London shopping

When I first arrived, I barely shopped at all, as my brain had an annoying habit of converting all prices into AUD.

I've gotten over this calculation issue, partially by having a prosecco (new favourite drink darlinks) before hitting the shops. It works.

For my lovely ladies, here are my favourite finds:

1) Massimo Dutti - sister store of zara. Same prices, all cropped leather jackets and cashmere jumpers. Witchery meets zara basically.

http://www.massimodutti.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/worldwide/duttigb/inditex-sel

2) Selfridges - the store on Oxford St is my spiritual home. Many a Saturday I've gone for a walk there, as an excuse to exercise. They ship to Aus (although really, I could just ship for you)

At the moment they have turned their rooftop into a mini golf and afternoon tea retreat. As you do.

They have the most amazing shoe emporium, which often sees me wandering through touching everything.

3) Asos- also ships to Australia.

4) Ted Baker - so so much better over here. Cheaper and lots of lovely silk dresses.

5)  H&M is terrible, but they have fantastic designer collaborations. Topshop is a nightmare from which I wish everyone would awake.

Tomorrow I'm going to Harrods for lunch with my friend Georgina (not normally a place we would shop due to it being only for tourists but she needs to buy some gifts for people in Aus) and then.. onto the UK's first Victoria Secret store for some "smalls" on Oxford St.

There are some crazy fashions in London at the moment for those who are interested of being ahead of the Melbourne game:

- crazy pants (patterned, studded, cropped and coloured)

- waxed jeans

- studs of any kind, on everything

- flat ankle boots

- oversized denim shirts

- hair buns

- loafers/brouges etc etc (still)

- never ever high heels (so lower class)

- denim shorts with butt cheek (good luck to you)

- mulberry everything

- floral sheer shirts

xxx la

Olympic maddness

The Olympics and paralympics are about to end, and my what a ride its been.

It began with London being eerily quiet - so quiet in fact, I was able to get a seat on the tube on the first morning.  It appears that all the lawyers and bankers (i.e. 99% of London) decided to get out of London for all of August.



Add caption

We arrived on the second Monday to see the semi finals of the athletics. We caught the Javelin - the recommissioned eurostar train from St Pancras to the Olympic park, which took all of 6 mins.

The atmosphere was fantastic, with all the Brits trying their best to stay away from every other country (in order of priority: Americans, Australians, the French etc).

We had fantastic seats and saw Sally Pearson in her semi finals, along with the NZ shotput winner, later disqualified for drug use. We also saw the discus, 800m mens' semis, 1500m mens and womens' semis.

For Discus they had remote controlled cars that would return the discus to the thrower - little minis. When it got a bit overcast, the controllers turned their little headlights on. Adorably British.

The crowd was absolutely fantastic - the vast majority of the crowd were British obviously, but when no Brits were competing, our neighbours diligently cheered the Aussies on, possibly out of fear of M, who was slightly boisterous.

Its almost over, and the tube is back to its usual insantiy.

xx