London Weekend

After a pretty unproductive week work-wise (including 3 days where I had to be in meetings for clients who I wasn’t supposed to be working on this week) I managed to slip away early on Friday and make it to my flight to LONDON - my first big trip to the big smoke!

It was a whirlwind trip, and out of all the London mates I only managed to catch up with Vanessa. (Sorry guys!)

Here's my backpack making its maiden voyage-

So on Friday night I was quite proud of myself for getting all the way to Schiphol on the bus without being on the wrong side of the road for the bus, getting the wrong bus, or getting off at the wrong stop. I grabbed a quick Starbucks coffee (the only place in Amsterdam they have it!) and then milled around in duty free. Unfortunately the duty free was off the cards once again because my payment had not gone through from KPMG over here yet…

Nonetheless, after a successful arrival in Merry Old England, I even stumbled my way onto the correct bus to go to Vanessa’s house! With a minor detail being the fact that I asked to get off at a stop a tube ride from Vanessa’s rather than the stop just around the corner!

After a long catchup covering all the gossip, and a good sleep on an air mattress (sadly this is likely to be considered more comfortable than my little bed in Amstelveen) it was time to hit London.

Vanessa’s neighbourhood is where Madonna and Kate Moss live. So we walked around a bit, but didn’t see anyone famous. Although we did see a big fancy car. No one of note inside it though. A couple of streets over is Lord’s cricket ground, so we walked around it and took a few snaps.

The next item on the agenda was some serious shopping. We headed off to TOPSHOP to meet up with Amanda and Milli, who were running seriously late. Milli had some emergency shopping to do (shoes and a handbag) and the rest of us were happy to browse.

I wanted to get a real ‘pub meal’ for dinner, but the pub was full by the time we got there! We went to some Thai restaurant with Vanessa’s friends Chanel and Helen, before a few drinks at the pub and a relatively early night.

Sunday morning was brunch and the ‘Langley Lightning London Tour’, which consisted of sightseeing: London Eye, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace.

By this stage I was pretty much exhausted and we headed back to Vanessa’s to grab my stuff for the flight home.

Now my smooth journey into London left me with high hopes about the transport system back towards the airport. Unfortunately, a major debacle ensued. While waiting for my prepaid bus, all the buses that come past are full! Luckily Vanessa was waiting with me, so she helped me to RUN (yes run) to the tube station, jump on and go up one stop, then RUN (yes run) to the train station, buy a ticket, and jump on a train which then connected to a shuttle bus in order to make my flight. Which I did. So good work on that front from Vanessa!

A couple more pics -

If you click on this one and make it bigger, you can see that I'm pointing at an advert for NZ!

This very flattering picture is of me saying 'I'm on the tuuuuuuuube'. It's gold.