As for typods and other weird constructions: I wrote this yesterday when I was feeling quite sick...so that's the excuse!
Saturday April 1st: April Fools day
But this was not a joke…I left for Luton airport at 13:35 Dutch time.
This was after I had been busy packing my stuff in the morning and managed to miss my bus to the station, nice!
When I arrived in Luton Ailsa was already waiting for me there :) We got to her car and before I knew it we hit the highway and I sooo felt like sitting on the wrong side! We found our Holiday Inn hotel in Brent Cross where we were going to spend our first night…only problem was to actually GET there…this proved to be not that easy with the one way traffic and like NO exit…we managed to drive past the hotel in different ways about 3 times! We then went to pick up Suzanne close to the tube station and finally managed to enter the parking lot outside the hotel….thank GOD!
After checking in and trying out the room (some first bed bouncing was done) we got ready to leave and get our buts to this UK Roxette fanmeeting we were going to attend at Leicester Square in London. This also proved to be not as easy as you might think…we got to the tube station alright, got our tickets, got some drink for on the way…and then waited for news from Fliss and Klair who were about to join us…the 2 girls were supposed to be on a train that would pass ‘our’ station as well… as a train came in Ailsa’s phone started to ring…she answered…talked and talked…and then jumped on the train…right before the doors closed…leaving Suz and me behind on the platform…laughing our head off! :P After we’d slightly recovered from the shock we got in touch with Ailsa and were told that Fliss & Klair would be on the NEXT train, so we jumped on that one…only to find out they were NOT haha!
So…5 girls were supposed to get on a tube to London centre altogether, but instead we were on 3 different trains…but we managed to all find each other in the end and had a laugh about this almost for the rest of the time it took us to get to Leicester square.
Once there we met up with some of the Roxette fans that were already there…it was a bit awkward…as it always is when you meet up with people you don’t know, or only through the net, yet. After some waiting for more people we then went to this Italian restaurant where we had dinner. It surely wasn’t the best Italian restaurant I’d ever been too, but we had a good time anyway. After dinner, and a little auction, we ‘went to find a bar’ where we’d be spending some more time together…this proved to be very hard to do…
as:a- bars in London are rather packed on Saturday nights (duh!)
b- everyone seemed to have different ideas on what was a good bar
…so we ended up walking around for quite a while, spending some time in one bar…walking around again…until we were a bit fed up with it and left for the hotel(bar). With us came Fliss and Klair…and we had a good time! The night ended in our room where Suz did some die-hard bed bouncing until Fliss almost bounced off the bed lol :P
Sunday april 2nd: Windy!
We slept in until about 10 am…barely made it out of the hotel before final check-time haha! Got some breakfast at Tesco’s nearby and then hit the road again…southwards!
Somewhere in the afternoon we arrived in Uckfield where Suz lives, after meeting her family we, Suz’ sister Sheree joined us, drove down to Brighton where we did some good sight-seeing, Royal Pavillion and more, and were almost blown of the pier! We ended our visit there with some chips at the pier.
We then drove along the coast and after some fun photo stops on the way we came to Beachy Head…where I took some amazing photos! It was really cool to stand on the cliffs there, even if we were freezing to death haha!
When we got back to Uckfield we went out for dinner in the local pub… *mjam*!
We had a relaxed evening with lots of good talking and laughing.
Monday april 3rd: Ca(s)t(le)
We were lazy again…took us quite some time to actually GET up, get a shower and some breakfast…but hey it’s holiday! After we were all done we went to the Rocks, a really nice place just outside Uckfield. We sat on a rock there for quite some time, enjoying the view and the spring-sun…as Suz brought her guitar we actually ended up playing & singing some familiar, some less familiar as well haha, songs…fun!When we got back to Suz’s place we had to leave unfortunately…but knowing we’d see each other again the next day in London!
Ailsa & me then headed for Windsor where we walked around for
a little while, admiring the castle, becoming friends with a cat, being frustrated by the French schoolkids and more :PAfter this we drove further north to Milton Keynes where Ailsa lives. I was already warned that there’s loads of roundabouts in MK…but geez, there are a LOT…felt a bit sick as we were roundabouting towards Ailsa’s place! I met Ailsa’s parents, cousin Derrick and dog Guinness here. And Ailsa’s sis Iona of course, but I already met her for the first time in Halmstad last August.
Later that night we went out for dinner with Iona, Derrick and 2 of Ailsa’s friends…this time in an Italian restaurant that was actually GOOD, especially the cheesecake for dessert haha!
We ended our day in a cocktailbar…but didn’t stay for long as we were pretty tired and had a long day in London ahead of us
Tuesday april 4th: London baby!
