If I had to pick just one reason for our move to London I would easily say that it was because London is the perfect base camp for lots of European travel.  I would hazard a guess that most antipodeans would say the same thing.

And it was easy for me to move here because I am one of the lucky ones – my mum was born here.  Yes, that’s right; I am the lucky owner of a UK passport.  It’s red, more solid and hard than my Aussie one, and has a little microchip thing in it; needless to say it is one of my pride possessions.

And it’s sad, but you can tell the expats who don’t have one… they get a far-off misty eyed look on their face when they find out you have one; it’s called longing, my friend.  They want it bad.

Combining a UK Passport with European travel proves there are even more benefits for the lucky chosen ones – you queue in the EU line rather than the ‘Other [LOSER] Countries’ line when going through international security.  In all honesty though, this doesn’t always work out to be faster because the ‘Other [LOSER] Countries’ line is often so short – but believe me, when its long, It. Takes. Forever.

My husband-to-be and I were discussing our travel achievements on the way home from Barcelona the other day and he pulled out his Canadian passport to do a quick check of the places we’ve been.  So all good – I daresay we’ve been getting around – Belgium, Amsterdam, Cardiff (does this count?) Switzerland and most recently to Barcelona all since we arrived in London.  Tres cool, lots of stamps.

So I pulled out my passport to admire my stamps (and secretly to one-up him as I had many more stamps from my recent round the world trip… so sue me, I’m a terrible person).  Well, Karma’s a b!tch – I stared in astonishment at my completely naked passport – not a single stamp!  Not only was I an idiot because of course all my pre-London trips have been on my Aussie passport and not my UK one, but you don’t get stamped when you travel within the EU on a UK passport – all this travel and nothing to show!  I don’t even have a stamp from my arrival into the country.

I swear I heard him giggle.