Hello London!!! I'm officially here! After about 20 hours flying time, 24 hours in transit, & about 4 hours sleep in 36 hours, I finally made it to ye olde London town! The flight went smoothly, although I was super jealous having to walk past the uber cool first class sleeping "pods" on emirates before reaching my lowly economy seat :P which, realistically, was pretty damn swish anyway! I watched 127 Hours (Nomi, you would struggle with the bit where he cuts his arm off! :P), The Social Network, Jerry Maguire, The Last 3 Days, The Town, + a bunch of other TV shows. So quite a cruisy 24 hours really :) Oh, & I was lucky to score a spare seat next to me on the Dubai to London leg of the trip, which was pretty sweet considering it was supposed to be a fully booked flight! I resisted actually lying down for the first half of the trip before tiredness overwhelmed embarrassment & I decided to go for it - best decision EVER! :P

No dramas on arrival, except that I forgot the address of where I was staying, which lead the customs guy to interrogate me pretty intensely - fortunately I passed with flying colours! Met Dad on the other side, trained from Heathrow to Paddington, Paddington to King's Cross, King's Cross to Golders Green - & there was the lovely Esther Dawkins! I'm still very obviously a tourist, because unlike the rest of the bustling passengers on the underground I still have to stop regularly to gawk at the confusing map of many colourful lines to work out where I'm going. That, and of course the fact that I look like a Turtle with my backpack on! Haha But I made it to the house in one piece :)

I'm staying with Esther (a friend of mine from high school) and her cousin Jess. They have very kindly extended a piece of floor to me in their store room/Esther's current bedroom, which was once a garage! Truly multi purpose ;) There are actually 7 people living here right now, 8 including Esther, 9 if you include me for the next 3 days! But unlike the open plan living in Australia, the house is more segmented, 3 stories tall, and with lots of little nooks & different rooms with oddly angled walls. It's kind of like they built one room, then just sort of added more and more as they went along! I'm not sure if it's that or the jet lag but for the first 24 hours here, when I walk around I actually feel kinda dizzy…like the walls & floor are moving…strange!

I managed to sleep in until 7:00AM on Saturday morning, which was a pleasant surprise (for those of you who know my sleeping patterns well you will understand how great an achievement this is for me - a 7:00AM "sleep in" at home is a triumph, let alone when there's jetlag involved!). Then I headed out with Esther to get myself a UK sim card, which was suspiciously easy…I'm still waiting for "the catch". My number here is (+44) 07926 136134 (to text from Oz type +447926136134). I also got myself an Oyster card (the UK equivalent of a multi rider) & a good supply of English pounds. I was now officially ready to shop! :D

Esther & I met up with Jess, and one of the housemates Nat to take a trip to the Portobello markets. I'm very sad to report that the once blue, iconic front door from Notting Hill is now black, and the travel book shop is no longer a travel book shop - it's a travesty! Notting Hill, however, is still gorgeous as always, and Portobello road was lined with dozens of cute stores packed with costume jewelry, cheap dresses, & antique tea sets. I managed to fight my addiction to fine china, admitting to myself that a Royal Dolton teacup is not the most practical thing to buy at the start of a trip backpacking through Europe…however I did give in to my love of polkadots & bought (yet another!) navy blue & white polkadot dress. It's OK, Esther understand my love of polkadots & doesn't think it's at all strange that more than 50% of the dresses I've brought traveling with me sport this delightful pattern! :) We also ate delicious cupcakes from Hummingbird cupcakes, which I will admit, give my own creations a run for their money :P

When the crowds of Portobello markets became too hard to bear, we headed to Kensington to high street, home of Top Shop, H&M, and Urban Outfitter. Now, never having been much of a shopper I thought I'd be safe, I was really just along for the ride…well, it turns out that H&M is like the gateway drug to shopping addiction. "I'm just browsing" turned into "Oo! Look at these cute hairclips", which progressed to, "Hmm, I'm just going to try this cardigan on", which somehow ended up with me leaving with hair clips, cardigan, top, AND a new dress! But at a total price of about 30 pounds ($45) it was kinda hard to resist! I also bought a one pound pair of pink pig socks from top shop hehe I just loved the alliteration :P

I was determined to stay awake until 9:00PM, but when I woke up in the middle of the night to find that Esther had disappeared out for the night with her friends, I realized I must have failed somewhere around 7:30…which leads me to being awake at 4:00AM! Which leads me to writing this blog to you now :) Not that I mind really, it's a beautiful morning, the sky is clear, there's a beautiful bunch of fresh daffodils on the table, and…I'm in London!!!

Liv xoxo