothes in a drawer, an AWESOME shower, home cooked meals, comfy bed, and having met my dad's cousin for the first time ever he and his family have welcomed us into their home, spoiled us to the max and been so great to us, showing us the sights of London, giving us a place to stay and feeding us like absolute kings!!
So what have we been up to since we arrived at Heathrow on the 7th May?? Sorry...this is going to be a long one, but it HAS been three weeks!! 😊
Well, Stephen (dad's cousin) and his two daughters Jen and Katie picked us up from Heathrow and our flight got in an hour and a half later than the scheduled time...oops, not the best first impression! We arrived in what we've since been told (and experienced again today) typical Bank Holiday weather - grey and rainy. We also got told we must've brought the rain with us because the
two weeks before we arrived were supposedly beautiful!
After a day or two of relaxation and having a look around the local 'hood of Addiscombe and Croydon (which is just out of London, in Surrey - in fact Croydon is sometimes considered London as well; it is right on the border) we headed into the city for a morning to see a few things. We went to Buckingham Palace and watched the Changing of the Guards. It was really good (and much longer than I thought-about an hour) but we stuck it out and after a few of the people had left, we coud actually see what we had been taking photos of above everyone else's heads and umbrellas. The best part was when the band started playing and we were expecting traditional marching tunes, but instead they started playing the Grease Megamix!!!! Maybe it's the Queen's favourite movie...I dunno...but we certainly weren't expecting it!!! We then walked around and got a few typical London photos (i.e. Red Phone Box/Big ben etc etc etc.), passed the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, Downing Street, and had a quick look down Oxford Street.
Then on the weekend Stephen, Penny
and Katie took us into London for some more sightseeing. We went to Westminster Cathedral and saw some funny men when we came out which we found out were Morris Dancers who had bells on their legs, cute little funny hats, and banged sticks together. We then went to Westminster Abbey which was absolutely brilliant. You just feel so little and young when you walk around somewhere like that with all the history behind (and in and under) it. Jimmy loved it and it was difficult trying to drag him away from reading EVERY single plaque so that we could actually see some other things instead of staying there the entire day. I would love to know more about the history of the monarchy in England...it's so convoluted and incestuous, and why do they all have to have the same names?!?! It's so confusing!!!
After Westminster, we walked past the Houses of Parliament and saw Big Ben again (sorry Stephen, we didn't actually see Big Ben - that's the bell!) and had a lovely lunch. Then the lovely English weather kicked in and we had a good hour or so of fairly heavy rain. Jimmy wanted to send a
picture of him in the English rain, and hence, see picture attached of him in the middle of the Trafalgar Square roundabout in the pouring rain! So we saw Trafalgar Square and the Admirality Arch as we walked towards Waterloo Bridge. We then went down on the Thames and saw Shakespeare's Globe Theatre which is so cute and when we come back I wouldn't mind watching a Shakespeare play there. They do them each day and it's only £5 for a standing room ticket. Not sure if I'd love it, but it's something cool to say you've done hey? And if you're going to watch Shakespeare anywhere, it may as well be there! We walked across the 'wibbly wobbly' bridge (aka: Millenium Bridge); althought they've since fixed the problem (of the bridge moving in high winds and giving people motions sickness) and so it didn't actually wobble while we were on it no matter how much Katie and Penny tried jumping up and down to try and make it move. We walked down a bit further to where the Burough markets are and down the little cobbled streets by the Thames which are so cute and my favourite street I've
seen so far is Clink Street down there. We then saw Tower Bridge from afar before we headed back, and it really is a very pretty thing in real life.
