영국여행 | England (Day 1)

For our 2015 summer vacation, we decided to blow all our money on a trip back to England. We don't get many holidays, and the summer holiday is the longest one we get, so it's the best for travelling a long distance. Considering we'd been away from home for over a year, we thought it'd be a good opportunity to go home.

I kind of really enjoy long-haul flights and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I always associate them with being really excited or big adventures. Maybe it's the free movies and food.

On the plane we were sat next to a boy from Busan who was going to study in England. We had to help him with a few things, as we were flying with BA so most things were in not-so-simple English. The most horrifying thing was realising just how weird the English used in the boarding and immigration documents is. There's no simple language like most forms. In place of "address" it's something like "location of residence" and instead of "reason for travelling" it's like "intention of sejour". Why would you do that? Especially on flights where it's likely people wouldn't necessarily be fluent in the weird words British formal public language likes to use.

We watched The Royal Tailor during the flight, because we'd seen it over a few shoulders and it looked quite funny. What we weren't expecting was that halfway through it would suddenly become very tragic and we'd cry a lot. (It was a great movie though, you should watch it)

Everything's in English!

So, half a day later, we arrived in England about 4 hours after we'd left Korea (ah, time zones), grabbed our luggage (after the usual drawn-out fear that it didn't make it over) and got into a car with our friend Tom who'd graciously agreed to spare us the pain of getting the Tube from Heathrow.

Back at Nick's house, I was happy to be reunited with my dear BatBear who'd been vigilantly keeping watch over all the things I'd dumped out of my over-full suitcase in distress 14 months prior.

We unpacked a few things, took showers and changed out of our gross travelling clothes, and waited for our guests to arrive. In an attempt to keep ourselves awake and fight off  jet lag, we'd actually convinced a few suckers to sit with us right on the very first day. (Also, anything to work around peoples' schedules)

It wasn't long before Ann-Marie and Chris arrived, and we all went to the pizza shop at the end of Nick's road. I love the pizza from this place. It's run by three Italians and all hand-made, baked in a proper wood oven right there in the shop. Unsurprisingly, it tastes fabulous. We ordered two and realised how lucky it was we'd decided to do this today, because they were actually doing renovations in the shop and would be closed for the entire rest of our trip!

We chatted and caught up whilst gorging on pizza and relishing in the wondrousness that is REAL CHEESE. And then played Yu-Gi-Oh all night, haha. Really simple things like that were actually some of the more enjoyable and strange moments, because it felt like we hadn't been away at all. It wasn't stressful. We were just back at home, messing around, almost as if it were any other weekend.