Near-death experience - London

We are now in Madrid, but just a brief recap of London with a post on Madrid to come later tonight.

Had the LSE Pre-Moot competition which was very well organised. Managed to fit in our record of four moots in one day. On the friday Alex had a day of heaven involving 2 hours in Topshop and another two hours experiencing the joys of the Tait Modern. We also saw the supension bridge the death eaters destroy in Harry Potter! And the globe theatre. Being with Katherine Belton was amazing for many reasons, her kiwi accent, being able to gossip about New Zealand stuff noone in Europe gets, being able to say words like 'jandals' and all her anecdotes of amazingness.

The next day we had a bit of a near-death experience. We had to get to the airport rather early, and after getting off the bus (double length, and physically packed at 6am on a Sunday morning) we got a taxi to get to the train station to get us to the airport. There was the three of us, myself and Alex and Vis-big-sister Katherine Belton (who is awesome, and was kindly getting up at 6 to go with us to the train station to alleviate our travel stress - amaze). The taxi driver drove past two men (who I will call the Spaniards, as we later established they were from Spain) being chased by a gang of men. One of the Spainards was bleeding quite a bit from the back of his head so the taxi driver offered them help, and they jumped in the taxi with us.

It seemed that they got into an argument with the guys chasing them, then one of the Spaniards got bottled, but managed to get the cellphone of one of the other guys. So when the two Spaniards jumped into the taxi, one of the guys chasing also half jumped in through the open passenger window, holding on by the wing mirror, and screaming that he wanted his phone back. The taxi driver then drove away with him hanging out of the side of the car. As Alex described as James Bond-esque, the driver then tried to swerve the car and drive past lamp posts to try and knock this guy off the car. After about 30 seconds the Spaniard threw the guy his phone and he let go and we were on our way. It has been three days since then and Alex still hasn't quite fully recovered.


Madrid is fantastic - we will see more of it today - but somewhat missing the less exciting streets of Wellington.