LONDON! Part 2
(part 1 here)
Day 3: Saturday August 6

I know it looks like the exact same English breakfast as yesterday, but.... I had one more sausage and.... a piece of brown bread! Omnomnom.

We took the Tube to Notting Hill, where we followed the crowd to Portobello Road...


On the way we passed a house where George Orwell lived.


Portobello Road: huge market, loads of people. o_O


Creepy street artists without heads!


Not as many spectacular shop fronts as Camden, but still pretty cool:)


The buildings featured in the movie Notting Hill (in the middle the actual Travel Bookshop;)


We found a bus that took us all the way back from Portobello Road to Piccadilly Circus. We didn't get to sit up front this time, but still had a great view of London:)


We went to Empire Cinema for Horrible Bosses, which was a fun afternoon film.


Such a pretty cinema - with great chairs for relaxing before another round of shopping \o/


Goodies from Boots. What? We don't have that awesome Aussie shampoo in the Netherlands, nor Johnson's baby powder, which is equally delicious. And I always have to get some quirky showergels. Mmm, vanilla biscuit.


After freshening up at the hotel, we went back into town and picked up our theatre tickets at the Haymarket Theatre.


We had a quick dinner at Byron, a very well designed burger restaurant; look at that amazing wall of London and the lights at the ceiling in the shape of the Underground Map.


I had a very tasty Byron burger (after I removed the unnessecary lettuce and tomato; what the hell, give me MEAT)

Sadly I didn't take a photo of the tastiest dish; we had the most delicious waiter. Omnomnom.


We sat on the third balcony, but besides having a perfect view of the ceiling, we also had a great view of the stage for Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Delightful play.


Of course I ended the day with another luxury bath \o/


Oh, forgot to mention we went to Hamley's where I found a funky cow rattle for nephew Ruben:)

Day 4: Sunday August 7
Our train back to Brussels didn't leave until 4 p.m. and after breakfast we left our luggage in storage at the hotel, so we could spend our morning at the cinema. We found a place where the normal 2D version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 was playing. A bit out of the way of the centre, but we should be able to make it back in time to get our bags before catching the train...


This is Green Park station where we switched trains to get to North Greenwich (South London)


This is the O2, right outside the Underground station, where I thought the Odeon Cinema was situated... it wasn't...


Look at those clouds (don't worry, I'll get back to the story shortly;)


Love this building. (Okay, fine, I'll continue...)

Inside the O2 was a Vue cinema that wasn't showing Harry Potter, but luckily a security guard knew how we could get to the Odeon. We had to take a bus! All in all it took us another 20 minutes to get to the cinema.


But we got there with time to spare, even though the guy who sold tickets took his sweet time to open up the register. Pfff.


I was amazed that we got half an hour of commercials and previews. THIRTY MINUTES. Ridiculous. So the film lasted a bit longer than calculated.


Look! A plane! (Tan found it amusing I got so exited about all the planes flying so close to the ground, but hey, I don't get to see that at home;)

We discovered a bus that would take us right back to the street of our hotel and we decided to take that instead of getting back on the Underground. It would save us changing and walking.


This time we did get seats right up front and I made some touristy pictures during the hour(!) on the doubledecker bus \o/


We're sitting high and dry:)


Another bus! Like looking in a mirror!


Yeah, think bike!!


London Eye.


View from London Bridge: see Towerbridge in the distance?

And notice those dark clouds? Right when we arrived at the busstop it started pouring down, and even though we didn't have that long a walk, I was soaked when we got to the hotel. Luckily I had time to change into a dry blouse and put on my rainjacket for our walk to the Underground, where we only had to travel one stop to the King Cross/St. Pancreas station to catch the Eurostar to Brussels.

There we had a connecting train to the Netherlands, that also stopped in Antwerp where I said goodbye to Tan.


I had time to get some dinner when I changed trains in Rotterdam and got home around 23.30.

---The End---
But not quite: on Monday morning I had another English Breakfast/Brunch with strawberry scones Tan had given me and a left over Welsh cake.

Mmmm :-)