London

I had the most fortunate luck yesterday to have a) a free day, b) some cash and c) a good friend of mine with the same previously mentioned situation, all of which resulted in a planned trip to London, capital of our home and our hearts [Unless like me, you live in Wales, in which case that would be Cardiff. On second thoughts, I'm not that fond of the place. Swansea forever!] It was an amazing day, when all was said and done, and I think it cemented a few things down that I already knew beforehand. Let me run you through what happened.

It started with me waking up quite a bit late, and soon followed a hasty transformation from smelly and undressed to clean and smart with me as the star. I bounded out of the doorway just a little after the time I planned, hoping that I would still get to London Kings Cross by 12PM as Curty had said she would be waiting there. I waited for the bus, and one came in less than 5 minutes. "Yes!" I shouted to myself, "Some luck!" I stepped aboard, and asked the driver for a ticket to the North Station, when he replied "Sorry mate, that's the 61." Backstory: I caught the 61 a while back, and he told me the 61 doesn't go to North Station anymore, that it was the 78 that went there now. I wish they would make up their minds. After it stopped, I walked an extra 15 minutes to the station, and had a whole train drama episode!

Anyway, boring travel aside, I turned up a little late to the station, but Curty had already travelled to Liverpool Street, so the next task was to find her. Easy right? "I'm at Starbucks." "Okay, I'll come find you." silence "I'm at Starbucks, where are you?" "I'm in Starbucks." "You're not here!" "I am!" "Wait where you are, I'll come and find you." "But we're apparently in the same place!" "Wait there, I'll come look for you!" "No don't, it'll take ages in this place, tell me what's next to you..." "Pret A Manger." "I don't see one, what else is there?" That carried on for a couple of minutes, until we found each outside... Starbucks. But it wasn't the same one the whole time.

After we rejoiced in our meeting up, we headed outside, me with a Pain Au Chocolat. I saw that Sezer bloke off Big Brother walking past me into the station, something that took me five minutes to figure out who it was before letting Curty take the picture of me. [See Exhibit A!] Man do I look goofy. We decided our first trip would be to Covent Garden, cos I couldn't ever remember going there before. Why is it that whenever I see a place name, I take it literally? I expected an actual garden, lush and green and all I got was some stone market, though it was excellent in all fairness. Turns out I'd been there before, when there used to be a smaller Hamleys store there. We saw the very end of some street act [Who must be making a mint there] and some woman singing in front of a cafe patio. It was possible she was just some lady who decided to stop and sing in front of them, something that seemed only more possible when the cheap tattered suitcase full of CD's at a ridiculous cost was spotted behind her. We moved on.

After a quick venture around the local space, we figured we'd walk to Charing Cross. Somehow we ended up in Trafalgar Square where we spent a whole bunch of time just standing around looking lost. We must have interrupted protest season, as there were not only some seal loving people outside the Canadian Embassy, but also some Clothing brand had hired people to walk around London wearing some sings resembling protest placards in thick black and green coats. I hope they're getting paid a lot for that. They were also walking around in perfect pairs with dead straight faces. It was definitely weird, and I should have taken a picture of it really.

We were actually looking for the Trocadero, an awesome gaming establishment in which all your dreams come true! Well, it has a big arcade and a plentiful pick and mix shop so that's half the population satisfied. We went in, and the only thing that really intrigued us was the dancing machines, despite the absolutely boiling weather [Saying this, we sure did pick a brilliant day to go out for the day] but just as we figured we were ready to embarrass ourselves we saw some psychopathic dancing nuts on the metal dancefloors, knocking up absolutely insane scores on some distant level, so we backed up and decided not to humiliate ourselves... We instead opted for the camp, mystery island type shooting/love match game, which is harder to describe than I have attempted to make it look. We didn't last that long. Needless to say, we had our fill, and Curty was pleased with the place as she'd never been there before.

Next stop was food, so we trotted locally to a restaurant. However, after we had sat down outside and been given our menus, we were aware we'd chosen badly. The prices were too rich for our blood! So, I got the quite embarrassing task of going back in with the menus and saying we didn't fancy it here anymore. Curty owes me for that. We found a cheaper cafe type setting, which suited us both financially and comfortably. I had a vanilla milkshake due to Roxie letting me have some of hers yesterday, and it was amazing! Also, the food was really good. I also brought up the fact that I tipped the woman in the cafe, who was a good hostess to us, as I believe in the laws of Karma, and how bad things you can come round and bite you in the ass eventually. Of course, the same going for good things.

