Last Week in London for a While...

Our last week in London was probably our biggest yet! We have made many friends in London and it was much more difficult to say good bye than we thought.

Wednesday
Nat’s job agency took her, Caroline and Ciara out for drinks in the bar next to the bank. On the wine list, they had WA Madfish White Wine! Nat was stoked! The first quality wine found in any bar so far in London. All the wine from WA is really bad quality wine we would never buy at home! After drinks Cam came in to city and we went to Caroline’s and she made us a lovely dinner. Caroline, (one of Nat’s workmates), is going to be away when we return from Germany. It worked out perfectly and we are going to rent her room for a few weeks. We met her flat mates who are really nice. Such a relief to have somewhere to stay on our return. It will give us a few weeks to find a new place to stay. Needless to say, the flat is only a 5-10 minute walk to Big Ben!!

Thursday
Nat had a night out with her girlfriends at a cocktail bar. Half price cocktails! A rather big night, especially when you have to get up for work the next day. Sacha, Nat’s mate who sits next to her at the bank, was also enjoying a big night out and Nat left him about 11.30 talking to her Brazilian friend Mariana and Spanish friend Pam. He was looking rather worse for wear on Friday, makes the hangover much easier to bear when someone else has a worse hangover than you!! I thought Sacha was such an innocent young man, until I saw him out in the bar chatting up my friends! I think he thought that I was a really nice person until he saw me out too!!

Friday
Nat and the bank girls met up at 8am for breakfast, we knew we would be feeling pretty rough, so it was a great idea. BIG coffee, eggs benedict and fresh apple juice. What a great way to start the day! This was supposed to be my last day, but I asked nicely if I could work on Monday too. More money the better! We battled through the day. Someone in the bank had free tickets to a comedy show, I grabbed myself 5 tickets and had a night out with the girls and Cam had a night out with his pub mates.

The comedy was awesome. I’m not sure what was more funny, the blank look on Pam’s face when everyone was laughing at the jokes, trying to explain the jokes after or the comedy itself! It was a great night out, even better since it was free!

Saturday
Nat, Mariana, Brooke and Ciara went to the play Vegemite Tales in the afternoon. Mariana and I thought we would be clever and catch the bus, bad idea! We got there about 15 minutes before the show, had no idea where the theatre, Brooke or Ciara was! It was a mad rush, but we made it just in the nick of time. You know Nat, couldn’t possibly be on time! The play is about an Aussie share house in London and the scenarios you encounter when sharing with other people. It was really well done. (Cam was working at the pub during the day, working like a trooper).

Sunday
We are supposed to be moving out of our room today, but Cam is back off to work and Nat has to pack everything up. This is the worst part about working and traveling. All the damn packing. We seem to gather so much stuff and most of which we can’t part with. We’ve now got things like our towels, sheets, pillows, fry pan, work shoes, the stuff you need on a day to day basis, but not while you’re traveling. We were blessed that Pam was away this weekend, so Nat moved all our stuff down in to her room. What a debacle! We had to pack what we thought we needed for traveling and pack everything else to leave in London. A hard decision when your not sure what the weather is going to be like.

Monday
Our official last day of work, for now! Nat has made some great friends at the bank. All from different places, Caroline and Sacha are from England, Ciara from Ireland and Prabashni from South Africa. Our flat mates, Mariana from Brazil and Pam from Spain. Its been a great experience so far, many different people from different countries. I finished my last day with great relief. A strange feeling not knowing where you will be working next. After work Nat met up with Mariana in the city for a bit of last minute shopping. Cam met up with Craig for ‘boys’ drinks in Canary Wharf, one of the ritziest business areas in London.

Tuesday
We packed up the last few things, I swear it seems to take us forever to pack! I don’t understand why we have so much trouble! Anyway, Mariana skipped her classes and came home to say good bye. We’ve become best friends in London, and Nat is going to miss her so much.

Come 3 o’clock we say our good byes and head to Gatwick Airport by train. The security checks coming out of London are crazy. You are only allowed a small carry on bag, and absolutely no liquids. Lip balm, lip stick, hand cream, not allowed. When you go through security, we all had to take off our shoes and belts! I wouldn’t want to be security handling peoples shoes!! You should have seen the huge bags full of peoples water, lip sticks etc. What a waste! We boarded the plane and off we went!