I managed to swap my flight to Jakarta for a flight to London Heathrow with great timings that I could catch my uni friends after they finish work on the Friday evening. With a busy non stop flight over to London landing at 4pm, we made our way over to the hotel where I quickly changed and made my way into Central London to a place called Pizza Pilgrims!

With great pizza and litre pitchers of wine, all 10 of us piled around a table busily chatting away and catching up. It had been a while since I’d managed to catch my friends in London, some of whom I hadn’t seen in over 2 years!!

The food is great and the restaurant has a real laid back ambience. If you’re looking for somewhere central and not overly priced or overly fancy, I really do recommend! 

Continuing the evening on we went to a place in Soho called O Bar. It had been a while since we’d managed a night out together too!

A late evening resulted in a wasted following day in London that involved a Tesco food shop and little else.

A waste of my day, but a great layover all in all. An overnight sector back to Dubai feeling pretty awake after my lazy day in bed went quite quickly with two services. After this I was due to do three back to back overnight turn arounds. I wasn’t overly keen for this and had sent out numerous swaps for all the UK flights, and last minute before I was set to do a turn around to Jordan, someone accepted my swap and it was back to London again, but this time to Gatwick! My favourite out of the two.

So it was an afternoon departure out of Dubai over to London Gatwick and a very busy non stop flight that left me feeling exhausted but ready to head over to my best friend Kitty’s house for a sleepover and a catch up with her family. The last time I had seen them was back in February when I was in Sydney!

Sue had plated me up a good and proper dinner with LOTS of gravy (my favourite) and baked her famous brownies! Chatting around the table for an hour or so, it was finally off to bed before I would get up with Kitty and do her commute to work in central London with her.

Waking up at 6:10am to Pete bringing us a cup of tea in bed (why didn’t my parents do this to me?) we got ready and went to the station to catch the 07:16  from East Grinstead to London Bridge. We then changed to head towards Charring Cross before we walked up to Tottenham Court Road where Kitty works nearby. Interesting fact, the train into London Bridge is the busiest commuter train in the UK. Luckily getting on the train early we had a seat, but the closer into central London we got, the busier the train got! It made me very happy that I don’t have to do this on a regular basis. I don’t think the 9-5 lifestyle is one for me!

Saying our goodbyes and not knowing when we’d catch each other next, I grabbed a coffee and walked the length of Oxford Street – of course stopping in my favourites Zara and the infamous Oxford Street Topshop.

I love Oxford Street, its one of my favourite places for shopping and it was such a beautiful day with the sun shining and lots of tourists milling about and residents rushing around for work.

Jumping back on the tube, I made my way over to Kings Cross to meet my friend Aidan for lunch who had a lengthy lunch break and we stopped for our favourite Five Guys before I made my way back to the hotel for a nap before the flight.

The flight back was quite an exciting one as we had Lorraine and Good Morning Britain filming our flight back to Dubai for an exciting competition they were running. Sadly when they came looking for crew to film I was busy in the cabin and missed out on my 15 minutes of fame, but keep on an eye out to see what our premium cabins on Emirates are like!

A great back to back London trip where I caught up with plenty of friends. 24 hours in the capital is never enough and even doubling that up to two occasions I still have family and friends to catch up with! I’m sure I’ll be back soon enough London.

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