London, England
Day 102 - 105
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLIE!!!!!!!! All our love to you!!! Hope you enjoyed your night the other night, we wished we were there with you all!
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It seems like ages since i've been on here!! But it's only been three days! I do usually try to get here after the weekend, and before the weekend so i catch my darling at work! Hi Lisy loos. And hi Alena, your Dad loved talking with you today!
Now that we've overcome the shock of everything being the same price as the Aussie dollar, one for one, we can be composed. No kidding, if a dinner is usually $25 in Aust it's £25 here! Or a drink is $1 in Aus it's £1 here. Dollar for pound. The only difference being that a pound is equal to $2.50 But we're over it. And it's taken us a week! We ended up just thinking, that's the cost here. WEAR IT. We get accustomed to it..just in time for us to leave...Oh well.
But it's only been a few days and we've done so much here in London after having our first couple of days being totally lazy and luxuriating for four nights in the room we had...gee, it was wonderful. Kensington was such a great place to be too, as it's near everything and most of all the gardens of London.
We've really enjoyed them. They're so relaxing...Kensington and Hyde Park are our favourites and we've had a few 'supermarket meals' there! (Buy our ingredients ie bread rolls and fillings and drinks and go to the park to eat!) It's such a beautiful thing to do. The flowers and lakes are gorgeous. We spent a whole afternoon watching a pond bird building a nest on top of a discarded bin liner one afternoon!
We also went to Kensington Palace where Princess Diana lived. And where Princess Margaret lived. We saw the wonderful state rooms and some of the displays were amazing. Diana's ball dresses were there, as well as Maria Testino's black and white photographic collection of Diana. She was so beautiful. I just loved her! And her 10 year memorial anniversary is coming up so people here in England are going mad with preparations and media attention.
But! We're in a different room now...3rd night tonight. We're in a place near the Edgware Tube station. And to be honest, it's scummy! And it's costing 5 pound more..arrgh. So annoying.
So we're seeing different things!
Apart from the London Eye (which British Airways sponsors and charges £13 to go up in) and BIG BEN...and all the London landmarks...
We went to Westminster Abbey and the houses of Parliament yesterday...I tell you, Westminster Abbey is different to what i thought it would be. Bigger. And there are so many tombs. We saw the Coronation chair that has had every coronation since it was made for the stone of Scot when Edward 1 won the battle there. (The stone has been in Scotland since 1996 and will be returned for the next Coronation).
What's amazing...is...upon closer scrutiny, the Coronation Chair is full of graffiti!!! Whether it's the royal kids writing or not, i don't know..but there are all sorts of engravings in the wood!!!!! So funny.
One thing at Westminster Abbey that suprised me was the memorials. There are a lot of kings and queens there..but also poets and writers. Thomas Hardy, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Jane Austen etc...so many famous English people mentioned there. Also..just at the exit there is a large memorial to Winston Churchil for his contribution in the British Battle. There's also, to the left of the exit, a memorial dedicated to Roosevelt for his friendship to Britain.
I found it interesting and started wondering where Diana was. And where the Queen Mother was..and the guard in the Abbey said there were no royal memorials since the 1700's! So there you go...
We did go to the Diana Memorial Fountain In Kensington Gardens....aww...
Still in Westminster, we ventured down Downing Street where retiring prime minister Tony Blair is currently moving out. We couldn't get to number 10. The whole place is locked up..each end of the street completely iron fenced off. The security, since the bombings here, is tight. After the suspect bombing the other day in Westminster it's even tighter. The tube station there is even under tight survellence. All new, due to the bombing, and it looks like an underground pipe system there's so much metal!
We've also been to Tower of London..and heard all about the beheadings that went on there..which apparently have been only five. With all the 'press' you'd think there was more..but not so. Two of the beheadings there, on the Tower Green, were the wives of King Henry Vlll. There was a saying about his 6 wives...they were, 'divorced, beheaded, died, died, beheaded, outlived! haha! Oh dear. What a brutal man. The 'Tower' stories were fascinating to say the least!
There was one about Jack Robinson. He was a man who organised the public executions on Tower Hill (near the Tower of London) and did it so fast..that the saying of 'you can do it faster than Jack Robinson' came about.
So many stories...as only the English can tell..with THAT humour!!! Just love it!
We also went on a Jack the Ripper night and saw where he killed his victims. He killed five women..and a bit like the Tower of London executions..there were less than folk lore says. When you think about the notorious Jack the Ripper...and the fact that he was a serial killer...five is not much. But whose counting!
We went on the river thames that night too..and learned about the KGB killings and mysterious suicides....
