We're going to Looonndon..to see Robbie Williams! :)

Warning - This post is VERY long/picture heavy and a little pointless to most of you probably. I'm just personally interested in other peoples journeys, no matter how much is written - it's like a memory/story I like to read, so I have decided to share my own :D I hope you don't find it too boring.

So - I have been wondering where to start, because as I said in my last post, I have so much to write about! Seeing as it's still at the front of my mind and we had a fab time - London must come first...from the beginning...

Me & Gemma (the Sister) don't really venture away from Nottingham or Derby - we're a little confused by directions and how to get to places! We don't go away on holiday abroad to sunny places like the rest of the world.

We stick to Bournemouth (yes! & we love it!) or Scotland to see our family... or that magical place ;) but  even that's rare.

We haven't really been able to afford big holidays or girly weekends away before either and I don't drive but now Gemma does! (Yay!).

So when she told me we were going to London to see Robbie Williams - well, I nearly fainted! I was secretly panicking for months before because all Gem cared about was getting tickets to see the love of her life haha! And I knew... it was up to me to sort the rest :P I like organising trips but this was something I wasn't used to :D SUCH a geek!

 

Me & Gem before Robbie :)

 

The last time we went to London I was about 6 and Gemma was 11 with our parents so we can't remember much at all.

We only stayed one night (Friday 23rd) but it felt like we'd been away a week. Because we didn't know what we were doing or what to expect, how to use a tube etc etc it was our mini adventure.

We arrived at St Pancras roughly around 10am.

We'd booked to stay at the Southwark Premier Inn (thanks to a lot of help from my friends, we had a tiny idea of where we were). It was so cosy there, really nice and clean & the food and drink prices were fine - just what we needed.

FYI - the food was amazing! (This is VERY important) Seriously we were shocked at how nice it was, and the 1st night we had booked for dinner (and breakfast) for £22.99! So to be honest, we weren't expecting much quality or choice wise, but it was the best meal I'd eaten for years!

That may sound quite hard to believe, I know, but it's true!

Highly recommended if your needing somewhere convenient to stay! Half of the cosiness of our trip was chilling in the hotel at meal times & at night - it was so relaxing!

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Thankfully, Gem soon figured out how the tube world works! It seemed so easy to get around! Obviously to the O2, we needed the Jubilee line & back again :) It was just the initial fast pace of Londoners and shock of it not being as 'glitzy' as we may have hoped.

So us being so ditzy & not realising we could have left our small case at the hotel even before we were due to check in at 2pm!! We decided to head towards the Premier Inn location and walk along the river bank and go where the wind took us.

 

 

The further we walked, the more we realised we were walking to nowhere... we had no idea everything was so spaced out! We decided we'd try and find Madame Tussauds, as we realised my friend had given us a 2 for 1 booklet, so we would both get in for £30! We've always wanted to go, so we set off on our little adventure.

By the time we got there, I realised we had our suitcase...that's when it hit me - "Will they let us in with this?!" I asked Gem. For some reason, we hadn't thought about that little nugget!

We asked the security guard outside & said we couldn't check in until 2pm...pauses *he looks at his watch*..."It's just gone 2pm!" Oops.. It had taken us so long to get there, it was time to check in to our hotel!...We explained our little trek and he asked where we were staying etc and agreed we could go in :D Thank flip for that!

Which brings me neatly onto my next point...if you are from London (which most of you are)..someone pleeeease explain to me why you're always in a rush!? And you miss a tube and sigh like you've missed a plane lol...2 seconds later another one pulls up! There are thousands of steps & escalators we had to pull our case, coats, ourselves etc up and down! I can tell you, I was completely ready to collapse after an hour of being there! Haha I'm still exhausted now which is why I haven't been blogging).

 

- Back to Madame Tussauds - The guard searched our case to find 10 packets of Pom Bears and a bottle of coke spilling out of it! Haha! Ok...so we might have been hungry! You can always find time for Pom Bears lol BUT ... that doesn't explain the coke!!!

I could have thrown it at Gemma in a flash! She never told me I was carrying a full 2 ltre bottle of coke around the underground and London!!
No wonder I was about to die haha! It was actually quite funny.

Madame Tussauds itself was actually pretty good! When we saw the full ticket price was £60, we thought "you would never pay that - what could possibly be in there to spend that much!" but we didn't expect it to go on so long. First things first - stairs!! Who the bloody hell invented the things! Straight away, we had to climb 400 steps, just to get to the desk!