So Tuesday was London day…Ailsa & me got the train there from MK and walked straight to Leicester square, haha! It’s a really nice place but we’d already been there on Saturday so we just continued to Piccadilly Circus. We had a good photo-stop there…it is a really cool place to finally see for real. As we knew Suz was on her way to us we decided to spend some time in the Virgin megastore at Piccadilly as that would be an easy place for her to find us…that is if we heard our phones haha! Eventually we did and we were reunited for the rest of the day :)
We did quite a London walking tour the rest of the morning/ early afternoon; from Piccadilly we walked along Regent Street, Carnaby Street (in a side street here we visited a very nice jewelry shop… of our favorite Swedish jewelry maker (:P) Efva Attling! Didn’t buy anything though
.We then continued to one of the busiest and chaotic streets in London (or the world?!); Oxford street…where the girls did their best to find this little street which had a little little record store to which Anton Corbijn obviously knew the way when photographing Plumber guy for his latest album. So…we DID find it, but it was C-L-O-S-E-D! Again, because the first time the girls had been there it was closed as well…apparently business is not going good….or whatever. We did take some pictures of course, and got some strange looks from people walking past lol.
After all this excitement we were hungry…so we headed for Subway, which was good! Then we decided we wanted to go to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament...as it was quite a long way we decided to go by bus…and boy was it excited in there! :D We sat in the front of the second floor and had the BEST view…until we were thrown off! The bus didn’t go any further so we then had to find another bus that would go in the right direction, which we eventually did…up and in the front again I was able to take some cool photos from the bus. We passed places like
Trafalgar square and Downing street…and we then got out where the Houses of Parliament are…took more nice photos, including lots with Big Ben on it! From this part of town we then took a bus again, which took us aaaaall the way to Camden. As the bus trip took us a little time Suz and I both had a little nap…lol! Once there we strolled around the streets there…first of all to find a toilet (:P), then to find this bridge that was used in a video about 12 (OMG!) year ago and finally we just walked around and had a look at the shops and market…very Waterlooplein-ish (square in Amsterdam which has a flea market).
After this we went back to central London and had some hot drinks and muffins at Starbucks :) Then it was time to say
goodbye again…Suz had to take the train back to Uckfield and we went back to MK…sad but full of fond memories of the last few days!When Ailsa and me eventually got back to MK Iona picked us up from the station and we got some fish & chips on our way home…where we ate it on the couch while watching Eastenders…how more typical English can you get eh?
We had a cosy and relaxed evening and watched some Gyllene Tider on DVD before we went to sleep.
Wednesday April 5th: Peace & cows
Wednesday came and after a laaaaaaazy morning (still on holiday!) we went to do some serious MK sigh-seeing…meaning going to this BIG shopping mall (where Ailsa works @ Jessops), having a picnic in this park (which has a Buddhist temple & a Peace Pagoda) and seeing some cows (who are not real :P).In the mall we paid a visit to Jessops, I bought some nice books in 2 different bookstores and we took some Millie’s cookies with us for our picnic. On our way to the
park we bought some drinks and sandwiches as well. Once in the park we had a lovely time…taking some pictures of this Pagoda thing and relaxing…in the sun!We then went to see ‘the cows’ Ailsa had been talking about for days (lol!)…so here they were…concrete cows with some funny expressions…besides the cows I also met up with some real horses.
Back at Ailsa’s place I did my packing and early in the evening we left for Cambridge.
I was trying to read the directions, but it was good that Ailsa had a good idea of where we actually were going because I don’t think we’d made it there!We had a traumatic experience before we came to Cambridge though…in the dark on this little road a male pheasant suddenly turned up…right in front of the car! Even if Ailsa still tried to stop the car it was too late anyway… :’(
After this we were just a bit shocked during the rest of the trip…
When we got to Cambridge we soon found the place where Kate lives and after being welcomed with a big hug she showed us the apartment where she’s living at the moment. We then walked into town where we had a nice (& spicy) dinner at Nando’s.
By the time we got back to Kate’s place Ailsa had to head back home again…it was quite sad to say goodbye…but (again) happy memories!
Kate and me then sat and talked for a long time…it had been more than 2 years we last saw each other!
Thursday April 6th: Colleges, colleges &…more colleges
Next morning I could sleep in as late as I wanted as Kate had to go to work and I was going to spend the day on my own. Of course now I woke up quite early…but I had a lazy morning at Kate’s anyway…watching some TV, taking a bath and finally getting ready to stroll through town.
