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Kya Travels
We woke up this morning, packed our bags and got ready, then went downstairs to check out. We left our bags at reception, then walked into the city, going a different way than the other times. We passed lots of restaurants and looked at a lot of menus, but ended up just going to a small noodle place when we got into town, in Leicester Square. It was very delicious though! Mmmm! When we finished eating, we went to find the golden tours office to go on a free Beatles walking tour, as we had vouchers for it since the Stonehenge tour we did back in June, and today was the only day we had left that we could do it! So we met our guide there, then went walking. We walked through Leicester Square, where he pointed out the best place to buy theatre tickets from, which is a half price discount tickets box. Apparently it's always cheapest to buy tickets from there, even compared to buying directly from the theatre. I don't know why or how, but that's just apparently how it works! We walked down to Piccadilly Circus, where we were shown the theatre that The Beatles theatre show was on, and where they had played once. We then walked down through Soho, past London's red light district, and past a very famous gay club, Madame Jojo's, whose name came from a Beatles song ("Jojo was a man who thought he was a woman"). We walked around further and passed a famous recording studio, where The Beatles had recorded some tunes, including Hey Jude, as well as a lot of other artists recording famous songs, including Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody! From there we walked down Denmark street, which is the street full of guitar shops that we had visited last time we were here. We walked through Soho gardens and past Paul McCartney's current recording studio, MPL. (McCartney Productions Limited) From there we headed over to Carnaby street, which was a key area for the social revolution of the 60's, and had the huge Soho Mural on a wall, which was made to look a bit like the Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, but with pictures of important events and people from the area. We walked down Mayfair, and saw the rooftop where the famous rooftop performance was held, when The Beatles were sick of recording for the day, then we made our way back down to Piccadilly Circus. The tour finished there, so we thanked our guide and headed back down towards Leicester Square. We stopped at KFC for toilets, then walked down to check out the theatre ticket prices, because there was a production of the movie Once currently showing in town, and we love that movie! We found a place that did them for £19.50, which seems to be a really good price, so with that in mind we headed off and went back to Denmark street. We went into the first shop on the street, and went downstairs to have a play of a few guitars. I'd almost forgotten how good a real guitar sounds, after pretty much only hearing our ****** one for ages! We hung around there, chilling and having a strum of a few guitars (including a very nice Vintage brand travel guitar!) and having a chat with the guy who was working there. After a while it was getting dark, and it was time we had to start heading back, so we left and started the walk. We were only just down the road when it started raining pretty heavily, and it didn't look like it would be stopping anytime soon, so we went down to the tube and caught a train back to Edgware rd. We went back to the hostel where we chilled out on the wifi for a bit before grabbing our bags and heading back to the tube. We went out to Vauxhall station, where we met Hinn, then went to wait for a bus to get to a restaurant he had highly recommended. The bus arrived and we jumped on, but one of our cards didn't work! We had already paid the fare on the other card too, which was so annoying! We tried to pay cash, but the driver said he couldn't change our £5 note (I found out they're not actually allowed to accept any notes, which seemed very strange) so we were about to jump off the bus again, when the girl behind us said she might have change for our £5! Lucky! So we got on the bus, luckily, and made our way to Camberwell. We went to a pub down the road, because it was still a bit early and we were meeting a friend, so we had some beers and a chat while we waited. Hinn's friend, Fleur, arrived, then we had another drink together and a bit of a chat before heading down to the restaurant. The place was packed, and had no seats for us, so we reserved a table for half an hours time and went back to the pub! After another drink there, we went back to the restaurant and sat down, and looked through the menu. I picked a vegetarian meal, and Hinn just ordered a bunch of dishes for everyone else to share. It was so delicious. I can't even describe how good it was! It was supposed to be western Chinese take on food from the 'stans' (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, etc) and it was absolutely amazing. We had some kelp as an entree, which was much better than I had anticipated, and I had this amazing eggplant dish, with huge flat noodles as a main, and the others had a massive bowl of some kind of chicken and noodle kind of soupish thing, and apparently it was amazing too. We all had another beer each too, and by the end of the meal, we were a little tipsy (except Darren who was a little drunk!) and a lot full of amazing food. We finished up and payed, then headed out to find somewhere to top up our Oyster cards before getting on the bus again. We checked in almost every shop we passed, but no one had top up facilities. Hinn had said they were everywhere, but we just couldn't find one! So we ended up just getting change from someone so we could pay for the bus in cash, then went down to the bus stop. We said bye to Hinn, them jumped on the bus and headed out to Liverpool st station. Once we were there, I had a bit of an annoying and confusing time trying to work out where to go from there, but we topped up our card, and got on the train. We chatted to a guy on the train who was listening to Blur, then got off the train when we arrived at Clapton station. We followed our directions and walked down the street where we got to Saumya and Graham's house, (who we had met at La Tomatina in Spain) buzzed in and went upstairs. We said hi and had a very quick chat and catch up, got a tour of the house, then they both had to head to bed, as they had work in the morning. We made ourselves a cup of tea, then headed in to bed as well.
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