Day 5: Newbury - London

After a good 4 nights of rest in Newbury to recuperate from university and to prepare for travels, we next headed over to London. By taking the coach as opposed to the train, we cut our travel costs in half, which was great! So here's Andy (Luke's dad) dropping us off at the bus station. Actually, I wanted to take a picture with him, but since we were running late, I had to take a picture of him instead. He was like "what....". He was so much fun and made us feel really welcomed in his house.


I mentioned earlier on that he was a show jumper and now does training and commentating on horsing events. Coincidentally, at the same time as we were staying with him, Olympia, this huge international horse show in London was taking place; so we often saw Andy in front of the TV watching all the events. Occasionally, when timing allowed, we would join him as well, which was great as I got to learn a lot regarding show jumping and the rules and the like from a professional.

The first time we joined him, this event called the Puissance was on, which is basically jumping the horse over a "brick" wall (made of cardboard but to resemble bricks) which kept rising each round. Each horse can only make 5 jumps (if I recall correctly) so it's up to the "referee" guy to decided how high to raise the wall each turn to narrow the field. If there was more than one guy remaining after the final jump, they'd split the prize money. Apparently, a lot has to do with the rider cause there is this special distance from the wall that they have to hit perfectly in order to clear the wall. A lot also has to do with the horse, both it's temperament and training. Basically, since the horse can't see past the "brick" wall, (s)he has to trust in the rider that there's a safe landing spot on the otehr side of the wall and just go for it and jump. These walls go up to over 7 feet, which is higher than the wall in your house. Can you imagine jumping over one of them? Must be exhilirating to clear it.

Some of the other events were really intePublishresting as well. There was this one knock-out competition whereupon each horse has to go through a set course of hurdles, both testing their ability to jump high and their ability to jump far. After the rider completes the course, (s)he then decides which obstacle (s)he wants to raise or widen to make the course more difficult for the next rider. And this goes on and on till only one person can complete the course. So it's pretty strategic. At first, you raise or widen barriers that you know you yourself can clear. After awhile though, you observe your opponents and see which they have trouble clearing and modify those instead... Pretty nail biting stuff.

I also learnt about about the personalities in horse racing, such at the Whittaker family of fathers, sons, cousins, which is this huge horse riding clan. And it requires tons of training and hard work. It was pretty cool. When Andy was a teenager, some one came up to him and offered him a job as a stablehand in Amsterdam (I think). Anyway, not knowing anything, he packs up and leaves and starts his show jumping career as a stablehand mucking out horse crap and stuff. Through hard work, determination and brains, he made his way to the top and was a successgul show jumper. I saw some pictures around the house of him on a horse jumping over the Puissance wall. Totally cool.

And some nights, while we were in Newbury, he travelled to Olympia to attend some of their black tie functions and the like.

Most of you know that I watch a lot of different sports. If Singapore did telecast show jumping, I very possibly would start watching that too, it's really interesting.

So, we finally got to London around lunch time and went to our first hostel of the trip - the Globetrotter Inn. We found it online through this website: hostelbookers.com and I would SERIOUSLY recommend it to anyone who intends to go "backpacking" around the world. They charge absolutely no commission, give the best rates possible and also, travellers rate the hotel based on service, facilities, room, location and such and such so you get really good hostels for affordable prices! I know what you're thinking - "only a certain type of traveller would be lame enough to return to the website to rate the places". That's what I thought as well and was pretty nervous, but they're really good. After our stay at each hotel, hostelbookers.com actually followed up and sent us an e-mail asking about our stay and to take a few minutes to just give some evaluation an comments, and since the hostels and so good, we did also just spend a short span of time to help other travellers make the right choices.

So anyway, the Globetrotter Inn was voted the best hostel in London in 2005 an I could definitely see why! The location is really really good, just a few metro stops away from the centre of town. It was affordable, at 12.50 pounds a night. The toilet facilities were good and it was really clean. Within the hostel, there's a shop, a bar, a movie room (free movies!) and breakfast was provided. The staff were friendly as well. My favourite part, and this was the only hostel on our trip that had this, was that you had a "bed curtain" for each bed along with your own personal light, so you got your own space of sorts at night. I could stay up later than the rest reading and planning for the next day without my light disturbing them and keeping them awake. Very nice!!

There's the exterior of our hostel...

And there's my bed. The strings you see at the right are my curtains. More about that Arsenal shirt later =)

First order of business was to get lunch and around our hostel were tons of good and affordable eateries as well. We found this italian (authentic since the staff and owner were all Italian!) sandwich bar. Throughout the whole trip, we ate tons of sandwiches since they're basically the cheapest thing you can find.

After lunch, we immediately set off to see the MOST IMPORTANT landmark for me in London and the first thing I brought up when we talked about going to London - the EMIRATES STADIUM (or for people who don't appreciate corporate sponsorship, ASHBURTON GROVE)!!! So there we are on the metro heading over to ARSENAL STATION!!! YES! You heard me right!!! Arsenal have their own station!!! Take that Chelsea and Spurs!! (Don't know if Liverpool or Man U have their own stations...). The best part is that the location of Ashburton Grove is really good, within the metro demarkation of "central london" so we could travel there without paying extra on our day travel passes.

