London Part 2

Sunday 28 August

Happy birthday to Alfia, a girlfriend Sylvi has known since grade 1 and we continue to send each other birthday and Christmas greetings each year.

Nathan had suggested we visit Spitalfields markets in East London so we took the bus there and visited Christ Church first up, a church which has stood here for over 300 years but has only recently been restored to its former glory.

The markets themselves are great for clothes shoppers and reminded us of the Southbank markets in Brisbane. 

One great find though was Square Pies who opened their first store here in 2001 and now have a couple more in other locations around London. We hadn't had a good pie for over 3 months and they really hit the spot.

A short hour and a half walk across town to Buckingham Palace saw us come upon several iconic sites – The Gherkin, St Paul's Cathedral, the Monument to the Great Fire - but we were happy to finally arrive for our afternoon tour of the Palace's State Rooms.

Monarchs since Queen Victoria have used Buckingham Palace as their principle residence, but it was originally a mere mansion known as Buckingham House when built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703.

We have seen so many wonderful Residences, Chateaus and Castles in our 3 months in Europe, but Buckingham Palace is up there with the best. Being one of the few working Palaces in the world, everything is immaculately well maintained and very richly decorated. The plaster work in the ceilings is second to none.

A section of the tour is dedicated to the recent royal wedding, with Kate's dress, shoes, earrings, bouquet and wedding cake on display together with lots of explanations about the organisation of the event. The first room you actually enter on the tour is the same one William, Kate and guests entered immediately after arriving from the ceremony at Westminster Abbey.

There is also a gorgeous display of various Faberge objects owned by generations of the royal family. Unfortunately no photos were allowed to be taken.

The tour concludes in the gardens which are vast, taking us at least ten minutes to walk to the exit. We were totally thrilled with the visit and highly recommend for anyone visiting July-Sept when the State Rooms are opened to the public.


We then headed towards the Thames, stopping to look at Westminster Abbey, Parliament House and Big Ben.

Not everything is establishment, with the perpetual protest group near Parliament House, like in most large capital cities.

We are sure Sir Winston would not have been impressed.

After a nice dinner at Giraffe just down from the London Eye, we capped off a huge day by walking the rest of the way home, catching some unusual evening sights along the Thames. 

Who would have thought of sand lounges on the banks of the Thames.  The city is beautiful at night, and we were very lucky to be able to experience it close up.

Monday 29 August

Today is a “Bank Holiday” (Public Holiday) but as with Australia, just about everything is open. We decided to head out to the largest Westfield shopping centre at Shepherd's Bush so caught the Underground. The Notting Hill Carnival is also on this long week-end but we thought we'd stay clear of that as masses of people and police are expected, and with the recent riots we didn't want to risk it.

Not having seen a film for 3 months we thought we'd give “Captain America” a go. It had received good reviews but didn't really tickle our fancy.

We met up with Nathan one more time before he returned to Liverpool for work tomorrow.


Tuesday 30 August

The weather the past few days has been mainly sunny with a chill in the air, but today it is overcast and cold. We've learnt to not leave the flat without a rain jacket and brolly, just in case.

Heading out very early we caught London's version of the Citycat to Greenwich, the home of Greenwich Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time.

Bill was looking forward to seeing the Cutty Sark, a preserved clipper ship, but it was unfortunately covered in scaffolding while restoration work continues following a major fire in 2007.

A steep walk through Greenwich Park to the Royal Observatory provided a great view of the river and Navel College buildings below. Unfortunately we were too early for a visit in the place where the Prime Meridian was established in 1851.  But he played the geek, and made sure the earth and satellites were aligned by checking with the GPS on his phone.

Quite a long bus ride took us to our next destination, St Paul's Cathedral. A Cathedral has stood on this site for over 1400 years and the current one, designed by Christopher Wren, was completed in 1710. It was here where Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer on 29 July 1981.

This is a massive Cathedral, very richly decorated with marble, gold, crystal chandeliers and glass mosaic tiles and many esteemed historians are buried here. The magnificent Italian influence canopy towering over the high altar is one of the many highlights.

We climbed the 257 steps to the round Whispering Gallery where whispers from one side can be heard at the other (truly). 

And continued 119 more steps to the Stone Gallery which gives a good outside view of the city, and finally 152 more steps to the Golden Gallery, 85 meters from the Cathedral floor for a 360 degree view as good as that from the London Eye.

Although we were a little weary by now, we caught another bus to the British Museum for a quick look.  It's like having a quick look at the Louvre.

