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| The Southbank |
I can easily say that London is one of my favourite places to visit; everything about the city from the wonderful sights, the diverse cultures, the busy underground, the fantastic shows, I just love it all.
This visit stood as my sixth visit to the streets of London, and it still takes me by surprise just how easy it is to find something new to do, even after so long. The train journey from Darlington to London does not take very long, jumping on the train at 10:03 we had arrived at Kings Cross by lunch time. I have always enjoyed train journey's, unlike some people I don't find them boring or tedious, especially not when I have travel company like my mum and sister. We hooked our phones up to the free wifi, drank a cup of coffee and chatted; allowing the 2 hours to go by quickly.
Arriving onto our platform we were greeted by a gush of warm air that was similar to the feeling of touching down in a hot country. The atmosphere was definitely a sign of what was to come as we had glorious weather the entire trip, much to our pleasure. The hotel we had booked was closer to London Waterloo than Kings Cross, but this did not matter as it was a fairly simple journey across the underground to reach our destination. I have come across people before who worry about the Underground and find the idea of using the Underground a slightly daunting challenge. We have never had this problem, my mum often refers to me as the Underground expert as I find it easy to navigate and find destinations using the system; and have even successfully done it myself when I had a train which changed in London.
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| Waterloo Station |
The hotel was only a 5 minute walk from the station which was definitely helpful since we had our suitcases, it was a great location as it was not directly on the Southbank so there was no loud, disturbing noises to keep us awake at night; we did initially face some problems with the room as it was only set up and designed for 2 adults instead of 3, but the hotel staff were lovely and when my mum mention the situation they happily moved us to a larger room more suited for 3 adults.
Once we were settled into the room it was time to begin our trip, and what better way to begin than with a West End show? You should never visit London without seeing a show, it is honestly a waste of a trip. I have seen many different shows over our many years, including, Grease, The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and others. For our trip this time we choose to see 2 shows, a musical and an actual show; our choices, Wicked and The Women in Black.
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| Apollo Theatre, the home of Wicked |
Both me and my sister have wanted to see for a long time, but the show has always been sold out on previous trips. So finally getting to see the show was a dream come true. The Wizard of Oz has been a favourite of mine since I was a little child and I have always loved everything about the story, along with this, last year as part of my creative writing we did a module on transformative writing which saw us take something that already existed and remake it into something new. This added to my excitement, seeing the story told in a completely new light from the point of view of the witches was intriguing.
It was definitely worth both the hype and wait, it was absolutely fantastic and definitely one of the top musicals I have seen. The story was lovely and I really felt for the character of Elphaba (The 'Wicked' Witch) and was throughly pleased with the outcome of the show. Along with the story, the musical numbers where outstanding; I spent the entire night with Defying Gravity stuck in my head, not that I minded as it was a fantastic song. Adding that with the little nostalgia characters and sets that took you back to the land of Oz, the overall night was 10/10 and a brilliant start to our trip.
The following day we chose to visit London Zoo, we have been to multiple zoos over the years across England and in other countries but never once have we visited London Zoo and we were looking forward to our trip to somewhere new. The sun was shining bright and it was set to once again be a hot day, we had not packed so accommodating as it was England, so despite the soaring temperatures we still had on our jeans, luckily I had packed a selection of my favourite crop tops.
Once we had eaten breakfast and got our bags ready we headed for the underground, getting the train over to Camden Town where we could make the short walk to the zoo in Regents Park. We had never been to this part of London and I loved it straight away. The culture, diverse shops, markets made for a lively and fun atmosphere and I hope we get the chance to revisit Camden properly on a future trip.
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| Welcome to Camden |
The zoo itself was wonderful, the aquarium sanctuary was a personal highlight due to it's large size compared to previous zoo aquariums I have been too. I also loved the meerkat sanction, they have the most adorable faces and look so cute when they stand up to observe their surroundings. I could've spent hours watching them whip their heads around simultaneously at every little sound, but my mum and sister wanted to move on.
