Day 76: London!!!!! I have been to London (Part 1)

22nd August 2009, woke up at 4am cos i was too excited, had to catch the 5.47am train at Liverpool Lime Street Station anyways.. London has always been one of my dream places to visit, besides Paris.. Walked to the station at 5.15am and arrived minutes before the train was due to depart.. :) Train started moving on the dot, exactly at 5.47am, super punctual~

When my friends went to the toilet, this guy in the pic below started trying to catch my attention, i tried ignoring him at first, "never talk to strangers" right? He was quite persistent tho, turns out he wanted to give me some magnetic wristband thingy that gives you free entry to a place called Mood, which is a club in Liverpool, turns out he works there.. He ended up sitting with us for the remainder of his journey and we ended up chatting with a Turkish sailor sitting opposite us as well.. :)

super friendly Wesley from Runcorn :)

early morning fog/ mist.. like a scene from some classic book or something..

Went out when the sun was rising
(got back when the sun was setting, what a long, amazing day we had!!!)

Arrived at London Euston 2 hours later~
same journey would take much longer in Malaysia :S

Richard Branson is great! <3<3 Virgin trains~

Since we were too early, most attractions don't open until either 9 or 10am, and we arrived at 8am, we went exploring round Euston..

This is the old entrance to Euston station, and there are 2 on opposite sides of the road..

Whats so special you ask.. Well, there are names of all the major places in UK etched on the sides.. Recognised many places that i've visited- Inverness, Manchester, Llandudno to name a few.. :D

If you zoom in, you can see that im actually pointing at Liverpool~~

This is listed as an attraction in Euston if you do a quick online search, hahaha..
but thats not the reason we went in.. We actually needed to borrow their toilets, Hilton toilets, not bad at all, haha...

Cute~~

Another attraction in Euston, honestly, nothing much to see in Euston lor..


Outside the church.. The inside was just a very normal looking church interior..

I like this pic~

Took lots of pics of Underground signs :) I like the symbol,
feels familiar cos i've seen it in books and on tv before~

Next place we went to was The British Museum, to visit its Great Court (cos it opens at 9am @.@~) Had some fun outside first.. Oh, and got some souvenirs, very cheap souvenirs available at the shop opposite the British Museum..

Red phone booth

and black phone booth

Red phone booths are considered major attractions in London, along with red double decker buses and red letterboxes, hahahaha... They even purposely put a few in the same area so that tourists wont have to fight for space to take photos.. :)

Great Court- a very beautiful place~

Lots more pics of Great Court in my lappie, but don't want to bore you to death, do I.. :)

Some stuff you can see in the museum:

1250 pound horse head sold in the gift shop~

We only looked round the ground floor, partly to save time and partly cos, you see one museum, you've seen most museums, so no point going round the whole giant place.. haha.. We were supposed to go to Oxford Street next but decided to come back to it last so that we would have ample time to browse round the shops.. Ended up running out of time and skipping the whole place altogether.. I shall hereby promise myself that I will go and visit Oxford Street next time I'm in London, hope that will be able to happen soon.. :)

Quaint little shop selling umbreallas and walking sticks..

Branded umbrellas that cost:

Taadaa! 39.95 x 6= RM239.70!

Next destination was Green Park station to get to Buckingham Palace, we were supposed to arrive before 11am in time to watch the changing of the horseguards (official changing of the guard only available at Buckingham Palace on odd days in August >.<), but this was where one of my friends couldn't get on the same train as us, and we got separated.. Luckily i had repeatedly droned on and on abt which station we were going to next, so we managed to meet up again, but we were late, and only just caught sight of the ending of the ceremony.. saw lots of horse butts.. better than nothing lah..

Horse butts~

Remembering Princess Diana~

saw 2 stern-looking guards marching around..


Loads of tourists trying to spot royalty outside Buckingham Palace..

Me and Kammy, outside B. P :)

I wasn't kidding when i said 'loads of tourists' ;)

Better view of the fountain..

I wasn't going to give up on my horseguards, but the directions i printed out were going in the opposite direction from where we were going.. I found a useful 'walk' and map online that pointed out where the major attractions were, but since it didnt match our plans, i wanted to try finding the horses on my own first so we wandered round the perimeter of the palace grounds, and had lunch at St James Park on the way..

Never thought i would ever come here.. sobs.. so touched..

Some of the stuff we saw while searching for the horseguards:

This is what they call an allotment, where various vegetables are planted..

Cute scarecrow~~

Duke of York column

Police memorial (green lump) and citadel in the background

City hall and London Eye in the background..

In front of City Hall~

Dunno wat building, but click to see clearly, very intricate..

We were quite near Heathrow already, so could see many planes flying low overhead..

Another memorial.. I think this is our only group pic.. :(


Love this cos of the birds.. memorial of Bali Bombing 2002..

A glimpse of Big Ben..

This is the end of Part one, and we still hadnt found the horseguards place, part 2 is about what happened after we gave up and decided to follow the directions given on the website.. by following the 'walks' we saw lots of interesting stuff that we would never have noticed if we walked ard on our own, cos besides directions, the website also provided lots of interesting descriptions about the places we passed by.. :D Stay tuned for Part 2!!