log

London Trip 2014

Here lies the (heav­i­ly edit­ed, elid­ed, edi­to­ri­alised?) pho­to­graph­ic record of my trip to Lon­don in June 2014 to meet up with Chris and explore a for­eign land. Along the way I hit Liv­er­pool for two days and stayed with Dave, and then we made the trip to Spain for a week to stay with the gra­cious David and Dave in their apart­ment near the beach.

All of the pics here have been resized down to 1200 pix­els wide (orig­i­nal­ly around 4k) so if you’d like a high­er-qual­i­ty ver­sion of some of the images, please let me know and I’ll send it. I’d put them all up at full qual­i­ty but they total 24GB. :P

 

Pics from the love­ly din­ner at Papadi­nos with friends the night before I left.

Head­ing down to Syd­ney for the Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. Michael and Tayo escort­ed me down to say farewell. Thanks guys! Oh and I got on a plane, but that’s not important.

Land­ing at Kuala Lumpur — the first time I’d been out of Aus­tralia in about 15 years — and explor­ing their rather nice air­port. Since I land­ed at 4 in the morn­ing not much was open, but I spent a good chunk of time in the Lounge and had a show­er to fresh­en up. 

Just a small gallery since I was too excit­ed upon land­ing to think of get­ting many photos.

After get­ting some decent sleep for the first time in two days, I jumped on the bus with Chris on his way to work in Kens­ing­ton. Lots of pics from the bus as I saw the city for the first time, plus: — My first break­fast at Bil­l’s Restau­rant and Cafe in Kens­ing­ton High Street Sta­tion — Wan­der­ing through Whole Foods and see­ing their exclu­sive British Cheese area, lol — Enter­ing the mas­sive Kens­ing­ton Park and see­ing the Palace, the gar­dens, and the native water­fowl near Hyde Park — Pop­ping into White­leys’ to get a shot of their cool inte­ri­or — Run­ning across a new fam­i­ly of poten­tial­ly dead­ly swans being taunt­ed by small chil­dren while their father egged them on

Wan­der­ing from Chris’ place in Bat­tersea north over the bridge and into Chelsea, which I ini­tial­ly mis­took for a slum­my area until a Lam­borgh­i­ni drove past. It’s actu­al­ly a snob­by, mon­strous­ly over­priced area! Chris was trav­el­ling that night so I end­ed up stay­ing out late after walk­ing through the Buck­ing­ham Palace area and had din­ner in Park Lane Hard Rock Café to escape the light rain. I appar­ent­ly picked the most expen­sive Hard Rock in the city, but the serv­ings were ridicu­lous­ly huge.

Caught the bus into Kens­ing­ton with Chris again, and had a break­fast omelette at a very respectable-look­ing French café on the cor­ner head­ing east. Wan­dered down to South Kens­ing­ton where I ran across the incred­i­bly impres­sive Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um and got dis­tract­ed by a tem­po­rary but­ter­fly show. A zil­lion pho­tos and my cam­era died, so I left the Muse­ums until anoth­er day.

Our first week­end to explore the city. We caught the fer­ry down to Green­wich, snap­ping shots of the land­marks and bridges we trav­elled past. Here lies the Cut­ty Sark, which until that point had just been a weird name I’d heard in my child­hood. We had brunch on the water­front then walked through the greens to the Obser­va­to­ry, escap­ing the rain in the gift shop and cafe­te­ria before check­ing out the tele­scope. Wan­der­ing slow­ly back down the hill, we caught the fer­ry in the rain and stopped at Tow­er where we dis­cov­ered we’d need to auc­tion off limbs in order to afford a tick­et inside. A gen­tle walk took us back to a con­nec­tion home, but not before we cov­ered lots more of the city includ­ing St Paul’s Cathe­dral, the Gerkin, an inex­plic­a­bly a Bol­ly­wood film set.

