// March 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Trip information
The Big Ben
Well I have been a bit pre-occupied but now I’m back blogging.
Thursday/Friday
We flew out of Sydney airport on the Thursday afternoon, and 24 hours later we arrived at Heathrow at 6am on Friday morning. We were told not to sleep straight away, but to see out the day and sleep at normal times to avoid the Jet-lag blues. We had the excruciatingly painful job of carrying all our luggage onto the London tube to Gloucester Road which takes about 40 minutes. It was a great sight seeing my sister Teneale carrying a backpack which was about twice the size of her. I offered to take it, but she said “I need to practice to carry it on my own”. I was fine with my backpack, as I had the one with wheels 
We dropped our luggage at the Hotel at about 8:30am (not very good, about one step up from a Hostel, but it was close to the city centre, and relatively cheap). We then went back down to the Tube station and all 5 of us went into London Central. We collected our phone cards and initial information from 1st contact, then we all went and opened our bank accounts. We all manged to do this without a hiccup, however they blocked Teneale’s attempt due to a dodgy address. It was all sorted later however. It was about 4pm so Mel, Teneale and I went back to the Hotel and checked into our room and chilled there until about 5pm. No sleeping allowed, just relaxing. After Candy and Amy came back, we were all starving except Teneale, so we went down the road to this Italian place and had pizza. I was so hungry that I burned my mouth badly, but didn’t care. We were then we were all in bed by 7:30pm.
Saturday
We all slept for about 12 hours then made our way to the restaurant for our included breakfast. We then phoned the parentals to inform them of our arrival, then headed to the bus stop to jump on to a red buses. If you didn’t know, the red buses go past all the famous spots in London, which gave us a brief look at London. We braved the cold and sat on the top of the bus which has no roof.
We were on the red buses until about 5pm when they close. It was an awesome experience, although very very cold on the top (lucky we brought beanies). We saw everything from the Big Ben, The Eye, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace to St Davids, etc etc….Check out the photos after reading!
We then got ready back at the hotel and went to Convent Gardens on the Tube. It was so packed. Kind of reminded me of Southbank in Brissy with performers everywhere and people everywhere. We went into this Aussie pub (a well done to Amy for remembering how to get there) but it was packed and nowhere to sit down for a meal. It was about 9pm so most places had stopped serving food. We managed to find a really nice Greek restaurant and had a really nice meal there.
We then Tubed it back and called into the pub down the road from the hotel for a cider. Tell you what, Im really getting into the English cider over here. It’s quite nice. We then got back to the hotel at about midnight.
Sunday
We woke up a bit later on Sunday morning, as there were these people in the room next to us who were up talking until 2am. I managed to sleep from about 1am to 2am but I then had enough and went to the reception and asked them to tell the people next to us to quieten down. The guy came up with me and told them to shut up. they did and we slept. The next morning Amy and Candy took the train to Exeter (they said it cost them 60 pounds each! OUCH!). Mel and I wanted to stay another night so we went to reception and we booked another night.
It was a really nice day on Sunday. Teneale had organised to meet Gemma at 11 so we packed Teneale up and walked her and her luggage to the train station to meet Gemma. Mel and I left Teneale with Gemma and we hopped on the Tube and we went to Madam Tussuad’s. It was unbelievable…we had a great couple of hours there taking thousands of photos..met Freddie Mercury, Becks, Mel Gibson, George Clooney it was cool. The wax figures were randomly placed and you thought they were people.
After our visit to the museum, I called Teneale and then Mel and I went and met her at Portobello Markets. We had a good walk around there with Teneale and Mel, but didn’t buy anything, although the adidas shoes they had there were AWESOME!!
After that we left Teneale back a Gemma’s and I called my best friends’ sisters’ boyfriend, Stu (If you get the drift). We met up with him and his girlfriend, Sinead, in Angel. They took us to the pub and we had a few ciders. After that we went to their share house which is very nice and they bought us dinner!! As they said our dollar is worth nothing in the UK they are correct tho. We had takeaway Indian, it was nice but weird. The butter chicken was so sweet, so different to the Australian Indian you get.
Whilst at their house, we were talking about catching the train to Exeter, as Amy and Candy did, but they said it was way too expensive. They were awesome and organised a rental car for us. Luckily my Australian credit card still worked. We left them and tubed it back to the hotel.
Monday
We woke up a bit later, checked out and then tubed it Euston, where we had to pick up the car. We got a nice little Ford Fiesta and I also made sure we got a navigator!!! We jumped in the car and made our way out of London (somehow!! the navigator kept stopping and telling us to turn down one way streets and to turn where it was illegal to turn) but we got through.
I remembered seeing a place called Bray on the map so we set the sat nav to go there. It was about 15 minutes out of London and such a cool village. Pictures are in the photos section. We then went from Bray to Exeter. We took a gamble about half way into the trip and went to bath. Bad move! The place was packed and we ended up driving around and round in circles trying to find a park. In the end after 30 minutes of driving we gave up and left, knowing that one day so we shall return!
We then kept on to Lympstone, Exeter. We finally made it (only after going to a wrong street).
Tuesday
It was another really nice day on Tuesday. I think we brought the weather with us. We had to return the car to the Exeter airport today and that was a nightmare. Drove around in circles trying to find where to drop the car off. We found it and then went to our local pub where we had homemade Irish Stew and a Homemade Lasagna.
…and that was our initial landing in the UK.
