Well, I never thought I'd find myself back in London in so short a time frame again, but I did! Wasn't quite sure what to expect this time round -as much as I love London, I knew that things might be different now that I'm not actually living there, but oh what the hell -I couldn't wait to see it again anyway. (:
And so I landed in Heathrow with my friends, topped up my old student Oyster card (and was pleasantly surprised to find that it still had £2.10 in it hehe) and got onto the Piccadilly Line (towards Cockfosters, please mind the gap) in order to get to our hostel at Russell Square. And I found myself in some sort of a paradox: I had just taken 14 hours to reach London, yet being on the tube it felt so normal, like I had never left -and yet it was so strange that it was so normal. And so it went for most of the time in London -walking down Torrington Place, Gower Street, Tottenham Court Road, Charing Cross Road, Oxford Street, Regent Street, visiting UCL, Waterstones, Sainsburys, Tesco, Giraffe, Kensington Creperie, the list could go on and on. Okay I think I'm just thinking too much -it is normal feel normal to be in London, after all, London's 'normal' was what I had lived in for the better part of 5 plus months.
Geez two paragraphs in and I'm rambling already.
Well, just to keep this short -it's hard to enjoy London in the short few days we had there, not that I didn't enjoy doing my favourite things, but I think the bulk of my enjoyment in London came from just living there and doing normal things, or looking for new events or places to go to, with my friends or alone -best carried out over long time periods, with a comfortable room to return to after each foray was completed. Good memories of London accumulated this time round -lights gently twinkling along the Thames reflected in the wet pavements, slowly walking in the darkened streets of Covent Garden after catching a musical -with the sounds of 'When You Say Nothing At All" drifting across from two men with a guitar, and as those sounds faded, that of a violin came to my ears, from a lady standing in a softly lit doorway, and after she was done a man standing a short distance away from her applauded her, which she gracefully acknowledged. Just little things like that, things that are hard to come across sometimes in Singapore. And I behave a little differently in London, little things that I'm glad to be reminded of.
I definitely did not get to visit all the places I wanted to linger in, bringing my friends around to the big attractions does deny the luxury of time. All the same, I was glad to be able to share London with my friends -I was really pleased when they all concluded that they liked London (I'm sorry Huishi that you had a miserable time back there) despite my terrible tour-guiding skills ("That's Nelson's Column, I'm not sure what Nelson did but yeah that's his column." "Mmm yeah and that's another monument -I don't know what it is") and my apparently warped sense of distance that one tends to develop in London (i.e. everywhere seems to be 'walkable' to) (:
And there isn't really any point to this post I realised, just that London will always be there even if I'm not, and I'm so pleased to have had the chance to experience the city through SEP (a special spatial-temporal experience), it's strange to realise that there's another city so far away that I know about as well as Singapore (well, not really just as well as Singapore -more of in terms of navigation and survival skills).
Looking forward to finding myself back there one day again (:
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
London, almost one year on
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The very last post
I think I've pretty much chronicled everything I've wanted to about the last six months of my life (notice I changed the blog title from "the next six months of my life"? (:).
I've already done my Thank Yous on FB so I won't repeat myself here, but to everyone who matters, thank you once again.
One important lesson I've learnt in the UK and the whole experience: shit happens, so deal with it.
Hahaha. Sounds depressing but nah it's not as bad as it sounds! Shit has affected me way too much in the past. I've learnt how to be a lot happier with my life and simple things (which involves being more self-sufficient), how it is like to feel more confident of myself, how lucky I am to have had such an opportunity to learn (both academically and otherwise -well except maybe in the department of cooking) and how lucky I am to have met such wonderful people along the way (:
I think I have a much better idea of who I am now and I hope it'll stay this way for the rest of my life to come.
Haha I don't really know what to say anymore cos I think I'll just end up repeating ad nauseum what a good time I've had and how much I've learnt from the whole thing -but seriously, best time of my life.
Hope that you all have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I've had fun writing about the last six months of my life for all of you, it has been a wonderful ride.
