Tuesday...Day 8! I've officially survived my first week of traveling haha!! And what an amazing first week it's been! Today I will be meeting up with Georgia and Chloe again but first I needed to book my flights to Espania ready for when I start nannying (so excited!) and also book my train ticket to the Midlands ready to go up and see my family. My card wasn't working online for the train so I catch a tube to Liverpool Street station and get a ticket for £8!!! (this is unheard of!) I then proceed to catch another couple of tubes (did I ever mention how many tubes I catch!) to Knightsbridge and meet my friend Dumazi again for a quick coffee. He shows me where the museums are that I've been wanting to visit all week and how long I would need to allow for each! Back home in Adelaide, you could probably get all of them done in a couple of hours lol! So I decide to leave the Natural History Museum for today and head to the Prince Albert Museum instead! The building is so beautiful and inside is the home for various historic monuments and statues as well as varying exhibitions that change every couple of months or so. There was one exhibition with all Wedding Dresses from the 1800's or something crazy and another with Italian fashion from the Victorian times, but these cost £20 ($40) each to get in so I stuck to the free stuff!!!

I do find one exhibition full of works by an artist named Maqbool Fida Husain, more famously known as 'M.F Husain; Master of Modern Indian Painting'. The exhibition is called 'Indian Civilisation' and his works are quite striking with their bright reds, yellows and orange colours. I would say his style is a little abstract but you could feel the stories and events he was creating within his work. (I will post some photos on Facebook along with all the other photos I've got to upload!) I then head into a more historic permanent exhibition in a large room with surely 19 foot ceilings. The architecture and carvings of the walls in this place are like art itself and there are actually a couple of ridiculously huge paintings across some of the corridor walls! I won't bore you but the pieces in this next room were exquisite. So ancient, so beautiful and with such stories to tell! You should visit the Prince Albert next time you're in London. Once I've finished admiring the place, I catch another tube to Oxford Circus to meet Georgia and Chloe. We then head (on yet another tube!) to Notting Hill Gate where I will take them to the famous Portobello Markets. These markets are apparently heaving on a Saturday with food stalls and various entertainment stretching down the whole street, but Tuesday is good enough for now and ends up still being quite busy! I didn't realise just how long Portobello Road is but there are hundreds of little shops and pop-up stalls full of everything you could ever imagine..Clothes, food, furniture, Persian carpets, shoes and masses and masses of silver jewelry with all the different gem stones with all their different engravings and designs. I've never seen anything like it and if you know me, well, you know that this is my heaven. I am a fiend for all this kind of vintage-style jewelry with Onix stones, amber, amethyst, topaz, turquoise...you name it! But would you believe, to my own surprise, I resisted and knew that I didn't have the room in my bags or even the room on my fingers to indulge in any jewelry! I did, however, indulge in this one store that was serving freshly cooked crepes (the size of dinner plates) filled with strawberries and Nutella (chocolate)!! I couldn't resist and hadn't eaten lunch so I thought that would be a good excuse :p and holy moly it was yummy!!!

We wondered along seeing all the little stores and what treasures they had, with Georgia and Chloe treating themselves to a thing or two before we came to the old book store that is the feature point in the Notting Hill movie! I felt like a little kid so excited that I had made it but then my dreams were crushed as I was about to have a photo with it before realising the 'g' was missing out of the shop name 'Notting Hill'! So it read 'Nottin Hill' haha but hey!I really enjoyed the markets and will even try and get back down at some stage to visit on a Saturday - just to experience the buzz!...

We catch another tube after a few hours in 'Nottin' Hill and head to Walkabout where I was a few days ago to meet Alex again along with some of Chloe's other cousins and relatives to watch England vs Costa Rica. Even though England was already out of the Cup, the place was absolutely packed and there was not a seat in sight! This place is beyond huge and even has another room (also packed) that was playing the Italy vs Uruguay match.After about half an hour though, I spot an empty couple of spots on a bench at a table with some (more sober than most) lads sitting around. As forward as I usually am, I walk over and ask if they are taken. Something like 'well they've gone to get a drink but yeh, sure' was enough of an answer for me and so Georgia, Chloe and I took a seat and made ourselves comfortable! The rest of our group also headed over and continued drinking and watching the game! Before long we started talking to our fellow table buddies and the guy sitting next to me was an English fella named John, our age and rather friendly! We spend the next couple of hours chatting, meeting the other friends and not really watching the game! By the time the game had finished, we had taken over the whole table with Chloe's relatives now seated and only good ol' John left in between us all after his mates had left.

Some classic music starts up once the games completely done and we find ourselves all singing along quite passionately to Coldplays, 'yellow', The Killer's 'somebody told me', Bon Jovi's 'living on a prayer' and that song that goes 'and I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more...' Lol! It was a good laugh!Once we've finished bellowing out our amazing voices, we say goodbye to John as well as Chloe's family and head to get some dinner. We cross this bridge and it starts to rain (it's summer!) and despite our efforts, we find ourselves getting completely lost somewhere along the South bank! I decide to pull my GPS out and see what location we are at exactly but it seems to think we are in the middle of the river...the blue dot, that is supposedly 'you' and it's saying we are in the river Thames...this really helps!We wonder around trying to find somewhere to eat and to relieve our bladders until after about half an hour we finally find this bar that looks more like a cute little cottage full of business people drinking and eating and being merry. The three of us drowned rats stumble in and plonk ourselves at the only seats free and order some food..which turns out to be really yummy and healthy and is a nice change from all the Nando's, crepes and Galaxy chocolate ;)

After another fun-filled and rather eventful day, we decide to call it a night and head home, catching another couple of tubes!!! Tomorrow will be Georgia and Chloe's last day before they leave for Paris, as well as my last day before I head to the Midlands!