This is also a massive place so we chose to focus on the Egyptian exhibits featuring many statues, tablets, sarcophagi and mummies as well as a prized exhibit, the Rosetta Stone dating back to 196BC.

Wednesday 31 August

As well as being the anniversary of Princess Diana's passing, it is also Sylvi's 44^th birthday. We took it easy in the morning catching up on emails and calling home before heading out for a very long and lovely lunch by the River Thames. 

An enormous super yacht was moored not far from our chosen restaurant, so we pretended it was ours, having just dropped us off for lunch.

On the way home Bill mentioned we hadn't had a drink at our local pub since being here, so we dropped in for a quick one.

It may not sound like a very exciting day, but we both enjoyed ourselves and mark it down as another memorable birthday celebration.

More photos here.

Landed in London

Tuesday 23 – Friday 27 August

Monday night's dinner at a local French restaurant – La Vieille Forge – was totally divine. Such delicious food and wine and the ambience was lovely too. It was nice to walk through the town at night without the bustle of tourists and to see the buildings lite.

Tuesday we drove the 5 hours or so to the Frankfurt camp site we'd booked for our overnight stay. The one big highlight was stopping at a McCafe along the way for a soy latte.

Wednesday morning we handed back the motor home and much to our disgust, had to pay 85 Euros for the Austrian tolls - we'd traveled on the toll roads for only two days there. Ridiculously expensive.

Our taxi driver to the airport was quick to reassure us that all was well with his vehicle which he had to hang onto whilst putting our luggage in the boot, because the handbrake didn't seem to work properly and it kept sliding away.

The German customs agent was showing his younger colleague how to freak people out by asking us to prove that we hadn't stayed more then 90 days in Germany in contravention of the Schengen Agreement. Luckily we'd kept all the camp site receipts from where we'd been, plus our arrival and exit dates didn't exceed 90 days anyway.

The 1.5hr flight to London City Airport was fine and we were grilled by the customs agent on arrival about why we wanted to stay 3 months in the UK. They want to ensure you're not there to stay or work.

While in London, we are extremely lucky to be staying in Southwark (pronounced Sutholk) within sight of Tower Bridge in an apartment owned by the parents of our girlfriend Charlotte. It is such a great location, well appointed and comfortable, we almost feel like we're back in our Teneriffe apartment.

Thursday we took it easy first up and went for a stroll along the Southbank of the River Thames in the afternoon amongst all the other tourists. We organised two Oyster cards, the London version of the Go-Card, which is exactly the same concept – load funds onto the card when necessary, tag on only for buses, tag on and off for trains.

There is a lot of construction and renovation going on in preparation for the Olympics next year. What will be Europe's tallest building, The Shard, is just about finished and looks very impressive.

That night we met up with an old Brisbane friend of Bill's who has lived in London the past 20 years. We caught the bus to Convent Gardens and met in a traditional English pub for a few drinks then onto a local pizza place for a quick bite.

Friday we were on a mission to buy a few things so headed back to Convent Gardens and walked from there. It was a very rainy day with occasional heavy showers but we persisted.

We also wanted to join the British Trust which is very worthwhile for then visiting museums etc and we can use it in Brisbane as well. However they don't make it easy via their website and their headquarters is locked up tight and unwelcoming so we'll have to find another way of organising that.

Finding ourselves outside Buckingham Palace, we organised tickets for a visit of the State Rooms on Sunday afternoon. Liz and Phil may or may not be there!!!

We've noticed that London drivers are very aggressive, love to use their horn and are quite partial to mouthing off to other drivers. The traffic is quite hectic, but maybe the added aggression makes it more so. We witnessed some “bus queue rage” as well with this guy mouthing off at someone wanting to push in, then wanted to pursue the matter once they were on the bus.

A quiet night in front of the telly was well deserved after a pretty full on day.

Saturday 28 August

Our nephew, Nathan, is living in Liverpool at the moment but comes to London a couple of days a week so we'll catch up with him today. He's a hair and make-up artist and recently finished a 3 month stint in Dohar in the Middle East and is now working on a local soap “Hollyoaks”, a bit like “Neighbours”.

We met at the Borough Markets which are a short walk for us. They are fresh food markets opened to the public Thursday – Saturday, and extremely popular. A duck sandwich was our choice for lunch. Yum.

We will be in London until Thursday, when we pick up our next campervan, so we will be out and about exploring this massive city.

More photos here.