Aye, it's a Wee Update (email #14)

How ironic. I thought that I was going well with being in the first English speaking country in 6 months. But then I got to Scotland, and I STILL can't understand a word they're saying! But back to London for a few moments...

29th LONDON: Tagged along to my first day of work with Mum and Catherine. I've always been under the impression that it's just 'shopping', but good golly Miss Molly, there's a LOT more to it than that! I bailed and had lunch with Ally after about 3 hours... Yes, that's right, ALLY! We completely forgot that we'd be in London together! the course of the lunch time conversation went like this:

ME: Hey Al, what are you doing this weekend?
AL: Not much.
ME: Do you want to go to Scotland?
AL: Okay!

And so we planned it! We wandered around Leicester Square and found ourselves at the National Gallery for a few hours, before retreating to a cafe. 2 hours of nostalgic memories later, we parted ways so that I could meet Asha for a drink - double shot of nostalgia! Mum and Catherine met us a half hour later, and we all drank stop-sign coloured cocktails waiting for our table at Nobu to be ready. Yah huh! Nobu! The restaurant is in the same building as the hotel that Mum and I were staying at, so it was only natural that we'd try to get a table! The food really was AMAZING. Especially considering that I hadn't had sushi or any type of Japanese for a half year; nonetheless with a Brazilian fusion. After some green tea, Asha and I rolled ourselves down Regent Street to meet one of my friends from Croatia, Tiffany, at a bar. I got all the way there before I realised that of course, I have no ID! Stolen! And I'm hardly going to take my passport out with me when I'm bar hopping... But a little smooth talking and barrier jumping, we were inside the OUTSIDE section. Close enough! A good night followed, full of so many accents that it was making my head spin. I trotted off home at about 1ish.

30th LONDON:Portabello Road. Portabello Road. Street where the riches of ages are stowed. Anything and everything a chap can unload will be found in the wonders of Portabello Road. I managed to somehow spend an odd 4 or 5 hours filtering through discarded brooches and leather jackets. And of course the receipts for everything I bought are going straight to the BA offices... We're edging on Day 3, and that's when I start to get benefits! Late that afternoon, I met Tif again for some tea at a gorgeous little bio-cafe hidden somewhere near the Times-Square-esque Piccadilly Circus. That night, it was Asha's turn to take me out! So I dolled myself up in the little clothes that I had (not helpful in 'London Summer'), and met her down South. At a club that played exclusively late 80s music. Now, I may have been born in the late 80s, but I probably missed this era by a few years. And it showed! I was the youngest by a long shot, and this was emphasised with my lack of musical knowledge. That said, a few drinks later, I was dancing away to Cindy Lauper like the best of them. Went home earlish with Asha due to work commitments. Slept on a very VERY comfy couch.

31st LONDON: Met Mum and Cath at Liverpool Station to head down to Spitafields - another market, but more young-designers verses the antique orange juicers of Notting Hill the day before. Yet again, managed to spend the best part of a day wandering around markets! We later found another one called the Sunday Upmarket a little further towards Brick Lane. And then there were people on the street who were trying to sell you everything from phone cords (sans phone) to hotel shampoo bottles (empty). I split off by the time we got to Covent Garden, as I wanted to go for a run in Hyde Park. I got all the way back to the hotel before I realised that I of course don't actually HAVE any runners because Heathrow STILL didn't know where my bag was... I was more than a little pissed off by now, so I made about the 20th call to their lost baggage service. Well! It turns up that they DID find my bag stranded somewhere on the Roman tarmac. And they had sent it onwards to the hotel. That morning. At least 4 hours ago. Hmmm. Yet I still had no bag. So I went downstairs and asked the guy behind the counter if anyone from BA had dropped off a backpack. "... you're not Georgia King, are you?". "Yes...?". "... Oh...". Well it turns out that the baggage had arrived, but they couldn't find any proof of me staying at the hotel (all under Mum's name) so they had SENT IT BACK. Ahh!!!! And the next drop off was 2pm the next day. But we were leaving the hotel at 9am. Great. So I trudged off upstairs, and sat for 6 hours hoping it would turn up, ended up having a sentimental last dinner with Mum (ie- room service), and watched conspiracy theory shows on TV.

1st: LONDON: 2am. A knock on the door. MY BAG!!! Happy exhalations, and then back to sleep. Woke up, checked out (WITH my bag), only to find that I had to follow the girls to the airport to change my flight tickets to New York. Because there is no British Airways desk in London - only at Heathrow. Go figure. So my day was a little pushed around, but I was on a high thinking that I had my bag back. I spent honestly nearly 2 hours trying to find the cute little bio-cafe that Tif took me too, and got hideously HIDEOUSLY lost. Ended up eating lunch at 4 due to this fact, and then quickly popped off to see a Yoko Ono interactive exhibition piece at the National Gallery. There were 3 pin boards FULL of post-it notes. The theory was that you had to write whatever you wanted about love, and put it on the board. And whenever a board was full, they would send it to her and she's going to do SOMETHING with them all... I put my mark on the board, ran back to the hotel, then to Heathrow for 10 minutes, then to Asha's house in South London. As much as I just wanted to sleep, I had to stay up watching Asha's housemate watch TV. I couldn't kick him off his own couch, could I?

(ah!! Getting too long already. I'll try to to shorten it up...)

