I'm spellbound, struck speechless. I love London. It's beautiful. Everything about it.Except the heavy weightage of the currency thus the burn-a-hole price lists of everything in the fabulous stores. Now, that hurt. I pounded my credit cards...hard. Only to return home to find out that one sterling pound is six dirhams. Didn't know Her Majesty The Queen is THAT heavy.

Nonetheless, I breezed through my trip there in bliss. It's like living out of Love, Actually. How very London-ny everything was. The architecture, the people, the weather....watch out, Kiera Knightly, here I come! My crew hotel was in London Heathrow so that's quite a distance from Central London and my Prince William. Didn't stop me...took a 45 minute trip on the Underground to Picadilly. People stared at me. I have a strong suspicion it's because all I had on was a short sleeved T-shirt and my Levi's, with a pashmina wrapped around my neck as my first line of defence against the chilly 15-degree London weather and many of them were bundled up in overcoats and scarfs and mitts and whatnots. I'm sorry but I LOVE cold weather and I'm sorry, I'm Singaporean. We're made of super thick skin, nurtured by the constant heat of the Singapore sunshine. I knew all those sweaty armpit days would come to good use one day. Heh.

Shopped insanely on day one. Really. I was veritably unstoppable. Hey, c'mon. It's my first London trip. The Jakun-ness can be excused and the hefty card statements can be forgiven. I only had time for Picadilly that day but I had the energy for the whole of Great Britain! Since I didn't know where I was actually in Picadilly, I just walked and walked and walked. Till the bags in my hands just got too heavy. Didn't really buy stuff for myself. A book on fairies, a handbag, chocolate...that's for me. THe other stuff, for my family. And my Azim. Got him the Rialto CD he really wanted. It was sold out EVERYWHERE, even on the Internet and the one I got my hands on was the LAST one in the store! It was a pity I didn't have my Ixus. Azim took it with him to Frankfurt. He left for Frankfurt a day before I left for London. I'm getting him a digicam for his birthday, this month! So kering....tak dapat take pictures.

Due to a friend's fantastic pictures of Kensington Gardens on her blog some time ago ( Yes, Trin...it's YOU!), I was determined to go there myself on my first London trip. So on my second day there, I did. Yeah, I got lost but what the heck.....getting lost also meant I saw the architectural masterpieces of Albert Hall, Museum of Natural History and various old London hotels and churches. Whoa. OVerload. But I got to Kensington Gardens, eventually. One Word. BEAUTIFUL. Two? BREATHTAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL.

I'm gonna go mamam now. Azim whipped up some fantastic dish for dinner and I'm rumbling. I've been trying to swop a few of my April flights coz due to me not doing my bidding properly, I got a sucky roster. Not sucky in terms of flights but sucky in terms of ME WANTING TO GO LONDON AGAIN but I have no London flights. No SIngapore flights either. If I can swop it, next London trip, I'll bring my digicam. Then I don't have to say so much. The visuals would say it all.

Cheers!