Super Rich Kids.

...(some of whom may not have 'nothing but fake friends')

I'm sitting in my kitchen writing up this blog post, my quiet, clean kitchen!! It's the second week of the Easter holidays here at UEL, & I am thoroughly enjoying the solitude! A couple of weeks ago now, (I know, it's been a while!) my friend Sydney & I spent a day exploring North London. It's an interesting area, both geographically & historically & there are many areas which have been redeveloped into luxurious apartments for the 1%. From the tube stop, we took a wrong turn (of course) & stumbled upon a beautiful cafe with cheap brekky & tea. After a reorientation pit-stop we continued (still going the wrong way) & wandered amongst the pretty hillside houses until we finally discovered our end point.

Princess Park Manor.

Originally named Colney Hatch Mental Asylum, then changed to Friern Hospital due to introduced Anti-Discrimination Laws, this estate was commissioned in 1849 & opened to patients in 1851. This particular asylum was very interesting for its time, so I'm going to give you a short history lesson...

Colney Hatch was the most expensively built asylum of it's time & was the largest & most modern in all of Europe. To walk all of its wards would have taken five hours. Colney Hatch had it's own water supply, well, cemetery, chapel & a 75 acre estate. In 1903 there was a serious fire in a temporary building that was erected as one of the many additions to house more patients & 52 patients & nurses were killed. It is also said that many of the patients housed there escaped as some remains were not found & patients were not accounted for. During the Second World War 12 wards were requisitioned for use as a temporary war hospital & during the bombing of London four separate villas were destroyed killing civilians, patients & staff.

These days the estate is much smaller & some wings of the building could not be salvaged during the restoration, but it is still one of the most impressive castle-like structures I have ever seen! Friern Hospital only officially closed in 1993 & was abandoned for a few years before the estate was purchased by Comer Homes, a redeveloping & real estate company owned by two wealthy Irish brothers with an interesting history of their own. They transformed Friern Hospital into one of the most expensive & beautiful places to live in London, Princess Park Manor. Some current occupants include the five lovely lads of One Direction!!

Enjoy! I will be writing more, & more often hopefully as I have a fair bit to catch everyone up on! xo

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Currently listening to & loving Ed Sheeran's new single SING ♪ I have also pre-ordered his CD album, 'Multiply' & a copy of the vinyl, to be released June 23rd.

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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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