Vacation in Great Britain: part 4

As you might remember from my last entry,
this is the entry I will write about my first meetup with Ruth! ^^

In the evening the day before, we had contacted eachother about time and place of where to meet up!

We decided on a conveniently placed busstop that is situated pretty much just inbetween my sisters place and Ruths place, around 2 pm o´clock! It would only take around 5 minutes for me to walk there, so I had plenty of time to get ready in the morning! ^^

The only thing that kind of worried me about it all, was that I was really cold to begin with >.<

I get cold easier because of my illness, so I made sure to pack my mittens and wear a big scarf as well! ^^ I luckily didn´t have to wait a long time for Ruth to get there either...

The first thing we did was to check the bus-routes, so we could get closer into the sentrum of town. We started with going to a cosy little café where they had the most divine looking cakes! Peachie ordered a cute Strawberry Gateau cake, and I got an Apple tart with a scoop of Vanilla icecream ^^ It was yummy! and I enjoyed the fact that is was warm, as I needed to be heated up for going out in the cold and windy weather again >,<

Afterwards, Peachie showed me this super cute little bubble-tea place, where she ordered warm banana milk tea with strawberry bubbles for us ; v; it was one of her personal favourites, and since I´m not very familiar with bubble-tea I just went with the same as her! ^^

It was very tasty! >v< (You can totally tell how windy it was outside that day XD ahaha...)

Later on, we went to the local comic book store near the national museum. I always visit that place whenever I´m in Edinburgh, and it never dissapoints me! I totally fell in love with these amazing Adventure Time comic books I found *v* They had so much AT merch also, I was basically swoon x) (it´s my nr. 1 fandom I think ;V;).... Didn´t get anything of that on the first visit though, as I am one of those people that can never decide on anything ;v;
I did visit the shop several times during my trip though (but more about that later ;-) )
This time, I wound up only getting the next volume in a manga-series called "Honey Clover"
(it´s a series I collect, would REALLY reccomend it, its so nice ;V;)

Afterwards we went down Princes street to the St. James shopping mall, where we wandered through the accesories stores, and I squeed over all the cute things I found at Claire´s (why don´t we have Claire´s in Norway ;A;??). Peachie had to sit down for a little bit, so we took a rest. We decided to look into the huge warehouse shop they have there before heading home. We smelled the lovely perfumes and acted like fancy maids in the exlusive candy and confectionary area x3 hehe 

After that, we sadly had to go home, since Peachie was really tired and had a little mixup with her medication earlier, appearantly... I was kind of sad, but I realized I was quite tired myself due to my poor health condition at the time, so even though we only stayed together around 4 hours, both of us where quite beat! We quickly found a bus to take us home...

Luckily, I got to visit Peachies flat for a little while when we came back to our living area (still find it so nice that my sister is situated so close to Ruths place ;V; <3). Nice as she is, she offered to take pictures of my outfit, even being as tired as she was ;A; whaah... I was really excited about what I wore that day, since it was my first time wearing my Toy Parade OP, so I happily agreed to it after getting reassured she was ok with it ;V; 

Here are some outfit pictures she took!^^

This is my favourite one! ^^

Toyish Meetup

OP: Angelic Pretty

Shoes: Secret Shop

Tights: H&M kids section

Socks: H&M

Wig: Mbok auctions

Accessories: Homemade, gifts, Närcon shop, 6%Doki doki,
Glitter, Chocomint, HolleyTeaTime, gifts, vintage

Detail picture! ^^

Sadly, Peachie was too tired for taking pictures together, and after taking these I quickly had to leave for her to rest properly! <3 She would have many days to get more rest after this, since we weren´t going to meet up until 4 days from then! So I hugged her and told her to take care until our next meet ; ^; I was a bit worried that I had tired her out, but she told me she had just had another friend over for a few days up until the day before, so the lack of rest might be a part of it! >.< As a fellow lolita with a cronic illness I know life in general is tiresome enough, yet alone being a host for such a nuisance like me =__="" I felt bad, to say the least... 

In the end I cried a bit, because I was worried about her, but we parted with a hug and a smile and she reassured me she would rest a lot ^^

That was it for our first meetup! 

After this I just went home to my sisters place
and we watched a disney-movie together before we headed to bed ;V;
Even though our first meetup didn´t go exactly like planned, it had been a fairly nice day anyway ^^

What is your favourite bubble-tea flavour?

Until next time,

 

Vacation in Great Britain: part 3

 
The third/last full day in London, we started with going to the national portrait museum, to look at paintings and pictures to get inspired for future photographic school assignments that we might get. It was really lovely! Everything from huge paintings of victorian kings and queens in their most bejeweld attire, to the simplest little sketches, and modernistic photography of all the most famous people up through history... Personally, I was really fascianted by all  the details in the art, and wound up looking at the "wrong" things (folds, shadows and such, since I am into drawing myself) instead of the things I could have adapted into a photograph (positioning of the model, light, style of clothing etc.) hehe... all my reference pictures are detail pictures = V="""

Since the gallery was coincidentally situated in Leichester Square, we were quite close to China Town, which was really great, since my group had planned to go there afterwards. The first thing we did after finishing up our tour at the gallery, was to go look for a close-by Ben & Jerrys´ that we had found during some searching on google earlier. We don´t particularily have that kind of thing in my country (or atleast not in the smaller cities and towns) so it was definitely a goal to find one!