Off to Brighton Beach we go — my first peb­ble beach. Weird but at least there’s no sand going every­where. Beau­ti­ful warm weath­er the entire time. Found the naked beach area as we walked down the board walk towards ice creams, sand sculp­tures, and adverts for dis­gust­ing mushy pea pies. Once we’d explored the beach and amuse­ment area on the pier, we head­ed into town itself. Windy lit­tle roads and strange shops abound, includ­ing a dog cafe.

Here lay the remains of the British Olympic Games. It’s a nice open space with pret­ty build­ings, but I was­n’t too impressed with the upkeep of the area — it’s basi­cal­ly a ghost town. Kind of sad to see. And every­thing is gat­ed so tourists can’t even see the olympic pool or velo­drome with­out pay­ing to get in. Also in this album are the shoes that gave me fifty cent blis­ters that I still have almost a month lat­er and a Lego shop that was inside the near­by West­fields plaza. Did a lit­tle gift shop­ping in there.

Tues­day I jumped on the train to Liv­er­pool to vis­it Dave (my ex) and see he and his hus­band’s place that they’d just rebuilt a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of. Caught the Vir­gin train, tak­ing about two hours, and then explored the city as much as I could before meet­ing Dave at around 8:30pm. Liv­er­pool is much big­ger than I thought it was. Every­one around me rec­om­mend­ed things to check out, includ­ing the Cav­ern Club where the Bea­t­les per­formed before they made it big, and a vari­ety of cathe­drals that are absurd­ly huge. Bonus points to Liv­er­pool for build­ing a bridge that looks like the birth canal, btw. 

Dave and I spent the day walk­ing through Liv­er­pool start­ing with a short train trip from the house to town, then into the water­front. We had crois­sants for break­fast from a small café with a very friend­ly wait­er, roamed through a few muse­ums, and had lunch at The Pump­house (end­less jokes ensued from all par­ties). After I saw Dave off at the train sta­tion for his flight back to Spain, I spent my last few hours tak­ing shots of the city from a high point and explor­ing their incred­i­ble city library.

No jus­ti­fi­ca­tion here — I felt real­ly slug­gish and slept in. Spent the day sort­ing through pho­tos and read­ing in the sun at Chris’ place. He was due home late after a big night out at a work do so I ducked down the road to the local Weath­er­spoons pub called the Aspara­gus and had an awe­some steak (with peas on the side… I don’t remem­ber the last time I had them along­side steak). This place was incred­i­ble val­ue for mon­ey — check out the menu — and it was deli­cious. Appar­ent­ly the Weath­er­spoons group stay cheap because of how they pur­chase ingre­di­ents that aren’t too far from their used-by date. Meh, was great.

Anoth­er lazy wan­der­ing day lead­ing to dis­cov­er­ing a new area of the city, this time Pica­dil­ly Cir­cus and Carn­a­by Street. Along the way near Hyde Park I realised that a heavy met­al con­cert was about to start behind a huge fenced bar­ri­er — Lamb of God? Lots of mid­dle aged guys in death met­al shirts. Carn­a­by Street has the most incred­i­ble shoe shop I’ve ever seen. Stopped at a love­ly pub near Bond or Oxford Street (can’t remem­ber) and had lunch while the city bus­ied itself around me.

After a week and a half in Lon­don we packed up and ran to the air­port for Spain. Well, bused to the air­port for two hours any­way. Long queue time and bag­gage issues aside, the flight went quick­ly and before I knew it the land­scape of Spain was pass­ing by out­side the win­dow. It was my first trip into a non-Eng­lish coun­try and I was very excit­ed to get out of the air­port and see some real Span­ish coun­try­side. It did­n’t dis­ap­point. I took lots of pic­tures of moun­tains and felt imme­di­ate­ly at home. So many thanks to Dave and David for pick­ing us up, host­ing us for an entire week, being both fan­tas­tic com­pa­ny and tour guides around Denia, and even drop­ping us off at the end of the week when they did­n’t need to. Thanks a ton.

