05 Jan The start of my London adventure
The last couple of days have been a whirlwind adventure and the days have honestly flown by! I arrived in London on the 27th December after a total of 29 hours flying from Sydney with a massive smile on my face. The flight was long and the jetlag was slowly starting to kick in, but I was still hugely excited to have finally made it to London. One of the Absolute Internship staff and a few other interns who had arrived earlier met me at the airport and we then made our way to the housing together, which took about 45 minutes. Once at the accommodation, I met the rest of the interns and got to know my roommate Cass who is doing a marketing internship. We then all caught the Tube together for our welcome dinner from Stockwell station, which is the closest station to the accommodation, and about a 10-minute walk.
The Underground is a very impressive system as the trains are always super fast and running on time. We didn’t really have to wait for the trains because they are so frequent, which was a welcome change from the trains in Sydney. We made our way to Nandos in Covent Gardens for dinner and got to know each other a bit better. All us interns are from Australia and for the majority of us this was our first visit to London, so we were all very excited to see both, the city and start our internships. After dinner we had a wonder through the streets of Covet Gardens, which is beautifully decorated with Christmas lights and decorations and filled with people despite the cold. We walked through Apple Markets, which is filled with stalls on the weekends and saw a Lego sculpture of London’s most famous landmarks which was pretty cool. By this time we were all fairly exhausted from our flights and most of us were feeling jetlagged so we decided to head home.
The next day, I woke up to a sunny London feeling refreshed and excited for the day ahead! It was about 6 degrees outside which wasn’t too bad since it wasn’t raining or windy. My roommate and I made a trip down to the local Tesco for a few supplies early in the morning. All the products in the shops are exactly like the ones we get back home but it was interesting to see that the grocery shops sold alcohol as well. We then had breakfast with everyone and had an orientation presentation, which outlined what we had planned for the next 2 months. We have dinners, weekends away and plenty of sightseeing ahead of us! After breakfast we had a walk around our area to get familiar with buses and the location of certain places like the Post Office and major supermarkets. A few of us then decided to head over to Ikea, which is located towards the outskirts of the city. The journey there and back was incredibly memorable!
We had to learn the Tube map very quickly so we knew which train to catch and which station to change at. We then decided to visit Piccadilly Circus for dinner and had Italian, then walked down Oxford Street, Soho and towards Trafalgar Square. London city is more magical at night, in my opinion. I think it was even more character and the atmosphere is definitely different. It’s much colder but still full of people and things to see, especially on Oxford Street. We’ve been very lucky with sunny weather so far and start our tours of London tomorrow! Very excited for it all and I’m especially looking forward to visiting the galleries and museums.
No Comments