Quite a killer of a night! haha
While in London we've experienced the famous English beef pie (homemade) with mushy peas, and English roast with Yorkshire Pudding.....and if anyone can tell us more about this, please do. The one we experienced didn't look like what i thought a Yorkshire pudding was..and what my friend Tracey from Bristol used to serve!!! It looked more like an encasement for pavlova! But it was nice...
We've also had beer in the pubs, cups of tea (they make the BEST tea), English breakfasts that we've been having each morning because it's included in our accomodation price, read the London Newspapers......the free London Metro in the morning and the London paper and London Lite in the evening. They have lots of them...including and Australian one for Aussies living in London! And then come the one's that you buy!
London is really clean. (Although our hotel is to be desired, really, it's not the best!) The streets are orderly and clean. Even the beggars don't mess it up! And the beggars are polite. They say, 'Can you spare some change please?'!!!! Gosh. The traffic is dense but it's orderly as well. The black taxi's in London are everywhere and seem to have their rules ie they don't like the rickshaws so are complaining that they're taking over their turf. The big double decker red buses are everywhere as well.
There are heaps of expensive cars here too. We've seen street fulls of luxury cars. And we think they're the only people who can afford to park in London. They have a 'conjestion tariff' here. 8 pound per day to park in London. The electric cars don't have to pay as an incentive for people to go electric. Livingstone, the mayor of London brought this in.
And we've experienced the London Tubes breaking down..regularly!!!! And they're HOT inside! No aircon. Not like the new Greek metro..or the french metro. The London one is old (and the original one) and in need of tender loving care that's for sure!
We saw St Pauls where Charles and Diana were married..and were enthralled by Christopher Wren's architecture....a man who is completely reverered by Londoners!
We've also been to Madame Tussauds Waxworks Museum..kissed Brad Pitt for Allie...and got seen with the best of them....Tom Cruise...Princess Diana...John Travolta..and of course Johnny Howard!!!!!! ANd oh, the House of Horrors.......we heard the screams and bypassed it! Only cos we didn't have time tho.............we had a ferry to catch on the Thames! Drats. Really need a whole day to enjoy the museum.
Dali was something we really wanted to see while here in London. His exhibition has been running here since 2000 and we were so glad we found the place. Salvatore Dali is such a great surrealist artist, so complex, so weird. And we loved all his floppy clocks and log spindly legged elephant and eroticisim.
Truly a great exhibition to see...almost 400 of his works were on display. If i could have taken something home..i would have bought one of his replica clocks..but of course, too delicate and we're not going home, so like the porcelain mask i saw that i loved in Venus, it stays put.
Harrrods was an eyeopener! It's in Basil Road. We were met by the Harrods guard who kept the door open while we entered (made us feel special!) and at the entrance there was a memorial to Diana and Dodi. Under it, it says, 'Innocent Victims'. I signed the book that sat behind the memorial, and i felt quite sad. I realised i still miss her!!!!
But what a shop! The Eygptian stairs are beautiful. So tasteful. SO EXPENSIVE. On the 3rd floor, the antiques and fossils were there and the asking price for the furniture was in the 30 and 40 thousand pounds. Ohlala. Just what we can see Cotts decorated with! But we thought..the cats might scratch it. hehe
After that..and even being in the luxury bathroom, we decided to buy our boot polish in Marks and Spencer! (Another great shop here in England! Which now seems to have a whole lot of outlets springing up all over the place!)
But best of all..was our trip to Kent today..to see the Leeds Castle...it was glorious....we just loved it...so peaceful and so regal. So much money. Lady Olive Baille was certainly a lady of wealth to be able to afford that in 1926.
She stayed there until 1973 and willed it to the Leeds Trust where it now is open for the public. The grounds are simply majestic. We spend a whole day there...beautiful place. There was even a collection of Australian birds there, cockatoos, and the black swan was Lady Baille's emblem for the castle.
We also saw a giant rhubarb!!!! 2.5 metres high! The things you see..
And that's London, for now. We saw other places, like Buckingham palace, Albert Memorial and just generally experienced the 'London Town' but there's so much still to see.....like the National Gallery and Museums.....and we haven't been to the Mousetrap or any plays yet. Remember the Mousetrap Mum?
Nor to the movies like we thought we would...(I remember seeing James Bond in 'The Spy Who Loved Me' in 1978 here in London, and i wanted to see the latest James Bond movie but we just didn't get to it!)
But we'll all see that when we return on our way out of the UK..and maybe even get to the Honeypot sis..and Sandhurst St..and Wembley..and .. and .. and all those other nostalgic places!
Off to bonny Scotland now...well, heading up that way via the English countryside!
PS Hi Angie..thanks so much for your newsy email!!!! We loved it!!!
