London Days 11 & 12

Read Day 0, 1 here

Read Day 2 here

Read Day 3, 4 here

Read Day 5 here

Read Day 6 here

Read Day 7, 8 here
Read Day 9 here
Read Day 10 here

Day 11

'Twas on a Sunday morning, and we went to a service at Westminster Abbey. (So that's the most traditional service I have ever attended. It wasn't as boring as I feared it would be.)

Within the chapel, we saw the graves of Dickens and Kipling and Handel, but got chased out before I could spot any queens. Westminster is quite eerie. It is extremely cold for some reason - colder than outdoors. And I started to tear when I entered. Quite inexplicably. It really gives you the chills. 

Then, for some absurd reason, we left and forgot to see Big Ben. Such a big London icon, really near Westminster Abbey, and we managed to forget.

Oh well. It gives me a reason to go back one day right?

Anyway, we then took a bus to St Paul's Cathedral. It was significantly warmer, brighter and altogether far more pleasant.

Charles and Diana got married at St Paul's. William & Kate married in Westminster but having seen both churches now, I definitely prefer St Paul's for a wedding. (Dear friends, should one of you ever marry Prince Harry, please hold your wedding in St Paul's. Haha!)

We then went back to Oxford Street for some last minute shopping and I finally got my M&S tin. It was this gorgeous tin with pictures of tea and biscuits and people having tea and altogether a lovely container I instantly knew I had to have once I set eyes on it. I first saw it on the day Mum & I had previously gone shopping, but we were carrying far too much to add a tin on to the load so I decided I would get it from another M&S. Except I visited 3 M&Ses in subsequent days and it was either sold out or not available at all. So I was so happy to finally get it in the end.

We ended the day with a wonderful turkey Christmas dinner with Aunty LK's family.

Day 12

Mum and Aunty LK decided to go for lunch on their own, so it was up to Rachel & I to decide what we wanted to do.

Rachel stayed home, but I didn't want to spend my last day in London staying inside. So I decided to go shopping. On my own pretending he's beside me. This marks the first time I was ever allowed to go off alone in a foreign country, and I must say it went really well. I'm hopeless at directions, but by God's grace, I didn't get lost at all. Miraculously, I seemed to know exactly where I was headed and I walked in all the right directions. (Ok I didn't actually know. I follow my gut and most of the time my gut is wrong but this time round God gave me some internal compass just for the day.) And I didn't get attacked or pickpocketed either. Thank God for keeping me safe:)

On our previous shopping day, Mum & I had barely finished Oxford, but Aunty LK suggested I also check out Bond Street. (Oxford, Bond and Regent Street are the streets with all the shopping).

Anyway, so I went to Bond Street and was greeted by the largest, most beautiful Victoria's Secret I'd ever seen in my life. (Haha actually I haven't seen that many VS stores. Just the small ones in SG that I never bother to enter.) Aunty LK said it was gorgeous and I had to check it out, so I entered. Let's just say I've never been excited about lingerie in my entire life, but this store thrilled me. I swear I've never seen so many beautiful bras before!

I'd really entered the store out of curiosity, not intending to buy anything. But then I saw this gorgeous bra and immediately felt like I had to have it. It was baby blue and silver lace and absolutely darling. I probably spent ages trying to look at other stuff and forget about it, but I still kept coming back to it. So finally, I gave in to temptation and got it.

Now that I think back upon it, I think it partly made me think of Elsa from Frozen because it was in that colour scheme. And I kept wondering whether or not to buy a particular turquoise something else because it was so much like Ariel's tail colour. I don't think I'll ever grow out of liking things because they remind me of something Disney.
(Wait... I just realised my favourite colours are turquoise and purple and Ariel's shell and tail combination is turquoise and purple omg Disney so subtlely influenced my favourite colour choices and I only JUST realised this???)

Anyway, I must have looked really young and inexperienced, because the cashier asked me if I'd had any help, and I said no, and he was like wow ok, and asked if it was my first time there.

I continued to walk around Bond Street but didn't see anything in particular that interested me.