 

It was pretty hard work seeing as there were more stairs than the tube stations! But we had such a good time there! We never expected it to keep going into different 'zones' and it was just packed full of interesting things. We enjoyed the little ride but it did creep me out! Anyone who knows me will know I'm a big wimp & scared of my own shadow. The wax works are weirdly realistic - you walk through waiting for someone to move in case their not real haha.

 

 

 

 

Seriously - if I'd have turned around at this point...I would have ran!

 

Quick Gemma - he's going to get you!

 

The last part of MT was very clever! As I said, the place just kept going on longer than we'd expect so all of a sudden we were in another Que for a Marvel 4D experience! (I'll say no more as I'm trying not to spoil anything in case you haven't been).

 

We looked at the time and all of a sudden, it was about 4.30pm!

We were like "Oh My God!" Where has the time gone! I'd completely forgot we had Robbie to get ready for! It's like we were in a whole different never ending world! So after asking the guide how long it lasted, he said about 10 minutes and it's the last part - we decided to wait, after all what's 10 minutes on 2+ hours!

 

We had dinner booked at our PE for 5.30 (earliest we could book) but at least Gem was getting good with the tubes by now! So it took us 1 tube to get back :D

We got ready as quick as we could but at this point all we wanted to do was sit down! We were buzzing from our trip so far though.

We went to dinner and had chance to calm down  - as I said, very relaxing there!

We had to skip dessert, finish getting ready, decide that we'd missed his support act & go go go!

 

When you get to the o2, we were like .. "Is this it?!..Really?" because it felt so much smaller in real life. We were very excited still...I think Gems seen Robbies full concert about 6 times now in Manchester, Scotland & London but I'd not seen him before!

She's a little excited!

 

 After settling in to the o2, it grew on us. We were on the top bloody floor though! He was wanting over £100 to be nearer the front which we can't afford given the cost of making our trip happen etc! So as much as shes the biggest fan, if you can't afford that price there isn't much you can do about it. Tickets were £50 and we didn't know where we were sitting.

Well, I'll tell you where we were sitting! - 2nd row from the VERY back! Arghh don't look down!

 

 

We still really enjoyed it and it was worth going for the whole experience. My eyes are just stupid and I'm struggling to see far away! So obviously I watched most of him through my camera lol. He's a showman though so you're always guaranteed a mega experience!

 

Although I have a really good video camera, when I zoom in that far, it completely distorts from tiny movements so I took mainly videos and the 1 good picture I got of Robbie was from the screen! (That was nowhere near us!).

 

 

Oh and did I mention Gary Barlow was there too!

 

 

When it had finished, we headed back to our PE and chilled out! We were worried we wouldn't wake up but we did, and we went down for a lovely breakfast. We had to check out at 12 noon so we had a lie in, going down for breakfast at 10.30 :D

 

After breakfast, we had a look at our tourist books to see what we could do on our last day in London. We have always wanted to go to London Zoo so knowing that we were able to leave our luggage with PE and we had our handy 2 for 1 attraction booklet when travelling by train :) it made it much easier to decide. We weren't sure whether to just browse and shop or do something big (zoo) which would mean spending the day there so we wouldn't have time to do anything else.

 

As we didn't know when we'd be back in London, didn't have money to waste at shops and could get into the zoo for £20 (both of us), we headed there. We weren't sure where we were going - we were following signs for the bus (or so we thought), we walked a little way from the tube station and I was so relieved to see greenery (a park across the road) I wanted to walk through it. Luckily for us, this was Regents Park and there was a sign telling us the Zoo was at the other side.

 

 

When at the Zoo... pretend to be an animal

 

Oooh! Can I have one of theseee? :)

 

 

Well, I have to say we were so disappointed! If you know London, you'll probably have realised how bad it's got but we had high expectations! There were hardly any animals there and it looked so un tidy! And did I mention it was raining!

 The highlight...the carousal haha! I've conquered my fears of the things! And the man kindly let us have 2 gos :) I think we were attracting the customers as were big kids!

 

But - we enjoy each others company and find anything funny so we create the atmosphere ourselves.

 

We had such a good time and ticked 3 major events/places we wanted to visit off the list in 2 days!

I'm so grateful Gem asked me to go with her :D I'll remember it forever! Even now I'm wanting to go back.

 

If you managed to read most of this post - thank you! :D I have so many beauty posts to come! I was wanting to write a few tonight but you wouldn't believe how long this took me!

 

Hollie x