영국여행 | England (Day 15)

Last one! This was the last day before we packed up, headed to the airport, and got on that long, long flight back to Korea.

First of all we met up with one of Nick's friends, and I'm glad we got to meet and walk around Liberty for a while. It's a beautiful shop full of beautiful things and I like to daydream about filling my non-existent house with their products.

But then I had to zoom off to make one of the last arrangements of my holiday, which was with a group of people I've known for a very long time, but never actually managed to meet (other than Syd, once) before now. So I was super nervous as well as excited.

We decided to meet at Five Guys (yet another burger! What am I doing?!) which was great because I'd been meaning to go there for a while. I mean, I know it's just another US burger chain, but with all the hype I at least wanted to check it out.

Actually, we stayed at Five Guys for about...five hours. Quite possibly tried every one of their multitude of soft drinks (they seem to have every shade of Fanta, Coke and Sprite under the sun) and some combinations, which lasted us well after the burgers and fries were long gone, supplemented by the free peanuts. Free peanuts!! After a while we were just cracking them to have something to do with our hands. Not wanting to waste anything, we took all the shelled nuts home in little boxes 🙈

영국여행 | England (Day 14)

Photo stolen from Loti. Sorry/thanks Loti 🙈

So, I got up bright and early the next day to speed my way to Stratford to meet up with Loti from uni and actually meet her son and husband-to-be, for the first time. Even though it was only a few hours I was glad to meet up, have a wander and catch up before heading on to my next appointment. 

Busy busy busy.

Sadly, these are the only two pictures I have from Nat and Andy's barbecue that we went to. The picture on the left being a wasp we trapped and shamed for bothering us, feat. excellent lamb cooked by Andy (or what was left of it). The picture on the right is some remnants of the cakes that I devoured before considering the fact I should maybe take a picture. If I remember rightly that green cupcake was alcoholic. Gin and tonic? Tequila? I can't remember because someone kept providing me with generous glasses of white wine. ;p Either way it was all delicious, as expected, and absolutely hilarious, as expected. I think I had a cry on the way home. I cried a lot that week and continue to despise my slow descent into being a massive crybaby.

We did take some polaroids, but they don't photograph well, so you have my apologies.
Nick also took one where we look like some kind of dysfunctional Victorian family at a funeral but I forgot to take a picture of it, so you'll just have to imagine that one :p

This is the strangest and most wonderful photo I've taken so far

Nick x Monkey = true love

영국여행 | England (Day 11)

Lion Selfies

아 힘들다.

This day was technically me heading back to Bristol for a little bit more time, so I had to carry a bag of provisions with me.

Rather than spend 3 hours on a coach to look around my home city, I thought it'd be nice to look around London with mum and dad, considering mum is always wanting to go on trips to London but there's no time or it's too intimidating (for real, London is quite terrifying the first couple of times if you don't have someone to show you around)

Anyway, since they wouldn't arrive until the late morning/early afternoon, I had a scant few moments that I used to meet up with Cara, someone I've known since the Dark Ages, probably.

I'm really bad at...selves-ies...us-ies? It's not 'self' if there's multiple people :p

We spent most of our time walking around a lot and just catching up, considering it had been years since we'd last seen each other. And we had some fun with the joys of Korean selfie camera.

Why is this a thing

Also, we met Batman.

Before long, my parents sent a message to say they'd arrived, and I headed over to meet them.
I'm not sure how or why we ended up looking like some kind of reject Addams Family but I'm okay with that because black is always excellent.

This photo is cute but that alcove reeked of pee, these are the sacrifices we make.

We ended up going to Bodeans, which I will never argue with because Bodeans is a heavenly place of meat and cocktails.

영국여행 | England (Day 10)

I can't wink, how do you people do it?

This day was a great moment of serendipitous fortune, because we happened to be available and in London at the same time as our good friends Erin and Morgan. They were some of the first people we met in Korea, and recently finished their contracts and went back to live in the US. But they were coming up towards the end of what I will call a "world trip" because they genuinely went to so many amazing countries and cities over the course of quite an impressive amount of time, immaculately planned (in my opinion, anyway). So it was really exciting to have a final glimpse of them before dipping back into "when will I see you again?" territory. Sobs.

We'd booked in to see another Shakespeare play at The Globe, this time Much Ado About Nothing. But prior to that, we had a mosey around the Southbank area, including lunch at Pieminister (repping the West Country), which I ate too quickly to even think about documenting. That's how much I love those pies.

We still had some time to spare, so we went to the Tate Modern, which was just as confusing and incomprehensible to me as it was during a secondary school trip, which was the last time I'd visited. Maybe it's all too deep for me. I got more enjoyment looking at people looking at the art. Or is that also part of the modern art? Deep.

