I made it to London!

Well I can happily announce that I made it to London!

I’ve been here for just over a week now and it’s been an absolute whirlwind of a fortnight for me. Packing up my apartment in Melbourne seems like months ago now, and it was only two weeks ago!

I’m glad I took a week off work before I left Melbourne to gather all my things as that last week was just so crazy that I had all my days booked in half-hour slots, and every part of my day was planned with packing, cleaning and mostly catching up with friends. It was pretty intense, so-much-so that for the first time since I was about 8 years old I was actually looking forward to getting on a plane so that I could finally have some ‘me time’ and do absolutely nothing. I didn’t even need to take my anti-anxiety pills (I always have some prescribed for long-haul flights because they scare the hell out of me) which I was really proud of.

My boyfriend and I had a two night stopover in Singapore and we stayed in the Marina Bay Sands hotel which I thought was already amazing to begin with, but then at check-in they gave us an upgrade to this incredible corner Orchard Suite on the 54th floor with almost 360 degree views of the city – I almost fell over when I walked into the room. It was a whole apartment with two living rooms, a dining room, a bathroom that was the size of my apartment at home and a walk in robe that was bigger than my bedroom!

It was such a relaxing two days spent shopping and sitting by the pool drinking cocktails that I was totally ready to get on that plane and make my way over to London. We flew with Qatar via Doha and I have heard so many good things about Qatar since it’s been voted number 1 airline for two years running now, but I actually didn’t like it at all. They kept dropping the air conditioning when they wanted people to sleep, and it was so hot that we were sitting in singlets and shorts and absolutely sweating our butts off! There was zero service – they came around with water only once (which was really hard to deal with on such a HOT flight) and when you asked for a drink it was such a big effort for them. Also I had ordered vegetarian meals and they kept giving me the standard meat meals, and when I always asked for the vego ones they would roll their eyes at me. I also think they need to implement some sort of personal hygiene policies as we were unlucky enough on both flights to sit next to passengers who obviously didn’t use any deodorant and at certain points during the flight I was trying really hard to hold back on my gagging reflex. Also, don’t even get me started on the unorganised mess of a transit at Doha airport.

So in conclusion I don’t recommend flying Qatar to anyone, and I don’t understand why it has such great reviews, but I already feel better by venting about it.

London has been surreal and amazing so far. I love exploring my new home city and am in absolute awe of everything I see – the architecture here is so different to back home and everything seems to have this certain British charm about it.
The atmosphere with the Olympics has been huge which has made this week even more fun, the whole of London is buzzing and everyone seems to be uniting as one and just enjoying themselves. All the Olympic-haters have been converted to Olympic-lovers, and last night I went to a local park screening of the closing ceremony which felt like one huge concert in the park with hundreds of people getting into it and dancing and singing along. So in the end, what I thought was actually a terrible time to move here has turned out to be the best time to move and I’m really grateful that I was here to experience London in the midst of the Olympic excitement.

This week will be extra busy as I’m in full house-hunting mode and will shortly be commencing the job-hunting phase too. We have also booked ourselves a little holiday getaway to Cinque Terre in Italy, so I fly out on Wednesday which should be lots of fun. At least I already expect the worst from Ryan Air so I shouldn’t be complaining too much more about airlines next week 🙂

Until then,

The London New Girl
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