London Feature | Dos & Donts

Planning a trip to somewhere you've never been can be difficult if you don't know how the city works. I've already touched on a few tips and tricks to keep in mind for your visit to London, but I always wanted to give you a little bit of advice to keep in mind of what to do and what not to do.

Enjoy!

DO

- Look for deals!

Use sites such as Groupon, Wowcher, LivingSocial, VoucherCloud, to look for deals, everything from restaurant deals to 2 for 1 attractions, you can always find cheaper alternatives if you take the time to do your research.

- Pack light

Even if you don't want to, you probably will shop whilst in London. It's impossible not to, even if you're here on more of an educational visit, you will come home with memorabilia, so make sure you save yourself some suitcase space. 

- Book in advance

This may seem like an obvious one, but even I mess up with this sometimes.

Sometimes its easy to underestimate how busy central London will be, and if you on a whim decide that your family of 5 fancies eating at a certain restaurant you may be faced with waiting an hour for a table. It's always worth it to book before the hunger pangs kick in!

- Carry change
This comes as a shock to many people that visit London, but if you're in a train/tube station or even sometimes just in public, you have to pay to use the toilet. It only costs around 30p but you're better safe than sorry to carry just a small amount of change with you.

DONT

- Travel during rush hour!

If you can avoid it, then do.

Don't travel between 8-9am and 6-7pm, not only will you massively regret it, but it will probably take double the amount of time to get to wherever you're going.

- Look for hotels in Central London

I know that the idea of staying in a hotel overlooking Oxford Street may be sound perfect, but trust me, it will be a bad idea. Not only will you pay probably 10x more, but travelling through heaps of people with luggage will not be worth it.

Do your research, look for hotels a little bit further out but still with easy access to tourist attractions. Not only will you save money, but only after you've witnessed a busy Oxford Street, will you know the pain!

- Be roped in by sales people

They are everywhere, whether they want to sell you cheap theatre tickets, sign you up to a charity or force you into their restaurant with a 10% voucher. 

Take the time to plan your day, where you will eat, what you will do, book everything in advance and you will be fine and not risk being scammed or being pressured to eat something you don't really fancy. 

London Feature | Tips for the Tube

The tube. Probably every London residents nemesis. 

The tube can be a horrible place 90% of the time, but if I've tried to make a small list of tips and tricks to make it slightly more bearable for you if you are planning a trip to the city any time soon. 

- Always have your oyster/ticket ready

There is nothing worse than if a tourist (or sometimes not a tourist) has got to the front of the queue for the tube and are having to rustle through their bag for their ticket. The amount of death stares and sighs you will receive from the queue behind you will not be worth it, I promise. If you know you're about to enter a tube station always have your oyster or travelcard in your hand ready for the barriers!

- Always carry sanitiser and tissue

If you ever did your research about how many people use the tube and how many germs there are on the tube, you probably wouldn't use it.

So just to rest your mind, always carry sanitiser, tissue is also a good one to keep in your bag, just in case!

- Don't use the tube map to judge distance

Something I had to learn early on, the tube map can be quite overwhelming, and tube stations that are next to eachother on the map, may well be half an hour apart. It can be a couple of minutes walk, but unless you know London quite well and know where you're going, I wouldn't advise walking between stations.

- Always have water

Quite soon after I first moved here, I almost passed out in the heat of the tube, there is very little ventilation and so many people crammed in to such a small place, that it can definitely take its toll. A shop might be 4 sets of escalators away, so be sure to have one in your bag at all time, just to be safe. 

- Never try to get on a tube if the doors are closing

Something everybody I know hates is when a person will try to run and jump on the tube as the doors are closing, not only is it highly dangerous, but it also delays everybody elses journey. The tubes run every few minutes so you're better off waiting for the next one.

- Be aware of other people

You may only be going one stop but always try to conscious of other passengers, don't play music outloud, don't let your children run around crazily, stand up if you see somebody less able to stand needing a seat. It may be common sense but I witness some of these things everyday and it just makes every bodies lives easier. 

- Check TFL

TFL stands for Transport for London, and it will be your best friend if you are travelling anywhere in London. It's a website and app that will plan your journey for you, using the quickest routes, and also tell you if any of the tubes are not running or are delayed. It will save you so much time, trust me.

Trick or Treat....

Ahh Halloween!

Probably my favourite holiday except Christmas! I love how 'into it' people get. I love the colours, I love pumpkins, I love the amount of sweets it's acceptable to eat, I love dressing up, I love Halloween parties, I love horror movie marathons, I love the excitement, I love the fear, I love everything about it!

Tonight I'm going out to a Halloween party with a group of friends, we're all dressing up and I'm very excited! I love this time of year!

Do you have any plans tonight?!

Marbella

About a month ago I got home from work and my lovely boyfriend had booked us tickets to Marbella in Spain. His sister has a house there so he goes to stay with her a lot, but I'd never been, so obviously I was super excited!

Even though the weather in London had been exceptionally nice all summer (strangely) he had booked for us to go for 10 days at the end of September, to prolong our summer a little more!

We had an lovely time, her house is amazing and we went in the pool every single day.

We pretty much just relaxed, sunbathed, went to the beach, ate really good food and drank plenty of wine and cocktails.

It was perfect.

Here's a few pictures from the holiday :) 

The perfect ending to a great summer!

A day in St. Tropez

HEY!

So Chris' family had a trip to St. Tropez planned for a while for his sister's birthday, however, my passport hadn't arrived and Chris wasn't too sure if he could get it off work.

Two days before the planned trip, my passport arrived and Chris luckily got it off and before we knew it we was in the car with his 5 brothers ready to go.

We drove from London across France and it took 15 long hours! 

It was lovely to see all of France though!

We left on Friday and returned on Sunday so we only really got one day there, which was spent eating A LOT of food and drinking lots! 

Unfortunately we choose the one day that was raining, but it was lovely nonetheless. 

I definitley would love to return in the Summer but we definitley will not be driving haha!

you can fall if you want to, it's just a matter of how far...

hello chums!
i'm slightly cheerier today, however i still haven't done much exciting things over the weekend. i need a life.
i've worked all weekend! yay.
however it pays off i guess as i treated myself to some new shoes and lots from lush (if no one else wants to treat me i guess i'll have to treat myself)
i've decided that i want to go on holiday so badly!
i need somebody to go with and then i will stop buying shoes and start saving my money, but until then i guess i'll have to just look ahead and think of my walk in wardrobe :)

tomorrow is fancy dress day at work, oh how my job is barrels of fun. (i don't get to dress up though)
my supervisor is also leaving tomorrow so we plan to throw him in the pond! i'm taking my camera in tomorrow just for that!

anyway, i'll blog tomorrow to let you know how that goes and i will hopefully provide pictures.

right now though i'm going to hop in bed with a hot chocolate and catch up on your blogs until i fall asleep (:
hope everybody had a lavley weekend :)

a few devon pictures :)