One nice thing about these streets is that they're lined with random people who give you moisturizer samples that have gold or diamond dust in them or something. And in this sort of country, moisturizer is essential. I have to take it cos it's free right? Haha so Singaporean:)

Anyway, I headed back to Oxford Street and browsed the shops. Shopping alone in London is wonderful. There's no one holding you back in a store you're uninterested in or rushing you elsewhere, and everything's new (and thus exhilarating). I generally prefer shopping with people rather than alone cos I'm quite fickle and I like asking others for their opinions, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself here.

I ended up wandering back into Primark but the paying queue was far too long so I didn't get anything this time. As a matter of fact, I was so happily walking through all the stores that I forgot to note the time (Mum wanted me back by 3.30pm so we could do final packing and bathe before our flight) and by the time I remembered to check my watch, it was 3.10pm. Cutting it a bit close. I rushed to the tube and marvelled at how fast it was (4 stops in 6min) and ran back and stepped through the front door at 3.29pm. Not bad hahaha

And thus concluded our trip to London.

-

I'll be back. There's so many more shows to catch, and I'd like to finish the British Museum and Natural History Museum, check out places like Madame Tussaud's, the Sherlock Holmes museum, basically loads of the other museums, have a quaint little British pub and pie experience, remember to see the Big Ben. And do more shopping.

Till next time then!

London Day 10

Read Day 0, 1 here

Read Day 2 here

Read Day 3, 4 here

Read Day 5 here

Read Day 6 here

Read Day 7, 8 here
Read Day 9 here

Day 10

On this bright blue morning, we went to see the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace.

Unfortunately, I could barely see anything through the sea of people.

But I could hear the music. 

Later on when the crowd began to disperse, the guards were still playing their music and if I strained my head enough I could see the back of their heads. Their music was so cute. I thought they'd be playing all sorts of pompous music but there they were playing fun tunes and it was so amusing.

(So I googled the sort of music they play and it turns out they play all sorts of tunes from traditional military marches to songs from musicals and pop songs. Now I have to go back and see if I ever get lucky enough to hear them play a Les Mis song.)

After that, we headed to The Tower of London, which houses the crown jewels.

Mum was so thrilled by this fact that she must have repeated it to at least 10 people when we returned home so I can quote her on this now:

The uncut Cullinan diamond was 3106 carats, and was presented to Edward VII in 1906.

Emphasis on the 3106 carats, obviously.

And there's another really huge diamond currently set in the crown of Queen Elizabeth (wife of King George VI and mother of Queen Elizabeth II) called the Koh-i-Noor.

I'm pretty sure the entire crown jewels exhibit is a large vault because we were walking through those giant vault doors the whole way. Anyway, they were all very beautiful and definitely worth a visit. But I can't say diamonds excite me as much they excite Mum.

We also saw the graves of Anne Boelyn and Lady Jane Grey.

By the way, did you know that Jane Grey was executed when she was only 16? Poor girl, having to be caught up in the whole hustle for power at that time. If I recall correctly, she didn't even want to be queen. She was merely a pawn in her father and uncle's fight for power. 

Our tour guide was really entertaining and full of punny humour.

Now here's a fascinating fact. Do you know who the original Humpty Dumpty was? (At least, I'm just going to recount what the tour guide said). 

Richard III (who's kinda known as a bad guy - check out the legend of the princes in the tower) was a hunchback. Apparently he was a pretty proud guy. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Then he died in battle after he fell off his horse. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And kind of got hacked apart. And all the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again.

And his body was only recently found. Buried under a carpark lot labelled R for reserved. With a sign nearby that said "Caution: Hump in Road". Or so they say. Make of that what you will.

Also, did you know that the current Queen Elizabeth II is the second longest ruler in the history of England? (The longest being Queen Victoria). Queen Elizabeth II was coronated at age 26.

We had dinner at Gold Mine Bayswater. It's supposed to be famous for either the duck or the lobster noodle, I can't recall which, but we had both and more and they were all pretty good.

London Day 9

Read Day 0, 1 here

Read Day 2 here

Read Day 3, 4 here

Read Day 5 here

Read Day 6 here

Read Day 7, 8 here

Day 9
There is a road in London called Exhibition Road. Proximal to this road there are 3 museums: Natural History Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, and Science Museum. We visited the former 2 museums on the same day.