I don't really want to hit the "Publish Post" button because it seems so final -no more posts about London to be written, no more pictures to be uploaded.
So here goes.
There's still the rest of my life to look forward to (:
The last weekend in London
It was such a great weekend and a great way to round off the whole London experience, I think. (: By this time Fen-ma had just moved into Yinghong's room as well, so the company was of course good!
Saturday -It's all about the music (20/6)
We had a pretty slow morning, shifting all our things from Yinghong's old room to her new room, and then Fen-ma arrived with her crazy heavy luggage which she had dragged all the way from the main road up to YH's place cos we missed her call :X Whoops. So yup we all settled in, had some breakfast, and set out to catch West End Live!
West End Live is held at Leicester Square, and all the big acts of the West End put up a few songs and acts. What better way to experience the best of West End... for free? (: Well unfortunately by the time we reached there it was 1pm and we (much later) realised that all the really cool acts (e.g. Hairspray, Wicked) had taken place earlier in the morning! But it wasn't too bad, we still managed to catch a little bit of Chicago (with Jerry Springer as Billy Flynn), and my all-time favourite JERSEY BOYS (which I had caught 2 days before) -they are sooo AWESOME. So yes, that was enough to make me very, very , very, very happy!
We wandered off after a bit and realised that there was a queue outside the Harry Potter truck -there was nothing else to do but to ask those dressed in wizard robes what it was all about, and apparently it was free admission for all today! Featuring the brand new not-released-yet X-box Harry Potter game, props and costumes from the movie and Dumbledore's office!
Oh yes, we would have really liked to have caught Jude Law performing in Hamlet, but tickets were so hard to come by by the time we realised we wanted to catch it, so the next best thing we could do was stand outside the theatre, take a picture with the poster and take comfort in the fact that at that exact moment, he was no more than 50m away from us putting up a show. Cheap thrill!
Next up: the girls were kind enough to accommodate all my whims and fancies since it was my last weekend in London, and there was pretty much only one place left on my Would-Really-Like-To-Visit list: ABBEY ROAD!
What I knew about Abbey Road was that music series Live From Abbey Road was filmed there -it's basically a music studio where loads of artists perform and record some songs -and the show used to air on what used to be Arts Central. After some googling, I realised that the Abbey Road Studios are also closely associated with the Beatles who recorded most of their material in there :O Their album cover for Abbey Road also features them crossing in a line across the zebra crossing outside the studios.
So after walking for ages from Baker Street, we reach but not sure if we are in the right place until we see loads of people taking photographs of a perfectly normal-looking zebra crossing. This must be it! Haha. Tourist-pedestrians are annoying the heck out of cars there, trying to retrace the steps of the Beatles and mimicking the album cover (and at the same time holding up the traffic a little) (: The walls that surround the studio are covered with words written in markers by all who made their little pilgrimage there -ranging from things like '____ was here' to the lyrics of Beatles songs. 
And I thought this was hilarious:
Hahaha.Sunday (21/6) -Turning 22 isn't so difficult
There was a reason why I pushed my flight date back from the 13th to the 22nd -so I could spend my birthday in London! What a good decision, well done me -pats self on back- (: Haha. Once again thanks to the girls for the great company and for letting me decide where to go! The day was spent re-visiting old favourites (East End Sunday Markets, Camden Town) and visiting something new (for me at least -Primrose Hill).
East End Sunday Markets: Where we jostled with the crowd amidst a burst of colours in the Columbia Rd Flower Market (and where they bought me really nice yellow flowers heh <3 ), where we had delicious bagels from a small but famous store, where I got to watch my favourite busker perform (he simultaneously sings/plays the harmonica, plays the guitar and drums -occasionally he plucks the guitar strings with his teeth), where we were shocked to find out that the best cheesecake in the world had disappeared from the Sunday (Up)Market GASP (but something else makes up for it later).
