Good morning! As you've probably noticed I changed the design of my blog (again)... I like this one though. It's cleaner, and anyone who knows me knows that my favourite colour combo is dark grey and Tiffany blue ;) Alright, on to the good stuff!
Today marks five weeks in England! What?!
I can't believe how quickly time is going! It really is starting to feel so natural being here and it's only every few days that it hits me again that I live here. I've fallen into routines with people and places and have finally started to relax about everything. My bank accounts are all sorted, I've got my Amazon Prime set up, I've got my favourite stores to shop at (H&M for clothes and Waitrose for food. Yes, I am a Waitrose snob. Sorry not sorry). My US loans have also finally come through (result!) so I can give my poor US credit card a break because it got quite the workout this past month.
So let's see, what have I been up to lately...
Well, I finally got to see Regent and Oxford Streets, that was quite fun, although by the time we got there all the stores had shut for the night, but it was still a lot of fun wandering around looking at all the lights. We also went to Covent Garden which is so so pretty. I can't wait to go back during the day and see what damage I can do in the Dior and Chanel stores (only kidding! Kind of...).
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| Start of Christmas decorations on Oxford Street! |
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| My flatmate Katherine and I on Oxford Street :) |
I also visited the British Museum, Primrose Hill, Portobello Market, crossed Abbey Road (Beatles style), saw my first football match (Fulham vs Wolverhampton. It was a blowout loss and it was freezing but I still had an incredible time), got completely addicted to the show Once Upon a Time, finished the book After You by Jojo Moyes, and have tried (and failed) to party like the English.
But the most important thing is that I went to Dover this past weekend! And for that story I have to start at the beginning.
So myself, my friend Kate, and my flatmate Becca all decided to go to Dover for the day to get out of London and start exploring this beautiful country. We bought coach tickets that left from London Victoria station at 7:30 on Sunday morning so we set our alarms and planned to meet at my flat at 6, thinking that would be plenty of time to get into central at that hour (because come on, who else is going to be out that early on a Sunday?).
Well.
Turns out the bus we needed to get into Hammersmith only runs twice an hour (a bus, mind you, that normally runs every
three to six minutes during the day) and that the tube conveniently decided to have a meltdown, causing us to sit at the station for a solid ten minutes. There's nothing quite like waiting for the tube doors to open and full on sprinting up two flights of stairs and down six blocks in central London at 7 in the morning in order to catch a coach. Really gets the day started off right, you know? The important thing is that we made it to our bus and ultimately to Dover.
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| Our first picture on the beach in Dover! |
After visiting the beach and getting super cold and windblown, we worked our way back towards the city centre to find a place to get breakfast. We finally decided on The Dovorian restaurant because: a) it was cheap and we're poor, and b) they had a vegetarian english breakfast! The food was good, not the best I've ever had, but you can't argue with the amount of food we got for the price. We got three full english breakfasts, tea and coffee and a plate of chips all for under 15 pounds. In central London that's what you would pay for
one breakfast.
After breakfast we made our way up to Dover Castle! The castle is situated on the top of this massive hill overlooking the town of Dover. On foot it's quite the hike, but once we got to the castle grounds we were completely blown away by how incredible it was. It was a freaking CASTLE, complete with medieval tunnels and WWII bunkers. The castle was in incredible shape and you were free to basically roam around wherever you pleased. They had some props in a few of the rooms and even had a fire going in one of them, but the best view was from the top of the castle where you could see
everything. I tried to take pictures, but there's no way they even come close to capturing how amazing the view was.
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| Dover Castle! Well, part of it |
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| The view of Dover from the top of the castle. It was breathtaking |
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| The castle! |
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| The three Americans :) |
After exploring the castle and grounds for several hours, we decided to try and trek to the famous white cliffs, which were just barely visible from part of the castle. We started walking towards them and finally decided we were too tired and too pressed for time to make it all the way to the top of the cliffs, but we stopped at a beautiful overlook where you could see them and watch the numerous ferries shuttling between England and France. The sun was out, it was a crisp fall day, I was with incredible people, and basically everything was right with the world at that time.
After the cliffs we stopped to get a quick bite to eat and then worked our way back down to town to catch our coach back to London. Overall, the day took us 15 hours, we took a total of 25,000 steps and walked 12 miles (and ran several city blocks), but it was worth every single minute.
Well, that's about all I've got for today! I hope that wherever you are in the world you're having a wonderful, incredible, magical day. Hopefully I'll be back soon with more stories, but for now, cheers!
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