We headed to the Natural History Museum first. This sort of museum isn't really Mum's cup of tea, but Rachel & I insisted on going there because dinosaurs! and you can't miss out on seeing dinosaurs right? Apparently it's like all the other natural history museums in other countries, but such museums don't exist in Singapore so I think my excitement was founded.

If you didn't already know, I have always liked dinosaurs. From those days when Walking With Dinosaurs showed on tv and I'd watch it with Dad and Dan. I used to be able to tell you all sorts of cool dinosaur trivia like the difference between a Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus and Apatosaurus (yes, I was am a nerdy kid), but that phase sorta passed and my memory now needs a little jogging. The Stegosaurus had a walnut sized brain. That I remember.

Anyway, I found out new dino trivia at this exhibit too, like: if a T-rex tripped while running, the fall would probably have killed it. Because its hands aren't long enough to protect its head from hitting the ground first. Hahahaha. Poor shorthanded fellas.

After lunch at the museum, we headed to the Victoria & Albert Museum (otherwise known as the V&A). I think it's something like a British history museum. It just so happened that a free tour was starting when we wandered in, so we joined in:) The guide really knew her stuff, and we learnt more about people like Elizabeth I, Charles I & II, Mary Queen of Scott's. (I wrote some random fun facts about them on my phone but I lost all that when my phone had to be rebooted and I lost a whole bunch of information, sadly.)

There was this Great Bed of Wale on which 6 bakers and their wives once slept together. Imagine 12 people on that one bed! Everyone had to leave their mark on the bed after they slept on it so there was centuries-old graffiti on the bed. I was reading the graffiti and noticed that someone named Ted slept on it a few hundred years ago (his carved name was really obvious). Alternatively some modern guy named Ted might have secretly managed to carve his name beside the centuries-old graffiti.

We also saw Raphael's tapestries. I really admire the tapestry weavers of those times because how does anyone have the patience to do things like that?

There was also an ongoing fashion exhibit from the 1900s to modern times which was pretty cool.

Whose bright idea it was to make women wear dresses like these back in the time? This fashion didn't last long for obvious reasons (women constantly had to walk sideways through doors). Can you imagine all those poor women shimmying their way around the place?

The embroidery is beautiful though.

We went to Harrods after, where Mum bought tea and chocolates and then went to look for lipstick. As she was choosing a colour and I was holding her stuff, Rachel came to me with various lipstick colours and tried them on my lips (inclusive of white and black, which look like frozen frosty lips and very dirty lips; the colour payoff was rather sheer.) Then I glanced in the mirror and realised she'd put the most garish bright Barbie pink lipstick on my lower lip. To my horror, this colour refused to come off so I had to go hunt for a suitable shade to mask the colour so I wouldn't have to walk around with stupid bright pink lips. Anyway, there were cool things like Earl Grey chocolate being sold, but Harrods is really expensive so we didn't buy a lot.

We also found the Diana & Dodi shrine which says innocent victims but Aunty LK insists it said they were murdered when she first saw it. Well.

Anyway, then we went to watch Wicked and we were late cos Mum had lingered around Harrods till 7.15pm and obviously one can't catch a 7.30pm show like that. 

They let us in after What is This Feeling. 

Before that, we stood outside watching the cast on the tiny tv while I groaned in anguish because I cannot believe I was late for a West End show.

We got the cheapest seats for Wicked too but instead of getting the faraway cheap seats, we decided to try the close to the stage but restricted view cheap seats.

Verdict: I might prefer faraway cheap seats (like what we got for Matilda) because most of the time, my view was blocked by this staircase, and I had to strain my head to the right.

Of course, there are advantages to getting seats really near the stage, like getting to see the actors' faces up close. Fiyero was pretty cute.

Cast assessment:

Glinda (Savannah Stevenson) the strongest singer in this cast. Also, she was so pretty; she looked so much like Amy Adams on stage. (If you googled her now, she doesn't bear a strong resemblance though. Maybe it was the makeup.)

I enjoyed Elphaba (Willemijn Verkaik) a lot too. 

Fiyero wasn't great though. His voice wasn't strong at all (he spoke significantly louder and better than he sang) so he was obviously outsung by Elphaba in As Long As You're Mine. 

