Awake is the new asleep...

Anyone who says they love travelling is mad!!!!!!!!!

OK... once you get there... it's a blast... but the actual act of getting there... ie "travelling"... Is all my worst nightmares come true!!

5 minutes after take off on my Cathay Pacific flight from Sydney to Hong Kong.... and yep... I'd broken my entertainment console... the hostie trudged off to get it rebooted, with a polite yet strained reminder to be a little more gentle with the buttons once it was fixed.... ooops... yes my impatience kicked in after a whole five minutes.... it was set to be a long trip!!

I did however make it to Hong Kong, still partially sane, and marvelled at the view as we landed at night... the roads were so higgeldy piggeldy compared to the straight grids of Adelaide... and what was that massive dark patch... ooooh.... a mountain.... I realised I'd never seen a real mountain before (guessing Mt Lofty doesn't really cut it!!).

So that was it.... I had made my first foray into a foreign country!! Hmmm... what did i note.... they didn't know how to que.... everyone just jumped in... annoying, if i'd had a car horn attached to my person I would have been tooting left, right and centre!!

Also, after dragging my way through security, and stressing about all the new rules about not bringing any liquids in your baggage, I finally settled at the boarding gate, and being thirsty... pulled my half drunk bottle of water out of my hand luggage.... OOOOPS!! Somehow the 57 million security checks had missed that!!

So back on the plane I got - and this was the sardine flight... as i squished myself between the window and a very cuddly passenger, whose sole ambition on the flight was to find all the free food available and stuff themselves with it!! Nevertheless I survived.... and even managed a little sleep along the way!!

And that was it... There was London... well not quite... immigration really didn't want to let me in... they seemed to think I would want to stay (how much did they not know me!!) but after i played twenty questions with them they eventually gave up!! (I'll be getting my British passport sorted before I go back though - since i really wasn't in the mood for an interrogation after being on the plane for so long!!)

And there it was staring back at me... Marks & Spencers!! I will never forget the happiness that shop brought me!! Of course, mixed with sadness that I will never be able to experience the happy ready made yet fresh and yummy meals contained within its walls in my very own home... nor the mini flapjacks.... sigh!!

Gratefully Emma picked me up and we were off!! Back to her place, a converted flour mill, which was simply stunning and I was in awe as I wondered around imagining this as my home for the next two weeks (not that we spent a lot of time there!!). To keep me on my feet (and fight off the jet lag) we headed straight out and off to patrol the streets of Greenwich (where Emma lives). I marvelled at the letter boxes, lamp posts (no stobie poles here!!) phone boxes and london buses as we made our way around - all things i had seen pictures of but assumed had been updated and modernised as the years had gone by - but not in London they haven't.

We made our way up the massive hill in Greenwich Park, where the sun decided to run away all too fast and the view which had been clear just moments before, now showed a fog descending over London...
I then straddled the Greenwich meridian, before we headed off for some lunch in Canary wharf where thankfully the sun returned.

Then what else could I do on my first day in london.... SHOP!!!!!! Yay.... with the impending wedding on my mind I knew I needed a dress ...and shoes... and fascinator.... ooohhh the possibilities were endless!! I fell in love with a shop called next (www.next.co.uk) and never managed to walk past it without stopping in for soemthing. And who would believe it but at Karen Millen I found a dress that very first day....but the shopping was far from being over....

Stay tuned to find out just how much more shopping one person could pack into two weeks!!