My HP Moments

I finally got to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last week with hubby, and remembered that I have photos from my "English" travel that I have yet to share with you:

At Edinburgh (in Scotland), we passed by "The Elephant House" where J.K. Rowling spent many days writing the book :)

We were pretty full from lunch at that time, so we didn't bother going in.  Plus, we heard from a few locals (friends) that the customers get quite bothered with all the tourists coming in and taking photos of the establishment, so we just took photos from the outside.

Back in London, we stayed at the newly opened St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel:

Does this look familiar to you? This hotel was shown in the HP7 movie, before Harry Potter and his friends brought their kids to the station---19 years later.

By law, exteriors of old buildings should be kept intact.  We were amazed at how they were able to renovate the interiors as well.

A friend even shared that this staircase was used in a Batman movie.
A Spice Girl MTV was shot here as well...

Anyways, back to HP.  St. Pancras Hotel is situated right beside King's Cross Station :D
Hence, the hotel scene was included...

... and somewhere inside is platform 9, which was closed off at that time.  

It would have been great to have a photo of myself right under platform 9, don't you think? :)

I feel blessed to have parents that treated me to this 2-week-vacation :D
Thanks, mom and dad!

UK Trip Day 1 (May 25)

Slept for about an hour due to last minute work stuff, and woke up at 3AM to get picked up by my parents. We got to the airport around 4pm.  Good thing we have access to the lounge :)

With so much stuff to do before leaving, I only got to browse through my e-mails.  Good thing, there was free internet, and I got to "chat" with my friend Nikki from London, and found out that I have to print some train tickets to her place. Whew!

On our way to HongKong, we left around 630am

Connecting flight to London at 955am

On our way to the gate

Side note: I brought a lot of maxi dresses.  I wanted to try something different this time, and not wear pants for this trip ;)

Waiting...

Good thing the leg room was a bit bigger—it's a 12-hour flight after all

my lunch

Got to finish the whole season 6 of "How I Met Your Mother"

My dinner: pasta

My brother's

Who can say no to Haagen-Dazs? :P

Look at the spoon, how cute!

Our snack

Awesome view

London...

Time to get our luggages

Their taxis are pretty roomy

We got to the Grand Plaza hotel (as recommended by a friend - John).  From the outside, we think this looks like the best apartment hotel there is in the area (Bayswater).

We got a free upgrade to a 2-bedroom unit - Yay!

The view from our window.

Got pretty hungry, so we ate at Pret

Walking around...

Bought Evian for our trip tomorrow to Darlington

My brother and I shared a Malteser ice cream stick

What I'm wearing: Forever 21 maxi dress, cotton jacket from Greenhills tiangge and scarf from Esprit

Decided to go back to the room and rest for a bit

Went out for dinner around 9pm at Noodle Oodle.  There were LCD screens on the walls for customer use.  Look at that, there's Gordon Ramsey.  He visited the resto and tried to "pull" noodles (make noodles by pulling them).

Had their dry noodles with minced beef 
It's sort of like spaghetti—Chinese version :D

My brother had their noodle soup

While waiting for our bill, we played some games

Spot the Difference hehe...

Off to Darlington tomorrow via train to stay at my childhood friend Nikki's pad
Bought some snacks to keep us from getting hungry on the way ;)

Ended the night with a chat with my two boys.



Haha... our household help and nanny are there, too! :D
Thank goodness for internet and YM.