London - The Hiccup

As I said in my last post, we ran into an issue with our Visas. We had tried to get an extension through the Greek police but this had failed. We knew that we could only spend a total of 90 days in the Schegen area. And given the amount of time already spent, we had to get out for a week if we were going to be able to go to the Robola Wine Festival in my dad's village. This thing is a big deal on the island and I'd heard from my brother that no matter what, we need to be there!

We'd actually planned to go to London for a few days anyway so extending that to a week was no problem. We rang the travel agent on Thursday afternoon and asked if she could get us tickets. Saturday morning we were sitting on an airplane at the Kefalonia International Airport waiting to take off. Everything was great. Until we landed at Gatwick.

The immigration officer decided to have a friendly chat with Alice and I. I can't remember the exact details but he went from being nice to a complete ar$ehole in about 1.2 seconds! We mentioned that we needed to get out of the Schengen Area and he said that "wasn't a legitimate reason for entering the UK". He "refuses entry for Australians everyday!". "we'd better be careful!". Ummm, we're doing the right thing by leaving the EU to not overstay our visa and you're complaining that it's not a legitimate reason. Maybe I should have said that the reason I wanted to enter the UK was because I really love dark, gloomy clouds and cold weather in Summer!

As you can probably tell, that really annoyed me. But I was determined not to let one person ruin my holiday in London. After all, it's one of Alice's favourite cities in the world so it must have something going for it. And it does. We had a great time. We saw all the usual tourist stuff, but we also saw a few art exhibitions (one on maps), the Ministry of Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, Westfield London and also caught up with Teresa whom I used to work with in Sydney and my old friend Natalie from school :)

Taking off from Kefalonia

Landing in London. Where did the blue sky go?! :(

Guards:

Not the best view of the Changing of the Guards.

Crazy Eye!!!

Ministry of Food:

British Museum:

Notice the words "rescued by Lord Elgin" *cough*

Walking the Streets:

This guy was doing the standard "holding up the Big Ben with my hand" pose when that guy in the blue check shirt gave him a massive high five haha.

Tower of London:

Big crowd to get in!

"He's a boy. And WHAT a boy!!!" haha

Westfield:

There were 100 tables set up all over the city.

Going Home: