london

On Saturday we returned to London after a fairly nice stint in Bath. Our room in the flat would was not becoming available until Monday but we had been invited round on Sunday night for a farewell dinner. On Saturday night we stayed at a hostel called the Globetrotters Inn. It was fairly nice and had the feel of a school camp with alcohol and no teachers. For 21 each we got a twin room with ensuite and breakfast. Pretty good for London but the antics of some of the guests (drunken sprints down the corridors at 3am) meant our sleep was not too sound.

Before leaving Wellington I had done some extensive searching on the London flat finder websites. As we only want to stay in London for just over three months finding a place willing to take people in for this long was really tough. Fortunately I stumbled across a flat that suited our needs nicely. The four bedroom flat is in Camberwell which is ten minutes south of London by train. The girl in the flat called Emma is traveling to India for three months and her travel dates correspond almost exactly to ours. I had talked to her from New Zealand and had arranged to contact her when we arrived in London to view the room before agreeing to stay.

We flew out of Hong Kong on Saturday night at 11:45 p.m. Fortunately our hotel had a late checkout of 6:00pm so we were not burdened with the problem of where to put our packs during the day. On our last day in Hong Kong we cruised the flea markets and shops in Kowloon. Although Emma was not too keen on the local food the packed streets soon drove us into a relatively quiet Chinese eatery where we had a nice lunch of noodles, rice and steamed buns.

After returning to the hotel and packing we took the train to the airport. The great thing about Hong Kong is that airline checkin can be completed at the railway station. This meant we did not have to worry about our luggage after boarding the high-speed train as it would travel unsupervised from Kowloon Station to Heathrows Terminal One. After arriving and passing through customs we had four hours to fill in and HK$500 to spend. We browsed the expensive designer shops and then had a nice dinner complete with lobster soup and cocktails at a european style restaurant. Our seats overlooked the departure lounge and airport tarmac so there was always something or somebody interesting to look at. It was a great way to round off our visit to Hong Kong and some european food after days of noodles and rice was very welcome.