Ibiza Here We Come

Thought I’ll make a quick post before I start dumping t-shirts, short pants and Speedos (LOL!) in my backpack, aka packing.

Two of my friends and I are going to the party capital of the world tomorrow – Ibiza. After all the interesting stories I’ve heard from people who’ve been there before, I hope that the place would measure up to my expectations.  Fingers-crossed, I hope I could tell the same interesting story, if not better,  when people ask me how do I find Ibiza.

I must say that the main reason for this trip is the very cheap deal we got from Monarch Airways. What started out as just a generic plan to go somewhere in Spain suddenly became very specific after one of us stumbled upon a very cheap flight to Ibiza. Neither of us three have flown with Monarch Airways before so this gonna be interesting.

And by the way, whilst I was checking my emails today, I came across an article about the hit-and-run incident in Ibiza killing a 21-year old British girl. Such a shame! With that in mind, I will definitely take extra precaution when going out and about. Although some would say that if its your time to die, you’ll die no matter what you do. I’m so not convinced by that! I’d say that since life is so short, always take extra precaution. Love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching and party like there’s no tomorrow.

Anyway, I should probably start packing few things away for this trip now!

Catch y’all later!

 

Exploring London – part 4

I have tons of women friends that’s why I know what they’re like when it comes to shopping. They’ll search the entire mall, try on everything they think would look good on them, ask your opinion, then your second opinion but then they won’t buy the item in the end. Then you’ll move on to the next mall repeating the same ritual all over again. But I made peace with it through the years.

St James' Park, London

Well, that’s roughly what happened on our 3rd day in London. We decided to go shopping and shopping we did!

Around 9 AM, we were already in Oxford Street. However, just like in the Philippines, most of the shops open at either 10 AM or half past 10. So we decided to walk to the other end of the street just to see if there are other interesting shops that we might wanna check out later. We walked past many people queueing in one of the shops and we thought that there was a massive sale that day, so we decided to join the queue. We didn’t even checked the shop’s name. It turned out to be Primark. Primark is known for selling clothes at the budget end of the market.

Westminster Palace, London

Their products are so cheap that we didn’t even bother to fit anything we fancy. Whether they’ll fit to us or not, was not so important that time as we could always send them to our relatives in the Philippines. Plus the queue to the fitting room was ridiculously long, so it wouldn’t be worth the effort. You could get a trouser for £5, a t-shirt for £3, a jumper for £5 and the list goes on. I even got a luggage trolley for only £9 and I’m still using it until today in most of my travels. So when you’re in London and you’re on a budget, I highly recommend this shop. Grab anything you fancy, put it in your shopping basket and decide later whether you really like it or not.

We probably spent half day in that shop alone. Then we moved on to the most obvious options, Topshop, Mango, Marks and Spencer, Next, Selfridges, John Lewis, Debenhams, House of Fraser, HMV, etc.

Millennium Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral, London

Our hands could barely held all the things we bought at the end of that day. Obviously because we didn’t go to Harrods (a high-end department store in Knightsbridge), otherwise, it would have been a totally different story.

We were so tired at that point that we decided not to watch any West End show as we originally planned. We haven’t met the Queen, the Prime Minister and David Beckham yet but our hopes were high that we might finally meet the Queen the following day as we’re going to visit one of her residences.

 

Exploring London – part 3

As we didn’t get to meet the Queen and the Prime Minister on our first day in London, we decided to spend our second day just wandering around the city hoping that we might bump into one of them.

St Paul's Cathedral, London

I wasn’t sure how many miles we walked that day but we walked a lot and I mean a lot!  Our first stop was St Paul’s cathedral. The place where Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married. The structure is a clear manifestation of human ingenuity. I was so impressed by the architectural design of the building.  However, we didn’t get to explore much of the interior of the church building as there were so many tourists that day.

We then headed towards the Millennium Bridge which isn’t far from the cathedral. I think the bridge appeared on the last Harry Potter movie. At the other end of the Millennium Bridge is the Tate Modern. Since Joan and I are not really into arts, we have no idea what the building is all about. It didn’t say anything on its name nor there were any signs suggesting what was going on inside. We weren’t even sure how to pronounce its name We entered the building anyway. Displayed near the entrance was like a two-story-building-tall spider (or was it really a spider, I wasn’t sure). At its bottom were loads of double-deck beds used by many people (mostly youngsters). They weren’t sleeping there, they were just either reading a book or chatting with their mates. The scene looked very bizarre to me. We’ve found out later on that it was an art show and the building is an art museum. It’s the biggest art museum that I’ve ever been to so far. It’s probably as big as SM Makati (per my estimation anyway). We went upstairs where more artworks were displayed. We weren’t sure how many art display rooms were there but let’s just say, we got lost at one point trying to find the exit. We could spend the whole day in that museum and still wouldn’t be able to see the entire art collections. If you’re into arts and stuff, this place is your Nirvana.

at Tate Modern, London

Our next stop was the Tower of London. We didn’t get inside the tower as we were too tired to walk and do the tour. We just chilled outside the tower enjoying the sunset by the River Thames.

Very close to the Tower of London is the Tower Bridge (it’s obviously named after the Tower of London) which is often mistaken by tourists, ourselves included, as the London Bridge. London Bridge is actually the next bridge upstream.

I think most the people in the Philippines heard of the song London Bridge is Falling Down. Hence, when you go to London and you see a magnificent bridge like the Tower Bridge, you would always assume that it’s the popular London Bridge. Because to be honest, I haven’t heard of Tower Bridge before and London Bridge didn’t live up to my expectation. That was my excuse!

Tower of London

Anyway, opposite of the Tower of London, on the other side of the river is a building with a crown design on its side. I found it very interesting. I was told that it’s a government building.

We did a bit of shopping and then called it a day, mostly because we could no longer move our feet!

Second day has gone and still we haven’t seen the Queen nor the Prime Minister, and at this point, Joan wanted to see David Beckham too!