Bank Holiday Monday

It is just past eight thirty and I am not at work so it must be a bank holiday- either that or I am being very casual about oversleeping this week. I have to say that I have needed the extra day this weekend just to catch up on my sleeping! Last week turned out to be a hectic one, with something on every day and a hangover to cope with on Wednesday.

I had got some dates confused in my head and the friends that I thought were arriving next week texted from the Tower of London on Thursday- oops! Actually, it was great to see them but I felt a bit bad that I hadn't tidied the house or got any food in for their visit.

Ner and her sister met me from work and we did a lot of walking around looking at sites- after a nice dinner of dak galbi at the Korean restaurant. Ner used to live in Mokpo, Korea, which is where I met her many moons ago, and the guy behind the counter was laughing at us strictly observing the pouring rituals with the lemon soju.

Ner left on Friday afternoon and her sister stayed on for another night. Charlene warned me that she wasn't really one for drinking and that she would be happy to go home if I wanted to hit the pub. But that is no way to treat a guest, especially one visiting London for the first time. I tried to put myself in the shoes of a tourist....what could London offer that would finish off her visit nicely? Aha, a show!!

So me and Rach dragged her round the streets of London, popping into various theatres until we found one that we could afford- we went to see 'Chicago' which was awesome. Got up early on Saturday (well, early for a Saturday) and did a river cruise down the Thames before some last minute shopping in Covent Garden before dropping Charlene off at Victoria to get the Gatwick Express out to the airport.

In other news, went wedding dress shopping with a friend last weekend and while she was deeply embroiled in fighting her way in and out of some beautiful gowns, I was outside the fitting room sneakily trying on tiaras



Any chance that the guests are allowed to wear them if the bride decides not to?

Dropped by Trafalgar Square the other night to watch a little of the Olympics on the big screen there



And to get a photo of an iconic Routemaster bus, which so many people love and yet which has been mostly taken off our streets



It has been fairly wet this summer, though not as bad as last year with all the flooding, but it has meant that there has been the odd amazing rainbow such as this one



the photo was taken out of my bedroom window and on the other side of the flat the view was pretty cool too



and finally, it is less than seven weeks until the big offski- ah Brazilian sun! Wait for me!!

Tragus piercing

I had my tragus pierced on Wednesday. Don't worry, it is something that I can post a photo of

and at least now I know the name for that flap of skin on the inside of my ear!

I am a little worried, before last September I had no piercings at all. Now I have four- if each of the lobes are counted separately. I have been thinking about getting the tragus pierced for a while but finally plucked up the courage to do it on Wednesday- the mojito in the sun with Ben first might have helped a little, I guess. I love it! I keep looking at it in the mirror and smiling:)

The heavily pierced and tattooed guys in the shop asked me if I was sure that I wanted the piercing on the same side as the helix one (the one at the top of my ear) as most people want to balance them out by having them on opposite sides. I pulled a face and said that I didn't want to be balanced, they laughed and agreed. They were lovely guys and, if I ever feel the need to get more metal stuck through my skin, I would definitely go there again. In fact, I will have to go back in six weeks to have a stud with a shorter post put in.

And just about two weeks after that, the earrings will all be glistening in the Brazilian sunshine.

Making the most of it...

More palace hopping, this time with Rachel.. we went to Hampton Court Palace last weekend. Very regal, very relaxing, very nice indeed.





One of the costumes from 'The Other Boleyn Girl', one of the few rooms that we were allowed to, nay encouraged, to take photos in



The invaluable audio guide









we made it to the middle of maze- there was quite a feeling of comraderie in the maze- people yelling directions to each other and then laughing as we hit the end of another dead end

Have Camera, will travel

I went to the pub last night and was asked by an old student why I had been absent the week before, didn't realise that I had to bring a note from my mum if I missed a week. Anyway, last Friday I went to Clapham for a change with a Colombian friend and had mojitos and later a curry which is different from several pints.

But I still managed to get up the next day for a day of being a tourist in London. You see, I realised that I had spent much of the previous evening complaining that I haven't been away since going to visit my brother and sister in law last year- which is a LONG time ago! People ask me why I feel the compulsion to go away all the time, well that isn't exactly what they say, rather more something like 'when the hell are you going to settle down?' and 'I could never go away on my own, why do you want to do it, you freak!'

I guess that need to do different things and break out of the old routine plays a bit part of it so I decided to go somewhere new in London instead of just complaining. Well, somewhere new for me, I will admit that the building is hardly new since it has been there since the 1600s. So last Saturday I went to Kensington Palace, a place which is kind of special for me, though I have never been there before, not because it was the home of Princess Diana but because when she lived there I sometimes did her shopping- or the KP order as we called it back then. It was weird to think that some of the things that I had picked off the shelves at Selfridges had been consumed within those walls and it seemed high time I actually went and had a look.



The guides are all very keen to point out that the building was never supposed to be a startingly artistic feat, it was built for William and his wife Mary, when they ruled as joint king and queen of England.



It orginally stood in the small village of Kensington, two miles away from London, selected because of the cleanliness of the air. Of course, at some point in the last four hundred years, London has rather swallowed up the villages around it so that Kensington is now pretty central.

Queen Victoria was born at the palace and grew up there and was apparentely very fond of the place.



And there is indeed a lot to be fond of. Unfortunately you aren't allowed to take photos inside the palace, unfortunate because it means that I have none of the interior to put here but extremely fortunate because it means that people actually have to look at what is in front of them rather than snapping it and filing it away for future inspection (and I am as guilty of this as the next person) but it also means that that palace is not full of people gurning in front of the amazing murals or posing on top of Queen Vic's bed.

There are some great views from the building of the Round Pond, something which if you photograph at ground level tends to look like a large puddle with a few swans on it, and Kensington Park in general. It is a nice location overall and it was a good day for sightseeing.







I made up for a bit of lost photographing time in the gardens after the audio tour, however, just to really grasp the idea that I was a tourist for the day. Then I went and had lunch in Wagamammas before getting the bus back to my part of London, a rather unusual act in itself when a tube will get me home in under half an hour and the bus is over twice that. And I made sure to look out of the window and appreciate what I was seeing rather than burying my nose in a book.



I had intended to do more sightseeing on the Sunday but went to the cinema with my flatmate instead and then chilled on Tooting Common for a while. The green spaces in South London, and indeed London in general, are part of the allure of this wonderful city and I don't really make the most of them.



Then this week I have been working and socialising, with a drop of Spanish class towards the end of the week. I was pleased to see that despite the recent ban on carrying open containers of alcohol on London transport, the tubes are not entirely drunk unfriendly- in fact I was delighted to discover this special 'drunk' bench at Leicester Square tube the other night



This person is so drunk that they even have their mate sitting on their lap.

Who says London Transport doesn't care?

And today it seems that I have selected the one day where it isn't hot enough to melt my eyeballs to go to Hampton Court Palace with Rachel. I'll let you know how it goes.