We're Home....!!

We're back in Malaysia!!! It's so weird being back here but it also felt like we went for a 2 week holiday and now we're back here.

It was soooooooooo hot getting off the plane, gone are the days where you'd have to at least have a jacket with you (in case it gets cold), an umbrella in case it rains, an oyster in the pocket for the tube & buses, the many long walks getting from one place to another and the ice cold Hoegarden from the tap.....and the fish & chips where the fish is cod!!

This was officially our last pints in London!! Minutes before we had to rush off to board the plane.

On travelling to London. Next time you decide to make a trip to London, please make sure to take into account where your plane will land.

Heathrow would be the best bet, you can take a tube to downtown London in under an hour and a half and that would cost less than £2 if you do not wish to fork out £20 for a Heathrow Express which gets you downtown in 30 minutes.

Stansted is where the budget airlines land, but Standsted is DAMN far, the coach ride took one hour and 45 minutes but you get to see the green British countryside. Coach costs at least £10 to get you downtown London.

Gatwick is also far, would take about the same time to get to London, and coaches would also cost £10.

Both Stansted & Gatwick has express trains but that would set you back £20 each way....so that's waaaaaaay ex!!

So the best, even if it costs a bit more to fly into is Heathrow airport, got tube, and tube is the cheapest eventough it's not the fastest way to get into London.

A VERY BIG THANK YOU TO MARTIN & MICHELLE for letting us stay in hotel class accommodation and feeding us beer and banoffee pie and Chinese food and Sunday roasts and ice cream and Korean food (i miss it already!!) and yummy four seasons duck and more beer and salt beef baigels and smoked salmon baigels and super spicy tom yam and much much more that if i wrote it down, it would be a damn long post!!

And going out to Cotswold for the bank holiday weekend, where we were able to do this.....

don't mind the bit of 'up t-shirt' view i'm showing....hehehe

Paris Day 3 Part 3

Last stop on the Paris walkabout was the Arc de Triomphe, even tough our feet were aching like hell, we MUST make this attraction to make the Museum Pass value!! The pass was 32€ for 2 days and you can go to as many attractions as you can.

So the more attractions you visit, the more value the pass gives you right? So that's why must make this last visit la.

the rain clouds begin to clear the way for blue skies

if you see closely, the red circle is where we were when we took the photo, after the gruelling spiral staircases

and then more stairs

finally reached the top, check out the face, almost white from all the climbing of stairs

Another arch in the distance, La Grande Arche de La Défense. Didn't get to go there coz our metro (subway) pass didn't allow us into that zone without paying extra

Eiffel Tower

if you look closely at the top right, you can see Basilique du Sacré-Cœur

all roads lead to Arc de Triomphe

we were there!! just so that you know the pictures were not 'borrowed' from the Internet

then it was time to 'sortie' so that we can make our way to catch our train back to London

love the rays of light through the dark clouds

not so nice if it was not HDR-ed right?

the loooooooong way down. Seriously, can get dizzy man!!

284 steps!!

The Arc de Triomphe

the dark clouds finally gave way....

for us to have our french McValue meal on the sidewalks watching people pass by

And finally, any girl's mecca, the flagship Louis Vuitton store!! I heard somewhere that you should never carry a counterfeit LV bag in France, as the police there are allowed to check your bags to see if it's a genuine LV bag or not!! can get fined if it's a fake!! dunno how true is that.

can only sit outside and sulk coz it's still so ex!! even tough there's like so many Asians inside buying purses and bags like buying fish from a high class market!!

And that ends the Paris trip. Went back to the hotel to get our bags and off to the train station to get home to London. The Eurostar train only takes 2 hours to get from London to Paris.

our magenta hotel, we would recommend it to travellers to Paris, cheap & clean

back home......temporarily...

Paris Day 3 Part 2

The weather was still gloomy when we left the Louvre, it was drizzling a little. But bearable la. So in front of Louvre was this other arch, not as magnificent as Arch De Troimph but it's an arch la, one of the many you'll come by in Paris.

After the Louvre, must go to Musée d'Orsay, just a short walk from Louvre, so go there too, to see Van Gogh's stuff.

the walk under the rain

got pharoah on the way too

this would have been quite a view had it not drizzled that day

the River Siene

Musée d'Orsay

Musée d'Orsay was actually a post office, they transformed it nicely i must say

Van Gogh

Whistler's Mother....made famous by Mr.Bean: The Movie...hehhe

the huge clock

resting tired feet

the interior of Musée d'Orsay

After Musée d'Orsay, we continued walking to discover more sights eventough our feet was already hurting...actually too kiamsiap to pay for the metro la...hehhe

feeding the birds, the birds damn ganas, just fly and catch the food mid-air!!

another obelisk, so much egyptian influence in Paris

want to be pricked by the Eiffel Tower?

the walk turned out to be a bit too long...

i think this is the grand palace, passed by only, didn't have time to go in

Paris Day 3 Part 1

The weather on the 3rd day of the trip was not too good. It was raining, but unlike London where we just sleep in if it rains, we have to go out to explore Paris.

all wet out there

our normal breakfast of nice soft fluffy croissant and cold cuts and sausages....yummy

the interesting spiral staircase of our hotel

at the famous inverted pyramid at the Louvre's underground shopping centre

got no 'holy grail' also??!!

one of the more interesting statues at the Louvre. I just found out that the Louvre is the biggest museum in the world and the Vatican museum is the 2nd largest

the Greek statue waits as the world passes by

da vinci's painting, if i am not mistaken, this is where the curator in Da Vinci's Code (the movie/book) died in front of

that's her alright, the mona lisa, so small.....always thought it'd be bigger

the mona lisa, some says that the one hanging there is not the original, the original is kept elsewhere

the main reason EVERYONE comes to the Lourve for

figuring out where to go next

chinese guy lepaks while the world goes by

we were here!!

old man 'zerox-ing' a painting

the famous tiles of the grand gallery

the crazier crowd when we made our way back to the mona lisa after getting lost

a huge ass famous french painting, famous coz i saw a jigsaw puzzle of it

chicko poses while the world passes by

the other famous artwork that people go to the Louvre for

the name says it all

not too famous statue

the original Louvre from the 1400's

thunder thunder thunder....thundercats.....hoeeee!!!

the Louvre and it's amazing pyramid

i swear that the Apple store in 5th Ave New York copied the Louvre's design!!

a really good hot chocolate to warm us up before we venture out into the rain

the Louvre and the rain