Won­der­ful­ly warm weath­er, con­stant sea breeze, a deli­cious break­fast, and approx­i­mate­ly 60 shirt­less nine­teen-year-old guys in small foot­ball shorts goad­ing a large horned ani­mal into stab­bing them repeat­ed­ly. That sums up our first day in Spain, along­side the awe­some Zen­za bar we spent two hours bask­ing in after­ward and the great din­ner cooked by our hosts. (This album con­tains my favourite pic­ture of Chris btw, the one with pure joy in his eyes.)

We all got up and half an hour lat­er were eat­ing in a love­ly café in Denia. Three serv­ings of the local egg break­fast for the boys, and of course I ordered some­thing unique that took longer to eat than any­one else’s. Wish I’d got­ten a pic of the fruit, ham, cheese, pre­served meat, and nutel­la break­fast I had along­side a big choco­late milk­shake. Explored Denia that day and took in the pret­ty mall area that goes on for five hun­dred metres with trees and lights over­head. Lat­er that week it’d be blanked out for the fire­work fes­ti­val and made com­plete­ly unrecog­nis­able. We tried to vis­it the oth­er venue of Zen­za towards the end of the arvo but did­n’t make it; we got dis­tract­ed by a beach­front resort with sofas and deckchairs and a huge ele­phant stat­ue. Incred­i­bly peace­ful. (Could­n’t help myself get­ting a shot of the local super­mar­ket. I remem­ber stand­ing in a phar­ma­cy ear­li­er that day try­ing to work out which tubes in front of me were tooth­paste and not den­ture paste. The words, they mean nothing.)

Jam packed day. Head­ed out with Chris in the morn­ing to explore Denia for a while and get some brunch (huge entrée fol­lowed by big piz­za fol­lowed by me giv­ing up), then after cab­bing it back to the house we tod­dled to the beach near the house for an hour or so. First and prob­a­bly last time I’ll get to wear those speedos in pub­lic, because they sure aren’t com­ing out in Aus­tralia. Once we realised that time had escaped us, we rushed back to the house and start­ed get­ting ready for din­ner out. It was incred­i­ble — eas­i­ly some of the best cooked and pre­sent­ed food I’ve ever had. After dessert we were treat­ed to Limon­cel­lo — just a lit­tle bit potent — and watch­ing a chef cook flam­bé crepes from scratch, fire jump­ing to the ceil­ing. Chris got a great shot of that. Fin­ished off the night late with an unex­pect­ed (at least for me) fes­ti­val. We walked around the pier near the restau­rant look­ing at boats we could­n’t afford and then head­ed into town to find a pre­sen­ta­tion of tra­di­tion­al Span­ish dress­es was on. Caught the tail end of it, then aimed our­selves at the mall area to watch the absurd­ly unsafe fire­works fes­ti­val begin. Tons of peo­ple dressed as dev­ils run­ning through the mall shoot­ing fire­works every­where, includ­ing on top of peo­ple and under their feet. Visu­al­ly spec­tac­u­lar, and set up to press peo­ple down the street towards the big sta­t­ic fire­work dis­plays. Poor Chris got a hot fire­work spark to the skull and instant­ly blis­tered up. The scab did­n’t fall off until a week and a half later.

On Wednes­day David and Dave took us for a trip to Moraira, a beach­side town with incred­i­ble views and an fan­tas­ti­cal­ly well-posi­tioned restau­rant where we had a light lunch of tapas meat­balls. Yum. Then it was into wine coun­try through the moun­tains, stop­ping to pur­chase a few things from the win­ery and a ran­dom gen­er­ous fruit ven­dor, and on to Nick­’s bed and break­fast far in the hills. I spent the after­noon cud­dling an affec­tion­ate dog.

A qui­et lazy day with a brief ven­ture into the wilds of Denia for lunch, a walk through town, and a lot of time sun­bathing and swim­ming at the nude beach (which I obvi­ous­ly don’t have pho­tos of and/or did­n’t include pho­tos of). After head­ing home I had some time to burn while Chris was get­ting a mas­sage and Dave was putting a bar­be­cue togeth­er so I took tons of nature pics out the back. Apologies.

