london day 3 and back to colchester

day 2 in London

Today, Angie and I went to the tower hill and admired the royal jewelery collections.  My favourite was the crown jewel which was absolutely stunning!  (Diamond of africa / star)  That was my favourite and I took the conveyor belt a few times just to admire it (yes, there was a conveyor belt to prevent ppl from stalling and blocking others..)

We grabbed a cheap sandwich for lunch and went to check out the St John HQ.  We met alex the receptionist and terry the tourguide.  Terry was an aussie/english and led us through a great tour of the tudor gate, 1540 building , library, great hall, church inside the chruch but couldn't get into the crypt.  I ended up buying 70 pounds worth of souvenir. man that was expensive

We then went shopping and looked for this crazy primark that pat told us to go to.We ended up getting some stuff off oxford street, will  go back tomorrow to check out fcuk for ah to.

In the evening, we saw the second show and it was Joseph and the technicolour dreamcoat.  Joseph was amazing.  It was a different genre and reminded me of skule nite in the sense that scenes are a bit random. I mean there was an elvis :/  But nonetheless, there were great songs, great cast (cute lead) lee mead - want to watch how he got picked now.  And I bought the cast book :)

After the show, we decided to head to king's cross so i don't need to do it tomorrow to get a shot of platform 9 3/4.

Tomorrow's plan is to check out buckingham palace (while the Queen's away on  vacation so we can go in!), hope we won't have too much trouble catching changing of the guards.

day 1 in london

the day started early with a cab pick up at 7:15 from harry's place
our cab driver was an older guy that i guess speed delivered us to the station in less than 5 minute ( harry's estimate was about 20 minutes)

we bought our return train/bus ticket and hopped on a bus with chinese writing on them (likely same bus made as hk buses) that took us on a jouney for about 1.5 hour to london liverpool station.

we started to get bad service at the train station right away and the lady was too busy talking to a guy than to serve us and got us to get a 3 day pass instead of an oyster card

then we got to our cottage which angie called shabby and i called it absolutely lovely.

speeding out of check in and paying our 3 pounds for a locker, we headed out to monument station to catch the free new london tour

our tour guide's name was gregg and he was an aussie. The tour was alirght and indeed showed us a lot of stuff that we wanted to see on the outside.

(more on the tour later)

It ended at about 15:00 and we walked over the west minister bridge right to the london eye, got our ticket and boarded our "flight".

it was quite nice up there, then we headed back to our hsotel, got into our rooms, claimed bed, showered and then went out to meet patricia and her friend at chinatown.

we ended up getting chinese food, avermicelli dish, veggie with garlic, weird apple sauce breaded chicken (spciy) thing, ducks..

it was a good meal but pat and her friend ended up paying more than us.. no good >< owe them big time

we then got our tickets at queen's theater for les mis. wewere sitting dead center except i had a huge head in front of me.. that was quite sad.
i didn't really know the story so it was quite exciting to just watch it unfold in front of me..
the guy who played valjean was awesome, the marius was cute and i quite like corsett'es friend.
some great tunes that i recognized (not sure how i remember, but i remember doing something on this musical maybe for french class and didn't persue it)
angie and i both bought the cd set for it for 30 pounds each and i got a program because i loved the cast too much for 3.50 on top. It was quite good and i vowed that i must look for the piano score when i get home.. too much to carry if i get it now.

anyways, i should probably also mention that this walking on the left side of the road is throwing me off. I always get it wrong in the tubes and going down the stairs, whichresulted in near incidents of collision... tomorrow we'll be travelling bright and early with the rush hour traffic, hopefully i won't get squished...

tower of london tomoro! super exciting! oh not to mention= St John HQ yayyay!! looking forward to souvenir acquiring ;) that's for sure! weee ahh must also get postcards! anyways i love les mis... it brought tears to my eyes at the end.. maybe i share more about the musical later..

bye for now

the hills are alive with the sound of music

Salzburg is awesome!

went on the original sound of music tour
viisted
mirabell gardens
leopoldskron palace
hellbrunn palace
nonnberg abbez
edelweiss ß didnät get the free gift
st gilgen and lake wolfgang
wedding church mondsee

apple strudel for 5.30 yummmyyyy

farewell @ the zum augustin

On thursday evening, Kabeg (work and coworkers) threw me a farewell party at the same restaurant that johannes took me to to try hausbeer on my first day there.

Then Rainer(boss) took me to dinner at this beautiful restaurant by the lake.  We had a kas dumpling thing and ilove it (cheese dumpling).

I need to get the recipe of these things and learn how to make it!

last week in klagenfurt

I can't believe it, it's my last week in klagenfurt, then I'm off to Salzburg, England, and then Munich and back to Toronto!

last nite in klagenfurt

Getting back from Paris

paris day 2

pa

now a paris

brugge and brussels

brugge

back from budapest:D