Getting high in London

Today I was finally reunited with Hannah, Shayna and Abby. We met at the busy Euston station to drop our bags off for a couple of hours before we set off for Sky Garden, one of the best views of the city. Only Hannah, Abby and I went as we left shayna to catch up on the other tourist sites as this is her first and only day in London. Entry to Sky Garden is free to anyone who has a pre booked ticket which you need to get 2-3 weeks in advance. I would highly recommend this for anyone visiting London, the views were amazing.

Hannah and I in matching outfits

View from Sky Garden

After Sky Garden we met up with Shayna at Euston again to pick up our bags and find our Airbnb. The Airbnb is right in the heart of Camden. It is a tiny room with two double beds and just enough floor space to fit our suitcases, but for price and location it is perfect for us for one night. After a quick rest, we met up with Lloyd, who we went to school with and is also visiting London at the moment. Then we walked up the street to the renowned Camden Markets, a hippy/grungy area filled with street stalls selling food/clothes/jewellry/souvenirs and other interesting bits and pieces. Unfortunately although it was only 6:30pm, most of the stalls were closing for the day. Nevertheless we found a handmade pasta stall where we had a delicious meal, followed by Nutella, strawberry and banana crepes.

Boarding the Contiki bus today and heading to Paris!

A trip to the country

The last 3 days I have spent in the English countryside in a small village called Sherrington which is about an hour north of London by car and a 40minute train ride. I have been staying in Anne (Adrian's sister), Stewart and Emily Thomases' beautiful cottage. This village and cottage is nothing like I've ever seen before. All the cottages are made out of stones and some have thatched roofs. There are beautiful flowers everywhere, the Thomases have a particularly nice garden.

The Thomases have just received an 8 week old puppy named Mabel. Mabel is being trained to be a medical alert dog to help people who have an illness like diabetes or epilepsy. During my stay in Sherrington I helped look after Mabel along with Trevor, a 4 year old Labrador. As she is a medical assistance puppy, we were able to take her everywhere with us.

At Anne's place with Maybel

Anne was lovely and took me out to Woburn Abbey on Tuesday. Woburn Abbey is the Duke of Bedfords home, he lives there with his wife and children. The house is enormous, the public are able to walk through a lot of it and learn the history of the Dukes of Bedford and see inside the room which are a picture of wealth and status. I have never seen so many paintings hanging from walls or gold covered furniture in my life. There was even a room called the Queens bedroom, where one of the late Queens stayed a few times as she was friends with one of the Duchess' at the time.

Woburn Abbey

Anne and Maybel at Woburn

The Folley in the gardens at Woburn

After exploring the house and gardens, we had lunch in the Duchess' tearoom where I tried my first Cornish pastor with HP sauce. The pastie was filled with veggies and gravy and beef and the HP sauce, stands for Houses of Parliament and is similar to BBQ sauce but a bit more tangy/sweet and overall better tasting!

Yesterday, Anne took me to Olney, another village near Sherrington which is rich with history. Olney was home to the great poets John Newton and William Cowper who together wrote the poem Amazing Grace, which we recognise as a famous song played at important events.

We visited the Cowper and Newton museum whilst in Olney which also had an amazing garden and restored rooms where William Cowper lived. We read about how Cowper had 3 pet hares and they were an inspiration for much of his poetic works.

We had lunch at a nice little cafe in Olney where I tried my first Scotch egg, a traditional English dish with a boiled egg covered by pork sausage and breadcrumbs. It was pretty good!

Scotch egg

Last night, Anne and Stewart went to see Adele in London and I was left in charge of the puppy and cottage. There were a friendly bunch of people around my age who were heading to the pub with Trevor's puppies who are 12weeks old now. They came past and invited me and Mabel along so we all went to the pub, with one puppy each, drawing the attention of locals who came and asked for a cuddle. My new friends Jess, her boyfriend and Maxim were good fun and we shared stories of growing up in different countries. After a couple of drinks we took the tired pups home and called it a night.

