I may miss out minor details that you probably won't know. Just bear with me and read on to know about my first time on European soil. :')
Day 0 - 27th December 2014
I barely slept that night because I was so stoked to finally go on this trip. Bags packed, warm clothes in hand, my Dr. Martens boots ready. After months of preparation, planning and excitement, it was finally happening and we were going to be on a Singapore Airlines flight for the first time! The flight was at 0910 so you can pretty much imagine how early we were. Dad and Afiq sent us off at Changi Terminal 3 and we finally headed to the departure gate.
We boarded the plane and the cabin crew greeted us as Singaporean as possible (because we were the few Singaporeans on board). We kinda got lost halfway because one of them gave us the wrong directions so this really handsome Malay steward directed us to our seats and no kidding, he was really good-looking. Then we just took selfies and he came back and asked if we needed help with the photo taking. He took the photo but because of the sunlight behind us, the picture turned out bad. Haaa, it's okay man, you tried hard.
Holy shit my tummy roll in that picture, hahahaha. The flight was 14 hours and 10 minutes and we were going 'back in time' sort of. We had sunlight the whole 14 hours, by the way. The seats were comfortable and we were provided with hot face towels when we boarded, blankets, a small pillow and socks for if we want to take our shoes off. There was a wide variety of in-flight entertainment ranging from current music like Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Paramore, to current movies and TV shows. The best part? They had a few episodes of Arrow and The Flash. Not all the episodes but enough to make me happier than I already was.
They served us food and after lunch, they turned off the lights and everyone was comfortably dozing off. I was too actually but then I woke up a while later and began watching Supernatural on my Mac. Honestly though, I just couldn't wait to land. I had the flight path on my screen the whole time just so I can keep track of where we were. :')
And finally, at 1530 I think, we arrived at London Heathrow. The moment we stepped off the plane on that bridge to the airport building, we could feel the chilly weather. Literally felt like air-con but like more natural. We got our passports stamped at immigration and then we collected our bags. But then of course, we had to search for wifi and there was wifi at the airport so we used it and informed loved ones back home that we've landed safely at Heathrow.
After a while, we decided to make our way to our hostel called Generator Hostel in between Russell Square tube station and King's Cross St Pancras. We went to the tube and got ourselves the Oyster Card, kinda like an EZ link card so we won't spend extra money on individual train rides. It's also usable on buses which was great because prior to buying the card, we didn't know that the buses ONLY accept Oyster, no cash. We took the Piccadilly line towards Russell Square but we end up alighting at King's Cross. Because we didn't have any 3G on our phones, I couldn't use Google Maps to find the direction to our hostel. I asked the information counter for help and well... it wasn't very useful. So I just walked out and followed my gut to the direction of the hostel. Managed to take pictures right outside King's Cross because it still felt surreal that we were in London.
The weather was freezing cold that night but we braved it and walked to our hostel according to the direction that the information guy gave us but then halfway, we couldn't tell where we were so we asked a passer-by who also just so happened to be an American hahahaha. But he had Google Maps so he helped us look for our destination and we found out we were close to Tavistock Place already. We walked up a little bit further and we arrived at Generator Hostel. We checked in and got our wifi accounts and towels because it's a hostel with shared changing rooms and shower and we didn't have towels with us. We got into our room and it had one individual bed and a double-decker bed but it was a little bit small for three people with three large luggages. I realised I didn't take photos of the room though, hahaha shit. After we changed and settled in, it was a tad too early for bed so we went downstairs to the cafe to get some food and tea.
We had sweet potatoes and relaxed at the common area while people-watching and there were plenty of handsome guys there. Then after that, we returned to our room at like 9pm-ish because we were so jet lagged. Here are some photos of the hostel's common areas.
Day 1 - 28th December 2014
The next morning, we woke up around 7am, showered and got dressed to explore the areas around our hostel and maybe further. We decided to have some breakfast before we ventured London city and we found a small restaurant across our hostel which served Halal food.
After filling our tummies, we walked around the corner and found a convenience store where we got our SIM cards so we could get connected to 3G and use it to get around. I mean honestly, walking around aimlessly wasn't gonna get us anywhere. I think it was unlimited 3G usage for £15. UNLIMITED 3G. £15 ONLY. That's like SGD30. For 1 month's unlimited 3G. That's how much I'm paying for 2GB of data with Singtel. Wow.
Anyway, we managed to settle our 3G connection and then found our way to Russell Square station. We initially wanted to explore the areas around King's Cross Station, but instead we found ourselves taking a bus to Trafalgar Square. It happened when we saw a bus that ends at Trafalgar, haha. So when we reached there, we took a lot of photos and snapchatted. It was a beautiful place. There were many tourists there too so practically everyone was taking pictures and selfies. Lotsa monopods in the air too, lol.
