London -

London -

So after two long flights I arrived at Heathrow aiport in the afternoon on the 2nd of August. I had made the fatal mistake of packing all the infomation and contact details of where i was staying in my suitcase, so had a fairly tough time getting through immigration, but 45 minutes, 1000 questions and 1 particulary nasty security gaurd later, i was through. Lucky for me i had two lovely people waiting for me, my cousin Katie ( who is actually a more distant realitive, but ive bumped her up to cousin status) and her boyfriend Dan. After dinner, i hopped striaght into bed, and went to sleep.

The next day I hit up the Portobello markets, went past George Orwell's house, and took a long walk via Hyde park to Victoria & Albert Museum. I really liked the theatre exhibit at the V&A, it had tones of costumes, images, scripts and programs - it was really interesting. That day was super hot, so a lot of little kiddies were swimming in the water feature of the mueseum. Next I was aiming to go back to Hyde Park, but attmepted to take a different route back.. but got mega lost and ended up in another park, patting a dog and talking to a lady. Also on the way two diffrent sets of people asked me for directions, I was able to help them both out because I had been walking so long. By the time i got back to the train i had been out walking for 9hours. When I eventually made it back to cousin katie's , her Granny, and cousin Mark came over to have raclette for dinner... Tones of cheese covered goodness. It was a very enjoyable evening, and was great to meet a couple more relatives.

The next day I hit up the National gallery which is about the time i felt i had been transported into a monolpoly game. I saw alot of paintings of Jesus, and other religious figures. One paintings of Jesus from the 1500s looked like dad in his 20s - which was kind of strange. Then I moved onto to the national portrait gallery, which I really enjoyed, and think was my favourite of all the galleries and museums. After lunch I walked to st Pauls cathedral to meet up with Akash and David Ince. We went into the brittish museum - overload ourselves with Brittish history and tried to comprehend how young non indigenous Australian history is. Then we headed to Camden, meet up with llyod - we wondered the Camden markets for a long time, before stopping into a few pubs. Eventually we ended up in a pub to watch Grace Woodroffe play, when we met up with Grace, she was a bit under the weather and was trying to remember the lyrics to sexy back by Justin Timberlake. This ended up being her encore, which was hilarious, as she did not remember the lyrics at all. But her set and encore was enjoyed by everyone, and it was really exciting for her to be playing in London, even through it quickly become apparent, most of the audience was from Perth anyway.

Finally getting over my jet lag I had later start the next day. I started by going to see big Ben at parliament, Westminster abbey, and the London eye - but the amounts of tourists, put me off staying too long. So I diverted to the back streets, found a great little gourmet food market, grabbed so cheap but scrumptious lunch and then wondered down the Thames. I walked by all sorts of bits n peices, imcluding the big disappointment of the national theatre, which looked like the state library of WA. Then to the TATE.. Super amazing to see Monet, Pollok and Picaso, I also really loved the art installations. Then I wondered past Shakespeares Globe Theatre. Then back towards the west end, back to see the Hollywood exhibit at the national portrait gallery which I enjoined immensely, and grabbed my ticket for jersey boys that evening.... which i had already seen twice in Melbourne, but decided i would like to see again.

The next morning headed to the train station very earlier, got my bag pulled apart and searched, and just made the train to Brussels.