... I guess the picture can state our search was successfull x) hehe

I ordered a sundae with three icecream-scoops (cookie-dough, s´mores and baked alaska) and it was topped with whipped cream, white chocolate, milk chocolate and nut bits and a drizzle of chocolate sauce to finish it off ;v; yay <3 de–e–licious!

Later, we looked around china town. We found loads of little cute shops with kawaii things in them. I finally got myself a new wallet! (My melody themed) and resisted buying the totally overpriced arpakassos they had there >v< (I have still got to get my first one ;^;  own none still!)

I tried out bubble-tea for the first time! I tried matcha milk tea with "tapioca" bubbles
(correct me if I misspelled it >.<). It was rather strange, but tasty ^^ I wasn´t able to finish it though...

Later we went back to oxford street, to do some last "cramp" shopping. I got a cute red tartan skirt from H&M (something I have been searching for for ages!), and the others got themselfes some new clothings as well. We wound up at Pizza Hut where we split a pizza between the three of us, and in the end we wound up so late that had to run our feet sore to get to our next appointed meeting place, to meet up with the rest of our class and teacher: the trainstation with the train that was going to take us to the Harry Potter Warner Bros studios tour! We were so afraid we were gonna miss the train, and essentially we were acctually 5 to 10 min too late to go, but we made it just in time anyway!

My, oh my, that was quite an adventure @_@ I was mindblown! It was so amazingly cool!
I don´t consider myself a very, very hardcore fan of the Harry Potter series. Sure I have those periods of time when I have a crazy Harry Potter period of my life, where I just have to read all the books again, watch the movies and play the games (usually during summer vacation it seems XD hehe) but generally it´s more one of those things that I am a fan of, but its not apparant at all times!
But there, and then... I felt like a little kid again x3 yaay <3

Imagine, actual REAL sets, props, outfits and gear worn and used in the movies... for display!??

(we were allowed to take as many pictures as we wanted, but my phone who is stupid and old, died on me,
so I got very few of them >.<)

 It felt really surreal. We saw everything from the great hall, the Gryffindor common-room, Dumbledoors office, Hagrids hut... I rode a broom and the flying car, got to see how they did loads of their special effects and even got to meet loads of the animal actors (several generations down) that was used in the movies! ^^ In the outdoor area they had butterbeer that tasted like soda with caramel and whipped cream on top xDD a classmate bought some, so I got to taste a mouthfull... really weird ( didn´t really like it...). And I got to take a picture of and with Hedwig ;v; <3 the real Hedwig!

 Later we saw the workshops with the different models, special creatures and masks and loads more information. Statues of centaurs, trolls and gnomes, and close up details of mermaids and loads of other things you never get to see in the actual movies! Just before we came out, we got to walk through the Diagon Ally (it was so lovely peeking into all the windows ;v;) and the whole tour ended with a huuuge 10 meter tall model (atleast!) of Hogwarts, with every little detail put in, like the boat-house, the whomping willow, the quidditch fields and everything! *v*

(here is also the ticket I got at the shop at Kings Cross!)

Needless to say, I had to get a couple of chocolate frogs (only one pictured here) and a copy of the Quibbler (with glasses!) from the souvernir shop before we left x3

Just to quickly mention the next day, since nothing special happend...

I felt rather sick this day, so we just took it slow...

 we went and looked at Big Ben and the London eye (though we didn´t take the tour)
and basically we (me, my classmates and teacher) parted around 1 or 2 pm. 

I headed to Heathrow on my own, and the others went to Gatwick (kinda scary, but I met everyone was so helpful and kind, it was no problem really...), and soon enough I found myself on the plane to Edinburgh. Nothing much happend on the first day. I got settled with all my suitcase in my sisters apartment, and otherwise just looked around some shops, if I remember correctly ^^ I was to excited about the following adventures to focus xD

As you might know, I took the opportunity to visit my friend Ruth (Princess-Peachie) while I was in Edinburgh, so the next entry will be about our first (out of three!) meetup! ^0^<3You see, we had planned to meet up the very next day after my arrival! I hope you look forward to it as much as I do writing about it ;V; I promise there will be better pictures >.< ehm...

Do you think its scary to travel alone??

Until next time! ^^

Vacation in Great Britain: part 2

I have been extremly busy with school the last couple of weeks! 

Sorry for the update–delay >0<!

The second day of my trip was rather busy as well @_@
And it definitely started off better than it ended...

We had a scheduled tour through the BBC news-building around 11 am,
so after getting ready in the morning, we pretty much just headed right over there ^^

Here is the entry to the new building! They had an old one built in the 30´s right next to it (that they also still use!), but this is now the main–building :-) It was really exciting going there!