Camden Town: Where we had really good risotto from the market, where we discovered the best cake in the world (it tastes even better than it looks, and it already looked fantastic) -eating these by the canal and then strolling by the canal to get to Primrose Hill (:
Primrose Hill: Where I got my final birds-eye view over London, spotting the all familiar sights of the BT Tower and the London Eye, and where we played with bubbles (with a contraption that was an impulse buy from along Camden High St) and had Marmite Chips (we love them!). So that was all good ah. (:
And ending the day off with a good meal at wagamama's, a typical crap-the-overground-is-closed-how-do-we-get-back moment, waiting for the bus with a disgruntled (they were pissed off that the bus was taking so long to reach and somehow this led to a complaint on the state of democracy in the country -with the expenses scandal and Iraq included) but friendly (they attempted to forge a camaraderie amongst all waiting for Bus 46) British middle-aged couple, and B&Js icecream in YH's room (: Perfect!
Monday (22/6) - And so I leave London
This last bit of time in London was spent doing perfectly normal things, which was good enough because that's part and parcel of living in a big city isn't it? I said goodbye to the girls in the morning, hopped onto the Overground and made my way back to Ifor where I had left my main piece of luggage with Terence (to save me the trouble of dragging it to YH's place -thank you to him for letting it take up space in his room haha).
Thank you to Rumen for leaving his room open for me, giving some space for me to figure out how the hell I was going to fit all my stuff into a not-so-big piece of luggage. I was utterly baffled and a little panicky for a bit, but it all worked out in the end phew! Said goodbye to Terence, had a nice lunch with Rumen, did the last bit of hanging out in Ifor (with more good music and conversation), and before I knew it it was time to go.
And so the last bit of the London experience began (I truly felt like this would round off the whole living-like-a-Londoner thing haha) -dragging all my luggage (but thank goodness my parents had taken back all my winter things already) to Heathrow via PUBLIC TRANSPORT -the challenge being negotiating the stairs in the tube stations. I took bus 29 down to Leicester Square station, so I didn't realise how difficult this was going to be until I reached the stairs there. Usually these stairs presented no trouble at all but now they seemed to be twice as long raaah. I needed both hands on the handle to make it, but ended up dropping my luggage on the stairs anyway =|.
Anyway to cut a long story short, I reached Heathrow with nothing more than a few bruises on my right knee and a tiny abrasion on my right hand. Haha. Upon checking in I realised that my luggage was 20kg (OMG half my body weight) and I felt really proud of myself for making it. Haha.
And so I got on the plane and left London, putting an end to an experience I'll never forget. I usually hate cliched sayings, but I really do think it may not really be the end but the beginning of all good things to come because I really benefited so much from the whole thing (:
Sunday, July 12, 2009
F**king Camden Town
Haha I don't think that of Camden Town, it's just that one night I was in The Shed to watch Rumen perform in Thursday's Open Mic Night and some of the guys later improvised a tune about Camden Town and that was one of their lines, which was pretty hilarious.
Well, just like I mentioned in my previous post about UCL, I never did a proper post on my life in Camden Town so here it is!
In mid-December 2008, I had still received no news of accommodation and was getting slightly worried as I was leaving for London on 31st Dec 2008. So after the accommodation office failed to reply my email, I decided to give them a call (my first encounter with a Londoner!) -so the lady on the phone checks my details and tells me I'm staying at "______" -I couldn't catch what she said. So she repeats it and I still can't catch what she says so I ask if she could spell it out, and she very nicely obliges - "I, F, O, R, E, V, A, N, S" and I scribble it down on my accommodation booklet. I then realise that it is quite far off from school even though I had checked "proximity to school" as my priority and that catered accommodation was my last choice (for those who are kept in suspense, this story ends well (: ).
Well, I google Camden Town after that and it sounds like a pretty funky area, with punks and goths and an interesting history, so I do feel quite excited about going to stay there. Even though the first thing 2 people tell me when I tell them that I'm going to stay at Ifor is "Oh be careful, that's quite dodgy". Yikes.