We had a little spare time so we went down to some internet cafe where my computer was broken, and managed to locate a restaurant we'd try if we had time later on. Next thing we had already decided to do was go in search of Krispy Kreme donuts. We already knew they did them in Harrods, so we headed straight there on the Tube. Except when we got off one station and realised we'd have to get back on the crowded Green Park stop [Actually, I'm not sure if I even remember this part of the story correctly, there was some reason why we couldn't go via tube...] we figured we'd walk there.

A little sidenote: I read today somewhere on the web how people in London aren't very friendly, but we were a bit stuck with exactly which direction we were supposed to be heading in post-subway exiting, but we had an abundance of people willing to help us on the way! Go London folk!

On the way, we hit a split path on some kind of underground pathway, a pedestrian subway if you will, and Curty thought we should head one way, and me the other. What did we do to resolve this? Both walked our own ways of course! Only I just hid around the corner and waited five minutes until Curty came back with her tail between her legs, which was when we headed the right way [My way I'll have you know! >:D] After we came out, Curty spotted this family, and her exact words verbatim were "Did you see that girl in the green top? She looked like a young version of Ugly Betty!" Oh Curty, you are a one aren't you :p

We got to Krispy Krem- I mean Harrods and had the best donuts in the world ever, which is a fact, and shortly afterwards, headed for a place to stop and rest. This was when we realised there aren't whole bunch of nice areas in London where you can sit and rest without them being locked and blocked from people like us :( Common folk! Damn you private gardens! We took rest on the nearest thing that looked like we could sit down on, and it happened to be outside a church, which was probably a big, subconscious reason why we decided to spend the next half hour having a big chat, bonding session maybe, including that age old topic of religion. Man, I don't ever remember having a conversation about that before, but we did and I think we really learned a lot about each other. Which was amazing :)

Another little sidenote: We were sitting down having a heavy old discussion, and some more friendly London folk asked us for the time. What's so special about that you ask? Well, they were really happy and thankful when we offered something which can hardly be called a big favour, and that stood out for me. Go London folk again!

We knew that we would have to get back to the gig now, so we headed to the tube station and went to Picadilly Circus. We got to the nearby area, figuring that the place would be getting a line outside of it in eager anticipation of the event that would be opening its doors in half hours time, but as we neared it, we found it was in the unusual part of Soho... the Red Light district. We even got to the gig and Curty wondered if it was the right place because there was nobody outside! However, we weren't doubtful at all as I knew the place we were headed used to be a strip club, so the location matched [As did the handy 'Sign' above the doors ;)] and we killed a bit of time by wandering around and finding things to do, like looking at fish tanks on the sides of bar/restaurants.

We got back, and at about 5 minutes to, there were three people waiting by the doors and the guys inside were starting to pull all the crap from the lobby out so it actually looked like it was open, so we were quite relieved. We got chatting to these people behind us, and one of them had a boyfriend who was playing the drums for the main act, Mr Ross Copperman, and we found out there was potential sound problems. When we got into the place, and paid our meagre £6, we were surprised and confused by the venue. It seemed confusing and we had to be directed the right way, and when we got inside...

The venue was much smaller than we imagined, and was almost full of chairs and booths meaning this would indeed be a sit down gig as predicted! This was going to be brilliant, we already knew. We picked a pretty big booth at the front end of the room, only a few feet away from the stage, and got comfortable. They even had little personalised match books, for which is still a novelty to a non London born citizen such as me. I snagged one for myself. We were getting comfortable, and just about an hour after the doors opened, some woman tapped me on the shoulder. She asked us if we could swap booths. I looked at ours, and figured we did have a little bit too much space here, but the venue was filling up and I liked our spot, but overall me and Curty agreed she could have it. What did she and her many friends do in kind response? Bought me and Curty a beer! I personally think this is brilliant, because Curty didn't tip and I did, and I got the beer to drink while she had a beer sat in front of her which she couldn't drink due to Lent! So I got two beers! This is why I love Karma :)

Overall, the gig was especially awesome, the two cover bands are quite new, with them being three and six months old respectively, called Selfservice and Bo Pepper, and both were amazing! However, the main act came on, and me and Curty both were blown away with how good he was, as we had been witness before but he seemed so much better this time round. So yep, it was an amazing day.