London 4.0

Sometimes this whole Europe thing seems a bit unreal, and I kind of have to pinch myself. Walking out of Wembley Arena the other night after a sold-out Def Leppard concert was one of those moments.

Despite it being sold out, Sarah and myself chanced our luck, and headed to Wembley Arena on Thursday night, and looked to buy some tickets off one of the kind folk (read: scalpers), outside the stadium. One guy was selling them for £70 a piece, but I got him down to £50 each, which I was happy to pay considering cost price was £43 anyway... His wife was Australian, and he spoke to us about going to Australia, so I'm not sure if that helped my cause....

Once we got into the stadium, it's a pretty amazing sight - think Burswood, but 1000 times more extravagant, and the atmosphere is electric. A weird thing I noticed here, and elsewhere around the UK, is their really relaxed attitude towards drinking. You can pretty much drink ANYWHERE in public - in fact, only this month was drinking banned on public transport. You can be walking through the streets, and someone will be holding a pint glass from the pub 30 metres down and across the road. There's also considerably less drunken hooligans - everyone is so well behaved and friendly and it's an awesome atmosphere.

Anyway, Def Leppard and supporting band Whitesnake were absolutely amazing, and I don't think a concert in Australia could ever come close. The place was packed, and the atmosphere insane.









Def Leppard @ Wembley Arena



Yesterday we went exploring around London a bit more, and went to Trafalgar Square. Unfortunately, they had some 'Veteran's Day' event on, so a lot of the Square was fenced off - but we got in the obligatory photos anyway.







Trafalgar Square



We wandered down to the Thames again, and this time saw the Tower of London, and Trinity Square, the latter of which is pretty spectacular - all the buildings around here are so nicely built.





Trinity Square




Tower Of London



With half a day still to kill, we headed over to South Kensington and went to the Natural History Museum which was once again, an amazing building in itself. After exploring a variety of exhibits which mainly consisted of stuffed animals and dinosaur skeletons, we headed off back to the hostel.









Natural History Museum



Last night we had a couple of drinks back here, and I dared to buy some Fosters ahah, which wasn't as bad as expected. I found it amusing that my first real encounter with Fosters was in London...

We've booked a 2:30pm train to Edinburgh, which we got for about half price because it's at night (we arrive at nearly 10pm). We've also have booked in a hostel there for another three nights.

Not much to do until our train leaves.. so we have a couple of hours here before we leave.

Mark

London 3.0

So I'm really starting to get into the whole London swing of things, as everything here just seems and IS so interesting. I've taken an extreme liking to Oxford Street, which is just this huge street that has an insane amount of shops and food outlets - mainly of the clothing variety. I guess the Perth equivalent is Murray Street Mall, but there's really no comparison.

One shop in particular called Urban Outfitters (amongst many others) has an amazing array of sneakers - some Nike sneakers were only £25 pounds, which is crazy considering a similar pair in Australia would be well over $100.

All of us got UK Sim Cards, however Sarah's phone isn't compatible with it... rendering her pretty much uncontactable by phone at the moment. That being said, the four of us are pretty much always together, so it's not so bad. With our phone we got some magic numbers deal where we can call 3 other numbers for like 15p an hour, which worked out pretty convenient for us four.

The Thai Buffet's we have eaten at haven't been that great, so we're making an effort to avoid them from now on - but we're still venturing to the Tesco up the street almost daily for Cheese Twists and OJ.

Every morning the power in our room also seems to cut out, which is a bit of a (major) annoyance, but we've been assured they know about the problem and "someone is looking into it".

Despite that, everything else here has been great - we went to Lords today, which is pretty much THE home of cricket, and got a tour there. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and we/I managed to sneakily get around the no photos rule which was apparently due to everything being 'copyrighted', but anyway..









Tonight I'm hopefully seeing DEF LEPPARD at Wembley Stadium, which will be amazing, I just have to hope that I can manage to pick up a ticket...

On that note, I'm off.

Mark

London 2.0

So today was a pretty full on day, and we got most of the main touristy things out of the way.

After checking in the other day, we lazed about the hostel for the rest of the night, and ended up eating food from Tesco for dinner. Tesco is kind of like a Coles - except it's open until midnight. They also have an awesome bread/bakery kind of section, and we all seem to have taken a liking to the 'cheese twists' there. They also sell Krispy Kremes.

Everything has been pretty fun so far, and we have invented numerous games including 'camera wars' and 'beddingware wars' - it's like we're on school camp again or something. We had a pretty early night last night - as we were all tired from the flights and stuff - Ben didn't sleep at all on the flight over, so he ended up staying up for 40 hours in a row or something, poor guy.

This morning we woke pretty early - and headed off throughout London. We went to Piccadilly Circus, and looked at a few shops there. There was like a London (ie better) equivalent of Joynt Venture, and a lot of small places to get food.



Piccadilly Circus

We then made our way over to London Bridge via the National Theatre, and Sarah's horrible directions (ha).. and then onto the London Eye, Westminster Abbey and Parliament House.





