London

Home of punk

Even though the previous day was nothing but naps, somehow I still slept in. Well at least a sleep in by Kylie’s standards, I think she was itching for me to get my arse out of bed and kick off our Saturday. When I finally emerged around 10 (I call a sleep in past noon), there was no way we’d get ready and tubed to Notting Hill markets before they closed at 1pm, and actually have enough time to enjoy them. Next best option, Camden Markets.

Arriving with a grumbling stomach was not a good idea. So many delicious food stalls with yummers from all corners of the earth. But there was no going past a Yorkshire Pudding Burrito. Roast beef, stuffing, potatoes, greens and gravy all wrapped in a larger than life Yorkshire pudd. Kid you not, I was making mmmm sounds as I ate. Or at least my stomach was. Soooo good, how do we not have these in Australia? Hmmm, food truck idea…

With appetites satisfied, it was time to wonder aimlessly through the lanes and buy things we didn’t need. The markets themselves are glorious, old red brick buildings, tunnels and open air stalls, so beautiful that Kyles called it – not the next best option after Notting Hill, better than.

Falling in love with a million little things, it was a lesson in restraint. I really didn’t NEED a wooden gin serving tray, a black cape jacket or a 60s style handbag. Just really really really wanted them. But I do prefer to spend my money on experiences rather than material things. And spend $$ on gin, gin makes some experiences bearable. Plus, with still over a week of my trip left, I knew if I shopped up a storm I’d be surviving on a diet of dust for the rest of the trip… but I did come across a Levi’s jean jacket with silver sequin angel wings that I couldn’t walk past… too old for sequins, maybe. Do I care? Not one bit!! Absolutely loved the markets, lots of things I just knew you’d never see in AUS, but of course, a lot of the stock standard things every second stall seems to have.

The highlight and possibly one of the most super cool stores in the entire world, Cyberdog. A raver’s dream, all things neon and glowing, everything you could ever dream of needing for a music festival or rave. Will be back before Glastonbury to stock up on flashing mouth lights, glowing eye lashes and neon fur coats.

After what felt like 50,000 steps, we took a drinks break at the funkiest bar ever. Exposed brick, neon lights, retro posters and arch windows. Would love to teleport that bar to Adelaide.

Having our fix of the markets, it was a leisurely stroll around the streets of Camden. So different to any place you’d find in Australia – well, at least the places I’ve been to. Shops selling everything from pot flavoured lollipops and chocolate to punk rock Doc Martens that’d make any Ramones fan proud. The place has a life of its own, an absolute buzz which explains the hoards of people packing the streets. Loved Camden, it’s added to the shortlist of places I could live if (or when) I move to London. Understandable why the mega superstar Amy Winehouse lived here.

With a 40th birthday to prep and pamper for, we reluctantly headed back to Brixton, having to leg it to a tube station further down the track. The Camden station was so busy they had to close it temporarily. Could you ever imagine that happening in AUS?

Back in Brixton we had the luxury of time to get ready for the 40th birthday of Dylan, a friend of Kylie’s and her house mates Kam and Sean. Wish I’d taken more pics of Kyles and I looking glam for the night, having been a super annoying tourist and taking millions of photos every minute, for some reason, only took one pic the whole night. The photo booth at the party got a good workout but with so many peeps per shot, kinda forgot to grab any evidence for myself.

The party itself was at a gorgeous bar overlooking the city. Once again, no pics. Why oh why. Fabulous night, Dylan’s partner Joe put together the sweetest video of birthday messages from his family and friends in Brissie and of course the music was amazing so we danced the night away. Loved meeting so many new people, felt like maybe, just maybe, I could start a new life here. Or get on with making the current one even more amazing.

Saturday 12th January 2019.

January 17, 2019 0

Recovery 2.0

So today I booked a tour of Oxford University, Stratford and the Cotswolds. I imagine it would have been beautiful had I made it.

The problem with setting an alarm for 6.30am when it’s around 7am already is that it bloody won’t go off until the next day. Yeah. So when I woke up at 9am and was supposed to be at Victoria Station at 7.45am for my tour, it took a minute of confusion and checking the clock 10 times to realise what had happened. Massive oops, and various other profanities.