What an incred­i­ble day this was. I’m still not sure how David met Amable but he and his hub­by own a huge, gor­geous house in the hills, over­looked by a moun­tain, with an incred­i­bly love­ly inte­ri­or, a pool, an out­side dance floor with night­club light­ing, and a beer tap. He was so gen­er­ous in invit­ing us Eng­lish-only speak­ing tourist strangers into his home, cook­ing such great food, and keep­ing us hap­py for the after­noon. This was such a good a day, eat­ing won­der­ful food and play­ing in the pool. Lots of times when I saw Chris’ face lit up with gen­uine play­ful joy. (I’m required by law to men­tion Chris’ swollen feet, for which I was appar­ent­ly respon­si­ble after step­ping on them in the pool. He adopt­ed such a sad look that night. Such a del­i­cate boy.)

Before we left Spain in the evening, David drove us all down to south Denia for a swanky lunch on the cliff­side, in a gor­geous area where rocky land meets the sea and nat­ur­al caves are carved through the rock at water lev­el for swim­mers to explore. Wish I’d jumped in actu­al­ly. After head­ing back home and pack­ing up, we start­ed the long sad dri­ve back to Ali­cante and the air­port. No bag­gage dra­mas this time, and the secu­ri­ty com­ing out of Spain is so much lighter than when leav­ing Eng­land. Once we touched down it was a coach back to Vic­to­ria, then a bus home. Long day.

Late rise and break­fast at a great café in Bat­tersea. It’s the first time I’ve ever queued at a café and it was enter­tain­ing to see how the British auto­mat­i­cal­ly form an order­ly queue with­out com­plaint. Aussies would be bitch­ing and walk­ing away. After a week of shock­ing­ly low alco­hol prices in Spain it was laugh­able to see a glass of Cava adver­tised for five quid. You can get a bot­tle of the stuff for three or four euros in Spain. After brekky we head­ed towards Clapham Com­mon, which I wish I’d spent more time in — I imme­di­ate­ly felt at home there. Laid back, incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful park, lots of male cou­ples cud­dling or hold­ing hands or read­ing togeth­er on the grass, and a decent main street of shops, pubs, and bars. Lat­er that day Chris had an apart­ment view­ing going on so I walked along Bat­tersea Reach and took snaps and wrote diary entries for a while. Yet more pic­tures of ducks! I don’t actu­al­ly have a water­fowl fetish, just so you know.