I will admit that due to the hot weather it meant many animals chose shelter and therefore were not milling about for us to see. This was of course not the Zoos fault but I was disappointed that we were unable to see the lions and that I only caught a few second glance of a tiger which is my ultimate favourite animal.
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| Meerkats and Tigers |
As a follow up from the zoo we had booked ourselves into the IceBar for the evening; a friend had recommended it to me, telling me it was a different experience, and with a free cocktail with entry price we thought why not. We would be in their for 50 minutes and its not something you can experience just anywhere. Following our very warm day at the zoo in which our jeans felt physically stuck to our bodies we changed into our dresses and sandals and headed down. We had booked into the 6:30 slot meaning we would have time to have a meal and do something else afterwards.
Upon entrance we were given a thermal cape with attached gloves to keep us warm, as I am a relatively short girl the cape fell below my knees and did its job of not letting me freeze, although having worn sandals my toes did get cold. It was a good laugh inside, we drank the cocktail of our choosing from our very own Ice Glass, we took selfies with our ridiculous hoods up to send on snapchat, admired the Ice artwork and sculptures and where fully satisfied and ready to leave after 40 minutes. It was brilliant and definitely an experience, with the added benefit of the still glorious sunshine hitting us upon a exit and quickly warming us up. One thing I will mention is that when fully booked it is busy inside, the room is not massive and so you might find yourself in the back of a few strangers photos. However, once the half hour mark has hit people begin to trickle out and it becomes less packed inside.
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| One of the many wonderful pieces of ice art |
Following our trip into the coldest place in London, we had a scrumptious meal in Chiquitos and finished the night off with a walk along the Southbank, a truly wonderful evening.
Wednesday was our dedicated shopping and sight seeing day, we can never resist a walk down Oxford Street. It's full of shops much bigger than the ones in Middlesbrough, other shops such as Forever 21 and Victoria Secret which just don't exist in our small town. We browsed the shelves and picked out our favourites, we did not finish the shopping laden with plastic bags but we did all have our fair share of bags.
It was another scorching hot day, with temperatures peaking at 30 degrees. Luckily we had more suitable clothing on, wearing our summer dresses and shorts to keep us a cool as possible, which was not possible really, as we headed to see the typical tourist sights. Our first port of call was Trafalgar Square, we usually get loads of photo opportunities at this point, climbing up on the lions and posing in front of the gallery. Sadly the lions were taped off so that we could not access them, but we did pop into the art gallery; it was free and it got us out of the mid day heat for half an hour before we walked up to Buckingham Palace. Sadly there was no sighting of the royal family.
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| Busy Trafalgar Square |
To top off our last day of this London trip we had booked in to see The Woman in Black. This as not a typical show we usually see in London, in fact we had only ever previously watched musicals. Not only that but it was a horror play, this was very different to our usual stuff. I'm not going to lie, I am the biggest wimp ever. The Daniel Radcliffe movie scares me, let alone the live action version. It was playing at Fortune Theatre, which was such a cute, small intimate place; even smaller than our local theatre. It added to the atmosphere and definitely helped create an eerie feeling that might not have been present in a large theatre.
Let me tell you, for a show that only consisted of two men the entire time, it was bloody fantastic. There was moments which made you jump or your heart beat a little bit faster, but it was not as scary as some people had made it out to be. It was definitely better than the movie - which is saying something as anyone who knows me knows just how deep my love for Daniel Radcliffe runs - and I would highly recommend it to people who either enjoyed the film, or doesn't mind jumping from time to time.
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| Fortune Theatre |
This marked the end of our summer trip to London, the next morning we packed our bags and headed to Kings Cross. It was a long train ride, with nearly an hour delay due to problems at Kings Cross. But it didn't damped our spirits or ruin the trip. We had still had a brilliant time, full of brand new experience that we had not had the privilege to take part in before; and as we pulled up in Darlington I was already looking forward to our next trip to the busy streets of London.
