We left our (travesty of a) hotel nice and early to get a good start on all the things we wanted to see in London. Mind you, we were never going to fit in anywhere near as much as what we wanted to see in only three days. Decision made: we need at least another two weeks in London, particularly to see all the fabulous museums, each of which you could spend an entire day in.
Anyway, we went to the local (15 minute walk away) Kings Cross tube station, but couldn’t get in as there was no ticket booth open. So we figured out which bus to catch into town. That was just a small sentence saying that, but believe me, it was a 30 minute adventure before we actually found the right bus stop, got the right change, and got on the bus! Our first trip on a double decker (although, showing my age, I have a vague recollection of them from when I was a kid in Sydney) and we got that el-primo front seat up the top. I was very excited... until the bus pulled up behind another double decker, which freaked me out a little as it got so bloody close. Anyway, a long, slow and jerky trip into town ensued. We jumped off at Trafalgar Square, which sadly, was covered in scaffolding and hessian bags. Getting all spruced up for the Olympics no doubt. Speaking of which, there were lots of road works and building works happening all over London in that regard.
From Trafalgar Square we wandered the streets, looking for the place we needed to pick up our London Passes. We found it, mainly due to the large number of people cramming into the building, but also due to Mark’s fabulous skills with a map (!). We saw Nelson’s Column too – once or twice, in different directions – in other words, we saw at least two columns, and at least one of them was Nelson’s. London Passes in hand, we headed off to Wellington Arch, our first real London landmark, well, that we could see the whole of anyway. It had a fabulous gate – we’ve become rather impressed with ironwork and woodcarving, particularly with gates. We went up into the arch, and got a nice little view of London, particularly the road leading down to Buckingham Palace. While standing there on top of the arch with the statue of the horses above us – I swear one of the horses was looking down at us (me in particular). I took a photo of it, but you can’t quite see the glare in its eye.
We walked from there down to Buckingham Palace and found a spot on a little ... thingy ... (Mark is telling me ledge) that you could stand on to take photos and admire the view. We took a few hundred photos from there, and then sat for a while looking out over St James Park. A fox ran through the multitude of people, poor thing, obviously confused and being swooped by birds at the same time. It later appeared on the grounds of the palace, running past the royal guards, who didn’t blink an eye at it. The police did though, and one shooed it off the grounds. So now I have seen most of the wildlife I wanted to see.
The palace is huge (obviously) and has really big gates. The gates are all topped with gold (paint I am pretty sure) and have the royal crest up on them, which is really huge too! It would appear that everything to do with royalty and palaces, has to be really, really huge. We took lots more photos, and then found out that the Palace was open to visitors – I was very excited by this as I thought we missed out by a week as it normally opens to the public on August 1st. So we wandered around to see if we could get tickets. They were sold out for the day so we decided to go back the next morning instead.
From there, we walked down to Westminster Abbey. (Sidenote here, I am typing this as we are on the train to Paris, and we just popped out of the tunnel and we are now in France – YAY!) (Oh, another side note, Mark tried to start another round of Castle, cow, sheep looking out the window of the train as we rode through England, but he only got the first two – he just tried again as he saw a French cow, but I have had to inform him “new country, new game” sheesh!). OK, Westminster – well, that’s huge too. As was the line to get in. We waited for a while, and then Mark went for a walk, and then I went for a walk to take some photos, and then Jamie and I laid down on the grass for a little snooze, and then we got in about an hour later. (Le castle/church, le moo and la baabaa has begun! May the best spotter win!). Westminster was well worth the wait. I didn’t realise there were so many tombs in there! We wandered around looking at them all, and came across the room Elizabeth I was buried in. She had a lovely crypt, and the effigy on top was said to be the closest likeness of her as it was cast from her death mask. In the same position, on the other side of the abbey, was Mary Queen of Scot’s tomb – opposite sides of the church, but equal positions – remind me again, is Westminster CofE or Catholic... so I was surprised to see Mary buried there. We made our way through the crowds back to the altar and choir sections, and stood about three feet from where William and Kate sat during their wedding. I looked back down the aisle, and yes, it too is huge, and very, very long....
While we were wandering around inside the Abbey, we came across a young man wearing red tartan pants, a dark blue trakkie top, and a patterned fedora hat. It was an interesting look. We kept bumping into him all day then, outside the Abbey, looking at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Jumping ahead a little, we ended up seeing him again when we were walking from the tube station to our hotel. He was a little like John Farnham– he kept coming back.
Totally exhausted, we needed lunch, and I had read about High Tea at the Banqueting House. The Banqueting House is the last surviving part of the original Whitehall Palace of the 16th century. It has a ceiling painted by Rubens and we ate (a very disappointing) High Tea under it. The food was pretty bad, to be perfectly honest, and it didn’t come out on one of those fabulous tiered plates either – aren’t those tiered plates what high tea is all about? Lucky the roof was so bloody good.
We walked back towards the tube as Jamie was heading to ‘The Laurie Arms’ Hotel to meet up with her old London friends for the night. We went past Downing Street, but couldn’t really see too much. I took a photo of the street sign though.
Mark and I headed down towards Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. As fabulous as Buckingham Palace is, this is surely the place that the iconic images of London come from. Needless to say, I took hundreds of photos. We looked up at Big Ben, videoed it as it struck 5:00pm, and took photos every few metres across the Westminster Bridge, looking back at it all. What a totally impressive set of buildings! Imposing and intricate, they loom larger than anything we have seen yet. We walked down one side of the road, all the way across the bridge, then under the bridge and back along the other side. A huge lion statue (yes, everything we saw on this day was H U G E) sat at the end of the bridge, and we discovered how completely detailed the sculptor was when we crossed the road and saw the … other side of the lion (see photos). We looked down the southbank towards the London Eye, and just saw crowds like we have not really seen before – so glad Australia is not as heavily populated! It was like the crowds coming out of a big day out concert, all at once, although nothing more was on than the London skyline.
We hit the tube and made our way to Hammersmith to meet up with Jamie and her friends for a drink. It was a cute little pub to say the least, with a guy at the bar that had a whole conversation with me, even though I didn’t understand a word that he said. I am pretty certain it had something to do with me asking for a bag of potato chips though. Jamie’s friends were lovely and obviously pleased to see her again – it was nice to put names to faces, and voices to names! We didn’t stay too long, we were buggered and decided to let them party on into the night (she got back to the hotel at 2am).
Back to Russell Square – the two tube stations were equally FAR from the hotel – and we found a happening little plaza thingy with a few restaurants in it. We ate at the ‘Giraffe’ which had “world food – world music”. World staff as well, so it would seem. Good food, good day, and time for a good night’s sleep!
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