And so came the day that I final­ly got back to the muse­um dis­trict in Kens­ing­ton. Last time I got down here my cam­era died after two pics in the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um so I left it for anoth­er day. There’s a lot of pics in this gallery. First off was the Sci­ence Muse­um. Loved the main hall — a beau­ti­ful space with a huge thin wheel in the mid­dle that had a wrap­ping LCD screen inside show­ing a physics demo. Below that was the steam pow­er exhi­bi­tion, lead­ing into anoth­er hall full of space and aero­nau­tics machin­ery. Tons of stuff to do inside, and four floors to explore. I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked the geom­e­try area where math­e­mat­ics met paper­craft — lots of pho­tos there — and the thread sculp­tures demon­strat­ing vir­tu­al sur­faces. Because I’m a cheap­skate and hate just buy­ing ran­dom junk, the only memen­to I bought was a cus­tom pen­ny with the sci­ence muse­um’s logo on it. Next was the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um full of art, sculp­ture, and fash­ion dis­plays (the lat­ter of which I did­n’t spend much time look­ing at). I have to admit that I was dis­tract­ed by the male form sculp­ture in the main hall… amaz­ing that some­one can visu­alise what they want to achieve from a mar­ble block and slow­ly etch it away into a recog­nis­able, beau­ti­ful form. Also, three hun­dred year-old willies. Beyond that there was a room entire­ly com­posed of white and gold dec­o­ra­tions which was incred­i­ble. Like most encom­pass­ing expe­ri­ences pho­tos don’t do it jus­tice so I’ve only include a shot or two. I wan­dered aim­less­ly through exhi­bi­tion rooms for a while until I found the objects dis­play, a col­lec­tion of ran­dom strange, unique, or beau­ti­ful­ly designed com­mon objects. There was an inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion booth about 3D print­ed guns as well. Next came the enor­mous and hon­est­ly breath­tak­ing Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um. From the out­side it’s impres­sive enough, but the inside is amaz­ing. Such a won­der­ful space, and clear­ly designed to draw the eye to cer­tain areas of the room. Of course I hit the dinosaur area first and took lots of pics, then wan­dered through the min­er­als and jew­els sec­tion and the Trea­sures room where one-off, price­less items like moon rocks and dodo skele­tons are on show. The giant sequoia tree was my last stop before I ran out of time and jumped on the tube back to Leices­ter Square to meet Chris as he fin­ished work. I had­n’t explored much of Leices­ter at that point but sud­den­ly found myself inside a huge M&M World shop. Who even knew M&Ms were impor­tant enough to jus­ti­fy a four-lev­el shop­ping com­plex. Kin­da hor­ri­fy­ing, but very well done. I smelt like M&M choco­late for ten min­utes after leav­ing that shop, and I swear they were pump­ing the aro­ma out of the build­ing to guide small chil­dren towards them like the Pied Piper. Last but not least we walked to Soho. I’d been to Carn­a­by Street before and explored a few shops, but we went into a bar this time and had a drink. Love­ly place, the Rupert St bar.

Anoth­er huge pic­ture day. Start­ed by catch­ing the bus to Kens­ing­ton and idly retrac­ing the way I’d been through before on my way to Bond St. Yet more ducks. Realised a bit in that I should hit Sel­f­ridges, whose impres­sive win­dow dis­plays I’d seen from afar with Chris a while back. Sel­f­ridges is like Aus­trali­a’s Myer or Grace Bros times a hun­dred, filled with upper class spe­cial­i­ty jew­ellery, gift, hand­bag, and con­fec­tionery shops who don’t hold back from charg­ing what they think they’re worth. Lunch was served at the Cape Town Fish Mar­ket, which is a ter­ri­ble name real­ly and was way too expen­sive for what I got. Also, it’s pret­ty under­hand­ed to charge some­one AU$7.50 for a bot­tle of water with­out them actu­al­ly order­ing it. Nasty. Stopped in at the Orbital Comics shop at Chris’ rec­om­men­da­tion and had a drink some­where near­by, read­ing for a bit and just zon­ing out. Met Chris at around 6:30 and began to head towards the Lon­don Eye, where we had tick­ets to go up above the city that night. The Eye was great, and we chose a per­fect day for it with lots of light and lit­tle haze. About half an hour lat­er and we would have caught the sun­set, but ah well. Saw lots of mis­cel­la­neous things on the way back to the apart­ment, includ­ing war memo­ri­als, Down­ing St, Trafal­gar Square, Nel­son’s Col­umn, and a giant blue cock.

I wan­dered pret­ty aim­less­ly on Wednes­day, not tak­ing many pic­tures but explor­ing the nooks and cran­nies of the city. Start­ed with an over­ground train from Clapham Junc­tion to Water­loo, over the bridge to the south east cor­ner of Green Park where I sat for a bit bask­ing in the sun, and then a lazy walk towards Pica­dil­ly and along Shaft­bury Avenue. My goal was to final­ly get to Covent Gar­den, but it did­n’t hap­pen, and dis­tract­ed, I end­ed up going back West along Oxford for lunch and a drink with a lucky branch down Berwick dis­cov­er­ing Gosh! Comics. (Also, bag­pipes are bloody awful.)