That night, Katie took us out in Croydon in celebration of Jimmy's birthday which was the next day and we had our first 'Walkie' experience. Walkabout is a chain of pubs in England which are Australian themed but apparently there are hardly ever any Australians in them except on Australia Day and when the footy/rugby is on the telly. So we went in there and had a few drinks, although clearly a lot later than everyone else had had their 'few' drinks! We got there just after 10 and everyone in there seemed completely hammered!!! Made for good people watching though, especially the bunch of girls dressed as policewomen in their tiny hotpants and tops undone to their belly buttons doing suggestive things with their batons!! Hmmm...I know - TARTS!!! Stephen had organised a birthday cake for Jimmy the next day which was very sweet of him and we had a lovely roast dinner for his birthday and a quiet night in. I'd arranged a day trip to Windsor
Castle, Stonehenge and Brighton for his birthday for the coming Thursday.
The next week we fit in a few sights; we went to the Tower of Londond which was amazing. We walked over Tower Bridge on the way there and like I said before it's just so pretty. I still have to see it at night which I'm sure would look magical. So the Tower of London is like a little city on it's own once you walk through those walls. We had a quick introductory tour from a Yoemen Guard (beefeater) who was very amusing and should get a gig doing stand up, and then were on our own. We were there for the entire day! There was so much to see and all of it was just so great. The Crown Jewels are beautiful...I can't believe they have so many!! Why can't they just reuse the same sceptre instead of having another one made each time?!?! We saw Henry VIII's armour, 500 year old carved graffiti in the prisons, torture tools, chapels where royal wedding had taken place, palaces, ravens, the list goes on. So much to see in one place and it's amazing that it's just
all there in the middle of London. So after we'd finished there everything else was shut, we walked to the Monument in Pudding Lane, to commemorate the great fire of London. You can go to the top which is supposed to be a good view, but it was closed at the time we were there. We then went to St Paul's but again, the tourist part of it was closed (mind you at £9.50 entry fee I'm not sure I was all that bothered - what happened to donations for entries to churches?!?!). We had a look inside but there was a service on so a fair bit of it was blocked off. It's very pretty in there though, and because the service was on, the choir were singing and they sounded beautiful.
We then spent another full day at Hampton Court Palace which is out of London. The place was huge and I'm still not sure if we covered it all!! They say you need only 3hrs there...ha! It was a funny old place. A cardinal owned it first and then Henry VIII took it I guess you could say, from him, and then after that a number
of other monarchs have resided there, and each time another moved in, they just added another bit on and now it is one higgedly piggedly palace of different architecture which sticks out here and there. It's just palaces from all different eras stuck together into one. The whole place is beautiful though...the state rooms are gorgeous with amazing paintings on the roofs and the furniture and paintings are so old and grand. The gardens there are beautiful as well (sorry I know I've used beautiful a lot, but there's no other way to describe them!) and we saw a real Royal Tennis Court!!
Thursday we went on our day trip to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath. The tour guide at the start of the tour told us it was the whirlwind tour and that we'd be on the run until we got back...and she wasn't wrong!! It was a bit too much to do in one day, but all the places were fantastic. We only got an hour and a half at Windsor Castle and had a look at Queen Mary's Doll House which is the best dolls house in the world, the State Rooms which again were just
stunning and over the top, and the chapel. Luckily we had read something in passing that we could get a stamp on our way out and use our admission from that day to come back for free within the next 12 months...so I think we'll go back there again. It's so impressive to look at and pretty, and the town around it looked nice too, so would definitely like to go back. Then we were off to Stonehenge which is just indescribable. Still noone knows how or why they're there, and when you see how big those damn stones are it's even more unexplainable!! Some of the stones have only ever been found elsewhere in Wales...so how the HELL did they get them there?! They must've been crazy! The structure is pretty awe inspiring and I would've loved to go right up to them, but of course we were restricted to the tourist track (with our audio guides). So after a quick look at Stonehenge we went to a pub for a traditional english lunch - Chicken Pie and Veg - yum! Then onto Bath which was a 2hr drive. Bath is soooooo pretty!! Very dissapointing though when we got
off the bus out the front of the Roman Baths and were told we had to be back at the bus in an hour!!! WHAT THE??!! So we pretty much ran around the Roman Baths which were great, had a (very quick) look inside Bath Abbey, then a (very very quick) look over the bridge and (glanced) at the stunning scenery, and then back on the bus. Again...we'll have to go back there. All in all though it was a good day and we saw some amazing places. Long day though but not long enough at each place!!
