Loving London

First off I need to explain the huge decrease in posts over the past couple of weeks. I have a Contiki and a Topdeck tour to blame which whilst they have been so much fun, have also been so hectic with very little time set aside in the day for me to do my self important blogging!

So to pick up where I left off in my last post, my friend Shereen arrived early in the morning on my 5th day in London. She had gotten very little sleep on her flight from Perth, mainly due to being stuck on the dreaded aisle seat, but she was a real trooper and didn't let the jet lag stop her from enjoying her first day. First up was the London Dungeons, where we had to wait an hour and a half in the queue. This guy had given us a flyer while we waited in the queue offering discounted "jump the queue" tickets for the London Eye and Madame Tussaud's if we bought them there at the Dungeons. The only reason we didn't say yes straight away was that I had a voucher for "two for one" entry into all three attractions which would have been cheaper for us anyway. After a such a long wait we decided it would be worth it for the Eye as it would be only £5 extra. Unfortunately when we got to the front of the queue and said we wanted the Eye ticket as well the guy informed us that if we had told them when they gave us the flyer we would have been able to jump the Dungeons queue as well! Thanks guy, that info would have been useful an hour and a half ago. But we had fun catching up in the line and playing with Shereen's new DSLR. It takes such good photos that unless we are going swimming there is no need to take my camera out, and Shereen has become my official blog photgrapher/blotographer/phoblographer.

Anyway the dungeons were hilarious. Shereen was very uneasy about all the people jumping out at you from dark corners. I would jump too but then be laughing at Shereen's much more theatrical reaction a second later. We both got completely caught out at the end of the visit, however, by the Hangman's Drop ride. It was one of those rides where they strap you all in a line and you are raised up on a tall pole, then suddenly you all fall back down to the ground. It wasn't that high and I wasn't expecting to be at all scared, but it dropped a second before I expected it and I let off this huge embarrassing scream. A flash of light later we realised they had also caught it on camera. We were laughing so hard at the result in the gift shop it was hard to convey to the shop assistant at we actually wanted to buy it.

After the dungeons we walked on to London Bridge and took a few photos across the Thames, before catching the tube back to the hostel. Shereen did a little urbanspoon-ing/ tripadvisor-ing and found a place off Oxford St. called Pho for dinner. We had spicy green mango salad and it was the best Vietnamese I have ever had.

The next day we woke up early to walk down the street to Madame Tussauds and beat the queue. We spent so long in there, it was kind if ridiculous. But it was just so funny taking photos and watching other people posing with the wax models. I'd love to out up all the photos but there were probably one hundred of them. Friends, look out on my Facebook for more coming soon. After Madame Tussauds we bought tickets on Oxford St. for the Original Double Decker Bus Tour. It was a hop-on hop-off situation and a great way of seeing the city. We got off at Buckingham Palace to take some photos and also got off at the London Eye to use the tickets we had purchased the day before. I have actually never done the Eye before, and I wouldn't say I would do it again, but it was nice to cross off one of those super touristy London things from the list. From the bus we also saw the Houses of Parliament, the Big Ben bell tower, St Paul's Cathedral, the Tower Bridge (which we actually saw open up too- pretty cool), the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly circus among many other things.

/Jolie-Pitts adopt another baby

/Shereen's dead-on Vanessa Hudgens impression

That night we took a break from being tourists and went to the movies to see Moonrise Kingdom, which is Wes Anderson's new film. He is probably my second favourite director after Tim Burton and I loved this lastest cinematic contribution. If you like your movie humor a little off-centre, go see it.

I have two more days to cover for London, but as you can see we packed a lot in and it takes a while to write about. More on our last days in my next post.

Cheerio xx