Today I am heading back to London to meet up with Shayna, Hannah and Abby (finally). We are spending the night in an airbnb in Camden before heading off on our Contiki tour which departs at 6am tomorrow morning.

Grand final at Queens

Given Wimbledon is on whilst I'm on the Contiki tour, I decided I would go to the next best thing; the grand final of the Aegon championships at the Queens club. With a star studded line up including Murray, Wawrinka, Raonic, Dimitrov and Tsonga, I was hoping to see one of them play Kyrgios in the final. However, all of these players were upset in early rounds, some by unseeded players, including two Australians. The final ended up being between Feliciano Lopez (Spain) and Marin Cilic (Croatia), two great players who have been around for awhile. The ground was in the favour of Lopez so I cheered him on with everyone else. It was a thrilling match ending in a tie breaker which Lopez won. Lopez had always dreamed of winning Queens so it was quite an emotional ceremony as he was so elated and said it felt surreal.

Following the singles final, one of the semi finals doubles match was continued as it was paused due to rain from the previous day. Marin Cilic was again in this match with a partner I had not heard of and he was playing against Jamie Murray (UK) and Bruno Soares (Brazil). Of course the English crowd was cheering on Jamie and he and his partner Bruno quickly won the match to move onto the final to play against a French pair. The final was short as they play deciding point at deuce, Jamie and his partner won again to the delight of the crowd. 

The tennis finished around 7:30pm then I headed back to the hostel feeling pretty tired from being in the sun all afternoon. One of the girls in my room at the hostel Anne was in there when I arrived and hadn't eaten dinner either so we decided to go for a wander in search for somewhere that sells something other than pizza (there are heaps of pubs in the area where we are and they only sell pizza). This proved challenging as it was 8:30 on a Sunday night and everywhere seemed to be closed or not serving food anymore. We finally found an Italian place that had 3 salads at the bottom of their pizza menu. We went there and the salads were great, then we tried their dessert which was described as a warm dough ring filled with Nutella and mascarpone. They were delicious but so messy to eat, the Nutella and mascarpone squirted everywhere when we took a bite. 

Today I am saying farewell to my friends at the hostel and  heading off into the country to spend a few days with Adrian's sister Anne and her family.

View from my seat, clouds threatened at the start of the afternoon 

Full arena and sunny skies

Italian dessert "Dolce"

Theatre heaven and a tiring shopping trip

After wandering around the historic Tower of London, I rushed into the city to go to West End Live, an annual two day festival held in Trafalgar Square where every musical that is on af West End performs a few of their songs to showcase their show. I was in a rush to get there because I wanted to see Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables which were on at lunchtime. The event was completely free, which meant that unfortunately I spent 45minutes queueing up to get in. As a result, I completely missed the Phantom and caught the end of Les Mis from afar. Once I got in, I saw a few amazing performances from the casts of Annie, Mamma Mia, Thriller Live (a Michael Jackson tribute) and 5 guys named Mo (a new musical opening in August). I enjoyed dancing and singing along with the large crowd and also enjoyed a refreshing cup of the traditional Pimms and lemonade.

Michael Jackson impersonater performing Billy Jean

First drink of Pimms in the UK

After having an amazing time at West End Live I headed to Oxford Street for the London shopping experience. 1.5miles long with 1.5million square metres of retail space, Oxford Street is a shopaholics  dream destination. Personally, Oxford Street was not the greatest place to visit, it was overwhelmingly busy, imagine central Sydney on Boxing Day but twice as busy. It was exhausting walking around and trying to avoid bumping into people whilst also scanning for a bargain. I ended up purchasing a denim skirt and a pair of comfy shorts before heading back to the hostel. I had planned on going to Harrods but after walking around Oxford Street for a few hours I could not bear the thought of walking into another shop, might try to head there another day but there are plenty of other places I want to see first.

