Workaway

The next day I took the train headed for Villefranche de Rouergue and Shyla took her flight to L.A.

It was a long but pretty train ride and I reached my destination late in the afternoon where I was met without problem by the 'workaway' family. Workaway is a cheap way to spend longer overseas as you get free food and board in exchange for 5 hours of work every day. It does unfortunately not leave you much of the day when you finish at three in the afternoon every day and are forty minutes away from the nearest town (by car!) but at least it's budget. 

I did a number of various handyman jobs for the elderly couple within the next few days, from weeding the garden, to painting a shed, to staining a table. 

My room is somewhat dark but it's private and my bed is super comfy.

The actual farmhouse we live in was once a cattle barn and has been renovated although in a very 80s style. The original structure however is about 200 years old so that's quite cool. It has the typical architecture of the region, Aveyron.

Paris

Paris was unfortunately a bit of a disaster in regards to time. Which we ran out of.

We got to the campsite which was twenty minutes from Paris late in the day making it impossible to go in that day when we still had to clean the car and get it ready to be returned. Thus our first 'full day' in Paris was gone. Additionally our third 'full day' in Paris was already ruined by my early morning train, this left us one day total to see Paris.

We had decided to stop at a campsite in Maisons Laffette, as it was the closest and easiest way to get to Paris and not pay a ridiculous amount of money. Of course having left the tent (and suitcase) with my aunt, I only had my backpack and thus we could no longer tent. We had decided to rent one of the little cottages from the campsite as it was more affordable than a hotel, however upon arrival we were told we needed to put a 300 euro deposit down plus pay upfront. With no such amount of cash upon our persons, we headed off to the nearest atm. All seemed to be going well, we returned and there was a line so we chatted to some friendly English-speaking people as they were very excited we spoke English. One was American and the other was in fact from New Zealand, Rotorua. Our first kiwi the entire trip! We of course made many in-jokes and talked about home until it was our turn to go up to the desk. We were then informed that it had been the last cottage in the campsite free, and that someone had just booked it online on booking.com so there was nothing she could do.

Unsure of what an earth to do now we wandered out, only our new friends had heard the whole exchange and as the cottages were all four bedroom and of course they only needed two rooms, they generously offered to share. It was very kind and so we accepted. We later found out THEY were the ones who had in fact stolen the last cottage by booking online, and had felt so guilty they instantly offered to share; they were too embarrassed to tell us at first however.

Shyla and I finally made it into Paris the next evening by which time we only had time to figure out the metro for the next morning and see the Eiffel tower before having to return to the campsite before it got too late.

We then went out for dinner to a lovely little restaurant nearby the campsite. Our last dinner together, it was a somewhat sad evening, filled with 'do you remembers' of our trip. We had such a fantastic time together, finally achieving the trip we always said we would do but were never sure it would actually happen. Thank you Shyla for bring the best friend I could ever ask for. 

London Day Three

On our last day in London (we only ended up having three sadly) we decided to have tea in Kensington palaces orangery (suggested by the lovely Aunt Angela) followed up with the Victoria and Albert museum which proved to be my favourite museum yet. 

We arrived very early and realised that nothing opened until ten so spent the next few hours wanderng Kensington park which was in fact lovely. We walked down the 'path of flowers' which was not only very pretty, but also full of squirrels!! 

After dying of delight for some time, we wandered deeper into the park across overhanging trees and chattering squirrels. 

We eventually stumbled across the Albert memorial. 

It was not only extremely impressive, but also had beautiful statues at each corner representing different countries.  

We then went to have tea. It was well worth the wait as not only was the atmosphere lovely, but the food was delicious, the coffee amazing, and the teacups my favourite thing in the world. 

I also introduced Shyla to the act of dunking sugar cubes in coffee and then eating them. A terrible mistake as once she had realised how good it was, she couldn't stop eating them!

Shyla and her pancake french toast berry goodness. 

After a lovely tea, it seemed like it would rain so we made our way to the Victoria and Albert museum, which turned out to be my favourite museum of all the ones we had been to so far, and we ended up staying so long we missed out on the natural history museum and had to sprint to catch our train back to Surrey to get to the Dover ferry in time. 

Beautiful mosaics hung in the halls.

Samurai. 

An adorable lion.

Medieval stairs.

Mesmerized by an adorable lion.

And then came my favourite section of all. The Shakespeare exhibition which I stumbled across much to my delight. Around a corner a wall presented itself to me covered in quotes. 

Upon closer examination I realized everything pertained to Shakespeare and after wandering around the corner I discovered all sorts of amazing things.

The original book of Shakespeare's plays.

An original ticket to one of his plays.

The skull used for the 'Alas poor Yorick' scene, given to them by Victor Hugo.

London Day Two

After spending much of the first day in the British museum, we decided to spend our second day taking in all of the iconic tourist sites. 

We began with the changing of the guards at Buckingham palace, which proceeded with much fanfare, police on horses, gaurds in traditional costumes (with swords even!) and a marching band. There were huge crowds which seems strange as this event occurs every second day. 

We then headed to the Tower of London which was so overpriced we couldn't afford to get in, but we enjoyed the view from the outside. 

There was also a World War One memorial around it, as you can see from the photo each porcelain poppy represented a death that had occurred due to the war. It was sad because there were so many and it was a very visual reminder of the toll.

London bridge was also enjoyable as we took a double decker bus over it. We then wandered for a while and took in the sites. 

The most typically London picture I was able to get. 

As everything was agglomerated in pretty much the same area, we wandered past Westminster abbey (although I really wanted to go inside it was once again too expensive) and then on a number of other awesome buildings.  

Parliament and Big Ben were next which I very much enjoyed.

We wandered past the London Eye which wasn't particularly interesting but was very large.

After taking in the typical London sites, we took a bus up to Trafalgar Square before going to find so,e lunch. Trafalgar Square was confusing transportwise with trains and buses going in all sorts of directions, to leave we ended up having to walk out of the area to get to a less confusing stop, aside from this however London transport was flawless. 

My favourite moment from that day in fact occurred in Trafalgar Square, when upon walking by the lion statues I heard a very confused sounding guy tell his friend 'See I thought they were bears but they are actually lions...' 

We simply had to have the typical tourist photo, which was harder than it looks to achieve as it was actually rather a long way from the ground. We succeeded however, and went on our quest to find a quintessentially English pub, harder than it sounds in London unless you know where to look.

We finally settled on the Black Friar which had wonderful atmosphere, and wonderful cider on tap.