I'm not sure who was playing him. Jeremy Taylor normally plays Fiyero but I just googled him and if my memory serves me correctly, it wasn't him I saw that night. Anyway, I distinctly disliked the voice of whoever I saw that night.

Boq (Sam Lupton) was pretty good.

All in all, while I enjoyed the visuals and costumes (though frankly I don't think any show is as visually stunning as Phantom), I wasn't overfond of Wicked. Perhaps it's because I still think Les Mis songs are 989281927819x better (plus I was blessed with the chance to get to watch a pretty amazing cast for Les Mis). It was also probably because Fiyero's voice was so very disappointing (and being cute doesn't make up for not having a strong voice in a West End show). Also, factors like restricted view actually affect a theatre experience more than I thought it would. So somehow, this experience didn't hold a candle to the previous 3 shows.

Nevertheless, getting to watch anything on West End is pretty amazing in itself and I'm so very happy that I got to watch 4 West End shows during this trip:)

London Days 7 & 8

Read Day 0, 1 here

Read Day 2 here

Read Day 3, 4 here

Read Day 5 here

Read Day 6 here

Day 7
It was a cold misty morning. People huddled each other as they walked down the street, breathing out in tiny water droplets. The bitter wind bit my eyes and chilled fingers to the bone. Pretty sure the blood temporarily froze at the tips of my reddened fingers when I took off my gloves to take photos.

We were headed to the Harry Potter Studio Tour that day. Cue jokes about the dreary icy fog being caused by dementors about the place. 

The fog left a visibility of only a few meters and I seriously wondered how anyone drove in this (they cancelled quite a lot of flights going out of Heathrow airport), so I was rather worried along the bus ride there. And indeed, the guy kept driving into tree branches. Then again, those tree branches were so low that any double decker bus was bound to drive into them.

You can barely see the sign.

This post was incredibly hard to draft because I went absolutely trigger happy inside the studio and took photos of literally everything. I was all, "Ok let's take an overview shot. Now let's take individual shots of every single tiny little prop." (I think this shows my character trait of both liking to see the overall picture and needing to obsess over details. Hahaha.)

Here's a selected photospam.

I was trying to take a mirror shot with the Mirror of Erised, 

but so was everybody else, so it was pretty impossible to get a proper shot.

We tried butterbeer for the first time. It's nice, albeit extremely sweet. Kinda like butterscotch ice cream soda.

Diagon Alley and Hogwarts Castle were my favourite exhibits.

When we were done, we headed to the Covent Garden M&S for dinner. On such a bitterly cold day (even the Londoners were complaining about it being freezing), warm food was very much appreciated. Turkey & stuffing soup, steak with onion chutney sandwich, gingerbread latte (less gingerbready than the Starbucks one though) and orange hot chocolate. My stomach is growling just thinking about it.

Cheapest seats view

That night, we went Cambridge Theatre for Matilda and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!
Matilda (there are a lot of Matildas and I forgot to check the cast board for who was on that night) and Miss Honey (Haley Flaherty) were excellent. And the alphabet scene was so cool! I loved the performances of When I Grow Up and Revolting Children.


Day 8
This was our designated shopping day. We spent the entire day along Oxford Street. The idea was to walk to Primark and start our route from there, but we got really distracted by the other stores along the way, so by the time we actually got to Primark, the sky was already dark.

Can I just say something? The shop window displays are so lovely. Special shoutout to Selfridges to the most beautiful shop displays I have ever seen! (I've never been to Paris, but I hear the displays there are quite a sight too.)

I mean, these Londoners really know something about enticing you into their stores.

I spotted a Disney store so obviously I had to make us go inside. For old time's sake:) The whole place was running around with little girls in Tinkerbell and Cinderella and Belle and other costumes. They were absolutely adorable.

I half expected to bump into a celebrity trying to shop incognito, but much to my chagrin, this never happened. I happen to know for a fact that Katy Perry, Tom Hiddleston, Rupert Grint and Jude Law were all in London at the time I was there. And I met absolutely none of them. #nocelebrityluck

But all in all, it was a fruitful shopping day. 10 shopping bags later (along with me getting mad at a guy on the tube who wouldn't let me sit because his silly water bottle apparently needed the seat more than I did...in retrospect I should have simply sat on top of his water bottle), we were exhausted and glad to get back to the house.