Young Border musicans Maidie Dawson and Lachlan Mitchell are on the trip of a lifetime to the United Kingdom as part of the inaugural exchange program between Dreamfields and the Somerset Rural Youth Project. The pair will keep a diary for The Border Mail during their trip.
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Day 1
We arrived in London after a long flight, at 8pm England time. Perhaps not surprisingly the bed at the hostel looked particularly enticing, so we went straight to sleep after our arrival at a hostel, near Kings Cross station. The next morning was an early start, getting up at 5:30am. We packed in a faIr few sights this day starting with Big Ben and Parliament House. While we say we saw Big Ben this is actually untrue. The name Big Ben actually refers to the great bell in the clock tower, not so much the tower itself. The clock tower is actually called Elizabeth tower. Thankfully this area has many places to tick off with Westminster Cathedral, as well as the London eye which we took a ride on. Following this we had to head back to the hostel as I realised I had left my credit card behind, which was not particularly helpful. Once the financial items had been recovered we cut across to one of Her Majesty’s residences, Buckingham Palace, making careful note of Australia gate. Near here was the Australian war memorial so we headed across to pay our respects with ANZAC day likely to be busy for us. From here it was across to Hyde Park where we managed to cross paths with a squirrel, much to our delight and the tourists around us, I think he may now have the experience to go on Next Top Model. Next onto Oxford Street to see the mammoth department store, Harrods. Strangely most things were outside our price range, how unexpected. This leads us to our last task, buying tickets to go see a musical in London. To do this we headed to Piccadilly Circus to find one of the many stores selling tickets. Next Saturday we will be seeing the Phantom of the Opera. We are pretty tired now we headed back to the hostel. Maidie is feeling the effects of jet lag and went to bed while I stayed up chatting to two Swiss guys, Nino and Pascal.
Day 2
This was not as packed as the previous day. First up we spent the morning washing our clothes to prepare to leave the next day. We where also waiting for the Swiss guys as they also wanted to go to the Natural History Museum. Disappointingly, the building is currently undergoing renovations so much of it was not open, including the main hall and a few exhibits. Despite this, it still displayed some impressive examples of flora and fauna. Including many Australian examples we where more then happy to tell the Swiss all about. I now had the task of getting myself a guitar to complete, so I googled second hand instrument stores and decided to go to one called Hobgoblin Music, as it had a cool name. Upon entering the store I placed my eyes on a particularly good-looking resonator acoustic in the corner, there was a bit of chemistry there so naturally I had to try it, and now I have a new guitar. This store was brilliant with an incredible array of instruments, from Russian jaw harps to tympanic drums, and to top it off the owner was hilarious. We ended up spending a lot longer than planned in here playing the instruments so from here it was back to the hostel. We had dinner with the Swiss guys again here before a session of pool and cards. After this we said our goodbyes before hitting the sack to prepare for the train to Glastonbury tomorrow.