Needless to say I was completely useless for the rest of the day! Slept, dozed through various Netflix movies and ordered Deliveroo. Normal Sunday in Adelaide.

Here are some photos of what I would have seen had I rocked up for my tour:

Friday 11th January 2019.

January 16, 2019 0

Bender

A day of semi-rest was planned, with Kyles working from home so a contractor can paint her leaky roof and then only lunch and the theatre. Easy peasey.

It was my favourite kind of morning, a little sleep in then I cranked some tunes and took my time getting ready for a lunch date with my favourite Londoner.

Our lunch date was at Canova Hall… by golly, I want to live here!! Just a short stroll (or quick bus if you’re having a lazy day like us!) then into the coolest, industrial style warehouse/cafe/office. So first up, they cater to people who need to go somewhere and just work, a quiet zone with bottomless coffee and super fast Wi-Fi. Then for the ladies who lunch (that would be us!), booths and amazeballs food. And of course a bar and a small gin distillery, as you do. Had it of been bottomless gin I would never have left.

If I had all the money in the world, I’d buy this place and turn it into a warehouse style apartment and live my best life. Ok, if I had all that money, I’d also want to end poverty and make sure no one was homeless, but anyhoo… and yes, there are pictures of the bathrooms because they are super cool, wasn’t at all awkward taking those pics…

So after one of the best lunches possibly of my life it was a hop skip and a jump over to the West End to see the show I’d heard rave reviews about, Hamilton. I managed to snag a £100 ticket to a matinee show, single seats makes that so much easier. I had wanted to get Kyles and I tickets for her bday present but evening show tickets started at £250 for the time I was here. Wish I was that good a friend that I could have afforded it!!

The show was on at the Victoria Palace Theatre, one of the most beautiful and ornate theaters I’ve ever been to. Absolutely stunning, could have sat there for hours just looking at the ceiling and beautiful stalls.

After a sneaky gin or two while waiting, it was showtime!! It only took 30 seconds to realise this was the best show I’d ever seen in my life, trumping my faves Kinky Boots and Billy Elliot.

The story is about the life of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s founding fathers and right-hand man to George Washington. Washington being the dude who instigated the American revolution, achieved independence from Britain and became America’s first President. Synopsis sounds yawn worthy but add hip hop and R&B singing and dancing plus a beautiful African American cast and it blows your mind. I laughed, I cried, I got goosebumps multiple times and had a little dance in my seat. Can’t even explain how brilliant the show was, everyone will just have to see for themselves! I know I left there with a massive smile on my face and the feeling that I’d just experienced absolute artistic genius. Of course Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer and composer is this brilliant, he is a massive fan of Brooklyn Nine-Nine after all.

So once again with a big goofy smile on my face, I headed over the road to meet Kylie at The Market Hall, two floors of food truck like vendors serving mouth watering food from stalls. I guess with limited space in London, food trucks en mass wouldn’t work so squish them all together, add a bar and you’ve got a bustling market hall. Still full from lunch, we just stared longingly at people’s food, wishing we had enough space in our bellies for more. There was of course space for a few gins…

From there we took the scenic walking route to The Piano Works in Farringdon, an awesome bar with a live band that plays requests from the crowd, well, most requests. My request for Lose Yourself by Eminem went unanswered, maybe because in the tip area on the request form I wrote “Be nice to your mother!”, guess that didn’t go down too well…

It was a bloody brilliant night tho, dancing and singing and proof Kyles is now a London local, running into a couple of friends and producing the only evidence the night ever happened…

So this is where I be honest and disappoint my mother, it was a MASSIVE night. So much so that when we finally got home I set my alarm for 6.30am to get up in time for my tour, too bad it was after 6.30am when I set it…

Thursday 10th January 2019… and into Friday 11th January…

January 16, 2019 0

Sun and snow

For me, the beach is my happy place. I feel myself exhale and relax. Lucky for me, I get to live right by the beach in Adelaide. But having been land locked since Christmas, well last year if I can be so lame and claim that, I felt a longing for the ocean. So today I headed to Brighton, also the namesake of the beach next to where I live so was on my list of places I had to visit.

