London - Paris-Brisbane - Day 22 - 6th to 8th March 2016

For the first time on a ‘moving’ day we didn’t have far to drag our suitcases. It was an easy walk this morning from our cheap, chain hotel to Euston International Station. We had a date  with a train to Paris. Everyone talked about the Eurostar – Hugh’s dad to say it was outdated, his wife Margie to say it was great fun, and our travel agent to tell us how much money we would save flying out from Paris instead of London.

St. Pancras Station

It was bad advice. Take the flight out of London. The Eurostar was old and outdated – and incredibly squishy.

Once we’d battled to get our luggage to fit (The Eurostar did not have nearly enough spaces for luggage) the Eurostar actually chugged along nicely – until it got to the tunnel. I’m just going to say that I don’t like enclosed spaces – particularly when there is no way to exit them. So the tunnel bit I was ok with, because it had open ends. The train malfunctioning during the power change-over I was not ok with. I was wondering why the train had been sitting at the mouth of the tunnel  for a quarter of an hour when an announcement came over that we were unable to connect to the tunnel power grid, and essentially we would lose power entirely for an undefined amount of time – including the ability to open cabin doors and the air-conditioning. Best way to get me into a panic attack ever. Despite it being winter, once the power went out the cabin heated up pretty fast. We sat without power for an hour before it finally came back on and we could continue our journey.

I was happy when I could get out of the cramped seats at Paris – having spent an hour more than expected on them.

We checked our bags into the Left Luggage area as soon as we arrived, intent on spending the day exploring, as our flight didn’t leave Charles De Gaulle until 7pm at night. Paris wasn’t really on the same page as we were though.

Before leaving the train station I went to use the ladies facilities, and came back out to see what looked like an impending fist-fight between a British tourist and a Parisian about some money that the Parisian had stolen from the British guy. Loads of people were standing around gawking, including the security guards who were laughing instead of stopping any fight from happening. Hugh and I left the train station as quickly as we could.

Outside the train station was no better. We stopped in for some super duper expensive crepes (disappointing crepes. I’ve had way better in Australia) for lunch, then headed to the Sacre Coeur. Within a few minutes of starting our walk I felt uncomfortable. We saw a man harass a woman with her 2 children for money and then the thief from the train station walked past us. As we got closer to the Sacre Coeur I was feeling very out of my comfort zone. There were scams happening left right and centre. We eventually made our way through the crowd in the streets nearby and found the Sacre Coeur itself. I have a vague recollection that it was quite impressive for the outside, but I didn’t get much chance to look, as anybody who entered the are was beset by illegal immigrants trying to scam or sell you things, every 2 steps. Or in the case of one gentleman, spitting at us when we didn't give him any Euros. 

Almost as soon as we arrived, we turned around and left. An hour after arriving in Paris, we had decided we had enough. It was a horrible, smelly, the French were incredibly rude, and it made me feel so uneasy. So we collected our bags from the deposit, somehow found our way through and headed straight off to the airport – 7 hours earlier than planned. When we arrived we had about 4 hours until we could even check in our bags, so we sat on the outside of the airport, where there were a few cafes, and wasted time there. It was a much better choice than staying in Paris. I wouldn’t go back to that place if you paid me to go.

Several hours later we eventually got to board the plane for a 10 hour trip to Incheon. We had a quick 3 hour layover, where we got to use the free showers, and got to take part in the free cultural activities, which included decorating a hand-mirror that I got to take home as a souvenir.

Decorated hand mirror

We boarded the next plane and finally arrived back in Brisbane at 7am the next morning, to discover that somewhere in Paris, someone had scanned Hugh's credit card and made multiple purchases off it.  I had a thought later that the 'fight' in the train station was probably not real, but a chance for someone to walk around and steal details while everyone was distracted. Thanks Paris, just another thing I'll remember you for. Luckily, the rest of our holiday was amazing, and we just joke about Paris now (our bank refunded the money which was great).

First things First at home: Updating the fridge!

London, Day 17 - 1st March 2016 - Harry Potter studio tour

HARRY POTTER STUDIO TOUR. 

Nothing else needs to be said about today. 

