Ye Olde London Town with Spud

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Dionisio (Spud) and I meet up at our hotel on Friday night. Time to spend some time preparing for Contiki next week. Spud will have his own section at the bottom of the blogs for the next 6 weeks as we undertake our Eurotrip.
A brief outline of activities:
Saturday 22/5 - walking tour of London getting to see the sights of London. Saturday night Pubcrawl. We also happened to fluke it and see the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace.
Sunday 23/5 - tour of lord's, London eye and meet up with Petulla
Monday 24/5 - today we planned to go Dublin for a couple of days but stayed in London (full explanation below)
Tuesday 25/5 - marathon sleep 13hrs, saw globe theatre, climbed monument (47.8m, 311 steps), Clink prison museum and Borough markets
Wednesday 26/5 - origin at walkabout, tower bridge and tower castle
Thursday 27/5 - watch test match between Bangladesh and England at Lords, meet with contiki crew

Saturday started off well with a traditional English breakfast at our hotel. We then planned to see the sights of London; Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Government houses, and all the general tourist spots. The changing of the gaurd was impressive except for the thousands of people cramming against the fence to get the best view. Eventually we like the rest of the crowd made our way to the front and got some good photos. We then joined a New London tour to get some history of the sites we had just seen. After this it was time to meet some people our age and what better way to do than a pubcrawl. A good introduction for spud into the drinking culture of the UK. We also had our first soccer fanatic encounter. Interesting to say the least.

Sunday was a little slow but that was fine as we didn't have much planned except to do a tour of Lords. The tour was pretty amazing as we were able to go into the the players rooms and the new media centre. However they were a little pedantic about their grass a they would not let you touch it. After lords we decided to catch up with Michael Petulla and go on the Jack the Ripper tour. However after deciding to go to a traditional English pub for dinner and then finding out the tube line we wanted was shut that debt eventuate. We then decided to go on the London eye which was very impressive on dusk.

Monday well we were supposed to be relaxing on a ferry cruising across to Dublin and be able to see Ireland which had been so talked about by everyone. However there was a slight issue at Euston Station and we were unable to make our quick trip to Ireland. We were very keen to try our first guinness in Europe at the factory. Instead we attempted to hide from the 30 degree day and find somewhere a little cooler to relax and ended up at our next hotel. The Pembridge Palace - it might hav palace in the name but it is nothing like it. We decided to see kensignton palace which was quite close and whilst there saw a small section of Hyde park.

On our way home we decided that we should have a few pints at the pub around the corner. After a few pints and a counter meal we decided some locals decided to start up a conersation with us and asked us where we were from. If it wasn't obvious enough from accents I said Australia. But as our new friend was more curious he wanted to know where and like most people over here I told them Sydney cause no one knows of Leeton. This bloke reckoned he did. I told him he was dreaming or on some serious narcotics!

After our marathon sleep which can be explained for spud as getting over jet lag but I really don't think I have a reason for needing to sleep 13 hours. We then decided to visit The Globe Theatre which unfortunately we couldn't do a tour of because there was a matinee screening of Macbeth. So we decided that if we couldn't do a tour of the theatre we would watch something there but we had also missed the start of the play so really missed out there. We then ventured to Borough markets had a quick browse then left and went to the Clink Prison Museum. On our walk back to the station we saw St Paul's Cathedral which was quite amazing but way too expensive too enter (like most tourist attractions in London). We climbed to the top of the Monument which was built in recognition of the great fire and got a panoramic view of the city.

Wednesday we headed to the walkabout pub for lunch and to watch origin. Of course it was the best result and inevitable result. We met with our first other contiki traveller at the pub. So many more to come though. We then travelled around the tower bridge area and went on a tour through both Tower castle and saw the beef eaters and massive crows then onto a tour of the tower bridge.

Thursday was spent sitting at Lord's watching the England v Bangladesh Test Match which was really quite surreal especially as it was my first match after missing the ashes 3 years ago. After this we headed to the Royal National to meet the other 50 people that we would be spending the next month with travelling throughout Europe.

Till next time,

Nick and Spud

We are currently sitting on the Greek Island (Corfu) and it is amazing we go on a boat tour tomorrow then back to Italy for a couple of days

Sorry about being a bit late with this but since joining our tour it has been a bit of a whirlwind of events and havent had time to update. Edinburgh blog for the week before is still to come its still only partially written. from now on i may just give an outline of daily events as we dont have time to write expanded entries

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