Probably the best New Year’s Eve of my life
[…] and the most chaotic, adventurous trip, too.
There’s nothing better for me than the idea of spending New Years Eve in London with my best friend! And it happened!
Madlen and I were from the 28th of December until the 3rd of January in London and it. was. amazing! But from the first second on a real adventure, totally chaotic and we don’t want to speak about the nights in the hostel..
Let’s start with the evening at the 27th were I came home from Oostende at 7 PM and immediately started cleaning my room and packing my stuff.
When I went to bed it was already 1.30 AM and my alarm was set for 4.45 AM. SOS!
With 3 hours of sleep I stood up and took my bus from Melsbroek to Brussels North at 6.06 AM. I arrived there at 6.40 AM and started searching the place where my bus would arrive. While searching I met a woman from Canada, a man from Brussels and after some time it was a whole bunch of people who were all wandering around, trying to find the FlixBus to London.
I fell immediately asleep but it was really cold so I woke up several times because I couldn’t feel my feet anymore.
At 9.00 AM were we at the Channel Tunnel in Coquelles (France) and every passenger had to take their luggage and go through a security control. Afterwards we had to go through another passenger control and at 11.30 AM our bus stood finally in the train. And again: I fell asleep and woke up 40 minutes later when we drove out of the train in Folkestone and started driving at the wrong side of the street. Welcome in Great Britain! Guess what? I fell again asleep. Don’t judge me! 3 hours! THREE hours of sleep LOL.
I woke up when we were in London at around 12.30 AM (UTC+00:00) and watched an hour the London-world until we arrived at the Victoria Coach Station at 1:30 PM. I said goodbye to my fellow travelers and started walking to the Buckingham Palace. It’s so overcrowded there!
My back really started to hurt so I started heading to the hostel in Lewisham. I walked through the St. James Park to the Horse Guard Museum. From there I went to the nearest station which was Charing Cross. I drove with the train to Hither Green and and walked the rest to the Pentland House. At around 3.30 PM I checked in and saw our room for the first time (small side note: we’re in a 9-bed-room for 6 nights). What we didn’t know when we booked: the room is smaller than my room in Germany and a prison cell is probably more comfortable than this s***.
At around 6.30 PM Madlen finally arrived and I showed her our cell. Luckily she was as shocked as I was. LOL. That was also the moment when we realized that we both forgot that we would travel to a country with different sockets but luckily next to the sockets were also usb-ports. We’re apparently not the only ones who are forgetting this little detail. Afterwards we went out to eat something, because she was starving and I afraid of that she would maybe eat me and we had a nice evening in an Italian restaurant.
In the next morning we left the hostel without a breakfast and took the train to Charing Cross. From there we walked to the Horse Guard Museum and there was an extreme amount of people standing and apparently waiting for something (we didn’t find out for what) and after 15 minutes of standing stupidly there, waiting for I-don’t-know-what, we continued walking. We walked to the Buckingham Palace and on our way through the St James Park were we distracted by the cutest and most trusting squirrels we’ve ever seen. At the Buckingham Palace were even more people and it was barely possible to move. But we finally found out why there were so many people: Apparently were we in the middle of a Guard Change (Parade?) with music and whatever haha.
Afterwards we started heading to the Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, which costed us much time because we had to “go” with the flow of the crowd.
At the Big Ben we bought tickets for the Houses of Parliament for the next day after a long period of standing around like lost ones because we didn’t find the ticket office. #smartgirls
After we found it we wandered to the London Eye and took a break at a Starbucks (I think the most of our money did we spend at Starbucks LOL). The London Eye was sold out for the day and we couldn’t buy tickets for other days at the ticket office (like for the Houses of Parliament), so we said we would do it online in the evening. From the London Eye we went to the Waterloo Station and took a train to the Oxford Street. Right after we went out of the station we were in the middle of a street-artist-beetbox-session and he was really(!) good. We weren’t that long at the Oxford Street, just ate something, bought some stuff that we forgot to bring with us to England (again: we were really prepared) and maybe someone lost one of her scarfs (luckily someone had two with her).
Then we took a train back to the hostel, booked our tickets for the London Eye (on the 1st of January) with the London Dungeon, Madame Tussaud’s and Sea Life included, spoke to two roommates from Australia and our first full day in London was over.
Second part: http://www.itsjustjessie.de/2017/01/08/probably-the-best-new-years-eve-of-my-life-23/
Third part: http://www.itsjustjessie.de/2017/01/10/probably-the-best-new-years-eve-of-my-life-33/
My own videos can you see in the upcoming VLOG: will follow soon!
Great Story Honey!