hello london

After KL, it was onto London and beyond!  The flight to London from KL was surprisingly bearable, despite it being 13 hours on a budget airline with no entertainment system and surrounded by babies. Landing in London was rather lovely - mild weather and a beautiful sunset.

We had a couple of days in London before starting the european leg of our trip. We didn't do much - just chilled out, recovered from jetlag and caught up with friends.


Our friend Prerna pampered us with yummy homecooked meals.


I also had the best roast pork sandwich ever at Borough market! Big chunks of roast pork with delicious layer of crackling and apple sauce in a soft roll... it was sooo good.


We also saw Journey and Foreigner in concert as our friend had some spare tickets... Foreigner was pretty good, energetic performance. Journey however, was not quite what I expected. I was looking forward to a good dose of 80s ballads as that was what I thought Journey's specialities were... they turned out to be all hard rock, and was fronted by an emo looking 30-something. They played a lot from their new album, which was too loud and too rock for my delicate jetlagged ears. While the oldies around us rocked out, I just wondered if this gig was worth the hearing damage. And they played only one ballad! (while we were there anyway) We left early - I felt like a grumpy old granny.

After the lazy days in London we were on our way to Spain. We nearly didn't make it though! We first caught the wrong train to the airport, and then when we finally got to Luton airport station we were fined for not having a ticket because we used our oyster cards instead of buying a ticket (The train information guy in London had told us we could) When at the airport I spent 20 minutes on the phone with the Oyster card helpline trying to get our money back. And after that we thought we had an hour before the flight and sat down for some burgers. Halfway through my burger I glanced at the boarding pass and nearly choked when I saw that boarding gate closes half an hour before the flight departure time - and we were not even through security with only 10 minutes to go! We threw down our burgers and raced to the security line, which was wayyy long. (You could get a "priority security gate pass" for three pounds, which I thought was the dumbest thing ever, but we so wished we had got them as we were panicking in those lines)  After security, our boarding gate was, according to a sign, a 20 minute walk away along corridors with no moving walkways. We ran towards the boarding gate so fast I thought I was gonna throw up. Thankfully, the food stayed down, and we made the flight, but only just. Lesson learnt!