Well, we did have an epic 2 hour journey from Monument to Watford Junction to get to the Leavesden studios. But it doesn't matter any more. Because HARRY POTTER. (Note: Do not attempt to catch the tube in peak hour with baggage. It will not end well, and will end in having to take a taxi in peak hour instead.)

It was an amazing experiance once we finally got there, seeing all the sets right next to each other, the costumes, props, special effects and planning of the movies. Everything was so complete and it made it feel just a little bit real. I was definitely imagining going to Hogwarts. I also got to ride a broom (but I did decline to pay the £14 fee to get the picture). 

There's not much that I can say without rambling, so I'll leave everyone with a few (or more than a few) pictures that should leave you all wanting to add this to your bucket list.

Dumbledore's study

Hogwarts Express. For real.

The great hall

The Hufflepuff table (My house)

The Christmas feast in HP:GOF

The boys dormitory

The Gryffindor Common Room

Snape wearing your grandmas clothes and looking incredible

The potions classroom, and Snape costume.

Ministry of Magic

Malfoy Manor - Death eater Meet-up.

The Burrow kitchen

Hagrids Hut

The Chamber of Secrets bores my husband.

Ministry of Magic - Magic is Might.

Prof. Umbridge's room

Educational Decrees

HP: PS - The food trolley & Ron.

Butterbeer in the backlot

Animatronic Buckbeak. He looked real & I wanted to take him home with me.

Voldy. You can push a button to make him move. It was really quite creepy.

Some of the special effects for Fenrir Greyback

Privet Drive

The Knight Bus

Diagon Alley!

Olivanders

Weasleys Wizard Wheezes

Model of the Burrow

Scale model of Hogwarts. It was quite big & took up an entire room

Night view of Hogwarts Model

London, Day 16 - 29th February 2016

Before we left Australia, I had marked out a few things I wanted to do in every city we stopped at, mostly because I was so excited that I wanted to feel like I was travelling before I was travelling, but also so that we didn't waste any time hanging around the same areas day after day. Even if we didn't see anything on my list the time spent looking at different areas meant that I had a pretty good ideas of different routes and interesting places to go.

Along the way I had come across 'St Dunstan in the East', a shell of an old church that had been turned into a park. St Dunstan was quite literally right behind our hotel. If we used the back entrance, it opened straight onto St Dunstan. It was a unique use of the old building remains.

St Dunstan in the East

I had marked off some of the more natural looking areas in London, including the Parkland walk from Highgate. We both felt like a bit of nature and less people today, so we hopped the tube from Bank (which joins onto Monument) to Highgate. The walk starts just below the tube line, and when we got off the tube there was a group of older people with walking poles preparing to do the same walk. Not to worry though, the walk is not strenuous - I guess being old they just didn't want to fall over. 

Parkland walk is a breath of fresh air in London. It's an easy place to forget about the traffic, noise and busy streets of such a big city. The Parkland walk follows an old railway line and starts off with oak trees and woodland, covered in Butterfly bush and brambles. We passed under bridges and over an old platform. A fairy peered from a crumbling wall.

Fairy in the Parkland Walk

Wooded playground along the walk

For a while we followed a man and his 7 dogs. I almost laughed with how quintessentially English the image of an old farmer type in gumboots walking a troupe of dogs was.

3 consecutive bridges on the Parkland Walk

The walk took us about an hour and a half (I made us stop to play in a park, and Hugh made us stop to take photos) to Finsbury Park.

The cold air and walk had set our tummies grumbling. I knew we weren't too far from Camden, so we hopped on the #29 bus to Camden.

Camden is not a place I can easily describe. There was so much going on that I feel like I was both overloaded and missing everything at the same time. Markets seemed to spill from every spare space of the main road. They sold tourist wares, alternative clothing, hand made arts and crafts and hot street food. People scurried every which way like ants over an open picnic basket, confused and frenzied.

The road followed along to a canal, where narrow boats were moored behind locks. It was behind the canals that we found Shaka Zulu, an African themed restaurant. 

Camden Lock Canal

Canals at Camden

It was easily one of the coolest restaurants I have ever been in. The atmosphere took me to a tribal jungle setting with low lighting in green and purple, carved spaces everywhere I looked, and a sense of space that replicated a treetop canopy.

