Location, location, location

The Irish-green fountain at Trafalgar square
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We arrived back in London (the grey, cold, miserable London), hoping to find some decent accomodation. Sadly, this didn't go quite to plan...

After visiting a number of places possible for living in, it went from bad to worse as we progressed on our journey, via the stinky Underground system.  One place we looked had an uncanny resemblance to the housing estate's that people seemed to get murdered in on The Bill. The advertisement that sounded the most promising was an absolute disater...

...traditional Irish folk band began their fiddling. The crowd however were delighted, and burst into spontaneous jigs...

The view from Trafalgar square
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After finally finding the address, located above a dodgy nightclub and in the middle of a busy intersection, we climbed three flights of stairs in the pitch black to the 'living area', where there really were some things living. Not only living, but crawling up the walls and under the couch... One dirty glass door led right on to the nightclub dance floor, which could have been kinda cool... The bedroom was filthy, as was the kitchen with the bags of rubbish lying on the floor and overflowing on to the stained lino. The furnishing consisted of two washing machines lying on their sides in the hallway... After considering this fantastic opportunity to share the place with the other 12 people that lived there, we decided against signing anything on the spot, and were instructed to close the doors behind us.

Our old mate the guard. We called him Guardy...
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Disheartened, we headed back up to London town, and stumbled upon St Pattricks day festivites in full swing, albeit a week early. A big crowd had gathered at Trafalgar Square, where the MC on stage was announcing that they'd "...saved the best to last, Irelands most popular band!..." Hannah got quite excited, thinking it was U2, only to have her heartbroken when the memebers of a very traditional Irish folk band began their fiddling. The crowd however were delighted, and burst into spontaneous jigs, young and old alike.

Taking the sights, outside Guardy's place
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On the way to meet up with a friend of Hannah's boss, who had very kindly brought over Trumble's knives and a 'survival pack' for Hannah, we did a bit of sightseeing. We passed a palace (not Buckingham, but not sure what) and got a photo with the guard who wouldn't move. Walked past the massive gates blocking off Downing Street, and gave a wave to the guards not 2 metres away from us with equally massive machine guns.

We met Adam and went up on the London Eye, the British Airways-funded ferris wheel that looks out over London. It takes about half an hour to do a full circle, with max 25 people in each heated cabin. Fantastic views, especially as we were on board just after the sun had gone down. Amazing...

Big Ben, Westminster Abbey etc at night
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The three of us went into SoHo, London's west end, and were surprised by how quiet it was. Had some good dinner and wine, and went back to the hotel before another day of fruitless house-hunting. We decied it would be our last day in London and Reading for a while, and said our goodbyes to Sue and Kallie who had looked after us so well. Tomorrow, we were going to Manchester...