656. Eurotrip Day 1 of 28 | Arriving in London!

Hello from London! It's currently 1:30am here. We arrived in London early "yesterday" morning. We flew from Toronto Pearson Airport to London Gatwick (which is very inconvenient I now realize). From there we took the Gatwick Express into the city and then a cab to my hotel. We were both so exhausted by the time we arrived with jetlag and all.
My boyfriend stayed here most of the day then flew to Spain. I am always used to travelling/exploring alone and love it, but now that he's gone I feel a strange sense of loneliness lol. I guess this is a good thing though. I'll be going later this week to meet him again..then we will continue our month-long trip around several countries in Europe. So excited!! Besides Hong Kong, London is the city I've travelled/spent the most time in. So coming back I got a feeling of familiarity. All the other cities on this trip will be ones I'm visiting for the first time ever though.

Coincidentally my friend Anouk is also in London these few days so we will be meeting up again. Every time we meet up it's in a different city. One of these days I'll actually make it to Luxembourg..hahah.

I'm going to try my best to do these daily blog posts again, or at least every other day. I really enjoy doing them when I travel, looking back and writing about the day to look back on in the future. I am working the same as I do in Toronto though (I work online/remotely) so I am still going to be pretty busy. Hopefully I will have a bit of time at the end of every night to do this. I will post a maximum of 10 photos per day then the rest I'll post when I get back to Toronto. Which - as you may know with my Asia blog posts - will be quite a lengthy process.


It was my first time flying with British Airways. Overall the flight was pretty good. Just the air in the cabin was super dry. I managed to sleep a little which I *never* usually do on flights.


I'm staying near Oxford Circus this time. After checking in to the hotel we took a nap for awhile then went out in search of food. Since we were so hungry we kind of chose the first decent one we saw. We ended up at Bodean's BBQ which turned out to be very good.




If you know me, you'll know that flat shoes/sneakers are extremely rare for me to buy. I decided to buy a new pair for this trip so I got these Puma ones. I really love the colour. They match my socks colour pretty well too hahah.



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354. London | Snapshots

I don't know where all the time went. I am already in Paris at the moment, so I figured I should hurry up with the rest of my London posts. I have a feeling the updates from this trip will go on for months and months, which was exactly what I didn't want to happen. I promise to post more frequently from now on. This time I mean it. ;) I'll post more in-depth posts soon; sorry for the lack of descriptions in this post.

I spent about two weeks in London, and was excited to get away. But now that I am actually gone, I really miss the city. I had gotten so used to it the past couple weeks. Now I am in Paris, my favourite city. I am loving it here (obviously) but I do miss the familiarity of London. I will be back in Toronto soon but hopefully back in Europe again very soon.


I really liked walking up and down Regent Street (from Piccadilly to Oxford Circus). Took hundreds of photos along here.





Loved walking on Portland Place as well (would love to live here). On the right is the famous 33 Portland Place





Cocktails at Cafe Royal Hotel with Ronan












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327. London | Oxford Circus, Piccadilly, Harrods

I can't believe it's almost been a year since my Europe trip in 2012..and I still haven't finished posting all the pics!! So here is a post on London (the first city I flew into).

I've always wanted to Fly Emirates (thanks to Arsenal & a little crush I had on Van Persie) Unfortunately that was not my plane. It was just there beside my gate. I flew Air Canada, had my flight delayed, had my luggage lost, returned the evening after I arrived, etc. Anyways. Bad start to an amazing trip.


Finally got on the plane..at least I had lots of leg room!

Since I didn't have any luggage with me when I got off the plane, I decided to try the Tube instead of the cab. Got to South Kensington, the station nearest my hotel. I didn't plan it like this but I was in pretty much the perfect location that night. It was the night of the Champions League final, Chelsea vs. Bayern Munich. Chelsea ended up winning. All the pubs were packed and people spilled onto the streets...but I ended up falling asleep quite early that night thanks to jet lag.

I had so much fun taking the Tube. If you're from Toronto/ever used our subway system you'll know how embarassing ours is compared to London's! Before I went I thought I'd get lost for sure since the map looked crazy complicated..& I'm used to the simple Toronto one. But the tube is actually so easy to use and fun to figure out how to get everywhere. I think it was a weekend when I was there..so almost everyone taking it were tourists.


The street of my hotel. I stayed at Blakes, the black one at the end of the street. (My review here)


Ah I love/miss Harrods!

Black Tier card..came with so many perks! Probably the reason why I spent more hours here than I did at my hotel room? Harrods was also my shelter from all the London rain & the hoards of people from the Queens Jubilee.

Besides Harrods I did manage to squeeze in some sightseeing during my short stay in London:










Victoria Station to take the train to Gatwick airport where I flew to my next destination..Copenhagen!

I think this was at Heathrow Airport before flying back to Toronto. All the breakfasts I had in London were better than any breakfast I've ever had in my life. I also started an obsession with "pain perdu" when I was there. If I lived in London I'd definitely wake up in time for breakfast every morning..


Hello Toronto :( (you can see CN Tower on the very right of the pic. My building is somewhere in there too)


I take tons of photos when I go on vacation but sometimes the most memorable moments were times when I did not take a single photo. One of the worst moments in London was at one of the restaurants I went to, and all I have from that experience is the receipt above. Didn't even take any pics of the food (which I usually always do as you know!) because the restaurant owner kept talking to me the entire time. At first I thought he was just being nice. But I was wrong. He kept giving me more tea, dessert, etc while they were closing up for the day. All the other customers were already gone and suddenly the staff members all left together. I realized I was the last one in there with the owner. Won't go into detail of what happened next but I quickly paid and practically ran out of there as fast as I could.
Lesson learned: don't let the staff leave before you do if the owner is a very creepy old man.

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