Sent north on a ran­dom quest by my moth­er to locate and sack an inter­na­tion­al Girl Guides lodge, I board­ed the tube to Hamp­stead. I’d wan­dered a dif­fer­ent route than usu­al from Chris’ work that morn­ing — north along Kens­ing­ton Church St — and even­tu­al­ly stum­bled across Lad­broke Grove sta­tion. Hamp­stead was a nice spot but I got lost by not look­ing at my GPS often enough. After I found the Guide’s lodge and got some mem­o­ra­bil­ia I aimed direct­ly for Hamp­stead Heath, which I’d been warned about pre­vi­ous­ly as being both ridicu­lous­ly huge and a big cruis­ing spot for men who enjoy the woods. I stayed on the fam­i­ly-friend­ly east side. Except for duck­ing in to have a look at the men’s-only pond that is. Then I almost got myself in trou­ble by catch­ing a cab that stu­pid­ly could­n’t take card (in the mid­dle of a city? how daft). Thank­ful­ly I had a fiv­er and just jumped out early.

Chris had been telling me to vis­it Covent Gar­den for days but I kept get­ting dis­tract­ed by oth­er lit­tle areas of the city, and parks, and cafés to eat in. So on Fri­day I aimed direct­ly at it and ignored all oth­er side streets. Covent Gar­den is love­ly. Bought a bunch of post­cards, gifts, and two over­priced Banksy prints here (I know, employ­ing cap­i­tal­ism in the pur­suit of Banksy art is inde­fen­si­ble). Def­i­nite­ly a tourist trap, but clean and pret­ty and organ­ised nice­ly. There’s even shirt­less tuk tuk dri­vers wait­ing on peo­ple in the mall area.

The day final­ly came when my tick­et was due and I had to go. Sat­ur­day was hard. I got my bag packed and head­ed out for a last lunch with Chris, spent an hour not want­i­ng to leave, and then the car came to take us out to Heathrow.

Oh the bore­dom of wait­ing in an air­port for six hours. Spent half of it in the lounge being harassed by their staff to take the com­pli­men­ta­ry mas­sage. Kuala Lumpur is a nice air­port aes­thet­i­cal­ly — cool unique ceil­ings and a gar­den in the cen­tre inside a big dome. Bit strange how the esca­la­tors are organ­ised though. Before I left I grabbed some banana and wal­nut bread, along with some car­rot cake and a fruit smooth­ie, from the air­port’s Boost bar. Some­thing fun­ny about see­ing an Aus­tralian brand oper­at­ing in a Malaysian airport.

Twen­ty one hours of fly­ing and wait­ing in lounges final­ly got me back to Aus­tralia at 10am where­upon I was imme­di­ate­ly hor­ri­fied by the food avail­able at Cen­tral. Crois­sants have for­ev­er been ruined for me thanks to the end­less French bak­eries in Lon­don. And wow, you can’t pos­si­bly be ask­ing for AU$4.95 for a muf­fin. I paid £1.60 in Chelsea for god sake. Any­way, home. :)

Warn­ing: con­tains every sin­gle pic­ture of ani­mals and insects that weren’t blur­ry or almost iden­ti­cal shots. Enter at your own risk.

Warn­ing: con­tains every sin­gle pic­ture of plantlife, flow­ers, and leaves that were remote­ly decent. Enter at your own risk.

5 thoughts on “London Trip 2014

  1. Andrew says:

    Any com­ments you leave will appear here!

  2. Genie says:

    Did­n’t they have games on the con­soles at your seat? Nice snaps of the flight path.….

  3. Genie says:

    I sin­cere­ly hope that was­n’t a Malaysian air­line! Oh no, wait…you’re back, so I guess not. Ah KL airport.…divine eh?

  4. Genie says:

    That brekkie looks suss.…loved the swans, and the shots of Kens­ing­ton Gardens

  5. Genie says:

    Fab shots! Loved the ones from the water…and the eye looks amaz­ing! Geez Lon­don has changed since I was there! Who’s the dude with all the micro­phones and paparazzi?

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