Four Feet Forward: A Very Belated Post About London

Dear London,

I would like to start by saying I'm very sorry for neglecting you from this blog until now. It's not that I didn't like you. In fact it was exactly the opposite- we spent about two weeks with you and it was so good that I haven't been able to put into words just how amazing you are. We came to you after about 2 and a half months of travelling and it honestly felt like coming home, but it was still new and exciting at the same time. Your people speak our language, only your accents a much nicer than ours. You have all the glamour of a big city, but not too many of the massive skyscrapers that normally go with it. And since we managed to avoid travelling on your tube during peak hour, it didn't feel too crowded. You gave us so many things to do that two weeks was not enough, and because we really fell in love with you we have decided to come back to you for Christmas. Did you hear that London, we'll be spending our first Christmas together. I hope you are as excited as we are! We will go ice skating in Hyde Park, look for all of your Christmas trees around the place, stop by Picadilly Circus and hope to get some last minute tickets to a musical, visit Madame Tussauds and be ultimate tourists, and go shopping on Oxford Street to find the perfect little gifts for each other. But before I get too excited about our next time together, I thought I'd remember the time we first met and the things I fell for in you:

THE SIGHTS

Let's get something on the table- you are one very pretty city London. I know you probably know that already -what with all your bright red phone boxes and double decker buses roaming around the place, you know how to please a snap happy tourist. But there is just something about your streets that is so beautiful... All the houses in areas like Victoria and around Hyde Park are these little white terraces lining the street. Your parks and big green spaces are amazing. And your buildings are nothing but iconic- Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, and that little palace you call Buckingham... Wow! We were lucky enough to catch one of the changing of the guards parades at Buckingham Palace one morning. By the time we got there the crowds had already scored the best spots, but we still managed to see the beefeaters in their funny hats marching along and going through the whole procession. Though we were a tiny bit confused why the guard's brass band started playing ABBA songs for a good 10 minutes during the procession? Maybe you know better than us London, is the Queen a big ABBA fan or something? Either way, it was still great to see, and we couldn't believe that your people go to that much effort every second day.... Police shut off the streets for about 2 hours and officers on horses control the crowds, as everyone piles in to see the funny-hatted men march. You guys sure know how to put on a show!

And of course we visited King's Cross station to find Platform 9 and 3/4

Oh, and you also did me the honour of naming a street after me. You shouldn't have!

THE FREE MUSEUMS

After travelling from Paris, where everything has a price, it was a real treat to come to your museums and galleries London and find out we could get in for free. We went to the Tate Modern, a modern art gallery that was really interesting (and in some places had Mike and I scratching our heads and wondering if it REALLY counts as art- I mean a mirror on a wall? That's just being cheeky). We visited the Science Museum on a rainy day which was fun with lots of interactive displays. And we visited the British Museum which has a great collection of artefacts- most notably, the Rosetta stone that was used to interpret ancient egypt hieroglyphs, and ancient Egyptian mummies including the mummy of Cleopatra! On our trip to the British museum I also found a wallet in the bathroom. When I looked inside to see if it had a name on it I saw it had £60 pounds in it! So I handed it in to the staff in the hope that they didn't have sticky fingers and that it eventually got back to its rightful owner. And it seems my good deed paid off- later when we were in Belfast we found £10 on the ground. So thanks for the good karma London.

Cleopatra, in mummy form

THE SHOPPING

London, I think you are tried to rob me. After spending two and a half months travelling without buying anything for myself, you tried to test my willpower with just one visit to Oxford Street. All of your shops were there stretching on for kilometers- Zara, Topshop, Bershka, Urban Outfitters... And just when I'd get past one of the stores, there would be another one 500m down the road! Sneaky London. Sadly for you I came out on top this time, and only bought a couple of cheap tops, a pair of jeans and a warm winter jacket. But I'm afraid that if I still have a little bit of money before we head back home, I might not be so lucky next time.....

But my favourite day of window shopping had to be when we visited Harrods. Luckily I knew I couldn't afford anything there, and managed to walk away with just a Christmas decoration in hand that I sent home to my family (and is now sitting proudly on our Christmas tree in Newcastle). But that place is insane- insanely expensive. This is the place that sells puppies for £2,200. (We wondered, part of the appeal of buying something from Harrods is having the Harrods logo on it.. Do these dogs come branded for the same reason?). Everything here just looks classy. Even the rats they were selling for something like £30 each looked a little more fancy. But my favourite parts were the entire floor dedicate to Disney (it would be so exciting to go there if you were a kid); and then the floor for Christmas, which even in October looked like the North Pole itself.

THE MARKETS

London, I think this is the part of you that made me weak at the knees. I love a good market at the best of times, but you have so many different AMAZING markets that it felt like heaven visiting them. Here are the ones we fell in love with:

Borough Markets

Filled with organic foods, this was a market that we visited on an empty stomach and I'm glad we did. The smells of this place were amazing! Not only could you sample little bits of all the delicious foods, we then had the tough task of working out exactly which food to fill up on for lunch. I had a veggie burger with a pattie made from hommus, and Mike had a pulled pork sandwich. We washed it all down with a cup of mulled cider that was so warm and delicious.