I walked around town for the entire afternoon, taking lots of pictures of… colleges’ haha! Kate already told me ‘they’re all really
nice but after a while you get bored of them’…which was kind of true after a while…but I had a good time anyway. Also visited the Great St. Mary’s Church, or University Church, mainly to go up in the tower and enjoy the view on Cambridge…really nice!When I got back to Kate’s place she had already come home and cooked a very nice dinner for us. Had a nice and relaxed evening again with lots of talking and some TV.
Friday April 7th: Solo the cat & cathedral
Today Kate & me took the train to a little village close to C called Ely. Ely is most famous for its cathedral…so that’s where we went!We had a nice walk on our way there…I played travelguide (even though I wasn’t that well prepared :P) in front of Kate’s video-camera and I also became friends with this lovely grey cat that was lying on this wall, turned out he was called Solo :)
When we got to the cathedral it turned out we had to pay an entrance fee of £4.50 so we kind of ‘earned this back’ by taking loads and loads of pictures…
especially the ones in this mirror were really funny! Other than that it was just a very very nice cathedral.After this we strolled around this cute little town for a bit and had a really good pizza for lunch!
That night Kate’s boyfriend joined us for dinner, he was pretty happy with the Dutch mayonnaise I’d brought him haha!
Saturday April 8th: Chocolate!
Today we were going for a road trip, Kate, Dave & me that is…Dave was the lucky one with a car who drove all day ;)
We headed towards Birmingham and found our way to Cadbury world (http://www.cadburyworld.co.uk/en/cworld & http://www.cadbury.co.uk) there. We spend a gooooood few hours there, going through the whole exhibition (and getting free chocolate during that *mjam*) and deciding what chocolate to buy in the shop there. My bag of ‘misshapes’ was a good choice I can tell you :D
From Birmingham we headed southwards again, to Warwick castle…we were quite excited about it until we saw that the entrance fee was £15!!! :O No way we were gonna
do that of course. So instead we just took a nice walk AROUND the castle and got some nice views (& photos) on it anyway.On our way back to the car we met some squirrels, one of them I managed to get on camera.
Since we had some time left now we then continued our route southwards and paid a quick visit to Stratford-upon-Avon…in case you are now thinking ‘eh…have I heard of that place before?’ I can tell you that, yes you probably heard about this place in your English class…it’s the place Shakespeare was from!
So with Kate as our guide, she’d been here a few years ago, we walked around this lovely old town and saw
Shakespeare’s birthplace. We also managed to buy some postcards, just about when the shop was closing haha!After this we drove back to C., on our way we saw some lovely rainbows!
We decided to have dinner at Nando’s and as we were pretty tired from our trip we then decided not to go to the movies today but wait with that until Sunday night.
Sunday April 9th: Punting
So our plan for today…do the most touristy thing you can in Cambridge: punting!
Kate & me went into town around lunch time, had a look at some shops and then met up with Dave. We took a look at the punting company’s place…and a good laugh at some Asians trying to go punting themselves…oh my, we were so NOT going to do this ourselves…to much risk of falling in the water.
We decided to have lunch first and come back for a punting tour later. Which we did…and luck was on our side, because during the first half hour the sun was shining! After that it started to rain a bit…
Our punter guy told us lots of good stories about Cambridge’s colleges and the people that went there…some of the stories were a bit too good to be true…but nevermind!
Of course I took some lovely photos again :)
We had dinner at Kate’s place and later that night we went to the movies and saw ‘Ice Age2’ F-U-N-N-Y!
This for sure was a nice ending to a fantastic trip to the UK!
Monday April 10th: B-b-b-bye-bye
Early Monday morning I had to say goodbye to Kate as she had to go to work. But luckily it wasn’t a goodbye for long…we were gonna meet 1 ½ week later in Brussels again!
Had another lazy day, last day of my holiday so better enjoy while it lasts, again…took another bath, watched some TV (there’s sooooo much TV in the UK…but not that many commercials, seen them all I think haha!) and packed my stuff.
Then I went into town for the last time, bought my ticket for the National Express bus to the airport later that afternoon, got myself some lunch at Marks & Spencer and took some final pictures (of colleges :P) . Then I went back to Kate’s place got my last things together and got to the bus station well in time.
The bus trip to Stansted airport was quite relaxed…and once there I actually had loads of time to kill, even before I could check in! When I was finally checked in I went through the customs and bought some final things, like dinner, from my last British pounds.
The flight back went just fine…arrived at Shithole airport around 21:45 and was already home by 23:00…where I, after some long hugging with Binkie, went straight to bed…alarm had to be set for 6:15 the next morning…back to work!
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