Day 34 - London Again

Monday, June 14th - I was up early to say goodbye to Jas who was catching an early flight back to Canada. I was hoping to push my flight to Dublin the following day up a day and change the 6:45am flight time, so I decided to head to the internet cafe to suss it out. The airline I had booked with wouldn't let me change the flight online so I headed back to the RN to call and make the changes. When I called the airline something was wrong with their phone system and I kept getting looped back to the main menu without talking an operator. I was beyond frustrated but resigned to the fact that this was my last day in London.

Rochelle, Sukhey, Sandra and I planned to go see Harrods and it was a fabulous experience. This is definitely one of the best shopping experiences I've ever had - it puts Holts in Toronto to shame. We ate in one of the many restaurants and it was delicious - my tuna salad was to die for. Better yet was the ice cream parlor we browsed after our meal, simply the best ice cream of the entire tour (note best ice cream - not gelato). We then wandered around all the designer clothes including Canadian designers D squared. Though I was more than tempted to drop a few hundred pounds on a few dresses I managed to restrain myself and headed to Top Shop instead for a few cheap finds. Sukhey and I then headed back to RN, she was my next goodbye and the one of the hardest. Rochelle and I were in tears saying goodbye to her. As of the moment I'm planning a trip to Vancouver in 3 weeks time, I'm looking forward to being reunited with my best from the tour.

I headed to London pub to find out what the plan was for that evening. A bunch of us had talked about going to see the Lion King show but it wasn't playing that night. We opted for Wicked and the majority of the remaining group came out aside from Matty Ray, who was off to some family members place and Ben and Matt F who got caught up at a casino and didn't have enough time to get ready. Wicked was alright, it was my first musical and I really didn't love it but in all honesty my mind was somewhere else that night. Afterward there was a huge debacle were we lost Chloe and Paula - who just ended up going home on their own. We all headed back to RN with the plans to go out to a club that evening. By the time we all got assembled in London pub it was quite late. I ran upstairs to grab my camera and by the time I came down everyone had decided to forgo going out that night. We all grabbed beers and hung out in the hotel bar, Sandra came and told me that our airplane shuttle was picking us up at 4am. It was already midnight so I just decided to pull another all-nighter.

Since it was my last night it was time for many sad goodbyes, the hardest was with Rochelle and with Ben. Rochelle and I had a few goodbye moments that night, it was pretty sad. After saying goodbye to the rest of the group, Ben and I headed to my side of the hotel and we had a long goodbye. For those who don't know, Ben and I started something up early on in Barcelona and it lasted the entire trip. Definitely had a few exciting moments together and the two of us will always view stairwells with a bit of fondness. We stayed up until 3am but eventually it was time to say goodbye. It was time for me to pack up and grab my airport shuttle, so with one final (and sad) goodbye to Ben I was off to Ireland.

Bye Rochelle!