Shaka Zulu

Shaka Zulu

 

This elephant at Shaka Zulu was carved from one piece of wood

The food was just as good, with an African-inspired lunch menu that cost just £10. Hugh was even game enough to try the Ostrich burger!

After lunch we wandered through the markets in Camden some more, and stopped along the canal for a while to just relax. We had arranged to meet Sarah again for dinner at a restaurant at London Bridge before heading to bed early for a big trip out to the Warner Brothers Studios the next day.

The view from London Bridge at night

Sorrento to London, Day 13, 26th February 2016

We were up in the dark this morning. We had an 10 o'clock appointment in Naples with a plane to London that we didn't want to miss. Neither of us were keen to get back on the Circumvesuviana with luggage again, especially early in the morning when there wasn't likely to be many people about. People in Italy didn't really get going until well after dawn break.

5.45 in the morning found us out the front of the train station in Sorrento, loading our bags onto a shuttle bus to Naples. For €10 each we decided it was worth the money to get a direct shuttle to the airport, rather than catch the train into Naples, and have to swap over to another train to the airport. We had tried to book the Curreri Viaggi shuttle bus the night before on our tablet computer, but the website kept crashing out and of course at night, the booking line was unmanned. We turned up in the hopes we could board without a reservation and thankfully it was fine.

The bus bumped along the coast for a while, stopping in at small towns to pick other passengers up. 

Once at Naples airport it was a simple check-in procedure that was fast and quick to get through. One of the benefits of flying out of a smaller airport is the reduced time spent in security queues.

Just after we got through security I noticed that my inner thighs felt somewhat cooler than the rest of my body. To my absolute horror, when I looked at my jeans to see if I had perhaps forgotten to zip up or something, I saw that they were completey torn on my inner thighs, up to my underwear line. And of course, I had just checked all my baggage so I had no other clothes on me. There was nothing I could do but tie a jumper around my waist and keep my legs crossed the entire flight to London.

We arrived in London Gatwick airport 2 and a half hours later. Hugh had warned me that English airports were horrors to get through, but once again, we managed to breeze right through. Passport control had nobody else at waiting in the non-EU line (in comparison to the quite large EU line), so for once there was a benefit to being Australian.

Once we picked up our baggage, my first priority was changing into pants that weren't ripped, not only to save myself from embarrassment, but also because London was cold!

I had already booked us tickets on the Gatwick express (it was cheaper pre-booked online) so we walked right onto that for our ride into Victoria. 

Those first few moments standing in the hub of Victoria station were confusing. People offered help and we were so used to Italy that we had to remind ourselves that they (probably) weren't out to pilfer our belongings. A work colleague had lent me 2 oyster cards so we didn't have to bother about trying to find somewhere to find one. Back in a country with English as a first language we were quickly able to figure out the top-up machines and loaded some credit on the cards.

From there we followed the London equivalent of the yellow brick road (basically a painted yellow line) which lead us to the Circle Line tube stop.

8 stops from Victoria station we pulled our bags out of the tube at Monument station, and walked a blissfully short distance (2 streets) to our hotel (Premier Inn).

London was a cold shock to the system after sunny Sorrento, so once we had made it up to our room and collapsed for a short while, we delved into our bags to bring out our thermals, gloves, scarves and beanies to layer up. 

Somehow our entire day had been taken up by transport (shuttle bus, plane, train, tube). All that sitting was exhausting.

A friend of mine who had lived in London for a year had recommended Brick Lane to us for meals.  It just so happened to be that part of the London Craft Beer Festival was being held at Brick Lane this week, so we made our way back to the Tube and out to Brick Lane. There were quite a few pubs and other small alcohol-sellers that we could see where participating in the Craft Beer Festival. Hugh, being a craft beer lover, was very excited. I was excited for the street food. Whenever we travel, we love to eat the local street food. Even in Brisbane, nothing is better than getting food from a truck. 

We didn't stay out too long, before heading home. We did stop at an amazing chocolate shop, Dark Sugars. My mouth was watering just from the smell of the place! The shop was stocked with chocolate cups filled with alcohol, slabs and chunks of dark chocolate, pralines, and metallic round chocolate balls.

Definitely the best place to end our day at!