I feel like getting around London is super easy, thanks to my awesome City Mapper app but also because the tube and trains are always on time and easy to move between… says a foreigner only doing it for two weeks, I’m sure locals have something else to say! So a tube and a train and I’m in Brighton, about an hour and a half travel all up.

And then there it is, the ocean. The locals must have thought I was a looney because before I could help myself, I said out loud, “Hello ocean!”. I actually have a bad habit of saying hello to inanimate objects, usually things I love, hello home, hello bacon…

So after 10 minutes of staring at my beloved ocean, I meandered down the esplanade to my breakfast stop. A long train ride so I knew exactly where I was going and the chorizo and egg goodness that awaited me, the breakfast martini was a welcome surprise!! Hello breakfast…

Having purposely not planned to do much of anything except chill at the beach, I wandered up the esplanade and everywhere I looked, I fell more and more in love with Brighton. So English with the terrace houses and chimneys along the foreshore rather than the modern monstrosities they build in adelaide. And the little shops and bars tucked away under the esplanade. And when the sun peeked through, perfection.

At the gorgeous Brighton Palace Pier I found Zoltar!! Might not mean much to some but I LOVED the movie Big with Tom Hanks growing up and Zoltar has a starring role making dreams come true. While I didn’t technically make a wish, he did tell me my fortune, scarily accurate about the past and hopefully true about the future. Starting to think the big wish is coming true too, that’s probs got more to do with butter beer and pies though…

The one major thing that AUS Brighton has on my new love Brighton… sand!! The pebbles, rocks or whatever they are, surely would not be comfy to sunbake on and how the hell would you even make a sandcastle?? I also once again for the millionth time in my life wore inappropriate footwear….

With time up my sleeve, I had another chance to mess around with my SLR camera and pretend to be a photographer. Would be nice to stop pretending and actually learn when I get back! Here are my faves:

Also had time to sit back at a gorgeous bar called Lucky Beach and enjoy a gin and the sunshine, while getting lost in my own head.

An impending theatre date with Kyles meant I needed to be back in the city pretty soon so I decided to wander through The Lanes, an old shopping area on the way to the train station. As soon as I stumbled onto the first lane, I knew I should have sucked up my gin quicker and spent more time here! Cute little lanes (hence the name!) that looked straight out of Diagon Alley with eclectic shops and market stalls. Could have spent hours, managed to buy a couple of rings and a birthday present then leg it back to the train in time, and by leg it, I mean I ran, in boots and all…

So after the sun came the snow, Jon Snow that is!! The Christmas present from Kyles, tickets to see True West starring Kit Harrington. After a delish dinner at The Port House, a random pick but awesome share plates, it was time to hit the West End. Being the dork that I am, I was ridiculously overexcited and when Mr Harrington just wandered onto the stage while everyone was still taking seats, I nearly lost my shit. Weird way for a play to start, dude sitting at a desk on stage reading, that’s when I realised I knew nothing about the play… other than Jon Snow’s starring role. But before me was not Jon Snow, not that I expected him to be kitted (like that!) up like a crow but he was the exact opposite. Porn star mustache, his glorious hair cut and slicked back, and in shorts and loafers with a 70s style shirt, ahhhh… the play started and all thoughts of my favourite member of the Nights Watch were gone, out came a southern American accent and a struggling play write was before my eyes. Round of applause to Mr Harrington for completely breaking the brooding pretty boy stereotype and doing something completely opposite to GoT. Complete respect. Great theatre, enthralled from start to finish.

Being hump day for Kyles and having had a busy few days myself, neither of us were up for a big night so a quick pop by Somerset House to check out the ice skating, still sore from skiing, we literally looked then left. Sometimes you gotta know when to call it!

Wednesday 9th January 2019.

