A group of men of arabic decent sit in a circle puffing on a shisha pipe, the clouds of flavoured smoke drifting in the afternoon air. The sun slowly sets over the western tree line, beside the deckchair a £1.50 bottle of beer is slowly building a nice coating of condensation. Looking around the park is full, which is a mean feat for Hyde Park. Kids play soccer, adults gather around eskys of wine and cheese, and vagrant backpackers enjoy a cheap drink in the fading sunlight.

It is a blend of the old with the new, of the traditional with the modern. Like a giant game of tetris the buildings and roads seems to wind around each other in a spiralling chaos of tight alleys and ancient architecture.

Nothing sums this up more than the underground network, or the tube. It criss-crosses the city in a pattern that can only be described the veins of London. As you descend into the hazy tunnel network the warmth of the lower tube stations is a pleasant surprise, that is until you board one of the tube trains and end up sweating your ass off.

When you emerge from the winding sub-world London town is, like many other large cities, a concrete jungle. The difference from other capitals is the oasis’s of the gardens, notice the plural. My personal favourite Regent Park, with its rose garden and boat lake, is nearly always full of families sporting young children. The abundance of birdlife means you catch smiling little ones throwing stale chunks of bread to the flapping ducks, their childish laughter filling the air along side the hundreds of bird calls.

A short stroll from regents park is the Camden Markets, one of London’s original tourist haunts. Market stalls selling clothing, posters, piercings, tattoos, shoes, hats, and the normal tourist brick-a-brack fill the north section of Camden high street. The area is a mecca for punks, gays, goths, and London’s hippy crowd which makes it a must for anyone visiting the British capital. Drop by an orgional doc martin store, get a tatoo by a bloke that saw the sex pistols live, and buy a dress made of an older dress that was once pants worn by Cyndi Lauper on her english tour.

Most backpackers join one of the Pub Crawls starting in Covent Garden, so of course that’s exactly what I did. The night slowly descends, like every pub crawl I’ve been on, in to drunken blur. At one point the fifty odd backpackers, all boozed up to the eyeballs, are cramed on a tube train heading towards Piccadilly circus. The general cocking about, drunken singing and random hook-ups could have been used a stock footage for any collage themed movie, it really was fun. The pubs and clubs of the UK are a little different than at home, they’re bigger to start with. That said drinks are cheap, the bar staff friendly and the lack of responsible service of alcohol laws means getting off your chops is pretty much the norm.

The pub crawl also reinforced one thing I’ve come to realise, there is as SHIT load of aussies here in London. I’m talking about every second person I meet being an Aussie. Seriously we outnumber the Yanks, French and Spanish 3 to 1 and that’s not taking in to account the bar staff, all of whom are accent sporting, beer drinking, AFL or NRL watching, Australian expats.

So I’ve stopped for now to earn some coin and get ready for Germany in September, but don’t think this means any less adventures.

From behind the bar he’s currently working in

GK Out.