Today I am spending the afternoon and night at the Queens Tennis Club to watch the grand final of the Aegon Championships (aka Queens). I was hoping to cheer on an Aussie, especially after two of our young upcoming players defeated the great Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka, but they did not make it further after those victories. Lopez and Cilic are competing for the title today. I will also see the semi final and grand final of the doubles final. Cilic is also in the doubles semi final, so it will be interesting to see his energy levels after playing the singles grand final.

Schedule for today's finals

Tower of London

I have had another busy day in London, enjoying the summer weather and amazing heritage sights. As I mentioned in my last post, I will now be blogging my days in parts. So part 1 today is the Tower of London. The tower bridge and Tower of London are just a short walk away from the hostel. This morning I walked across the Tower Bridge that runs over the Thames river.  From the bridge you can see the London city skyline.

View from tower bridge

Tower bridge and Thames river

I then went to the Tower of London, which as I mentioned in my previous blog has a lot of history being a place for the royals to stay, a prison, torture chamber and mint.

The Tower of London looks like a big medieval castle. Most tourists visit the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels. I was fortunate enough to get in early and see them before the line got too big (it can sometimes take hours). We weren't allowed to take photos, but they were amazing, some jewels were as big as an egg. I'd never seen so much gold/wealth in my life.

Also at the Tower are medieval armoury, artefacts from WWII and plenty of stories about the royalty who lived in the tower and also the prisoners who were held there, tortured and executed.

Tower of London

Stay tuned, next blog will be titled... Theatre heaven, you'll soon find out why.

Touring the monopoly board

My first day in London was jam packed. It started at 7am with an English breakfast at my "luxury" hotel. My aim for the day was to see the changing of the guards at 11am and as many other tourist sights I could via the hop on, hop off bus. The bus I got was called "The original tour" and it was awesome.  Seated atop a double decker bus with a live local commentator, I could see amazing architecture of buildings dating back to the 1600s and learnt heaps of quirky fun facts about places in London. Some of my favourite facts include; there are 80 shoe stores on Oxford street, the Queens garden at Buckingham Palace is the size of 40 soccer fields and the Tower of London which is now a museum has previously been a prison, torture chamber and mint.

One thing that I particularly liked, was how the bus took us through almost every street on the Monopoly Board and our tour guide pointed out Mayfair and Parklane which are two of the wealthiest streets in real life. I knew that all the places on the Monopoly board existed, but I didn't realise how close they all were and it was very interesting to see them in real life, I will definitely have a different perspective on the game next time I play it.

On bus, outside Harrods

From the hop on hop off bus, I got off 4 times during the day;
1. Buckingham Palace - changing of the guard

Changing of the guard

Buckingham Palace

2. Big Ben and West Minister Abbey

Big Ben

West Minister Abbey

3. Trafalgar Square and National Gallery

There was set up and rehearsals underway at Trafalgar Square for West End Live, which is an annual 2 day free festival where all of the musicals that are performing at West End take the stage and perform 3 songs to promote their show. I saw a rehearsal of a Kinky Boots number yesterday and I am keen to go back today to see the real thing.

Trafalgar Square

National Gallery

4.  Kensington Palace

The palace was amazing, my favourite areas were the gardens, the Kings staterooms and the exhibition on Princess Diana's fashion.

Front view of Kensington Palace

My favourite dress from Princess Diana's collection

Staircase to Queens area at Kensington Palac

By the time I finished at Kensington Palace, it was 6pm, time to grab my bags from my hotel and find the hostel for my 3 nights. The hostel is really good, I'm in a 6 bed female dorm and we have a toilet and shower in our room. The room is quite spacious and there is a trendy bar downstairs. After taking a much needed shower, I wandered down to the bar where I met a group of Australians who are going on a Top Deck tour that leaves today. The group was comprised of 2 sisters, one with her boyfriend and another girl they had just met, all of them were from Melbourne. After having a drink at the bar we wandered down the street to a pub to get some pizza for dinner. Then we walked back to the hostel at 10pm and it was still light outside! The daylight hours here are so long which is good but also confusing. It starts getting light at 4:30am and dark after 10pm.

