18th Sept 2008 - The meet up in London

After several solo travels, this time I will have a fellow travel buddy, my long time friend, Belinda, to join me on my next adventure. Together we will try 'conquer' Italy (Rome, Florence and Venice) for ~2 weeks. She'll be flying into London from KL to meet me and we will be spending 2-3 days before and after our Italy trip. Both of us have been rather busy before the trip. Bel's busy with her project in KL, and me busy running and 'playing' around... so we didn't prepare a whole lot for the trip but that's alright as we are both very flexible and spontaneous people. We had only decided on how many days we'll spend on the 3 places and sort out the accommodation part, the rest we'll just plan on the go.

*****

Day 1

It's been more than a year since we last met, although we often chat over the net, but still felt excited to be meeting her in London. Although she'll be arriving in London Heathrow around 4pm, but I've reached the airport around 11am. My cousin dropped me at the Frimley train station on her way to work, took the train to Woking and then changed to National Express direct bus to Heathrow airport. Bought a sandwich and sat on a bench and read a book. It's pretty busy today and there are plenty of University freshman arriving and there are representatives from the different Unis there to pick them up. I thought this is actually very thoughtful as these students are flying in from various countries so having someone to pick them up make things slightly easier for them and it is a good way for them to bond and make friends.

Finally, Bel's plane landed and we are finally reunited again in this foreign land. It's a shame that another friend of ours is not here in UK. Originally, the plan is that she'll be seconded to UK for a year or 2 for a project by end of July and me and Bel will bunk at her place. Although she won't be joining us for Italy but we'll still spend time in London. Too bad the plan didn't work out that way and she is still stuck in SG.

So we took the tube and head to Glocester Road station , where we'll be meeting Bel's colleague, WH, who kindly let us stay in her house although Bel only knew her through a common friend. This definitely helped us save a fair amount of $$...