I'll go where the music takes me, travelling around the globe.

While I've been living here in London, I've had the opportunity to meet some wonderful people & I've been lucky enough to go to some incredible concerts! As many of you will know, music is a big part of my life, & I love going to live gigs. In the last three weeks I've been to a few, so this is going to be a strictly music update. Also concerts are SO cheap here compared to Australia! I have no idea why, & this seriously annoys me. Yes, I know "life's not fair", but there is no logical reason that I can think of to why Australia would sell tickets at more than 100% the price in comparison to here!? Whenever I have been to concerts back home, they were in Brisbane, & although it's our capital city, it costs a bunch just to get there & back, not even factoring in the ticket prices... I haven't paid more than $50 Australian, for a concert here!! So basically, being a teenager in London would have been wonderful.

On the third of March, after returning from Paris that morning, I went to see 5 Seconds of Summer (x) headlining their own tour at the Shepard's Bush O2. I couldn't have asked for a better way to cap off my weekend. 5SOS are Aussie boys, I've seen them live twice back home, but only ever as openers, so to see them here, on their own tour meant a lot to me. It blew my mind to see all of the fans waiting out in the streets & in the rain for over twelve hours to see our boys! IN LONDON! I've lined up for standing tickets/mosh pits for concerts for twelve hours before, but it was insane to think that all of the people were here to see these four Aussie guys. I met girls from Spain, Italy and Switzerland who had flown to London just for the concert, & I could not be more proud of 5SOS. They have come so far in the last three years, & this year is going to be huge for them.

Opening for them was a guy called Mike Dignam (x), he's a British singer-songwriter, & I had never heard of him before the gig, but I certainly wont be forgetting about him now! He has an incredible voice & after the show he was handing out his EP for free/a donation, so I gave him £5 & had a chat.

Here is the vlog from the 5SOS concert with clips from them & Mike!

5 Seconds of Summer's first /official/ EP was just released & I am so excited for the album!!

Last weekend my good friend Essi visited me, & we had another wonderful weekend! Essi is from Finland, but is currently studying in Croatia. She got us both tickets to an All Time Low (x) concert on Saturday! We have both loved ATL since we were about thirteen & it was an incredible night! The mosh pit was hectic, over thirty girls got pulled out of the pit by security because they couldn't handle it, one girl got her nose broken & the boys spent the whole night starting up circle pits. 

A lovely Irish band, Only Rivals (x), opened for ATL. I couldn't understand a word they said, but their music was awesome & they were very pretty! Also opening for ATL was Tonight Alive!! Another Aussie band! (x) All of the bands finished the show by playing on stage all together & passing around bottles of Jagermeister & JD... Jack had to be carried off stage...

Alex from ATL also played an acoustic set including Therapy & Remembering Sunday, which are two of my all time favourites.

Therapy.

Remembering Sunday.

In a crazy twist of luck, on the Friday night before ATL, Jamie Campbell Bower, a British actor & musician that Essi & I both adore was playing a pop-up free gig outside the Tate Modern with his band The Darling Buds!! We both first became a fan of Jamie when he was in the Tim Burton musical film, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, alongside Johnny Depp. He has also been in the Harry Potter series, the Twilight Saga & most recently the Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. (x)

So it's been a long & lovely month full of wonderful music! Our next challenge is exploring more of London (there's always more) & then over to Italy for Easter break!! We have everything planned, except for returning flights!?... During the second week, I'm hoping to bus it around the UK. xo

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Currently listening to & loving ALL OF THE ABOVE! 

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Everything in this room is eatable, even I'm eatable! But that is called 'cannibalism' my dear children, & is in fact frowned upon in most societies.

For those of you struggling to understand my frequent pop culture references, this is something Willy Wonka once said to all of the children who won a golden ticket.

On Saturday the eighth of March, I travelled to Cambridge on a trip organised by the university, specifically for internationals. I fell in love! This city is so beautiful & much more my speed, being about the same size as Townsville. As soon as we stepped off the bus we realised that we were all a bit under-dressed... Every boy we saw was riding a push bike, in a blazer?! The architecture in Cambridge is incredible, & it is truly a university town. There are students everywhere, riding around to classes, grabbing Starbucks & dodging traffic. The main thing I have noticed about market squares & smaller towns is that everywhere appears to a shared zone. You might think you're walking on a footpath... until you almost get hit by a car!

The centre, or heart of the town, is it's market square in front of all the colleges which back up onto the river. It is incredible the amount of money that has gone into these universities & how much they are worth. King's College owns the O2 Arena in London, along with 50% of Tesco, the big supermarket chain here, & they own all of the land from their campus to Oxford!?

One of the highlights of the day (among many) was a celebrity sighting!! I was far too in shock to actually stop him & ask for a photo, (also he was on his way to class) but Freddie Highmore x (from the Spiderwick Chronicles, August Rush & Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) casually walked past us!!!

He definitely saw me freaking out & probably decided it was best just to keep walking... but we Googled it & he studies there! He is studying Spanish & Arabic, just for fun?!

So, on that note, we decided we definitely want to come back to Cambridge!



Here is latest vlog ~ punting on the River Cam with the girls.

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Currently listening to Sam Smith ♪ He is an amazing British artist who features in my Cambridge vlog!
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In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines...

... Lived SIX little girls, in two straight lines.

On an almost spontaneous decision, with a few clicks of a mouse, five of my American friends and I travelled to Paris last weekend! Over three seemingly endless days we walked up 34867 steps (I promise I'm not exaggerating!!), saw countless incredible sights & met many unfriendly glares. I really don't want to perpetuate an outdated stereotype, or generalise French people, but they did not seem to enjoy hearing the English language at all!

Our travelling crew consisted of myself, Hannah (the roomie), Sydney, Kaitlyn, Maeve & Devyn.
We chose to rent an apartment through airbnb because it was our cheapest option, & it proved to be the best possible choice! We stayed at the top of Montmartre just around the corner from the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur. Over the three days we visited most of tourist attractions, only missing out on the catacombs, a ticket to the top of the Eiffel Tower & the Louvre, but we didn't let any missed opportunities disappoint us! We definitely made the most of our time & didn't brush our teeth in two straight lines & go to bed like the good little girls in Madeleine!


We spent most of the second day in Versailles, which was mind-blowing. The entire area of the palace grounds must be the size of Ingham for sure!
Okay, I just looked it up... 
Ingham: 33.14 km²
Versailles: 26.18 km²!!
And like the fascinated, mature, students we are, every time we thought we had found Marie-Antoinette's palace (& when we eventually did find it) we yelled, "Off with their HEAD!"

Sometime soon we're planning on having a French movie night in one of our flats because we spent the whole three days singing Red & Black from Les Miserables in manly voices at each other. Also, most of the girls haven't seen Moulin Rouge OR Chocolat! I still don't know how they've survived so far?!

The main thing that struck me about Paris (sorry, it's not a positive thing) was how dirty everything was. Yes, I've been to Europe before, & I'm living in London which, historically, has a pretty bad rep, but I was horrified! Every time we entered a Metro station my brain was yelling "Yep, that's illegal in Australia. I'm pretty sure that is too... THAT is definitely illegal. Why isn't that light working? Where is security?"
I don't even want to think about the diseases that could potentially be cultivating away on the Metro trains or the organisms growing the piles of decade old dust in the corners of the stairs...

I don't want to ramble, it was a fabulous weekend, as one might expect! Here is my Paris vlog!!
Beware: Slightly inebriated & very overtired girls ahead (& maybe a few choice words here & there...)!

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Still listening to our Aussie boys 5 Seconds of Summer! ♪ Update on their concert coming soon!

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