Anyway to cut a long story short I really really really liked staying in Camden, though I find that there are two parts to Camden:
1. The Crazy Funky (somewhat touristy) Part
This is the part I first visited and was quite impressed by because at this point it seemed to have so much more character than the rest of London put together (yes, London didn't grow on me till about 2-3 weeks after I got there). I like going around the markets (when I'm in a mood for shopping), and bringing people around there, and just basically wandering around and looking at random things that catch my eye. Oh yes, and people watching -young punks, old punks, goths -what's there not to like (even though I question how 'authentic' some of them are)? Haha.
The canal actually stretches all the way from Kings Cross to Camden to somewhere else even further away, and is one of my favourite parts of Camden as it is really pretty and serene (it straddles both the funky and the normal) and also demonstrates some verticality in the landscape -it is so different passing under the roads that I usually pass by above the canal!Which is Camden Road (The funky part is on Camden High Street)! Look at the picture below, the one on the bottom right. The road on the right is Camden Road, Camden High Street is not in the picture but is where the road branches off to the left before this particular branch (confused? I'm not very good with explaining directions haha). Yep so Camden Road is the road I mostly walk up and down on my way back to Ifor, passing by Huge Sainsbury's (yay -I pay frequent visits to this place to stock up on milk and cereal-my favourite Sains Honey&Nut Cornflakes especially), Camden Road Station (the Overground that not many other people might know about, especially if they don't live in North London -I love taking this except it doesn't really lead anywhere into Central London heh) and some small restaurants and grocery shops (where I sometimes pick up some fruit). By the time you reach Ifor, it's mostly residential.
And okay la, I've never encountered anything dodgy in Camden even though there have been stories of things happening to other people (though we never know who they are), and at some point Mich & I figured that there other people were mostly always drunk. So yes the trick is to stay sober, plus the fact that the people I hang out with are not really the night-life type (and neither am I) so I usually get back at a pretty safe hour!And now we come to the all-important Ifor Evans Hall, where I lived in for 5.5 months. I was really sad about leaving the last time I tried to blog about this but I think I can do this now because it's all good memories!
Well, let's just say I thought it was quite a shithole at first (haha though I really did hear the head housekeeper describing Ifor as a "right shithole" while arguing with somebody on staffing issues), especially after visiting the spanking new Goldsmid House that Heather was staying in. But as I gradually did up my room and got to know more people, the place became as cosy as can be -and I quite liked that it was old cos it contributed to the overall atmosphere (and I guess I had to be thankful for having good neighbours).
My super ultra cosy room (pictures taken right before I started packing up to move out). On a random note, Dishwalla's Angels or Devils was playing on repeat while I packed up my room, and I'm playing it now because it reminds me of A303 and Ifor (:
The exteriors (pictures taken in winter)And what would I do without my regular dinner gang whom I stumbled across sometime in February, after utilising my sit-with-someone-you-recognise-and-have-talked-to-before-no-matter-who-they're-sitting-with 'strategy' haha. And so via Terence, I met Thomas, Mingte and then Rumen who were a fun bunch to have dinner with. Thomas later left us for Amsterdam and missed out on my attempts to 'cook' (okay fine I used pre-mixes) for them on 2 occasions (with no food-poisoning cases reported). We also had some really fun music sessions -plus it's nice to have people knock on your door to talk when you're bored to death studying or to have people's doors to knock on, to have people to watch HIMYM with, or to just look forward to dinnertimes everyday (especially during the dreary exam period when I hardly ever went out). Lucky, lucky me (:
So yes, that's the Ifor experience and the Camden experience and I loved it! (:
That's what I go to school for
I've never done a proper post on school, have I? It has always been a little here and there in this blog, talking about my lessons, and whining about studying for exams. So here's a little tour of UCL!
This is the Geography Department at the Pearson Building -I hardly ever have lessons here, I've only been here twice -the first time for the briefing for exchange students, and I've only had 1 tutorial here (cos I skipped the other one hahaha). The rest of the Geog department is located at Bedford Way, where ironically I only have Anthropology lessons at. I love Geography! (:
I spotted a staff poster on the wall. Yanjie must have been thinking WTH is wrong with her when he took this photo. Haha!