Portobello Road

We visited these markets in Notting Hill on a weekday so things weren't quite as good as they are on a weekend. But our trip had some other added bonuses, like giving us the opportunity to stop by THE bookshop from Notting Hill:

Eat a cupcake from the famous Hummingbird Bakery:

Find a cafe dedicated to Mike:

And appear on English tv with Stephen Fry (you can read about that in my other blog post).

Brick Lane

We had heard Brick Lane markets were best visited on a Sunday and so we gladly did this on one rainy Sunday afternoon. By the time we got there some of the stalls were packing up because of the rain, but that didn't mean we missed out entirely- in fact, we managed to source out end of day specials at some of the food stalls and had some delicious food and home-baked goodies. We were joined by our friend Georgie on this day which was good because it meant I had someone to look at the clothes stores with while mike was distracted by food!

Camden

Out of all the places we visited while we were with you London, Camden has to be one of the best. Purely because you never know what you are going to get from a trip to Camden. This section is in zone 2 of London, so it's just that little bit further out to invite all sorts of people that you wouldn't normally get in the city. When you exit the train station and head towards Camden markets and Camden lock, you immediately feel you are in a different kind of place. All the shops sell alternative (aka goth) clothes, and the streets are buzzing with people. On a Sunday there are people busking near the markets and you can hear the music everywhere. As for the markets themselves, we have been the twice now and still haven't even covered half of the place. Although once you've seen one you've kind of seen them all, I still really enjoyed looking at the clothes/jewelry/arts stalls. We visited one day with Mike's friend Joel, and Mike and Joel had a good time touring the food stalls for food samples, passing the Asian stall selling 'bang bang chicken', and haggling the best deal for our lunch at the market. There is one stall though at Camden markets that really sums up just how different that place is- a shop called Cyber Dog. It's basically a massive multi-level store dedicated to raves and partying. Walking in there feels like you are in some dance dungeon, with techno music blaring at any time of the day. People dance on stages and in cages in the shop and they sell anything that lights up and flashes for all those hard core ravers out there. That place is actually crazy.

THE FRIENDS

Without a doubt our time with you London wouldn't have been the same if it wasn't for the friends we met up with along the way. It seemed like every day we were there we were meeting up with someone- either friends from home who were in London as well, or friends we had made on the road. We spent a couple of days with Mike's friend Joel from home, meeting up with their friend Emily as well who they used to work with at the Dockyards and who now works in London; we crossed paths with our friend Georgie as well and saw her on two occasions; we met up with Mike's friend Todd Babic who works in London and went for a drink with him one night, and then visited the pub he works at another night where he treated us to some great mates rates; we spent time with Mike's friend Grace who he went to high school with and who happened to be working at the hostel we stayed at; we met up with two friends we had met in Granda in Spain, Nick and Dan, and went for drinks one Sunday night in Brick Lane; and we had a freak run in with a girl named Lizzie who we had met in Rome- a New Zealander who lives in London- and one night when we were waiting for a friend in the middle of Picadilly Circus she shouts out "MIKE!". It was nice being in such a big city and finding so many familiar faces, so we have you to thank for that London.

THE HOSTEL THAT FELT LIKE HOME

During our travels through mainland Europe, the longest we had spent in one place was about five days. So coming to London and finding a place to settle in was a real treat. We had originally only booked to stay in the hostel in the suburb of Victoria for 3 nights, with the plan to find somewhere a bit more affordable if we stayed any longer. In the end we got so comfortable in the hostel, especially because we knew Grace who worked there, that we just kept continuing our stay. We were a bit on the disorganised side though and would check out every two or three days, sit in reception and think about moving somewhere else and then end up going to the front desk and asking for our room back. While it meant we did had to move around rooms a bit, the bonus was we became friends with the staff and so on some nights they let us only pay for one bed to save a bit of money- definitely a big hand since London is the most expensive city to sleep in out of all the places we have been. We did venture out to another hostel for one night though, in a suburb called Elephant and Castle just south of the River Thames. We were lured to this hostel because it offered really cheap rates on a weekend- only £8 each for the night, instead of the total of £50 we would have been paying to stay in Victoria. It turns out this was a computer glitch though, and we had to fight to get that price, and then spent a night in a suburb that I won't be rushing back to any time soon. Elephant and Castle felt a little too ghetto for our liking (and the massive big project housing places or the sirens you could hear all night didn't really help with that either). The next morning we checked out of there quick smart and came crawling back to our home in Victoria- and promised we will never try leaving again.

THE MUSIC

After all the things you offered us London, the chance to see one of our favourite Aussie bands in a sold out venue on the other side of the world was one the best experiences we had with you. A lot of good bands tour through London, but normally tickets are sold out. Luckily we were organised with this one and we managed to snag tickets to see Tame Impala at the 02 Academy- and for only £19! We went with our friend Georgie and were surprised to see a huge line out the door and a sign saying SOLD OUT when we arrived. I couldn't help but feel a little patriotic when I saw this. The gig was a great night and they were definitely a great band to see live, made even better by the fact we saw them in London!