January 15, 2019 0

Mondayitis

Ah Monday 7th January, the day people not living it up in London Town are back at work. Although there was some guilt that I was snoozing while Kyles was up and at em and back at work, there’s also a little bit of pleasure in waking up on a Monday being able to do whatever the hell you want while the rest of the world works.

Pleasure until there’s Facebook messages and text messages to FaceTime home… a moment of panic until FaceTiming home looking like a bloated zombie only to find the panic was that I hadn’t posted on Facebook for 48 hours so my parents presumed I’d been kidnapped by gypsies… I get where some of my paranoia comes from (note: do love that my parents care so much, will be eternally grateful).

A day with nothing planned, tempting to be a lazy arse again but felt the pull of so many things to see and not enough time so I made a shortlist of all the touristy things that I wanted to do that I knew Kylie would be doing with all her other visitors. The plan was to start at Westminster Abbey then onto Harrods and Hyde Park.

Best App Kyles recommended to navigate London was City Mapper. Pop in where you want to go and it gives you the bus, tube, walking and taxi options plus the where’s and when’s. So I figured out the how and where, forgot that you also need to know which direction… took a punt on the next bus and luckily was on my way. City Mapper also shows all the stops on the way so came across a stop for the Imperial War Museum… why wouldn’t ya?

Love that museums are free in London, although they do encourage a “donation”. One of the most beautiful buildings I’ve seen so far, absolutely massive.

Each level of the museum is a different war so starting at World War I, I wandered through and realised how much I didn’t know about the war… like that the dude who’s assassination was the catalyst for the war is also an awesome Aussie band Franz Ferdinand… what hit home the most though was just how many people died, millions, on both sides. For god, for King, for country, maybe they didn’t even know why. And for the first time in my life, I hated the effectiveness of marketing, the war machine of campaigning that convinced all these innocent young men to surrender their lives. Overwhelming how much propaganda there was, and scary how effective it must have been.

Besides the tragedy of it, an amazing exhibit. Eye opening and sad.

Still amazes me that after the massive loss of lives in WWI that the Second World War even happened, as said in my fave movie Hunger Games, “we’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self destruction”. Couldn’t be more true. Although I love reading about the history of the war and seeing all the machines and artefacts, it’s heart breaking how many lives were lost all in the crazy pursuit of power by an evil man.

Venturing into The Holocaust section of the museum, I knew of the history and the stories of the atrocities committed, what caught my attention particularly was how the nazis treated people with a disability. So often it’s not mentioned in movies and books about how the sterilized and killed people with a disability in the name of cleansing the population. Made me feel sick. Since working in my current job for over two years with people with a disability, I know first hand that they are sweet, loving and beautiful people, heart breaking that being different is cause for someone’s belief that you shouldn’t exist. But I guess that was the whole belief system of the Nazis, if you don’t fit their profile of the Aryan race, you don’t deserve to live. Assholes.

As the prolific quote inscribed on the wall said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” How the world let this happen is beyond words.

After being at the museum longer than planned, I jumped back on the double decker headed for Westminster Abbey. Feel like an excited school kid every time I get on a double decker, must have tourist written all over my face with my goofy smile.

London was not turning it on for me today, gloomy and cold but still gorgeous. Disappointed Big Ben was still surrounded by scaffolds but walking over London Bridge, taking in the sites, just love love love this place.

The Abbey itself is just stunning. Beautiful gothic architecture, stain glass windows, marble and stone statues and more gold than I’ve ever seen in my life. It did occur to me that the Abbey is one big tomb, so many people buried or entombed there, bit eerie if you think about it too much – wandering through a building of dead bodies… hmmmm, must try not overthink things…

While i expected it to be the resting place of plenty of royals, I didn’t know that Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Dickens were also buried there. Lucky dudes, would be my preference to be buried there too, sure I’ll be important enough one day?!?

So after a massive touristy day, I found a typically British pub to chill while waiting on Kyles to finish work. Just love pubs here, they are all gorgeous.