On the Friday night we went to my cousin Kydi's place who's living in Parson's Green with her husband Adrian, and my other cousin, Eugene came around for a couple of glasses of champagne (celebrating the family reunion) before we headed out. They took us into Soho for dinner and we ended up at a really nice little French Restaurant, where we had to wait an hour and a half for a table though!! Oh well, they ended up giving us a round of drinks free for having to wait so long...lovely, plus we'd been taken to an all you can
eat Chinese buffet for lunch that day, so a late dinner was perfect! Then we went to Piccadilly Circus where we went into a really cool little club called Jewel. We boogied away and we (the backpackers) drank beers, while the others had G&T's all night long. Was a great night and good to catch up with some more family.
We got taken on the Sunday to Chislehurst Caves which is in Kent and seems to be a little known place but it was amazing. They are caves that are thousands of years old and said to be made by the Romans, the Druids and the Saxons over the years. In World War II they were used as a shelter from the bombs and they had 15,000 people down there at the time. It seems amazing before you go down there, but once you're down there you can see how they did fit. They go on forever and are really deep...you wouldn't want to walk away from the tour - you'd be lost for months! They gave you little oil lanterns to guide you around which Jimmy found very fun and I was a bit scared with his inquisitive
nature that he WAS going to be the one to wander off and get lost forever! We all kept a close eye on him!! 😊 Jen took a couple of pictures down there and got some weird things come up...they looked like ghosts and orbs and stuff, and when we came out, there was a post card of a ghost that people say they see, and it looked just like the image in Jen's photo...ooooooh, creepy!! So that was a fun and then when we came out it was a glorious day - yay! We went to Crystal Palace Park which is really pretty, and it's where they had the great Crystal Palace from the Great Exhibition back in 1851 transferred from Hyde Park. It was burned down though in 1936 and now only the remains are there. Stephen also showed me the house where my Grandad grew up in Thornton Heath which was strange seeing as I never even got to meet him. Dad...I'll email you the photo of his house seperately as I'm sure noone else really cares. 😊 Then that night in the still sunny weather, we had a delicious BBQ in the backyard.
During all
of this, Jackie had arrived in London on the 17th May. We caught up with her for a mini sightseeing day and went to Lord's Cricket Ground while we were waiting for Jackie to get there and then went to Abbey Road for the embarrassing tourist photo! Haha...it is pretty embarrassing but it has to be done! 😊 We caught the tube to Marble Arch and had a picnic in Hyde Park. We sat in a boring bit though which was just grass, but afterwards we walked down Park Lane and discovered Hyde Park Corner and the nice gardens and boating lake. It's a really pretty park and Jackie mentioned that going to all these park makes her feel bad for not having visited the Royal Botanic Gardens more! Then...we went to Harrods!!! We didn't tempt (or should I say torture) ourselves by looking at everything we couldn't afford so just had a quick walk through the perfumery and through to the Food Hall which I had been told I had to look at. They are pretty impressive...I think they have absolutely every food you could imagine. So then Jackie went home and Jimmy and I went back to Piccadilly
Circus, walked through Leicester Square and headed back to Clink Street and visited The Clink which is an old prison they've made into a museum of torture tools and about the prison and area in the time it was open. We tried to head to Tate Modern but it was already closed and so we walked all the way down Southbank to get a train home.