If you are a loyal follower of this blog (haha) you might remember that I wanted to blog about my hot lecturers but never got around to doing it -well now's the time! They're the two guys my fingers are sort of pointing at (I realised they aren't exactly pointing at them, but somewhere in the vicinity -good to protect their identities then).
M.G. wears flowery shirts, but looks good in t-shirts, has slightly curly and slightly shorter-than-shoulder-length hair, has a very soothing voice and sounds like a very sensitive intelligent man. And he is really intelligent, because half the time I have no idea what he is talking about and am usually chatting to Winnieee on Gchat during lessons :X Heather says that she just wants to give him a hug HAHA.
J.D. is American, quite good looking and is extremely charismatic -I think that he wouldn't be out of place on TV seriously. We all go to his lectures to be entertained, and we never fail to be entertained with his humour (e.g. describing a certain bus's appearance as being as rare as that of a unicorn, proclaiming he was going to hell for eating something as cute as a puffin -and he even showed us pictures of puffins for us to get the idea) -I even record his lectures because he is THAT funny. I look at my lecture notes and see that I have taken down quotes from him instead of taking down proper notes. Hmm. Then I realise while studying for his exam that his module's content wasn't very good in the way it was structured and that I hated it. Hahaha.
Okay despite this bimbotic post, I really must emphasise how good the lecturers in UCL are (hot or non-hot) -reading their articles I really am impressed by the quality of their work and bowled over by their intelligence, and I can see why the Geography department ranks so highly.
Okay other parts of school:
This is the Anthropology Department -see that white piece of paper stuck on the glass door? It says Department of Anthropology UCL on it -I don't know why they can't afford a proper sign! The doors are locked and you need a code to get in. Haha. I have my weekly Anthropology tutorials (tiny class size ranging from 2-5 people) here, and this is where I drop off and pick up my Anthro essays from too!
And this is the cafe in which I lost my old camera. Bleah. The greens are out! (:
And that, below, is one of my favourite buildings in UCL -the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES) -it's so gorgeous on the outside and the inside and I love the library(the pictures on the right hand side are that of the library from the outside). It helps that not that many people use this library, so I'm glad for the Anthropology mod that let me spend some time in here and to increase my knowledge of the region (:
So yup all in all I think I did have a good learning experience here in UCL (though not as much as it could have been cos come on, I'm on EXCHANGE -I don't do all that much work haha), though I still find the NUS geog department way more homey and approachable! And though that's where my heart lies I'm still glad to have had the opportunity to experience something different. So goodbye UCL for now! Maybe I'll see you one day for PostGrad HAHA. See where my dreams lead me to!
Even more overdue: Easter Madness
And also an experience I'll never forget. I don't know if you all know, but I really really have a problem retrieving information from my brain -cos if you ask me to tell you something really interesting that happened off-hand I wouldn't be able to, not because I didn't do anything interesting or that nothing interesting happened to me but because my brain just doesn't work that way! The best you can do is wait for me to remember something interesting that happened (which may, or may not happen). Haha.
The last you heard about my Easter travels was probably about how I was completely stressed out with tons of things to accomplish in the 2 or 3 days before I left -this resulted in me packing for a 3 week trip in about one hour, leaving hall near 2am, giving up on taking a night bus to Yinghong's place because the bus frequencies were too far apart, and ending up taking a 12 pound cab ride there instead.
The rest of the trip was good, despite many many frustrating moments I think we dealt with them and managed to have a good time still (:
So this post is going to be dedicated to my travel & London SEP buddies Esther, Huoyfen, Ziwei and Yinghong -well just because I believe that a trip is also all about the company, and they were great (:
Czech Republic: Cesky Krumlov & Praha (31/03 - 03/04)
Cesky Krumlov -a very picturesque town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is a 3 hour bus ride out of Prague, where we stayed in a very cosy hostel and where we realised after awhile that it would be much better to be there in the summer as the town was a little dead. Haha. We visited the castle, trod on the roads, retraced our steps loads of times when we realised how small the place was. However it was really a nice place and it was good to get our trip started there!
