London Trip I

Day 1:
Arrived in London late on friday night... I guess my friend yz was right.. The first impression London gave me was a very familiar feeling.. perhaps cos I saw so many asians on the streets and also the familiar left-hand-drive traffic... After much navigation and back-tracking, finally managed to meet up with Justin and Duan.. Justin's doing his masters in UCL now and was really kind enough to allow me and duan to put up with him during our stay in London... Anyway the next morning we got up early for cage in London... lol.. the weather in London is really erratic, just like that in Singapore.. one moment it was fine and sunny and the next it was gloomy and rainy.. Anyhow we got to play like 3 hours of soccer under very cold and windy conditions with most of us clad in shorts and sweaters...

Headed down to Leicester Square and Covent Garden in the afternoon.. Leicester Square is a pedestrianed square where you can find a number of theatres and cinemas showing plays and movies respectively.. Many of the movie premieres are hosted here with celebrities like Keira Knightley gracing it and it supposedly contains the cinema with the largest movie screen and most number of seats.. Here you can find many half-priced ticket booths selling tickets for many of the plays such as Phantom, Les Miserables, Mama Mia and the new play Wicked..

Covent Garden, on the other hand, is a shopping district boasting many familiar brands like Zara, Topshop, MNG, FCUK etc etc.. we came across a bakery by the name of "Cornish Bakehouse" which supposedly served pretty good pastries.. me duan and meng decided to try one each while jm stuck strictly to his diet plan... It tasted really good and it cost like 1plus 2gpd each... reminds me of the chicken pies we have in singapore though.. Inside Covent Garden contained another market by the name of "Apple Market" where you can find intrinsic sourvenirs, ornaments, cookie shops, street performances etc..

Next up was Chinatown where we finally had our lunch at like 5pm... London's Chinatown resembles that in Singapore, albeit a smaller scale one... The red lanterns hung over the streets and the familiar chinese faces brings to it a very asian feeling... Decided to settle for one of the chinese restaurants under tiax recommendation.. the chinese food wasnt fantastic but at least it tasted better than those in sweden...

After our late lunch.. we took a walk down to Trafalgar Square which has become an enormously important symbolic social and political location for visitors and Londoners.. On the square, there are 4 plinths holding statues of important ppl of whom i'm not too sure.. lol... Besides the statues, there is also a huge fountain in the middle of the square...

Dinner was at Bayswater where we had authentic chinese food at a chinese restaurant.. But instead of the famous four seasons restaurant, we decided to try out another one by the name of "Magic Wok"... the food was absolutely FABULOUS! had peking duck, roasted duck, ma po tou fu etc etc... it came up to around 12gdp per pax but it was definitely worth it since it's the best chinese food i've tried in europe so far.....

Day 2:
Woke up early.. wanted to visit borough market which is a wholesale and retail food market in London.. it is one of the biggest food markets in the world selling a huge variety of food from all over the world.. But to our astonishment, we found the market CLOSED! checked with one of the policemen patrolling the area and realised that the market's not opened on Sundays... DARN! Disappointed, me, yong and jm decided to head to Buckingham Palace to witness the changing of guards whilst meng decided to go to the museum to view some WWII relics..

Buckingham Palace's the official residence of the British Monarch in London.. the change of sentry duties is supposedly a very grand ceremony which takes place daily... hundreds of visitors flock to witness this ceremony everyday.. so it was no surprise by the time we arrived there, we were surrounded by lotsa ppl.. After the ceremony, justin took us down to the Emirates Stadium.. Home of the Gunners.. even though none of us is an Arsenal fan, we were still overwhelmed by the landmark.. a pity though that there wasnt any on-going match that day if not we would have definitely headed for it..

The next stop was the Tower of London which was previously used as a fortress, royal palace and prison.. Justin should really consider moonlighting as a tour guide cos he gave us a really good background knowledge of the monuments.. we also took a walk down the River Thames where we came across the Tower Bridge, London Bridge and the Millennium Bridge leading to St Paul's Cathedral, an Anglican Cathedral dated back to the 17th century...

After heading to Harrods and found it closed (DAMN! :( ), we dropped by South Kensington for some Crepes that was highly recommended by duan, jm and meng.. Indeed, this french eatery served really sumptuous crepes, both savoury and sweet... although it was abit pricey but wth.. Photo-taking at the Big Ben, London Eye and Westminster Abbey turned out to be disastrous with the street lamps marring our pictures..

Day 3:
Day 3 morning was spent at the Harrods, marvelling at the astonishingly grand interior of the building with the disgustingly expensive merchandise.. we kinda felt that we were the most penniless threesome in the store that morning... Had a extremely hard time locating the chinese dim sum restaurant recommended by Jing.. but when we finally found it, we were contented with the quality of the food served only to be informed by tiax that it's actually the lousiest among the chinese restaurants around Chinatown @(^#&! Nonetheless we had our fill and me and jm headed down to Bond Street which contains all the upmarket merchandise like LV, Zegna, Burberry etc.. Only went there cos we needed to check out the prices of LV for Sia.. So you better be thankful dude!

Next me and jm went back to Covent Garden to do some window shopping before meeting Justin for an early dinner at a belgium restaurant.. It's called Belgo and it contains this section called 'beat the clock' in its menu from 5-630pm where we get to pay for a main course and a beer at a price corresponding to the time of our order.. cool stuff! We all had mussels and the servings were huge too.. 500g of mussels.. hahaha. Met Tiax after his class for a final round of chinese cuisine before we returned to Sweden.. As usual, the servings were humongous.. kinda value for money..

Yup.. that rounds up my London Trip Part I... there are still pretty much many places in London i have not visited so i guess i'll be back in the summer again to continue with the adventure..Anyway a big thank you to just, tiax and jing! Now on to Copenhagen in less than 5 hours time! Cya guys...