2nd LONDON: Easily the best day I've had in London. Got up and tubed to London Bridge in the POURING rain, sat in a tiny coffee shop at a windowsill watching the raindrops race each other down the pane, eating a scone with jam and writing in my journal. Bliss! Overheard a couple of Bard actors bitching about their director, and ended up following them around to the Globe Theatre! I didn't go in today, but I'm going to go back when I'm in London. I went to the Tate Modern instead - and in typical Georgia fashion, I lost track of time, and suddenly it was 4 o'clock again, and I'd spent another day in a gallery instead of 'seeing the sights'. I did London with Dad when I was 9, so I already feel like I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, etc etc. I met up with Tiffany and her funky friend in the evening, and went to a Yoga class that Tif teaches. Hell I hurt the next day!!! We went out for a few beers afterwards (to counter our karma) and then I trotted off home.

3rd LONDON to EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND: Trained from Kings Cross to Edinburgh. I got in and Ally had only given me the name of the hostel and the street name - which turned out to be the size of Bourke Street. It was raining quite heavily, and I didn't want to just wander around looking for a phantom hostel, so I asked someone if they knew where it was. But I couldn't understand their answer! Welcome to Scotland. Perfect introduction. That said, I LOVE it here. So much more of a feel than London. When I do the required Aussie stint in the UK, I think I'll use my visa to come up here rather than stay in London... I found the hostel, and waited for Ally to arrive. I ended up meeting a bunch of boys from Melbourne, beat one of them at pool (yeah, I'm amazed I did too!), and then after that became chums. Ally got in, I made some dinner to warm her up, and then the group of us headed out. Wednesdays are huge here apparently. And we can vouch! 3 clubs later, it's getting light and we decide to head home as the boys had trains to catch the next morning.

4th EDINBURGH: Which they missed! Poor buggers... Ally and I gave our condolences, and then headed off for one of the Free Tours that I keep on raving about in these emails. It was a great way to orientate ourselves in what is an aesthetically beautiful city. Lots of little funny stories, but they go better hand in hand with pictures, so I won't detail them here. Early night that night due to our opening night escapades.

5th EDINBURGH: Set off for a walk to Arthur's Seat (the original! Not riding the chair lift though...). We didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into. It turns out it has nothing to do with chairlifts, but is instead a HUGE crag. See my photos to get an idea - it took us 2 1/2 hours! Ally was getting a free hair-model haircut that afternoon, so we strode back down the mountain to make it. (I'm trying to be extra short now, because I've got an appointment for the same free snip quite soon!). We spent the rest of the afternoon in an Internet cafe downloading photos and me organising my New York life... We fully intended to go on a Ghost Tour that night, but we missed it by about 2 or 3 minutes. So instead, we stayed at the bar in the hostel, and started drinking with the long-term-ers that live on the top floor. 7 hours later, we were still drinking. And I was STILL loosing at pool.

6th EDINBURGH: Got up extra early (ouch) to take a day trip to the Highlands to see Nessie! The opening line of the tour guy who was driving the bus was "now, please don't mind if the lights go on or off or something. I haven't driven this bus before so I'm just gonna keep hittin the buttons til I can work out how to use this thing". Great. Was actually a really funny guy once we worked out that he wasn't going to drive us over a crag face! Came out with a couple of beauties - "So basically, England is sinking into the sea and Scotland is rising, so we're gonna beat those bastards in the end". The day was filled with BEAUTIFUL, idyllic scenery, lots of Lochs (alas, no monsters), and hairy coos!! Oh... The hairy coos... We got back lateish, and had another night off.

7th GLASGOW DAY TRIP: We decided to go to Glasgow to see what all the fuss was about. It wasn't the most visually appealing of cities, but it was oozing with culture! It would have been fantastic to have spent a night there, as apparently the night life is amazing. But instead, we wandered around the Necropolis (essentially a really big graveyard on a hill) discussing baby names that we were getting off the tombstones. The paradox between birth and death wasn't realised until later! There were a couple of lines that played on my heart strings though - 'her sun is gone day while it is still day'. I then dragged Ally along to a a modern art museum! Unfortunately, it was full of Glaswegian contemporaries, so I couldn't really give her too much of a history lessons... We bused back in the late afternoon, and dolled ourselves up to go out on our last night together (again!). But by 11.30, we were having so much fun in the bar that we just repeated the night of the 5th, and drunk with all of the locals.

8th EDINBURGH: Ally left in the morning, but I'll probably see her again in London in a few days, so it wasn't splutteringly sad... It was a random stunning day, so I spent most of it reading and writing in the gardens below the castle. I went for a bit of a wander up a hill to get a view of the city in the afternoon, and that was it! A truly, much needed, relaxing day. The night was spent playing a game of 'loaded questions', which essentially sees you write down answers to obscure questions pulled out of a cup, and then having to guess who said what. We started off with the typical ones, like 'what 2 things would you take on a desert island' (an ipod, and a loop of carnivorous animal sounds) or 'what one thing do you want to do before you die' (life insurance). But soon moved to questions like 'what kitchen utensil or object are you most like' (a coffee mug), 'how would you kill a yeti' (drought/with great difficulty) and 'what flag would you like to burn the most' (India - it would smell of cardamon).

9th EDINBURGH back to LONDON: And here I am! Off for a free haircut in 20 minutes, then training back down to London...

How's home? I haven't heard updates in quite awhile! All I know is that Geelong thrashed the Saints... That's the extent of my knowledge of home at the moment :)

Xx