Praha-a really pretty place! We went on the free walking tour where we learnt loads about the city, had really good food which involves loads of meat, some sort of bread thing(which they insist taste like fa gao), and interesting selections of cheese and cold meats (for the adventurous). Where we sat by the river and chilled, had our first encounter with cheating on public transport, where Yinghong faced an internal struggle on whether or not she should buy a cup of Coke, where we walked to the Museum only to find out it was closed, where we encountered the first of many statues of people we don't know but took pictures of anyway. Haha.
Berlin (03/04-05/04)
The city we loved because of its rich history, where we went to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, thought we were cheating on the S-Bahn before realising much later that we were entitled to free rides with our Eurail pass, where we had encountered delicious German sausages, where we went for a great walking tour with a guide who talked really slowly for dramatic effect, where we bathed in record speed every night because of the open-concept-toilets in our hostel, where we loved shopping in supermarkets and stocked up on cheap Haribos (gummy bears!) and Rittersport which lasted us for the rest of the trip (: Picture from Esther's album cos my camera battery was dying by this point. Heh.
Munich (05/04-07/04)
Where we walked down a very long, dark and dodgy looking road from the train station to our hostel, where we learnt more about German history, where we had fantastic icecream, where we climbed damn a lot of steps up the St Peters Church Tower and left our mark on a bench, where we relaxed in the Englisher Gardens under the sun while swapping sunglasses, where we went looking for the very ulu Hirschgarten, Munich's largest beer garden -involving again walking down dark streets and through a dark scary garden (and where a car stopped to ask us where we were going cos it was weird to see 5 girls in the middle of nowhere), playing singing games to keep ourselves company, where Esther and I had a strange dish involving cold roast pork in aspic (some sort of gelatin), where we relaxed once again at Nymphenburg, looking at swans doing unglam things, where we discovered our travel plans in France were TOTALLY SCREWED cos of the Easter weekend and stupid French-train policies but where friendly American who looked like Jim Carrey helped salvage the situation a little (but we had to forgo going to Nice raah). Pictures courtesy of Esther once again!
Paris & Montpellier (07/04-12/04)
Where things all started to go wrong, where we collectively accumulated €150 in fines in our attempts to cheat on public transport ($(*)#&$), where we had baguette for lunch before realising that baguettes were what the Parisians were feeding to the pigeons, where we made 3 visits to the base of the Eiffel Tower but never once made it up there, where we were asked 10000 times whether we spoke English, where the Metro smells like pee and the list goes on and on and on (Refer to Esther's note on 15 reasons why we hate Paris on FB). Where we spent about 4-5 hours in McDonalds in Montpellier because it was raining even though it seemed like such a nice place, but also where we were SO HAPPY TO LEAVE FRANCE even though we nearly got a heart attack when our train was late and we thought we were going to miss our connection to Barcelona (luckily there were loads of other people taking the same connection), where when we thought we were finally safe on the train to Barcelona and I suddenly realised the carriage was emptying out and a kind guy who was going to get off too paused to tell us that we needed to get onto the other carriages cos the one we were on was going somewhere else, leading us grab our luggage in a mad rush and attempt to retrive Ziwei from the toilet. Haha.
(we look happy cos it's only our first day here)The first city where we actually had time to chill and stay put for a few days, where the sun was fantastic, where we had Paella, where we went shopping, where we were fascinated by Gaudi's architecture, where we chilled loads by the beach, where Fen-ma and Ziwei bravely dipped their toes into the waters while Yinghong, Esther and I remained all wrapped up on the beach, where we spent an annoying few hours trying to figure out how to get to Rome (damn Eurail), where Fen-Ma searched shop after shop for a magnet, where we just basically took things really slow and it was fun that way!
