London

My first impression of London? A girls skanky behind. Seriously.

We got off the train from the airport at Victoria station and were heading towards our hotel room when these two girls walked past us and made me stare for all of the wrong reasons, then when I did a double take, her skirt was so short that I could actually see her bum crack, from below!

Then we thought we were about to be mugged by this group of teenagers straight out of Vickie Pollard’s friendship circle from Little Brittain. Luckily we didn’t, they just offered to sell us a stolen phone.

Finally we made it safely to our hotel room to drop our bags off and then it was time for dinner at a lovely Turkish restaurant where we stuffed our faces. Good food from restaurants is very unpredictable and inconsistent in The Netherlands, so we were excited to be in London where there’s a lot of variety.

Bed time already after a few cocktails which helped me have a deep night sleep, something I hadn’t experienced for a while.

The next day started with a delicious coffee, another thing I miss since living in The Netherlands. The Dutch drink a lot of coffee….but it’s generally quite unpleasant. Or maybe it’s just different to what I’m used to?

Then we caught a bus to the London Bridge which we of course walked across. I think Holland has toughened us up in terms of dealing with cold weather, because while we were simply sporting  jumpers, most people around us were rugged up in ski jackets, scarves, beanies and anything else you would wear if it were actually freezing.

We look like lego people with lego hair

The sun was in and out of the clouds that day, made for this unique lighting

More walking took us to the Borough Markets where we ate some lunch (Kaushik had his token fish and chips) and then we continued on to the Tate Modern art gallery. I really like Kaushik’s honesty when it comes to art. I do, I’m not being sarcastic. He doesn’t wank around, trying to see meaning in artworks or why they chose this color etc etc. He simply likes it, doesn’t like it or thinks it’s ridiculous that it’s in a gallery in the first place because it looks like anyone could have made it.

I often feel the same, but on the other hand believe that art doesn’t have to be something you spend days, months or years on. Just because it may have only taken minutes to splash the paint on to the canvas, it shouldn’t determine whether it is art gallery worthy or not.

Moving on, we did more walking which took us past a skateboard park where we stopped and watched for a while, as did most passer by-ers as it just seemed so out of place, but pretty cool.

Onwards towards Big Ben. (We skipped the London Eye: at 30 pounds per ticket and probably 2 hours waiting in line, we could think of 376 better things to do with our time and money.)

Before we get to my touristy photos of Giant Benjamin, I want to share this photo with you. Might I add, this isn’t the first humorous photo I have taken of Ms. Hilton in a pile of garbage. Also note the title of the article.

Having done enough site seeing, it was time to meet up with our friends Matt and Trixie  from Sydney who have moved to London. We really enjoyed hanging out with them, indulging in a few too many drinks which lead to us going to a Purple Sneakers-esque type of night called After School Club. I think it really was an after school club because the patrons mostly looked about 18 years old. I’m getting old! Never the less we still had fun dancing around to Vampire Weekend and other fun music being played.

Matt and Trix

It was time for bed, after walking for about an hour back to our hotel. Another night of good sleep!

The next day started a little more relaxed and slow, but we made the treck to the famous Camden markets where it quickly became extremely busy and a little full on! I scored a beautiful green coat for just 15 pounds, and I could have easily bought more so I reccomend dropping by these markets if you’re after anything vintage at a good price!

Well, that’s probably all you want to know about our trip to London….that’s if you even made it this far!

Tags: big ben, food, great britain, london, london bridge, paris hilton, tate modern, travel