Once Kyles joined me we got stuck into some british pies, Three Bird Roast and Hampshire Game, oh my yum… so damn good will never be able to enjoy another Balfours… I’m not patient enough to take food pics when the food arrives, half eaten by the time I remember…

Before calling it for the day, we headed to what is known as the Walkie Talkie building which has views all over London and quite honestly is so super cool with indoor gardens and floor to ceiling glass. Words can’t describe. Or I’m tired and my words can’t describe!

Monday 7th January 2019.

January 14, 2019 0

Recovery

Waking up at 3.30am for a 6am flight after a pub crawl and hunting auroras, that hurt! An hour long bus trip to Ivalo then Finnair back into London and tubes back to Kylie’s house was beyond tiring.

The only solution, a day of Netflix and veg. With ramen in a bucket. Naps are my new favourite Sunday past time!

BTW, Bird Box on Netflix, bloody brilliant and terrifying!

Random google ramen photo so this days post isn’t completely lame…

Sunday 6th January 2019.

January 12, 2019 0

The Hangover

Didn’t wake up with a random baby and face tattoo but the details of the previous night were rather sketchy… explains yesterday’s rather short blog post.

Nothing like burgers and cheesy fries to cure a hangover. And copious amount of Pepsi. And Pringles. And Toblerone. No wonder my pants are splitting.

Quick tour of the Newcastle beaches before farewelling Pattie and back on the train to London ready for the 5am wake up call…

Cheers Newcastle, we’re paggered from neets on the toon but aye, ye was propa bonny and us lass’s had a belta time. Did I get it right Pattie??

Sunday 30th December 2018.

December 30, 2018 0

Noocasle

Not an overly eventful day, spot of shopping in the city, picked up the most beautiful pair of shoes I’ve ever seen in my life – forgetting that £79 isn’t actually a bargain.

But just driving and walking around Newcastle, there are old churches, spectacular architecture and of course, a damn Castle in the city center so of course every moment is amazing. I love cities in Europe, so much history and beauty on every corner.

So thank goodness for the ease of the day, the night was the complete opposite. Geordie wedding party, just asking for a gincident. Headed out to Sunderland and caught up with Patties mates for the wedding party of Louise and Elliot. Felt a little awkward before rocking up, not having actually met the couple but needn’t have – amazing couple and awesome group of people. Dancing, drinking, eating, drinking and walking/crawling through the hotel door at 6 something am…

Saturday 29th December 2018.

December 30, 2018 0

#castlechallenge

Bacon buttys are heaven. Bread. Yum. Egg. Yum. Cheese. Yum. BBQ sauce. Yum. Bacon. Yummers. Recovery food of champions, or the severely hungover.

After Star Wars and bacon, there were castles. What started as popping by Alnwick Castle turned into the castle challenge – how many castles can we visit in one day??

The answer is 6, not including the halloumi castle…

First stop, Alnwick Castle, just don’t be an Aussie and pronounce the l ie the w or you’ll get a swift hiding from the Geordie locals. Being the place where Harry learnt to fly, had to wear my overpriced Gryffindor jumper, also because it was cold AF.

Second stop, Chillingham Castle where the sunshine turned it on, apparently I bought the weather with me… always thought I was more of a storm…

Then onto my equal favourite, Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island. It was like stepping into a movie about King Arthur or the crusades. The road over can only be used when the tide goes out, and damn be sure not to be driving back across when the tide comes in… didn’t get right up to the castle but the priory ruins and cemetery were stunning, so much history, could feel the lost souls.

Next was Bamburgh Castle, looked like the Red Keep from Game of Thrones and of course getting all excited again about seeing Jon Snow for reals…

Haloumi Castle was by far my favourite. The deep fried roast chicken not so much…

Warkworth Castle was a quick pit stop, then onto Tynemouth Priory and Castle. Really was all castled our but in awe of being able to leg it around in a few hours and see so many. Can’t think of another place in the world where that’s possible, lucky poms.

The nights plans to head out on the toon in the Georgie Shore quickly turned into a snooze fest, quite literally. Ten minutes into a movie on the couch and Kyles and I were catching zzzz’s.

Friday 28th December 2018.

December 30, 2018 0

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