A Weekend in London

Friday night

Emerging from Leicester Square station and entering the hustle and bustle of London’s West End made me happy. It had been a while since I was in a “real” city. The brilliant lights, the traffic, the conversations in foreign tongues, the extreme fashions: they all hit me at once in some sort of amazing symphony for the senses. I absorbed it all in slowly as I waited for John.

When he arrived, we grabbed a bite to eat at Subway, then made our way to the Palace Theatre to watch Monty Python’s Spamalot. It was awesome! Hilarious! Highly recommend it. After the show, we went in search for food, and ended up ordering a deep-fried pizza from a Spanish/Italian restaurant (pizzas and tapas – talk about best of both worlds!). We ate it on the tube on our way to the hostel so I could check in. The hostel was some weird ex-Boy Scout Assembly hall thing in the lovely area of South Kensington. The room I was in was pretty decent – there were about four or so bunk beds and an ensuite washroom. I arrived there kinda late, around elevenish, so the other roommates were already asleep. I made my bed up and dropped my bag off.

After that, John and I roamed the nearby streets, looking for somewhere to sit and have a drink. But basically everything was closed. Lol. The only highlight was a blue (Tardis) police box which I managed to snap a photo of. We then caught a night bus to Trafalgar Square, and did some more aimless wandering around Leceister Square and Picadilly. We walked for ages. Before we knew it, it was around 3:30am and we still had not had a drop to drink. We went back to the hostel, inebriated on our own tired and emotional states.

Saturday

I had planned to meet Sara at 10:30am, but engineering work on the Circle and District Lines meant I was delayed and we ended up meeting at around 10:45 instead. We spotted each other almost immediately in the Saturday morning bustle of Notting Hill Gate station. After elbowing someone in the head, I managed to give her an “I-can’t-believe-we’re-both-in-London-and-it’s-great-to-see-you” hug. I hadn’t seen her in years. Sara was a friend from uni, who’d left pharmacy to study medicine. She was now doing a placement at St George’s hospital and it seemed the ideal opportunity for a catch up. We left the station and headed for Portabello Road – famous for its outdoor markets and antique stores. It was pretty cool looking through all the bibs and bobs and knick knacks – they had everything from antique silverware and jewellery to old trumpets and postage stamps. As we made our way further down the street, we came across some food stalls, and stopped to sample some treats (truffle olive oil = yum! Churros and chocolate sauce = yum!). There were also stalls selling fresh fruit and vegetables, seafood, flowers and bread and cakes. Further down, there were more stalls selling clothes and fabrics and various other things.

After that, we caught a bus to Kensington Palace (having first caught the tube to and from one station lol). Before going to Kensington Palace, however, we had a look around a nearby street lined with various consulates and official looking buildings. There was a Japanese one and a French one. I took photos but then realised it was illegal to. Whoops. Lol.
We made our way to Hyde Park and to the Kensington Palace. Now, I was thinking of some grand, stately palace, but what I got wasn’t that. It was a large but fairly ordinary looking building. There was some nice topiary outside, but that was about it. After looking at it and a squirrel, we made our way through Hyde Park, passing beautiful trees with autumn leaves. We passed the Serpentine Gallery and its obscure, unfinished wooden pavilion-like structure and strolled down towards The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain.

I first saw the fountain back in summer, when there was water flowing in it and I could give my toes a dip. But now in autumn, the fountain was emptied of water for maintenance work, and it’s grey, sloping loops reminded me of a mini-golf course. Despite this, we stood in the middle of the fountain and took photos. It was only later that we found out standing in the middle of the fountain was prohibited. That was the second illegal thing of the day.
After admiring the fountain, we went for an amble along the The Serpentine lake and I went in search of my “favourite” tree in all of Hyde Park. It took me a while, but I managed to find it. It's leaves were no longer a healthy green, but had turn a dusty orange. Sara was not impressed by its shabby, collapsed outward appearance. But it was only after going inside the tree, underneath its canopy of branches and leaves that one could really appreciate it – the engraved love notes on the trunk, the carpet of foliage, the mottled sunlight. After all, it’s what’s inside that counts :)

Satisfied with having found my tree, we crossed Hyde Park and headed for Harrods. There were protesters outside Harrods, objecting against the alleged harming of innocent animals in the fur trade. Despite this morbid congregation, we still went into Harrods. Now, I’d already been to Harrods before back in summer, but I wanted to go back again for two reasons:
1. To see all the stunning Christmas decorations
2. To use the washroom because its super cool!

So we looked around pretty much all the levels. It was really packed! Some cool things we saw for sale were:
- Fossils
- Prada sports wear
- A Swarowski crystal bejeweled Fooz ball table
- Saddles and stirrups for horseriding
- A road-worthy jeep in the Toy section
- Personal shoppers

The Christmas decorations were pretty cool – lots of traditional red and green things: baubles, wreaths, toy soldiers and teddy bears. There were even massive sized teddies and a teddy bear sofa (a sofa made of teddy bears)!.