Roma (16/04 -20/04)
Where the girls indulged me and my fascination with the Roman ruins and all things Julius Caesar related, where we visited most attractions for free because we were for once at the right place at the right time, where we threw coins into the Treviso Fountain which ensures our return one day but we forgot to throw another one in to get a wish, where we had the bestest gelato after having trouble finding the shop (thinking it had closed down when actually it was somewhere else), where we somehow could understand our warm hostel owner who spoke to us in rapid Italian, where it rained on us and we had a loooooooong lunch (with Ziwei and Esther competing for last place), where we brisk walked for an hour in the rain by the lovely Tiber to get to the Vatican City, where the next day we decided NOT to walk to the Vatican City and took a bus instead, where we saw the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel and sent postcards using Vatican stamps, where we had a simple lovely dinner of pizza which we dabao-ed back to our room, where we wondered why there was so much nudity on Italian TV (:
Firenze (20/4 -22/4)
Where we encountered more and more Italian Art and Michelangelo, Ti4Tian3, Raphael, etc etc etc (what is art?), where we ate more gelato, where we attempted to locate Lonely Planet's recommendations and successfully managed to eat at Mario's YUM (albeit on our 2nd attempt), where we sat on the floor at the train station because once again our train was rit.
Venice (22/4 -23/4)
Where we had to find our way to our hotel deep in the suburbs, where we spent day '1' in the hotel, where we watched The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll and Sweet Home Alabama in Italian, where we tricked Ziwei into having her fortune told while the rest of us conveniently forgot about our turns after hers, where we made our way into Venice on a bus, blocking the ailse with our huge backpacks (it was a CRAZY squeeze when people wanted to get out), where Fen-Ma struck up a conversation with a lady on the bus who gave us some good information on Venice, where we found out that baggage deposit was freaking expensive, where we wandered around with Fen-Ma leading the way with the map, where we enjoyed the picturesque sites, where it started pouring again, where we ate our lunch (which was dabao-ed from our breakfast) in a dark alley, where we realised gelato was really cheap and ate it anyway though the winds were blowing crazily at us, where we were all glad to get onto the plane and head back to London (:
Well, all in all I think we all had a fantastic time, and THANK YOU girls so much for being part of this experience! (: I'm missing all the good times we had, so hopefully we can have some more in Singapore! (:
Long Overdue: Edinburgh (15 - 17 June 2009)
Last trip with the SEP girls, dearest Yinghong and Huoyfen up north of the UK! Was really excited about this because at this point I had been hanging around London for about a month, and as much as I love London it's always nice to get out and see something different -plus it was to be our last trip out of London! Although rains were forecasted over Edinburgh for the 3 days we were to be there, I very optimistically packed in a pair of shorts (come on, it's supposed to be SUMMER) -and as you will discover later, my optimism was pretty much misplaced. Darn.
Day 1
So on Monday morning we started off our journey from Kings Cross Station, where I got away with using Pris's rail card yay! Lucky for me they checked YH's first so I guess they didn't bother checking very closely if my face matched the picture on the card (either that or all Asians do look the same haha). Hurrah.
After a 4+ hour journey, we pull into Edinburgh's Waverley railway station, climb up the stairs and emerge into the streets of Edinburgh. First impression: Edinburgh is gorgeous - it feels somewhat like a fairytale or that I've been transported a few centuries back in time as the sights of the Old Town meet your eyes. I'm going to let some pictures do the talking here (:
View of the Old Town -whilst ascending Calton Hill
The Royal Mile -the main road in Edinburgh's Old Town which has the Edinburgh castle on one end of it and a Palace on the other endit starts to rain. And this is no light London shower, this is RAIN -for real. And it's COLD. I guess the people of Edinburgh are pretty used to it because some of them are still walking around without umbrellas despite it being the type of rain that makes one gets utterly drenched. Raah. We make it to our lunch destination after a walk that takes us through picturesque Edinburgh (and in the process discovering how Edinburgh is VERY HILLY -NUS hills are puny compared to the differences in elevation in Edinburgh).
So anyway after a nice lunch, it is still raining and we decide to check the castle out, only to discover that by then it's about an hour before it closes so we're not too sure if we should rush it. So we make our way down the Royal Mile, ducking into random places to seek shelter. The rain lets up after a while, thank goodness.
