London take two

Lissa, me and Philippa at the bridge

Last year working as an advisor at Victoria University I had two coworkers, Lissa and Philippa. Lissa has spent the last six months living in Germany (I visited her in Erlangen in July) and Philippa has been in London all year (I visited her there in May). We'd talked about the three of us meeting up for awhile, and finally one weekend in November we did.

Poppy wreath outside Westminster Abbey

Lissa and I both flew from Frankfurt Hahn, my absolute favourite airport (or not, its a former army base in the middle of no where, turned into a trashy airport for low-budget airlines, I've flown in and out a couple of times). In theory it should have been an easy trip, as there's a direct bus there from Luxembourg and only a quick flight from Germany to London, but I'm amazed that I made it there! After a morning of all the errands I had to do here in Luxembourg going wrong, I left the house late and missed the bus I needed to take to catch the airport bus, got there by taxi with only seconds to spare, and then our bus to the airport got stuck in roadworks and Friday evening traffic and I barely made it through check-in!

Lissa outside Philippa's place

The next hurdle was getting in and out of the UK itself. Last time I was there I was placed on an alert list due to all of the fun and games I was having with my spanish visa, so I was scared that they wouldn't let me in this time, given all I have to prove that I have a visa is a laminated ID card. A surly looking German man studied this for a while, and then let me through and onto the plane. After we landed in London Stansted, we waited in the 'Non-European' queue watching two immigration officials rigorously interrogate everyone. Finally our turn came, and after several minutes spent swearing that I was studying Politics in Madrid on exchange and explaining who we were visiting, what job she did, and what her life plans and star sign and childhood pet's name were, we were in!

oldtimer band at the local pub

We managed to bus from the airport to Mile End station, and Philippa met us there and took us back to her flat. She's moved since the last time I was there, and is now living in a very Coronation-St-type two story, three bedroom place inhabited by five-and-a-half kiwis and with another on the couch - nine New Zealanders sleeping in a three-bedroom, one bathroom place in central London, true OE style! This house had once been inhabited by the Horror Handyman from Hell (fancy your light switches inside kitchen cupboards, anyone?) and the toilet had decided to stop working this weekend too, fun times. By this point, it was around 11pm UK time, so midnight our time, and we were quite shattered, but we did make it out for some food and a drink at their local, a crazy old-timer looking place with an amazing band made up of elderly men with what little grey hair they had left at a rock-star long length (check out the bassist in the photo).

our Yeoman tour guide

On Saturday morning Philippa and her fiance James took us out for breakfast and coffee at a wee cafe in a park somewhere near their place. The weather wasn't bad at all, after it being 3-8degrees most of the previous week in Luxembourg, having 18 degrees in London felt like heaven, and having a real Latte made by a kiwi barista was amazing! We then went to the Tower of London and did the tour inside. These tours are run by the Yeomen Warders, who, I was surprized to learn, actually live with their families inside the Tower. Imagine being the teenage son or daughter of a Yeoman Warder and asking a taxi to take you home there after a night on the town! The one who did our tour was absolutely hilarious, and earned extra respect from us for referring to Australia as 'one of the islands in the New Zealand group'.

the 'White Tower' of the Tower of London

I learnt a few things that I didn't know about the place. The Tower has a reputation for being a prison, but was actually designed as a royal residence and usually only had high-profile prisoners kept there for very short periods of time, and actually the first prisoner ever held there escaped. It was built in 1078, but there was no purpose built prisoner accomodation until 1687. The Tower was last used to hold prisoners during WWII, with Hitler's deputy the final one. The Tower of London also has seven capitive ravens living in the grounds, legend has if the 'six ravens' are lost or fly away, the Tower and the Crown will fall. The seventh bird is the reserve. There is even a 'Ravenmaster' Yeoman that looks after them and feeds them meat every day.

Spanish food at Borough Market

So, we did the tour, looked at the Crown Jewels, saw some old armour (that King Henry VIII had some serious allusions about the size of his own crown jewels!) and then wandered down to the Tower Bridge, where James left us. We went to the Borough Market for lunch, that place is amazing! It has foods from all around the world, both cooked meals and things like specialist cheeses and bread to buy. As much as I love markets here in continental Europe, its cool to have fifty different types of food in one place, rather than just fifty stands selling the same cheese and olives. Lissa and I had paella and Philippa chowed down on some German sausage.

View from the London Eye with Westminster in the bottom right

We went up the London Eye, something I'd wanted to do since the last time I visited. It's like a giant slow-moving ferris wheel, you go into a pod with about 15 other people and it does a thirty-minute circuit up and down again. It was quite cloudy but still very cool, and a nice change from walking up the windy stairs to reach the top of church bell towers! We walked over past Big Ben and Westminster, where they had war Remembrance Day memorials going on, and took a quick look at Buckingham before going back to the river bank for the Lord Mayor's Parade fireworks. They were quite cool fireworks, but from where we were sitting the Eye completely dwarfed them, and made it all kinda underwhelming.

Fireworks beside the London Eye

We met up with James again, and their former Aussie flatmates, and went for a drink and then to Brick Lane for curry. Brick Lane is full of curry shops, and the waiters stand outside the doors and make deals with you like free wine and 20% off if you come to their place. We went to what these guys consider to be the best, and it was really good (I tucked into some especially spicy stuff!) but what made the place was the decor - the walls were covered in huge paintings of erotic mythological scenes, apart from one wall that had a big painting of Diana instead. Weird. We left this place extremely full and not feeling capable of heading out, so we went back to the flat and hung out there with some flatmates and some of their friends for a bit.

Xmas lights on Oxford Street

Sunday was shopping day! We had coffee at another kiwi-barista place and then took the bus through town to Oxford Street, the road that almost bankrupted me last time I visited London. This time I was a bit more savvy, and didn't buy anything until we got to Primark, where I splashed out as one only can in a place where pants cost no more than five quid. A couple of hours later we managed to free ourselves from the grasp of Primani goodness and stumbled out to find darkness had fallen and the street full of Christmas lights. We headed up to Piccadilly to take a quick look, and then spent our final evening in London having an amazing chicken roast with all of the trimmings thanks to Philippa's awesome cooking. It felt quite weird to be sitting around with so many kiwis, eating something so kiwi, with english-speaking TV playing in the background after over ten months here in Europe!

Roast chicken dinner

Monday morning we flew back to Frankfurt. Thanks to Lissa's much more sound planning skills we managed to get a bus out to the airport without being stressed when we got stuck in early-morning traffic, but most on the bus didn't seem to be in the same boat and one man got really aggressive. I was looking forward to landing back in the immigration-slack EU, and sure enough I had no problems walking in with my flimsy Spanish ID card, but Lissa got held up a bit - her German visa was granted on the basis of her husband being here for work, and the woman demanded to know where he was (at work...can't a girl take a trip without her man to hold her hand?) and then we were back in the 2degree cold of Europe, and I was back to Luxembourg and small children once again.

More photos of London in November are here.