After hanging around Trafalgar for about almost an hour, we walked in the general direction of the London Eye and the River Thames. It wasn't far and the route wasn't too complicated. We had Google Maps to direct us anyway. Along the way, we saw souvenir stalls, and probably a certain important place that had guards on horses at the gate. It was pretty cool.
When we reached the river, we were so excited. We could see the London Eye but since we were just a short walk away from Big Ben, we went towards there instead. As you can tell by now, a lot of where we went were unplanned and spontaneous. Then we saw Big Ben and I just "BONG!", although it wasn't time for it to bong. Hahaha. K then we saw coffee shops and because it was freezing cold, we got hungry and thirsty really fast. I decided to get a cookie though, it costs only £1 and so delicious. Then we walked across towards the river and took photos and saw street buskers/magicians or probably scammers hahah, idk but we stayed away from them. They weren't the musician buskers by the way, and they didn't look nice. Anyway, we were planning to take the tube towards Arsenal or something but then the nearest tube to us was closed for some reason. So many people didn't know it was closed. Like an entire portion of a train line was closed. Honestly, it was worse than the train services here in Singapore. So we had to divert and walk further down to go to another tube station. The whole time, I was singing Ghost by Ella Henderson because "I keep going to the river to pray, 'cause I need something that can wash all the pain." It was then I realised she was talking about River Thames, hahahaha. We didn't cross the river towards the London Eye though, I'm not quite sure why. But I'm pretty sure it was because we weren't gonna pay to ride the London Eye anyway.
We reached Embankment and Aniq saw this sports shop and he had to go in to check out something for his friend and boy, was it a relief to be in a warm room after being outside in the cold for hours. Then we headed out towards the entrance of the tube station. Since we had to take the Bakerloo line from Embankment, we decided to go to Baker Street so maybe we could go to Madame Tussauds. I was pretty stoked about that because it sounded and looked so amazing when I checked the website. Plus, Baker Street was pretty much Sherlock Holmes' street. But I'm not that huge of a fan so it wasn't a big of a deal for me.
But when we arrived at Madame Tussauds, we were greeted by an extremely long queue for the tickets and for the entrance. We didn't buy our tickets online because we had a 2FOR1 voucher that can only be used onsite. So we cancelled our plans to go in to the museum that day and instead, planned to come early in the morning when it opens the next day. Plus it was a Sunday that day so naturally, it'd be extremely crowded. We left the area and found a souvenir shop with a huge phone booth ala TARDIS inside and I just took a photo and sent to Belle. She got all excited and I decided to buy her a Doctor Who souvenir. At that time, she was supposed to pay me back but then never mind about that, because I knew I wasn't gonna get her anything much anywhere else due to time constraints.
Since our Madame Tussauds plan didn't work out, we headed to Oxford Circus since it was 2 stations away and it was like the Orchard Road of London. But bigger with more things and more handsome and prettier Londoners. Aniq got crazily excited when he saw Nike town. Like it was literally the first thing that we saw there. It was like 3 or 4 storeys high and so happening. Really, with the music and the hustle and bustle of the crowd. There was a sale too because post-Christmas. Around Nike town there were other huge stores like H&M, Primark and some other expensive stores. After walking for a while, we found shoe stores and sports stores and Aniq was excited all over again. Then we went further down and I found HMV and oh God, I was the excited one after that. With the money I had for my own spending, I bought a couple of CDs for like less than £10 each, so after conversion to SGD, it's really less than what we've been paying for at our HMV. I got Olly Murs', Arctic Monkey's, Coldplay's, Maroon 5's and some other I can't recall what.
We walked along the stretch between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road stations till dark around 7/8pm before we finally took a bus back towards our hostel area. It was super spontaneous but since we didn't want to go through the trouble of changing trains and climbing up the many flights of stairs, we just boarded a bus that went towards Euston/Russell Square. We were so hungry and exhausted but luckily there was a halal restaurant that is still open that sells fried chicken just across our hostel. :') We bought food and ate back in our room, although we weren't supposed to by right, haha. And holy shit, the fried chicken was so good!!! Yums.
Writer's note: Ok so I delayed this for months and I haven't gotten around to actually finishing it because I've been busy with lazing around and watching Friends in bed. Lol, I apologise. But I can only afford these 2 days. Sigh, so many days this post is gonna take a year to complete. Day 2 will come soon so stay tuned!!! •