At present moment I am on the first day of my Contiki Winter Wanderer tour and am on the ferry leaving the White Cliffs of Dover heading over to France and eventually down to Paris. But I'll tell you about that later.
So before Manda arrived in London, I was treated to some fine dining and a hell of a lot of amazing wine with Will and Adrianne (Will's housemate) and I was also lucky enough to attend a Cointreau Prive party hosted by Dita Von Teese. I've been spoiled drinking bottles of Bollinger, Krug and Dom, and have eaten at some of the best Michelin Star restaurants in London! So basically I've been having a ball!! :)
Amanda arrived last Sunday morning and I met her at Heathrow (awwww) from there we went back to the hotel for her to change and shower and then we thought that we would head out and try to see some of London. Although nobody is in their right mind to be able to sight see after a 24hour flight, she soldiered on and we went and hopped on the London Big Bus Tour company bus and took a ride around London!!
Monday night we went to a restaurant close to the hotel for dinner, which turned out to be a huge mistake as I managed to get sick from the spaghetti that I had had and spent a horrible night in bed, eventually to be followed up by a power spew at about 7am the next morning. In all honesty I don't remember ever feeling as sick as I did that day. Hot cold hot cold hot cold, stomach pains, and never really being sure what end what was coming out of. I babbled some incoherent instructions to Amanda on how to get the train and left her to her own devices and to venture out on her own.
About 2pm I decided to suck it up so to speak and head out to find Amanda on Oxford Street, not the best move, as I still wasn't right, but I was feeling rather guilty about dumping her in a foreign city on her own not even 24 hours into her stay.
So somehow I managed to head into Oxford street on the train, don't ask me how as I don't really remember the actual train ride, to seek out Manda amongst the 4000000 shops.
Since I had disembarked the train I had been sms'ing Amanda to determine a central meeting point, I tell her I'm outside NEXT, across from Topshop, and we decide that I will stay put and she will meet me there. About 10 minutes later I get a text saying, "I'm here, where are you?". To which I respond.... No you're not.... I'm here.... You're not...... Lol. For anyone that doesn't know Oxford street and shopping in London, the London retail people (the ones that say what is retail and what shop goes where) are on crack!!! It turns out that indeed Manda was outside NEXT across from Topshop, BUT she was at the one further up the road. Not only do they have two NEXT stores, they have about eight in this particular shopping precinct!, ahhh!
From there we wandered around Oxford Street for another hour or two and then headed back to our hotel and promptly slept for about 16 hours!
Wednesday we had a lazy late breakfast out at South Kensington, and stopped by to say hello to Will and spent a cruisy arvo wandering around the shops. That night we we went with Adrianne and Will to The Big Easy, an American style restaurant about a 10 minute walk from the house. Talk about noisy! We were seated at the farthest end of the restaurant, right near the band, so it was realllly really loud. Food was pretty decent, drinks were even better and the company was fantastic! J
Thursday we went down to Portobello Road to have a wander around the markets, and see if we could see a Fur that I had seen earlier last week, alas the woman selling the fur is only there some Fridays and Saturdays. That night we went out to a Pop-up restaurant in East Melbourne,
We then went down to Portobello Road and had a wander through some of the shops and stalls down there, grabbed a coffee and then made our way back to Will’s to collect Manda’s washing and then headed to our Orientation for our tour leaving the following morning, grabbed a quick pub meal and then headed back to the Novotel, and then settled in for an early nights sleep.
Saturday was defintely an early start, and our Addison Lee (similar to a town car, but they for some reason use Addison Lee as a verb in London) arrived at the hotel to take us to the Contiki meeting point at 6.10, and by 6.15 we were rocketing towards the next 24 days of fun! We met our tour manager Jude, a vivacious, tenacious 26 old, with more energy than the Evereddy Bunny on a lifetimes supply of red bull and speed, and Neil (aka Hot-Neil) our Driver for the tour, Hot-Neil is I’m guessing in his late 20’s, more likely early 30’s and has a great sense of humour, and is very well travelled.
So at this point in this post, we are actually at day 10 of our tour. I haven’t really had a second of down time to be able to sit down and actually write. Wifi has been a little bit dodgy and it has been few and far between!
Okay so because this has become quite boring Ii've decided to stop here. I'll write about the last few days a little bit later on!Hope you're all safe and well!
Love to you all!
SJ x
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