Greetings from London!!!

Back at work again where it seems to be little quiet (which is good, so I can check my emails and not being in a hurry, he he!), so I thought to post about our great and very sunny, warm days in London. Well let me say that we had absolutely WONDERFUL time and oh my what a huge city London really is!!!! My goodness... my eyes were popping out there, LOL! Everything went just fine, so we can say it was better than Spain was! Our days were fully packed and my poor feet have never been so sore and aching before, but it sure was worth it.:D

On Thursday we could sleep little longer in the morning and had lunch too at home until heading to the airport. We landed to Gatwick airport around 2 pm and begun our way to the hotel, which was located in a suburb of Croydon. This was really nice area and cosy we thought! It took only about 15 mins to reach from there by train to the city. We had a nice hotel, but unfortunately had first some problems with it. When we arrived there, we noticed immediately how bad the air was and the air conditioning wasn't working at all. They had also bolted the window closed, so we couldn't get fresh air that way either.:S We complained about this, but when we got back in the evening, nothing had been done except bringing another fan to the room, which surely didn't help at all, but in the end we demanded to change our room. They got us a new one, but it went extremely late and we were finally in bed until after midnight feeling so exhausted.:( Well the good thing is they wanted to give us something and next day we had a bottle of white wine! Which they forgot tho', LOL, and again we had to demand for it, he he!!! Anyways, enough about that....:D Thursday evening we spent in Croydon doing little shopping. I found paperback books in good summer sale, which I was so happy about and from the same store (Helen, WHSmith - have u noticed what unbelivable great selection they've got of craft supplies for swaps??*grin* ) and I found some really cool stuff. LOL, nearly went mad, ha ha!! I bought 3 different kind of background papers (one of them being FF Bears, which was a gr8 discover as I cannot find this here at all!!!), FF bears scrapbooking stickers, glitters to use with decos (yes I'm still obsessed with them *g*) and finally 3 FF Bears quality rubberstamps worth only less than 12 £!!!!! My god, that'd had been the something else over here as rubberstamps are so expensive!!! !!! So I was all glowing when we finally got out, he he!!!

Clothes tho' seemed to be expensive and I was happy to discover our clothes here in Finland are CHEAPER!! So I didn't buy so many things except from one great store called Primark (same as in Ireland too, but with different name there). Very usual summer style shirts cost over 20 £, which was way too much I thought as here I can find them with a lot cheaper price... so it was nice to see my country isn't after all THAT expensive even everyone always think Finland is. Well eating out was a lot cheaper in London, but oh my I must confess we didn't like real Brittish food at all. Sorry Helen & Bridget, but I honestly couldn't think about eating such heavy things :( We went to a pub in Croydon and Pasi took there meat pie etc. which cost something like 4 £. I couldn't find anything nice for me, so I ended up with a salad which cost twice from that!!!! Shocking!!! Of course we tried fish & chips too, but well it wasn't anything special, LOL! Sorry I sound rude, but honestly.... :O

Friday and Saturday we spent in London. Friday we saw all the major sightseeings like Buckingham Palace, had a nice stroll at James' Park, Big Ben & Parliament House and Westminster Abbey. They'd had charged nearly 20 £ to see Abbey, which we didn't want to, so instead we went to a smaller cathedral just next to it. I cannot remember the name now, but it was very beautiful too.:) From there we continued walking besides River Thames. We had planned to take a ride with London Eye (a huge Ferrish Wheel), but lines were unbelivable long, so we decided to pass as that'd had taken I assume nearly 2h in total!!!:(

On Saturday we visited Brittish Museum and National Gallery (hope I'm getting the names right), but my poor feet were so sore, I didn't really enjoy those a lot...the rest of the time we just did more shopping and walking around in London. In the end we finally went to Harrold's department store and gosh what a shop that is, LOL!!! For the first time in our lives we see real golden forks, knives etc. and incredibly expensive furniture etc. It really is a place for extremely rich people!!!:D But it was fun to stroll there and we ended up buying something too: some tea of course which was OK price in pretty Harrold's box, Harrold's hand towel in sale (only 4 £) and a very beautiful tea pot, sugar and creamer. They all were very cheap and definitely the best discovery from the whole trip :D The pot is just sooooooo cute!!

I saw something very shocking too in late evening of Saturday. Well it was round 9 pm, so not THAT late, but still. We were waiting for our bus to come in Croydon when I see this strange man walking towards the bus stop too further from us. He was clearly on some kind of drugs when I cannot believe for real what I see him holding. HE WAS HOLDING A REAL GUN!!!!! He was looking at it and clearly not minding at all if someone sees and the puts it back to his pants. It was same kind of arm gun you see in most TV-shows like CSI or 24!!! At first I couldn't believe it for real and I was thinking did I see what I see, but yes it was true!! I totally panic and say to Pasi, let's the hell out from here. He didn't see this as he was facing me. There were lots of people on the bus stop and I start thinking what this guy could do! He walks to a bus that comes, but doesn't go there and just wonders around feeling impatient. It was TERRIFING!!! ! I paniced so much, we started walking away and just took a cab instead. When we're walking to the cab, I try to see did this lunatic go to our bus that soon came when we left and it yes it was either that or another one which came right after. HOW SCARY WAS THAT????? I was so shocked!!!!! !! Gosh to think if we'd had been in the same bus with such man!!!!!! I don't want to think..... We talked about it and clearly he was just wanting to brag with it, but you never know what's going on in the head of people who are under drugs!!!! Back at the hotel, we couldn't calm down either as when we went to bed before 11 pm, suddenly a loud music starts - I have never heard something so loud - and the hotel is having some stupid rap artist performing! Gosh the banging sound of bass continued about 45 mins before it stopped. Pasi called the reception, which said it'll stop in 5 mins! LOL, that didn't happen!!! But finally it did and we could sleep. Felt so tired next morning as we had to get up before 6 am.:S

Well in spite of those 2 incidents, we were so happy about this trip and enjoyed going through everything last night what we bought.:)) How boring it was to get back to work today, blah!!! It has been very sunny and warm here for the past 3 days, so we're going to enjoy the one more hot day too after work and heading for a picnic to the shore. Kids were already swimming yesterday, when we had a walk in early evening. Brr, it must be still so cold!!! Photos will be uploaded later - we got loads!!!!!!! :D

Hope I didn't bore u with my long story ;)