We got a great summers day weather on the Wednesday and thought we'd make the most of it and head to the coast. We caught the train to Brighton and spent the day there walking around and soaking up the sun. The Royal Pavillion is there which is like Indian/Taj Mahal style from the outside and Oriental inspired on the inside (another Royal Palace), but we didn't go in because it seemed a shame to be inside on such a nice day. We walked around the little streets with cute little cafes, boutique shops and the cutest little houses. We walked down the pier and had a picninc lunch on the deck chairs and even dipped our toes in the (freezing) water on the pebbled beach. We sat down and had a few
pints of beer in a beer garden on the beach and I got burnt!! I've now got quite the tan from one day in Brighton, but only on my chest and even then it's totally stuffed as I was wearing a strapless dress and so have a dead straight line which means no v-neck tops for a while until it blends. 😊 We then walked down to the Marina where there were more restaurants and lots of fancy boats. It all reminded me a bit of St Kilda, we liked it a lot.
On Friday night, Jen took us back to Southbank to a little place called Giraffe for some drinks and we met up with a couple of her friends, Jackie and Simone made their way down, and a footy mate of Jimmy's for a few quiet drinks. We had the weirdest waiter ever who repeated everything twice (i.e. So you ordered the mezze mezze?) and called wedges 'wedgies' and looked at us or giggled whenever we ordered another beer?!?! Strange strange man!!
Then on Saturday night Jen, Jimmy and I headed into London to meet up with a couple of girls we'd met in New York.
We went to Shoreditch High Street and Old Street area and went to a little bar with foozball tables all over and had a few drinks. When that closed at 12:30, we moved about 50 metres down the road to another bar for a few more drinks. Then when THAT place closed at 1:00, we thought we were screwed. Everything here that is open late seems to have a cover after about 10pm and it's usually about £10!! So we weren't dunk enough to pay that and all the others went home, but the Burl girls didn't give up and we found 2 pubs afterwards, one open until 2am and another after open until 4am. So we got home when the sun was coming up when we almost gave up at 1...not a bad effort I'd say - AND with no cover charges!!! Had a really fun night.
Sunday after we had a nice sleep in and had (sort of) got over our hangovers, Stephen and Penny packed up a picnic and we headed to Greenwich Park and saw that Meridian Line and had a quick look in the Maritime Museum (while Jen had a sleep in the car!!).
It was still a bit rainy and so our picnic was very English - under the cover of the boot of the car in the car park. Jimmy and Penny were feeding the squirrels Pringles and they were certainly enjoying them and kept coming back for more. We went and had a look at the Cutty Sark which really is totally destroyed. 😞 Oh well, I suppose they'll bring it back to it's former glory, but who would do that?!?!
So tonight is our last night in London before we head up to Preston tomorrow on a 5hr bus journey to visit Jimmy's relatives. We were here for a whole three weeks, but there is still so much for us to see when we come back! I really love it here although I could do without all the annoying drizzly rain. It is summer now...COME ON!!!
So from Preston, we will be flying to Venice on the 28th June to start our Busabout Adventure around Europe. We are doing the Northern and Southern Loop, which takes us to: Venice, Ancona, Rome (then we are doing a 3-day trip to Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, Amalfi and Ravello), Siena, Florence, La
Spazia, Nice, Lauterbrunnen, Lucerne, Munich, St Johann, Stuttgart, Paris, Bruges, Amsterdam, Dresden, Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Vienna and Salzburg. Can't wait!!! We'll be doing that until money runs out (so I'm really counting on my tax return...mum call me as soon as my group certificate arrives!!).
Well, better get to bed...I've stolen Stephen's laptop for the entire night just about!! Love to everyone and keep sending me emails telling me goss and other news from back home!
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Adrienne
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Hellooooooooooooo
Hey guys, wow that was a long blog thanks for keeping me entertained at work for a nice amount of time:) Sounds like ur having a ball makes me wanna travel more and more! The squirrles are so cute. Reading this blog made me hungry!!! Oh well it's nearly lunch time thank god. The Clink or whatever its called looks scary but interesting. Everything looks interesting love the photos too. Miss u guys I honestly do love yas xoxoxo