London Calling

Ahhh a Clash reference, so hip.

Flew out of Singapore on Saturday night and got to experience the A380. That plane is wicked, nice and roomy and an awesome on-demand entertainment system. Also gulped down a nice Tiger and Peanut Butter m&m’s before boarding. Awesome!

The flight was about 12 or so hours I think, slept a little but not too well, also watched Taken (Liam Neeson movie). He kinda sucks as an actor and somehow he was basically playing a Chuck Norris style role. Advice; don’t bother seeing it. Other than that the flight was pretty standard… oh, aside from the ‘medical emergency’ on board. Never found out what it was but one of the staff came on the PA sounding pretty freaked out, asking if there were any medical professionals on board.

Arrived about 6am, got to the hostel a couple hours after that and met up with Drewskies. Pretty awesome and funny feeling to be catching up with someone on the other side of the world… Went for a walk down to the river, saw all the usual stuff you’d expect to see down there, then met up with Ellen in Piccadilly Circus. Went in to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum (and he was right, I couldn’t believe it – it cost 20 pound to get in there!), and I got back into the whole cow-love thing.

Also what would a visit to London be without cliche tourist pictures?

Ur doing it wrong!

Casual Mike and the Delorean

Drew and Ellen

Drew split off to go hang with Ash or something, I went back to the hostel and had a shower (I was pretty filthy after a day and a half of Singapore heat and flights, if you couldn’t tell in those pictures), then met up with Ellen again to go to Camden Markets and go pub crawling across Camden. Pretty awesome stuff right there… and here.

Day 2

Today we went on a tour to see Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath. Pretty early morning start, Ash was meant to meet us as Russel Square but instead got confused and went to Regents Park… For those who don’t know, all you need to know is that’s pretty far. Long story short the bus driver was nice enough to pick her up from there so it all worked out.

First stop was Windsor Castle, where the Queen was actually staying at the time. And while I was there I made sure to get a photo with my ol’ pal The Queen. Kinda interesting, if you’re into the monarchy thing and all the royal extravagance of grandiose rooms with massive paintings and loads of guns/swords… Also saw the changing of the guard (you know, touristy crap you gotta see), and the main dude had some massive dog. Crazy big!

And here’s another lame photo:

As Tall As Castles

Next stop, the one I have been looking forward to for a long time, STONEHENGE. Surprisingly this wasn’t the let-down I was actually bracing myself for… In photos it probably is a little less than impressive, but being there was pretty cool… You get little hand held audio guides that tell you about the place, it’s pretty funny as pretty much everything they say is “we don’t know how or why, but this is what we think is the reason…” when it came to answering questions of why it was built, when, how, what for, etc… Crazy stuff though, apparently those stones weigh about 5 tonne each and were brought from hundreds of miles away, over in Wales. Pretty big deal when you consider it was done thousands of years ago.

Obligatory nerdy Spinal Tap-reference shot:

The miniature Stonehenge

From here we moved on to the city of Bath, way out West towards Bristol, not too far from Wales… The place has to be seen to be believed… Every building in the area is made from the local stone, so the whole city has this honey-ish colour to it (the colour of the stone). The main purpose of the trip to Bath is to see the ancient Roman hot baths (obviously what the town was named after), and with their apparent ability to cure ailments you too can purchase a glass of the refreshing (read: warm and eggy) water from the hot spring for 50p.

Taking the starting block

Got back to the hostel about 8ish and then headed up to Camden to the Barfly to see Moneen (and another pic). These guys rule, and it was pretty awesome to catch them in a venue which couldn’t have had a capacity more than about 200 people… Singalongs, beers flying, stage dives, Kenny pulling me up there, the music tour has started! (oh, and for those of you who care I managed to get a pretty decent recording of one of their new songs – Believe – I’ll try uploading that video soon)

Kenny from Moneen

Ol' pal Kenny

So yeh I’m having a blast (and blowing money waaaaaaaaaay too quickly… but that’s a sign of having fun, right?!)… Today is now just a chance to chill out a bit, check out the city and get ready for the bus trip to Glastonbury tomorrow. GETTING EXCITED!!