It was such a great weekend and a great way to round off the whole London experience, I think. (: By this time Fen-ma had just moved into Yinghong's room as well, so the company was of course good!
Saturday -It's all about the music (20/6)
We had a pretty slow morning, shifting all our things from Yinghong's old room to her new room, and then Fen-ma arrived with her crazy heavy luggage which she had dragged all the way from the main road up to YH's place cos we missed her call :X Whoops. So yup we all settled in, had some breakfast, and set out to catch West End Live!
West End Live is held at Leicester Square, and all the big acts of the West End put up a few songs and acts. What better way to experience the best of West End... for free? (: Well unfortunately by the time we reached there it was 1pm and we (much later) realised that all the really cool acts (e.g. Hairspray, Wicked) had taken place earlier in the morning! But it wasn't too bad, we still managed to catch a little bit of Chicago (with Jerry Springer as Billy Flynn), and my all-time favourite JERSEY BOYS (which I had caught 2 days before) -they are sooo AWESOME. So yes, that was enough to make me very, very , very, very happy!
We wandered off after a bit and realised that there was a queue outside the Harry Potter truck -there was nothing else to do but to ask those dressed in wizard robes what it was all about, and apparently it was free admission for all today! Featuring the brand new not-released-yet X-box Harry Potter game, props and costumes from the movie and Dumbledore's office!
Oh yes, we would have really liked to have caught Jude Law performing in Hamlet, but tickets were so hard to come by by the time we realised we wanted to catch it, so the next best thing we could do was stand outside the theatre, take a picture with the poster and take comfort in the fact that at that exact moment, he was no more than 50m away from us putting up a show. Cheap thrill!
Next up: the girls were kind enough to accommodate all my whims and fancies since it was my last weekend in London, and there was pretty much only one place left on my Would-Really-Like-To-Visit list: ABBEY ROAD!
What I knew about Abbey Road was that music series Live From Abbey Road was filmed there -it's basically a music studio where loads of artists perform and record some songs -and the show used to air on what used to be Arts Central. After some googling, I realised that the Abbey Road Studios are also closely associated with the Beatles who recorded most of their material in there :O Their album cover for Abbey Road also features them crossing in a line across the zebra crossing outside the studios.
So after walking for ages from Baker Street, we reach but not sure if we are in the right place until we see loads of people taking photographs of a perfectly normal-looking zebra crossing. This must be it! Haha. Tourist-pedestrians are annoying the heck out of cars there, trying to retrace the steps of the Beatles and mimicking the album cover (and at the same time holding up the traffic a little) (: The walls that surround the studio are covered with words written in markers by all who made their little pilgrimage there -ranging from things like '____ was here' to the lyrics of Beatles songs. 
And I thought this was hilarious:
Hahaha.Sunday (21/6) -Turning 22 isn't so difficult
There was a reason why I pushed my flight date back from the 13th to the 22nd -so I could spend my birthday in London! What a good decision, well done me -pats self on back- (: Haha. Once again thanks to the girls for the great company and for letting me decide where to go! The day was spent re-visiting old favourites (East End Sunday Markets, Camden Town) and visiting something new (for me at least -Primrose Hill).
East End Sunday Markets: Where we jostled with the crowd amidst a burst of colours in the Columbia Rd Flower Market (and where they bought me really nice yellow flowers heh <3 ), where we had delicious bagels from a small but famous store, where I got to watch my favourite busker perform (he simultaneously sings/plays the harmonica, plays the guitar and drums -occasionally he plucks the guitar strings with his teeth), where we were shocked to find out that the best cheesecake in the world had disappeared from the Sunday (Up)Market GASP (but something else makes up for it later).
Camden Town: Where we had really good risotto from the market, where we discovered the best cake in the world (it tastes even better than it looks, and it already looked fantastic) -eating these by the canal and then strolling by the canal to get to Primrose Hill (:
Primrose Hill: Where I got my final birds-eye view over London, spotting the all familiar sights of the BT Tower and the London Eye, and where we played with bubbles (with a contraption that was an impulse buy from along Camden High St) and had Marmite Chips (we love them!). So that was all good ah. (:
And ending the day off with a good meal at wagamama's, a typical crap-the-overground-is-closed-how-do-we-get-back moment, waiting for the bus with a disgruntled (they were pissed off that the bus was taking so long to reach and somehow this led to a complaint on the state of democracy in the country -with the expenses scandal and Iraq included) but friendly (they attempted to forge a camaraderie amongst all waiting for Bus 46) British middle-aged couple, and B&Js icecream in YH's room (: Perfect!
Monday (22/6) - And so I leave London
This last bit of time in London was spent doing perfectly normal things, which was good enough because that's part and parcel of living in a big city isn't it? I said goodbye to the girls in the morning, hopped onto the Overground and made my way back to Ifor where I had left my main piece of luggage with Terence (to save me the trouble of dragging it to YH's place -thank you to him for letting it take up space in his room haha).
Thank you to Rumen for leaving his room open for me, giving some space for me to figure out how the hell I was going to fit all my stuff into a not-so-big piece of luggage. I was utterly baffled and a little panicky for a bit, but it all worked out in the end phew! Said goodbye to Terence, had a nice lunch with Rumen, did the last bit of hanging out in Ifor (with more good music and conversation), and before I knew it it was time to go.
And so the last bit of the London experience began (I truly felt like this would round off the whole living-like-a-Londoner thing haha) -dragging all my luggage (but thank goodness my parents had taken back all my winter things already) to Heathrow via PUBLIC TRANSPORT -the challenge being negotiating the stairs in the tube stations. I took bus 29 down to Leicester Square station, so I didn't realise how difficult this was going to be until I reached the stairs there. Usually these stairs presented no trouble at all but now they seemed to be twice as long raaah. I needed both hands on the handle to make it, but ended up dropping my luggage on the stairs anyway =|.
Anyway to cut a long story short, I reached Heathrow with nothing more than a few bruises on my right knee and a tiny abrasion on my right hand. Haha. Upon checking in I realised that my luggage was 20kg (OMG half my body weight) and I felt really proud of myself for making it. Haha.
And so I got on the plane and left London, putting an end to an experience I'll never forget. I usually hate cliched sayings, but I really do think it may not really be the end but the beginning of all good things to come because I really benefited so much from the whole thing (:
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