Finally back home! Or rather, home for the year! The comfort of being able to reach the main luggage and convenience of using three pin ports rather than 2 round ports are extremely welcomed, except that London is being branded as one of the most expensive city in the world!
As we arrived sheepishly at Stansted Airport at 6.50am London time, we were required to take an airport bus down to waterloo, and the expected duration would be an hour. Turned out it became 2 hours. Because of the London jam. Mind you, we haven’t experienced much jam in this trip cause we have mainly been taking public transport(metros,trains) or walking on foot. Thus, we were forced to sleep on the bus(the ride was comfortable but jerky) rather than the accom bed😢😢
After alighting, we went for breakfast at Pret A Manger, the famous chain of cafe in London. It’s practically everywhere, and it was the best warm breakfast we have had so far in this trip hahaha! Precisely cause it’s warm and they had eggs😍 On our walk back, we saw King’s College and LSE. Sadly to say, I did not realise it was LSE until I saw the tag hahaha; it looked pretty normal and unmagical:/
Only managed to reach accom and unpack at 12 and we nuaed abit before we headed over to Twinings speciality tea museum and shop at Strand. To those who think that it is an impressive heritage museum, you might be disappointed because it’s nothing like that. It’s purely a shop that has a wide variety of tea leaves that you can smell or even sample at a counter. However, the teas are amazingly cheap for Twinings (the UK Tea Brand, not to be confused with Singapore’s TWG), and a box of fruit tea can be as cheap as £1.70. If you are into tea making, they even have a tea brewing team that creates new flavours and record them down. They can then pass the card to customers who are keen to brew tea that is not just made from Tea Bag + Water😁 There is also a high class tea master session where a professional tea maker would come down every week to make tea for the participants (£50) Super bo hua can hahaha! Dont fall for these tourist traps!
After Twinings, we went over to chill at Caffé Nerro and we would recommend the Chai Latte if you like Chai haha! That was a really good buy and the place had a good ambience that we enjoyed!
Subsequently navigation to Misato led us to Leicester Square. There was a huge ass crowd and being tourists, we decided to check them out. Holy freak, there was a movie premiere for some biography of Beatles and the BEATLES were there to grace the event as VIP😱😱😱 Couldn’t see them close enough but we were indeed quite taken aback at the coincidence haha! Michelle even said Benedict Cumberbatch and Emma Watson would come here as well on their premiere and I am so gonna drop by if they do! Honestly don’t mind not seeing them, as long as I can breathe the same air as them😂😂😂 SIAO LIAO
Misato WAS awesome as usual and I ordered Beef Udon cause I craved soup hahaha! Xinyi ordered Mackerel Rice Set! I love this place cause they don’t differ much between their eat in and take away menu! And guess where did we go after a good dinner? Well it was 中秋节, and we decided to go mooncake hunting! We went to this hotel recommended by Buzzfeed and bought a mini mooncake for £3(felt a bit scammed tbh, but its all festive) brought it home and celebrated with Michelle:)
Michelle also helped us to book Skygarden tour, which allowed us to go to the top of a building to see the panoramic view of London! The view is indeed amazing and because it’s a reservation system, there weren’t too much tourists around. Sadly, it rained and we could not enjoy a decent view with clouds and skies:/ London looked really gloomy when it isn’t sunny!
After the skygarden we walked over to meet Michelle at Poppies Fish and Chips. Super excited for it because it’s the first time I am gonna eat Fish and Chips in London:) We dined in thinking that it was cold outside (raining and freezing), but we did not realise that the dine-in menu was so much more expensive than if we were to take away. It costed £4 extra for the fish and chips😱 But undeniably, the portion was very big and worthed the money if you really love fish and chips!
We then went market hopping after the full meal and we realised that we should have eaten at the market instead where there were more varieties to choose from haha! BTW, market hopping meant 3 markets and we went to Spitalfields Market, Borough Market and Southbank Market! Each of them have their own charms of food and I honestly like Borough the best even though we did not order any food? It’s the natural variety and it felt like a weekend farmers mart that we saw in Markethalle, Berlin! The Duck Confit burger recommended by Michelle at Southbank Mart was super good by the way. A highly recommended burger to try out!
During our hops, we chanced by superb views of the city when the rain stopped, allowing us to see London when it has clear skies and when it is gloomy. Oh yes, London looks amazing when it is sunny and clear. The river looks less polluted, the roads seems more welcoming and the skies are blue hahaha! Not to mention that it is much warmer when there is the sun(30 degrees versus 15 degrees). If you are in London, you cannot afford to underdress:/
Caught Lion King in the night and all I can say is that the musical is nothing like that of Singapore. Having a theatre of its own to itself, the staging, props, orchestra location and backdrops are tailored specifically to the show itself and it is so magical to be watching it live rather than on Cartoon! I still remembered when the famous African chant in ‘Circle of Life’ started I was rushing back from the toilet and I had to sit on the stairs just to enjoy the opening scene. Each life form depicted was so lifelike and we were wowed at them. Only thing lacking was the singing of some performer but we are already so impressed at all the synchronisation already:)
On our third day, we went over to Canary Wharf to take some architecture photos. On a Saturday, Canary Wharf is very peaceful and quiet, after all its a CBD area. We managed to take quite a handful of cool still shots and architecture ones as well:) love how some families brought their children out to feed the birds, so homely hahaha! But there are too many seagulls there that its kinda like a bird pollution? Hahaha. Ohh and there are quite a number of (asian) couples dating there, guess we are not the only one😉
Visited Camden market after the phototaking session and I swear its the biggest market I have ever been to. Not sure if tourists flock there, but its much bigger than hongdae and bugis! It’s insane; you can buy food, clothes, souvenirs and even antiques there. Camden is really amusing and the fact that we went on a Saturday, we got to really see it flooded with shops and locals. A good thing about London is that we feel safe, even when there’s a crowd? I know that we should not let our guard down but the home feeling really made us less uptight and allowed us to enjoyed our stay more.
After walking around, we got ourselves dinner! Xinyi got some burrito like wrap with avocado sauce, while I got STEAK OMG! Hahaha its not super cheap for sure but oh man I missed steak. Something interesting I observed is the amount of effort each stall owner took to prepare the food. For example there was a stall that sold kong bap bao (扣肉包) and the English chef spent like 5 minutes arranging the meat and veg to make it look more appetising. Thinking of how Asians would prepare it in SG, i think they deserve a good effort award😂
After dinner, we went to Caffe Nero to enjoy Chai Latte and Lemon tart, and it dawned to me that it would be our last meal in London:/ time really flies and soon its gonna be parting when we head over to Birmingham. I will really miss my girl alot!
CinqeMinte 