We were in standing for this performance, so I got to see all of the gorgeous painting above the stage in better detail. I like that I got to have an experience of both seated and standing.

영국여행 | England (Day 9)

I'll give you one guess at where we went.

Day 9 saw me meeting up with Ann-Marie again to go on a day-trip somewhere neither of us had been before, once again checking off something on our "explore more of England" list.

We met at King's Cross, which is always fun to say, and we might actually have left from platform 9 or 10 (sadly not 9¾).

Breakfast! Once again making the most of cured meats and real cheese.

Due to our lackadaisical approach to planning a day out, we ended up just typing various place names into the ticket machine and choosing the cheapest one that was also less than a 2 hour train ride away, and ended up with Cambridge.

Flat English countryside from the train window.

What we didn't realise is that the train station is actually quite a long walk from the actual university buildings. What I also didn't know is that Cambridge apparently has a large Asian expat community, because we walked down a whole street of shops catering to Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese tastes, as well as many more. We popped into a bubble tea shop with post-it notes covered in cute doodles and messages not written in English, and generally caused a hassle, as we usually do (they didn't have a working card machine and I never carry cash, but they'd already started my order, oops)

It's kind of weird, just wandering around and then choosing a random university building to just walk into and look around. Especially as most of the buildings are probably halls of residence, it feels a lot like you're just walking into someone's garden and having a nose around, even though the area has the look of a stately home, which actually IS just walking into someone's garden (and house) and having a nose around.

영국여행 | England (Day 8)

What a terrible day we're having. Ugh. Sunny.

Day 8! Day 8 was a bit of a whim because we found out a bit last-minute that there was going to be a Korean Culture festival in London, and it would be a good chance to share our current home with people. The weather was really great! So hot and sunny and, unlike Korea, not humid at all, haha.

We went with Ann-Marie and Chris, with the promise of meeting up with a few more friends throughout the day depending on their schedules, including Yasmin and a very brief, fleeting hello with Jerlen and a few of the other Filipino kids from home. If we met anyone else, I'm sorry, my memory is bad and it was 3 months ago, haha.

I also took the opportunity to be a massive tourist a) for the sake of showing my students later, and b) because I haven't been touristy in London since I was about 17, so I needed an update. Plus, look at all the sun I have to document! Sun? In England?!

영국여행 | England (Day 7)

Deliberately moving this photo up to use as the thumbnail. Sorrynotsorry.

On day 7, Nick was busy with various arrangements and people I don't know, or at least know very well, so I met up with the second best thing, Ann-Marie (sorry, you're not a thing, I know)

We were determined to get some culture down our country bumpkin throats, so, after walking past the entrance gate and up the road the wrong way for about 5 minutes, we finally made it to the V&A Museum.

Considering it's full of ~beautiful things~ including fashion history, I've been wanting to come here for a LONG time. Look at that exterior! So pretty. Also, what a beautiful day to be spending indoors in darkened rooms with musty old things. Ah, yes.

Anyway, here are some pretty things. I like how they have benches all around this section so you can just sit and stare at the pretty things. I took these pictures mainly so I'd have some reference materials for drawing but we all know that's not going to happen, so I'll just share them with you.

My favourite dress, along with the section that made me laugh the most. Of course there's a section dedicated to modern British rainwear. Of course.

I love how tiny the lady is.

영국여행 | England (Day 6)

London Bridge, thankfully not falling down.

Next, we headed back to London for Nick's mum's birthday. We had dinner at Bill's (do recommend! Been there a couple of times now and it's always delicious) before heading to the home of another Bill, The Globe Theatre (see what I did there, winkwonk).

Eton Mess, how could I resist?

The walk along the Thames from Bill's to the Globe was great, with the sky being all kinds of colours and full of clouds. So pretty.

영국여행 | England (Day 2)

We started our day reasonably well and didn't sleep in too late, and had a deliciously English/unhealthy tasting breakfast of toast, fried eggs, and various forms of breaded potato with Nick's brother.

We went to the shops to see to several errands such as getting SIM cards for our phones and sorting out bank things we'd been having trouble with.

I was also determined to find some shoes and jeans to bring back to the land of clothes for tiny people, but didn't have much luck or time.

We did, however, have time to make Nick try on this hat.

We were trying to take it easy on day 1 and 2, but we were also determined not to fall asleep at anything earlier than 8pm to fight off any jetlag that could jeopardise our tightly scheduled holiday. So, in true British style, we "went for a walk".

It was nice to see all the British wildflowers and trees and people and air for a while. We also saw some seemingly wild parakeets, which was baffling. What exactly happened to England while we were gone?

We went to a great little cafe that we love, which was thankfully still there (we're damaged by the impermanence of Korean establishments), for lunch and had proper sandwiches. Take that, Paris Baguette!