In LOVE with London

Hello family and friends!
Firstly let us apologise as it’s been a long time in between drinks so to speak, as we have been flat out. Our feet are literally aching from all the walking we’ve been doing and our jet lag finally caught up with us. Not to worry though as after a nice eight hour sleep we’re rearing to go. In fact, last night was the first night that I haven’t woken up at 4am. The first time I did this I didn’t realise (it’s quite light at that time), so I rouse Brad and insisted he get up and get moving. When we found out the time I sheepishly went back to bed – much to Brad’s relief!
We absolutely LOVE London, which in itself is the understatement of the century. The atmosphere, the fact that every second street is from the Monopoly board, the buildings, the shopping, even the people – it’s such a melting pot and no two people are the same (apart from the orange tanned girls with acrylic nails and fags hanging out of their mouths – there’s a lot of them!).
We’ve seen and done so much already it’s hard to know where to start, so we’ll just logically proceed from the moment we touched down after a 13 hour flight...
The flight over wasn’t bad at all, with a few hours sleep, delicious meals and plenty of movies to keep us entertained. Arriving into Heathrow was quite exciting, until we say the customs line we had to clear before we were granted entry. After an hour’s wait and a chat with the customs lady who informed us that we were now ‘residents’, we could enter through the digital ‘iris scan’ line next time which had just a few people lined up, we were in. Following Shady’s precise instructions we found our way to his house on the tube with no trouble. Just that was excitement in itself!
Our first impressions of England were that it is exactly like you think it’s going to be – red-brick buildings, cobbled streets, grey skies... Today is officially the first day of summer here (happy winter whanau) and we’re wearing our winter jackets and jeans...!
We spent our first night exploring the local area (Clapham North), going to the supermarket and being astounded at how cheap everything is by comparison. I think there’s no way I’ll be able to avoid the dreaded Heathrow injection as you can pick up a box of Cadbury flakes for £1.30!
The next day (after my ridiculously early start), we decided to head into the city to embark on a free walking tour of London (after a token stop at Harrods), which is an amazing concept in itself. Essentially expert guides (our one was amazing) take you on a walking tour of famous sites and at the end if you feel the tour was worth paying for you can tip them whatever you like. Their concept is that everyone should be able to afford good experiences when travelling. We thought the tour was phenomenal and strongly recommend anyone travelling through Europe (Cara, Cara, Cara: www.neweuropetours.eu) to do them, as they have them in different cities. We went on the royal tour and we’ll also be doing the old tour and grim reapers tour (through the dark streets of London). We saw some amazing places and you really had to pinch yourself as it was so dream-like. We also learnt a ridiculous amount of information as well and feel we’re all very much a walking fountain of London knowledge! Like...
• London used to have a pigeon problem, with over 35,000 pigeons in Trafalgar Square alone. After two failed attempts at getting rid of them, they finally hit the nail on the head by feeding the pigeons food mixed with a contraceptive... That’s right, the pigeons of London are on the pill!
• Big Ben isn’t actually officially called that, rather that’s the name of the bell at the top of the tower. The real name is ‘the Clock Tower’, which is hardly original.
• There are over 700 rooms at Buckingham Palace with 78 bathrooms.
• There have been three successful break-in attempts at Buckingham Palace, one of which was a group of German tourists who jumped the fence thinking it was Hyde Park, set up camp in the gardens, lit a fire and spent the night. They were only found out the following morning when they walked up to a guard and asked him how to get out of the park!
• There are pelicans in St James park which originated from back in King Henry’s time when he had a zoo. No one knows why the stick around on the River Thames, but they’ve been known to eat pigeons from time to time – which is quite crazy, as pelicans only ever eat fish. This was only found out when s tourist was filming a pelican one day when it swooped on a pigeon. Youtube pelican eats pigeon if you don’t believe us!
• Big Ben is actually not that big – that was our thought anyway!
The tour went for three hours and we had an amazing time and loved every second of it!
Some of our friends planned a little meet and greet at ‘Jo Cools’, a pub full of ex-pats in Putney, and we had so much fun that the night just flew. One moment we met up for a few quiet drinks, the next thing you know six hours have passed and Brad’s in the middle of a dance-off with a team of South Africans, No need to say who won as it’s fairly obvious, but let’s just say it was a great patriotic moment for New Zealand!
We had so much fun and it’s amazing to see how everyone just bonds over there. If you’re Kiwi you’re a friend, and we can easily see how some people don’t actually ever met any Londoners. We’re hoping to get a flat with a few locals as well (like Shady and Emily) as you get to meet so many other people.
Yesterday we headed to Camden for the Camden markets, which were amazing and will definitely become a regular spot. After wandering around for a few hours we decided to head on to Oxford for a spot of shopping – shoes for Brad and cell-phones. While we didn’t get shoes for Brad (not for want of selection as it’s astounding, but rather the fact that Brad’s feet are too big to fit!), we did pick up cell-phones, are we LOVE them. Mobiles are ridiculously cheap over here and we got really fancy phones for the equivalent of NZ$140. They have an MP3 player built in, email, internet, GPS tracking – the works. We can’t go on a plan as of yet as we need proof of our address (will do today), but even the most generous of plans is barely even a fraction of your salary.
We followed up our shopping trip with mass at Westminster Abbey! Our tour guide informed us that while you have to pay to go inside Westminster Abbey, you get in free if you head to their daily mass section, and regardless of the cost it’s something we would have all wanted to do at some stage anyway. Honestly words cannot describe it – from the architecture, to the choir (best in the world apparently), the whole experience was amazing. All four of us were blown away, and not just because one of the choir boys was quite good-looking! After the service Emily asked if anyone had noticed the choir boy, and all four of us (Brad and James included) couldn’t agree more! Here we are sitting in the world’s most beautiful church (which FYI was originally meant as a gift to the Pope) and we’re all checking out the handsome soprano singer!
Today we’ve got quite a bit on our agenda so I best get moving and get on with it. But before I go, we’re currently planning out little trip away and have decided against going to Italy – purely for the fact that you can get ridiculous deals on a last minute holidays website (I think it’s teletext holidays if anyone’s interested)... At the moment we’re leading towards Tunisia in Africa – seven nights’ accommodation and flights for about £130 pounds! We’ll keep you posted with plans!
Love to all and urge you all to come over here! We can go on holiday to Morocco, the Canary Islands or Greece together for the cost of a night out!
xxxx