We decide to climb Calton Hill, as it seemed like there were pretty interesting things at the top to look at. On the way up, we see...
Loads of stairs,
A view of the Old Town and the train tracks leading into the Waverley Station,
and gorgeous paths lined with ROCKS (Scotland is a geological heaven) (:
An acropolis that is an unfinished monument meant to be a memorial to those who had died in the Napoleonic Wars (If I said that this is Rome or GreeceI bet nobody would know the difference. Haha.),
Panoramic views of Edinburgh (it's not raining but it was so cold that I put the hood up in an a desperate attempt to keep my face somewhat warm),
Really pretty pathways,
Arthur's Seat -an extinct volcano,
Great expanses of freshly wet grass,
Making for wonderful memories and good photo opportunities (:We booked a one-day tour up to the Highlands of Scotland, which I'm really excited about! We unfortunately underestimate the time we need to get to the meeting point and that PLUS the fact that we weren't all that familiar with the paths of Edinburgh and that it involved a crazy uphill climb meant that we were about 5min late, causing the bus to leave late and our guide/driver slightly disgruntled for the rest of the trip -but whatever, this post is not going to be about him. Haha.
The Highlands are GORGEOUS (and thank goodness the weather was perfect) -one day I'm going to take a really long tour of the Highlands -one day is not enough plus we spent most of the day on the bus rather than walking about. Oh wells.
Imagine the glaciers carving these smooth undulating valleys and mountains out eons and eons ago (: It's not all about geology, there's loads of human histories between the Scottish clans -victories, tragedies, human lives revolving around these harsh highlands.
Meet Nessie, one of the monsters that supposedly live in the Loch -but the Loch is so deep and huge (supposing it is drained it could hold 10 times the world population) it's not surprising if unknown things lurk below, is it (And Nessie, according to Marshall in HIMYM is a really a 'gentle creature' heh.)?
The infamous Scottish Kilt (I must mention the highly annoying tourist shops all around Edinburgh which sell kilts and insist on blasting some monstrous hybrid of techno-bagpipe music)
The waters of the Loch Ness
The Loch Ness and Us (:
And we decided to have dinner at The Elephant House -where JK Rowling wrote some of Harry Potter ahhh. Haha.
Day 3
Our last few hours in Edinburgh, and we were planning to climb up to Arthur's Seat (that extinct Volcano) cos apparently the climb is rather worth it for what you get to see at the top, but unfortunately the skies open up on us again.
Thank goodness for free museums to visit! We visited the Museum of Childhood -which covers more than just the play aspect of a child's life, but was a bit too cluttered for my liking -I much preferred London's V&A's Musuem of Childhood! This goes back I guess to museums as spaces -how would you choose to present something? What I liked about the V&A was that it really was a space where children could play as well, but the Edinburgh's Museum of Childhood was more of things being displayed behind glass cases (well perhaps because of space restrictions as well) which creates a strange atmosphere for things supposed to make kids happy. Afterwards, we visited the People's Story Museum, which was really interesting presenting a cross-section of occupations/ types of people living in Edinburgh, but at some point it was information overload -but you could see how they're really proud of all the different people who've contributed to creating the social life of Edinburgh.
The skies cleared up after lunch but we didn't feel like we had time to climb Arthur's Seat :( So we walked down Princes Street, once again got sucked in by H&M (I'm such an addict!!) and then decided to explore the New Town -which wasn't all that exciting because we felt like we were back in London all of a sudden. We decided to head for this bridge that ran over the Water of Leith (what a nice name for a stream/river) and were greeted by some other really nice views (:
And so we made our way back to our hostel to grab our bags before heading to the train station and making our way back into London. I wish we had more time to spend there , but all the same it was a nice short trip with the two girls and I'll definitely want to go back to Scotland one day (and eat my fill of Scottish biscuits) (:
I just realised that this is the first proper post I've ever done on my trips, and gosh it's TIRING and is likely to be the last proper proper post on trips. The rest are going to be bite-sized! Haha.