Current location:	London, UK and Paris, France
Current mood:	comfy

Being grown-up
So I went to London on Halloween day. I'll post more about that, because I wrote in my green book quite a fair number of details about the day (and by the way, it's not easy to write when the train will shake you around every now and then).

I had promised my sister to take her the next time I'd travel, so I did that, and off we went at 6 in the morning at Paris-Nord Station waiting for the check-in to open, in the middle of a fairly long line of people.
I'm always amused at the UK Immigration point, because the "EU Citizens" line goes so fast (they just check passports) and the "Non-EU Citizens" line goes so much slower. Gotta love the EU !
But then it was a bit short because the train was leaving at 6:22.
Then we got an extra 2 hours and a half to sleep before we made it to London.
I'll go quickly through this then, don't need you to fall asleep just now. If you want the full story well just ask for it, or wait till I actually type it in ;)

So Sister and I arrived at Waterloo International just before 8:00 am local time. So a breakfast was needed but as we were there I thought we ought to have a look at Big Ben, since it's so close. So we crossed that narrow street at the foot of the station, up the bridge then down the stairs and through the park to the open area at the bottom of the London Eye. As we were there, we saw people running towards us and there were cops among them (recognizable at their bright yellow reflecting outfit). Wondering what was happening, we quickly backed away to avoid the running people. It turned out it actually was a filming and all those people were stunts. They pretty much used whoever was around, so we played the stunts and now we've got to watch every single british series to find out what one it was ;)
Only problem, we couldn't cross the platform to get to Westminster Bridge, so we had to go the other way. Crossed River Thames at the next bridge, and up to Trafalgar we went. There we got some breakfast, and also a bit of heat, because it was a very sunny day but the banks were extremely windy and the cold was biting our ears.

After that, we had to meet David who'd said he'd be at our meeting point around 10:20. The meeting point I'd called for was a pub located behind Leicester Square, at the cross between Leicester Street and Lisle Street, a pub called the Hog's Head.
Well David texted he was running late, so we sat a bit in the sun in the park on Leicester Square, then went to find... that the pub was gone anyway. Replaced by another one called the Crooked Surgeon (what's it with all those weird names for pubs anyway), which happened to be closed. Baaah.
When our juicy-sweet friend arrived, it was already time to go pick up Sara at Victoria Coach Station, but her coach was actually running late as well so in fact everybody was late. Everyone finally met up in the middle of the street.
Off to go for a drink, but when I asked who was knowing London best, they said it was me ! Which really doesn't make sense, because I'd only been there once, but since Sara had only been there twice, that was hardly better, was it ?

Off we went towards wherever looked a more crowded place. At last we decided to get lunch instead, and so David told us about a pub he knew. We were around Lambeth at that moment, so up we went to Lambeth Bridge and back to Westminster and the filming ;), but it so happened that David can't estimate a distance right and his pub was located on Blackfriars Bridge, which is really way further than we expected. Sister and I were starting to be tired, because for our bodies it was 1 hour later (because of the timezone difference) and we had woken up so early. But we finally managed to get there and have nice yummy chips (and fish, of course).

After that nice stop in a WARM place for a change, I decided that Sister wasn't to have been in London and NOT have seen Tower Bridge and I was sure she'd like the Tower of London anyway (she usually likes medieval and possibly blood related stuff), we crossed Blackfriars Brigde and went down to the Tube, which was actually pretty crowded.
After a moment at Tower Bridge, it was time to go to Harrod's, because well it's nice to be seen as well, even though there's little chance you can afford to buy anything in there lol...
Back out it was tea time, so we entered the first place where to get something, which happened to be a Starbucks Coffee house - from what I remember, on Brompton Road opposite of Hans Crescent, not far from the crossroads with Knightsbridge Road and Sloane Street, but from their website & Google Maps, it looks like it doesn't exist... So huh...)

Then back to Waterloo, it was time to check in. I got duty-free food for the train and off we were in a rather crowded train which actually looked more like a pic-nic area at first, lol !


So that was it. Nice day, I have to say. I was really looking forward to seeing David and Sara as well and it's always nice to be moving around for a change ! Juicy-sweet day !

Also, I was really proud of my English talking, which has improved a lot over the past year. Sara said she was surprised because I hadn't got the French accent she was expecting :D but, it seems I still sound a bit German, which I've always been told throughout my schooltime english classes... and all this even though my voice was half-gone from being sick lol...


Then on Wednesday, I added one unit to my Age Counter. Got an awesome-looking book from Frikki and Freyja, it came all the way from Iceland in a nice envelope :) Also got a few cards, more books from my parents, and a number of gadgets such as a new home for my cellphone - the previous one was like 8 year old, and all ruined from being carried around so much lol...

AND MY AWESOME TRADITIONAL APPLE PIE !!!

;)