Some exhibit outside the National Theatre




London Bridge



London Eye

After being entertained by a cool Jamaican busker, we headed over to Green Park and walked over to Buckingham Palace, after which we realised our 'off peak' Tube Passes were set to expire soon, so we made our way back to the hostel.#



Londoners sunbaking in Green Park





Buckingham Palace


Probably going to a Thai Buffet tonight - something like £3.50, or so we've heard. Will have to see how it compares to Ruby Thai.

Internet time is running out now, so I'll expand on this later on...

Cyaaa

Mark

London!

So we've been in London for a few hours now, and finally made our way to the hostel (after a bit of a trek...), and are just killing time in reception until we can check in at 2pm, which is about 2 and a half hours away.

The flight from Singapore to London wasn't as bad as expected - probably because I decided to be the 'selfish person in front' and move my seat back for added leg room. That being said, I still couldn't manage to sleep for more than 20 minutes before waking up.



Leaving Changi, Singapore

The food was okay, we didn't get a choice - it was just fish, which was surprisingly good (plane food ruling so far). Also got Oreos and some other snack type food, as well as apples, which were horrible. I'm assuming they were Australian apples, but for the sake of blaming someone else, I'll place the blame on them being gross foreign apples or something.



Flying over Austria



Hahaha, hardcore mountains, mannnnn




London


Once we arrived in London, Sarah 'zipped' through all the official stuff thanks to her British Passport, while Claire and myself lined up with the rest of the 'plebs'. As a result of my Ancestry Visa I got through the whole process with only a couple of questions, but Claire on her normal holiday visa got questioned in something that resembled American Gangster (Crowe and Washington scene). It wasn't really that intense, I just needed to use a metaphore, and American Gangster is a cool movie.

London's Arrivals section is just full of heaps of men holding up signs for people they're picking up. Some guy had the worst sign ever, and for some reason chose to write it in highlighter. Why?! Stupid English man.

The tube is pretty simple and straightforward to use, despite looking like some sort of weird mess of lines and circles. For some reason the train driver needed to point out that "there is a delay on ___ line, because there is a man under the train". All four of us kind of looked at each other, thinking we had misheard it, but it was repeated later. No idea why they needed to be so specific...



Ben and Claire on the tube..

Since the tube ride, we've made our way to the hostel where, as I mentioned earlier, we can't book in until 2pm. Not sure what we have planned for tonight, but I think everyone is pretty keen on just sleeping.

I'm on the 3G UK 3 phone network at the moment, so I can now recieve calls for free (I think..), and messages and whatnot don't cost too much, so if anyone needs to get in contact with me via mobile on my old number, then you can now do so. Still haven't got a UK number yet..

Hope everyone is okay in Perth.


Mark

Singapore

Just arrived in Singapore after a five hour flight... the food was okay, Lamb and Vegetables and salad (aka lettuce in a cup), althought unlimited Bundaberg Ginger Beer was good.



Plane food... Ginger Beer = awesome.

The people in front of us were kind enough to push their seats as far back as possible, which made the somewhat cramped seats even more so. I tried to sleep, but was disturbed with the offering of icecream.

Changi is so quiet and clean, I guess I expected a lot more 'hustle and bustle' - but it's like a library... only more travelators. I feel so lazy using them, it's like I'm the anti-gladiator. Travelators are only good when they're in reverse and Mike Whitney is involved.

The in-flight movie stuff was okay, although I somehow managed to freeze mine and the flight attended had to reset it... but after it finally got working I managed to watch 20 minutes of about five different things before I got bored of all of them.

The plane leaves for London in an hour, so the three of us are making the most of the free internet, and I have managed to stay on the same computer for nearly half an hour now, despite getting logged out every fifteen minutes. I'm like the greedy kid who won't share his Nintendo.



Euro 08 @ Changi



Regardless, I bid you all farewell for now, as I go and prepare for the 13 hour long monster that is Singapore to London. And by prepare I mean... get a drink and sit down... or just sit down.

On an unrelated note, I have to wait a couple of days before my phone can be unlocked as '3' are getting back to me with an unlock code... so I won't have a UK number for a while yet.

Stay safe etc.

Mark

Final update...

So in less than 48 hours I'll be on a plane. I've got most stuff sorted... I think. I bought a sweet new phone which I should hopefully be able to receive emails with, and also browse the net & so on which should come in pretty convenient. It also has a five megapixel camera. So happy with it.



Anyway, I'll probably check all the emails I have currently - but the best one to contact me on will be markhiswords@gmail.com - because this is the one I've set up a mail forward on to my phone... and you can't do that with Hotmail emails.

I don't have a UK number yet, but when I do I'll let everyone know - so for the first few days don't bother calling me as the call rates are way too high....

I have nothing to add.

3 weeks until I leave. Last week at work, this one. I keep feeling like I need to buy clothes before I go.

I'm only posting this so I can test a few things out.

Mainly this thing.


View Larger Map

And this thing.


View Larger Map

The Ireland/Scotland thing is a rough guide on what we're planning to do. The Europe 'leg' is a really rough explanation of where we're going on the Contiki.

After we finish the Contiki Karl is flying over to join us, and we'll base ourselves in the U.K. somewhere.

June 22nd-June 29th: London
June 29th-July 10th: Somewhere in the U.K.
July 11th-August 8: All around Europe.
August9th-?: .......?