Unfortunately I am discovering that this blog site is not very compatible on iPhones (which explains the poor formatting, the poor writing is explained by my jet lag). To overcome the technical issues, I may have to write shorter posts about specific activities rather than full days...

Chilling at Changi and Landing in London

At last I've made it here to London. My flight from Singapore to London was delayed by an hour which ended up being 2 hours as we spent an hour on the plane waiting for the rest of the passengers to arrive as their previous flight was delayed. Hence, my stay at the impressive Changi airport extended to 8 hours. This stop over wasn't too bad as it enabled me to catch up on some sleep in the nap lounge, have a refreshing shower and i wander through the butterfly garden before boarding my flight to London.

Butterfly Garden

This flight had some positive and negative outcomes. The positive; I scored a row of two seats all to myself, which meant I could spread out and not trouble any other passengers for bathroom breaks. However, despite this lucky circumstance, I soon found out why travellers despise long haul flights.. the negatives; 14 hour flight plus being stuck on the runway for an extra hour and experiencing turbulence for the majority of the trip was... how to describe it... LONG.

Stepping off the plane at Heathrow Airport was incredibly relieving and surreal. After spending an hour in the immigration line I hopped on a tube and finally made it to my "luxury" hotel. I say "luxury" because compared to the rest of the trip (excluding my stay at Anne and Stuart's place), the night in the Holiday Inn 4 star hotel is lavish. Tonight I am enjoying a kingsize bed to myself and thinking about what it will be like tomorrow night in the hostel sharing a room with 5 female strangers.

For my first day in London today, I am planning on going to the main tourists sights via the hop on/hop off bus. I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures in my next post, apologies that this post is so bland, transport isn't very interesting, but from here on I should have some exciting days to report :).

Final Hurdle

As I prepare to fly out of the country for the very first time tomorrow night, I am also preparing for the PRINCE2 Foundational Exam which I am taking only hours before my departure. However, I am not too stressed as the course instructor has assured the class that he has a 100% success rate for his participants passing the Foundational exam. Although this statement provides a sense of relief, there is an undeniable fear among the group that one of us could break this perfect streak, an incredibly embarrassing feat.

Enough about the exam, I thought I should provide a brief overview of my trip and where I am going for those who keep asking and receive my recurring unhelpful response "Um... I am in London for a week then on a Contiki which goes to 12 countries in Europe, I can't remember which ones exactly". As many would know, Geography is not a strength of mine and I blame this on my inexperience as a world traveller. I hope this will change after this trip and I will at least be able to recall the countries I visited and locate them on a map. I have learned a few things whilst organising the trip, such as Amsterdam is not a country but a place in Holland (Yes, this is how poor my geography knowledge is), Leitchtenstein is a country (I struggled to count 12 countries on the Contiki map until I realised this) and 'Escargot'is the word for the cuisine of snails in France (Which I am determined to try).

Here is the plan;

I land in London on Thursday night (London time), and spend a few days solo sightseeing and attending the Queens tennis Grand Final. I will then travel one hour out of London to Buckinghamshire to stay with Adrian's sister Anne, her husband Stewart and daughter Emily in their beautiful country cottage. After spending a few days exploring the English countryside, I will head back to London to meet with Hannah and Shayna (friends I went to school with) and Hannah's cousin Abby to spend one night together before we embark on the Contiki tour. See below a screenshot of the Contiki tour map for the countries we will travel through and number of nights we will be staying in each destination.

Thats all from me for my first blog, next blog will be either in Singapore (I have a 7hr stopover) or London. I welcome any travel tips or suggestions of places in London to visit!