Do I look really excited?

And Luke (spurs fan... need I say more) does not look impressed.

There I am, in front of the Emirates which was REALLY REALLY REALLY IMPRESSIVE!!! Even Luke had to cough that up. And take my word for it, I know, I've seen St. James's Park, White Hart Lane and supposedly one of the most impressive club stadiums in the world, the San Siro (but more on that later), and Emirates tops them hands down! It's the second largest club stadium in England, Old Trafford is the first and St. James's Park the third. So beautiful.


I had numerous "wow" moments on this whole trip, where I'm just standing somewhere, shocked that I'm actually fortunate enough to be there and to see what I'm seeing. Where I start thinking I'm still a Secondary 3 girl dreaming of studying in England and I'm going to wake up in a moment. Being in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam comes to mind. In this whole trip though, I had 4 pronounced moments in my head, where I felt my knees trembling, my heart pounding so fast my head felt so light, where I could feel tears springing to my eyes because what I saw in front of me felt like beauty personified. You know how people say they see the presence of a divine creator when they see a beautiful sky, an awe-inspiring sunset. I had 4 of those transcendental moments and this was one of them.

I felt like an excited kid again, running all over the place shouting "look at this", "look at that" and "oh my god...".

We're the GUNNERS!!! So we gotta have them cannons somewere! I think this picture below has to be one of the top 2 favourite pictures of my trip. I'D ARRIVED!!! After supporting Arsenal since 1999, since I was 14, since I was in Secondary 2... 7 years of cheering them on through the tube. I was there! I was at Arsenal's stadium! It just grounded my whole football existence. It was almost earth-shattering and I do not exagerrate. Oh my god, I loved it so much.

Of course I had to go into the store. I was thinking of getting a new kit, though I have 2 home kits and one away one in Singapore already. Seeing the 40 pound price tag made me change my mind though... Even though my JVC one is actually really old and my O2 one was last year's maroon commemorative version for our last year in Highbury... But anyway, my longings for a new Arsenal shirt aside, I wanted to buy everything!!! Look, Arsenal teddy bears! =)

At first, I wanted to get this red spagetti strap shirt with the cannon embroided on the bottom left corner. However, they didn't have my size... I have to admit that the Arsenal Women's shirts are appallingly paltry. So I was wondering around the shop whinning to Laura. "I want a shirt... I want a shirt... What am I gonna do... I want a shirt". And she hit on a brillient solution. We headed over to the boys section and found this realy nice arsenal shirt so in that picture of me on my bed above and I now proudly own - an Arsenal shirt meant for boys 7-8 years old... Haha! Luke says it's so embarrassing that I should stop telling people that, but I just find it really funny. And it fits very well too =) You guys can see it when I get back to Singapore cause I will DEFINITELY wear it to Uni frequently.

Oh, I also bought a little Arsenal Teddy bear... I couldn't help it... Besides, all my money was going to help my team anyway =)

Come on you Gunners!! (See my shopping bag? I even kept the bag.)

I was then obliged to go over to White Hart Lane for Luke. By then, it was already getting pretty dark. White Hart Lane was only 2 metro stops away from Ashburton Grove, but it felt like a totally different neighbourhood and atmosphere. I'm sure during match days things are a lot better, but the neighbourhood felt pretty dodgy and I was glad to have a guy with us on our trip. It gave me an impression of a really poor neighbourhood. And those two metro stops pushed us out of the "central" zone, so we had to take a bus there.

White Hart Lane was no where near as impressive as Ashburton Grove. I have to admit that the female section of the store was much better though... Anyway, here's one shot of White Hart Lane.

We were pretty scared on the bus back from White Hart Lane. As I said, everyone looked poor, and for some reason, the bus was filled with predominantly black people, so we really stood out. When we were boarding the bus and walking towards the rear, this stoned dude suddenly grabbed Luke and started swaying with him for what felt like eternity before saying "sorry" and letting go. I told him to check his bag after to make sure he had everything. Also, I saw a guy nearly get pickpocketed. There was the would-be thief standing on the steps leading to the upper level of the bus and this guy was getting out, so he walked past him. Suddenly, the exiting commuter turned around on the stationary thief and said "hey, watch it" cause he felt the guys hands on him. He glared at the "thief" while feeling his pockets and couldn't find his wallet. He then looked on the ground and there was his wallet at the corner. I suspect the "thief" knew he was "caught" and dropped the wallet in the corner so nothing could be proven. And this was only at around 1730 in the day (though it was dark since the sun set at 1600 in the winter).

So anyway, we were mighty glad to get back into the metro and we headed into Picadilly circus to see the place brimming with life in the dark. We stopped for a coffee there, but the food was way out of our price range so we headed back to our hostel and found this great and affordable thai place within walking distance. Tom Yum soup!! It was heavenly...

We returned to the hostel for the night to rest up for a long second day in London.

silkstalkings waves