We found a full–size (?) Tardis, and even though I haven´t watched Dr. Who before, I felt this was a neccessary tourist shot to do xD hehe

It felt so surreal to acctually stand next to it O.o

The tour lasted for about an hour or so, afterwards we had to do some school related tasks before we had the rest of the afternoon off. Well, atleast we had until 6 pm, since then we had made a deal to meet up together (the entire class) and go to china-town for some dinner!

So, I and the others I was with decided to go to the Sherlock Holmes Museum
as soon as we had the time! ^^ We got cought in the rain, and had to stand in the it for an hour to wait, so I was soaked by the time we finally got in >.<

It was a really lovely museum! <3

  But the rain kinda ruined the rest of my day, cause I walked around shivering the entire day after that, in wet clothes.... So, I didn´t really enjoy our trip to Camden Marked afterwards... and thus because of that and because there was only a small amount oftime left, we only stayed there a bit over an hour before we had to leave to meet up with everyone else for dinner....

Some of the others felt that they hadn´t got enough after finishing there, so we went out to look around some clothing shops again, even though I mostly just felt sick by then, because I was so cold >.< 

...

On our way home we went by kingscross underground
so we decided to quickly visit the Harry Potter shop there! ^^

 It was really nice, and it had such a strong atmosphere around it <3
They played the correct music and everything!
I bought a "train ticket to Hogwarts" and a tiny little button that said "9 3/4", as a souvenir.

By the time we finally got home again, I had felt so cold and sickly for such a long time that my mood was down in the dumps and I just headed right to bed... there was no use in doing anything else (seeing as I could not "take a hot shower" since there was no warm water >.>)

Thats it for day two! 

Do you enjoy going to museums
when you are traveling??

Later!

Vacation in Great Britain: part 1

INTRODUCTION:

As these reports in their full lenght would be a quite extensive amount of writing, 

and I in my current codition feel quite tired, I will try to compress them as much as possible, still keeping the original contents in them! ^^ That means that instead of writing an entry about every single day (I was away for 11 days) I will rather write fewer posts, talking about several days in  each of them. I will also try and focus each  post around pictures, as I know reading long walls of texts might be discouraging and feel less interesting for some... so basically it´s a win-win situation, as that implyes less writing for me, and less reading for you! ^^

Without further ado, lets get to it! 

(ps: all purchase pictures is taken after getting back home!)

 

Being a senior in high-school, this spring brought along the time for our graduation trip. We had settled on London as our destination. We left home sunday the 16th of february and traveled all day until around 9 pm in the evening before we could finally settle in our little hotel in London. We were living in a little hotel (litterary tiny) called Leigh House Hotel, quite central in london, about 5 min. walk from Kingscross station! 

We were two and two in each room. I split room with another girl in my class :-)

It was a usefull place to stay, as we had quite a loaded program for our stay. 

The first day alone included going to a design museum with an exhibition about the works of INSERT NAME. It was time for a brake afterwards, so we went to Starbucks! Litterary my first ever visit to a Starbucks café, and I´m rather proud to say it was in London :-)

As geeky as it might sound, I researched a bit about what would be good to have there before I left home, since I generally don´t like coffee. I somehow stumbled upon this thing called "the secret menu of Starbucks" which generally is a list of drinks that you can order especially from them.

 I am happy to say I sucsessfully ordered a strawberry cookie crumble frappuchino (though they didn´t have the chocolate whipped cream), and I tried out their "fruit bread" which was quite tasty ; v;

After that we went to Tate modern where we could look at whatever part of their gallery as we pleased. I took great pleasure in their current "poetry and dream" exhibiton, featuring the surrealistic works of Salvador Dáli, amongst many others. I found a bunch of books I would have loved to buy, but as I was on vacation with a limited amount of space in my suitcase, I did as I always do: took a bunch of pictures of their front pages to save the titles for later ;-)

The rest of the evening, we had the day free, so I and a bunch of others (we had this rule about being alteast two people together at all times) decided to explore Oxford Street and China Town. We kind of misscalculated, and ended up having to skip the last part, since Oxford Street took a lot longer than we had accounted for. We started of by visiting the super adorable Disney store
(where I folded and ended up buying some cute toys >v< hihi)

I have wanted one of these glittery disney-princess plastic cups ever since I borrowed one at Peachies, the last time I visited her, so I was very happy that I was able to get it! And the cute toy cat was just because, you know > v> e–eheheh..... 

 After that we pretty much worked our way up the entire street visiting pretty much every store we came across. I made my most expesive purchase of the trip, invested in a really cute pair of suspender pants in a super light pastelly baby pink colourway and a pair of pink, gold-edged, heart-shaped earrings from River Island (a brand I rather like <3 Link is to their online shop, but if you ever have the chance to actually shop there, by all means go in! ^^)

In the evening, everyone gathered at a small tandoori resturant for dinner, before we jumped to bed after a very long day indeed ^^"

And that is the summary of the first couple of days!

Have you ever been to Starbucks?

Stay tuned for more updates soon :-)