The washroom wasn’t as great as I expected, but it was still pretty good. After using the facilities, I washed my hands, towel dried them, went over to the water fountain and had a drink, applied hand cream then sprayed some Ermenegildo Zegna eau de toilette on my wrists. They had some other fragrances (including some D&G one) but the Zegna one was what I use at home and I missed it!

Anyway, after the fun and Harrods, we took the tube back to Leicester Square and bought tickets for The Sound of Music. We then went to Chinatown for dinner. We ended up eating at The Four Seasons, ordering roast duck rice and stir fried bokchoy in garlic sauce. I was really dying for good Chinese food and this assuaged my hunger. The service was not the best – the waiters kept dropping subtle hints for us to hurry up, such as giving us our dessert (a plate of cut up oranges) pretty much at the same time as our main meal; giving us the bill before we even asked for it; and actually telling us to hurry up because there were people waiting ("thank you very muchy!"). I swear that wouldn’t have happened if we were white but let’s not get into that. Also, they didn’t give us our change the lousy thieves.

Anyway, we still had time to kill before the show, so we headed into the Soho area of London and went into a pub for a drink. We talked about some random stuff, what people were up to etc. It was cool. After that we walked along Oxford street and Sara somehow scammed a box of free bath bombs from some guy who was selling perfumes at reduced costs. He also honoured Sara by giving her the title “Miss Australia”. Haha.

The Sound of Music was playing at the London Palladium. It was a pretty nice theatre and we had pretty awesome seats. It was great seeing the familiar story and characters and listening to the classic songs. I was also really impressed with the set – there was even this suspended, moving stage thing which was meant to be the mountainside. It was all really awesome.

After the show, we exited via a side door and ended up walking down Carnaby St. This street, famous for its trendy shops, was decorated with large inflatable snowmen and pretty snowflakes and lights. We made our way to Regent St and saw even more pretty lights. The side of Hamley’s London, a toy shop, was covered in drape of silver and blue lights, and its windows were filled with Christmas themed figurines reminiscent of the Myer Windows.

Sara wanted to look at a famous store which had a clock that, when it struck on the hour, had little figures come out from some side doors and bow at each other. So we waited twenty minutes for 11pm to come around and it was a really lame sight. Haha. Even the Daimaru clock is probably better and that’s not even that good. Lol. Anyway, we wondered around some more and finally ended up at Trafalgar Square – the site where my previous night’s wonderings had begun. There we wished each other good night and good bye in the underground and caught the tube our separate ways.

Sunday

I had a latte and a fancy escargot from a nearby café for breakfast. I then went over to the Natural History Museum which was directly opposite from my hostel. The queue was kinda long, so I decided to wonder down over to this ice rink that had been set up. It was kinda cool watching the people iceskating. There were all sorts of people – kids, adults, couples, families etc. It was nice just watching them. It was also probably the first time I’ve seen an actual outdoor ice rink in real life. All the ones back in Melbourne are indoors. And the only outdoor ones I’ve seen are from romcom movies (My Sassy Girl (American Version), Serendipity etc). So that was a really cool experience for me.
Anyway, after watching the iceskaters, I headed back to the Natural History Museum. It’s such a lovely, old building. I really liked the architecture – the solid, stone walls, the beautifully ornate cornices and columns. Ah!

The inside of the museum was equally amazing. There was a massive, open space with marble floors and staircases and church-like windows with stained glass. A gigantic skeleton of a Diplodocus greeted visitors in the Central Hall. This is what I always pictured a real museum to be like. The museum was divided into various zones and covered various subjects including dinosaurs, the human body, the earth and ecology, animals and wildlife etc. The exhibits were great. One of my faves was a massive Blue Whale. I still can’t get over the amazing architecture. There were these cute monkey and bird mouldings on the columns.

I attended a lecture titled “What on Earth?” delivered by Mandy Holloway of the Department of Zoology. It was an interesting talk about the sorts of things people from the public bring in for the scientists of the museum to identify. Examples include a fossilized toe bone (actually just a piece of flint), a massive dinosaur bone (which was actually the shoulder blade of a whale) and various other bits and pieces.

After the Natural History Museum, I walked over to the nearby Victoria and Albert Museum. This is another stunning museum. It has an amazing collection of fine arts, ranging from sculpture, painting, fashion and furniture. It also covers a wide range of time periods and cultures, from Asian and Middle Eastern works to British and European masterpieces. I was equally amazed with the architecture and fittings, my faves being an awesome chandelier in the foyer, and the yellow revolving doors of the entrance. Even the gift shop was decorated with some funky, Christmas themed glasswork. I could have spent ages in there but I was already getting “museumed” out. Oh, and I also took a photo of a retable which I apparently was not meant to do because it was in a room that belonged to the Queen. That was the third illegal thing I did in London. Lol. As I was leaving, some market research lady came up to me and gave me an interview about my experience in the museum. I gave very positive feedback :)

Anyway, It was getting late in the afternoon, and it was time for me to head back to Southampton. I caught the tube to Waterloo, grabbed a BLT bagel from The Bagel Factory (they make really good bagels!) and jumped on the train.

Cheerio London! I will be back soon!