Haha okay so no one actually spoke to me like that when i was london. but i did hear 'cheers, mate!' while i was there. haha. we got on board an evening flight from frankfurt hahn airport to london stansted, and the whole journey from IU to liverpool street actually took about 7 hours, with bus, train and plane connections.
after meeting everyone's friends and receiving some inevitable suan-ing from adrian, we split up and i went off to keith's apartment in old street. haha it isn't really old, quite nicely-furnished actually, but he does live right beside a cemetery.
saturday morning we met jinteng and mingrui to go watch adrian and gerald in action at the london regional games. HAHA i think we were too bored la! saw some familiar faces.. but didn't know where to place them. too many asians la..
after that i made my way to covent garden to meet my pri sch bestie, florrine ng! haha. it was great catching up with her and going around trafalgar square and covent garden market (: the buskers there are really good!! violinists and sopranos. went to the national gallery for a quick peek at van gogh's sunflowers and his chair. but the sun was so good we came out to bask in it again. haha. her bf bought her a white rose when he met up with her la!! so sweet wor.. :P
and this is the late afternoon view from the london streets of covent garden or leicester square (can't remember la). nice eh?
walked around with keith in the afternoon and went to hamley's, a huge toy store. if you enlarge the picture, you can see that the giraffe on the left costs a crazy 3,500 pounds. that's more than 10K SGD! haha this beats the heidelberg giraffe and elephant by miles!! went chinatown at night for dinner with adrian, jinteng and mingrui. haha we were still in time to catch the CNY mood and decorations there! took pics like mad coz there's no such thing as chinatown and much less CNY feeling in germany!
walked around after dinner to the south bank where we saw the huge london eye, which was closed already.. and the big ben and westminster. oh there's the moon in the picture! there was actually a lunar eclipse that night, and me and jinteng kept telling adrian it was just clouds covering the moon.
sunday keith and i ventured to greenwich to see the prime meridian, despite adrian telling me it's damn boring haha. and so we stood on either side of the prime meridian and made a wish like i read somewhere.. it was quite a challenge to take the pic of the line i tell you, coz people were just crowding around that line looking for their own countries. haha. we also stopped by the greenwich market where there were foodstuff and quirky cards and wallets and cow hide carpets and whatnot for sale. it was raining heavily the whole day and quite sian to be outside honestly. london must pay for sunny days like saturday. haha.
monday in london i waved goodbye to keith at liverpool st station and went to meet the rest at buckingham palace for the changing of guards. you would think that the novelty of the changing would have worn off (esp among the londoners) after sooooo many years of changing but no, a huge crowd gathered at the looooong gates and huuuuge roundabout of buckingham palace to watch the guards in action. they didn't look as grand in their red suits as in summer coz they had the grey winter coats on. anw the queen was in the palace while we were there! coz the Union Jack was fully hoisted up. wonder if the princes were around. haha. and so our trip in london ended biding adrian goodbye at holborn station and having this announced over the PA system in london stansted airport,
"would passengers Tan, Thia, Chan and Chen please proceed to gate 43 for immediate boarding?" haha. never underestimate the size of stansted airport and the time taken to clear the baggage check.
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