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I am sitting at the Tower of London overlooking London Bridge and I am amazed. Australia is so young, I never realised how young. The history here is incredible, around every corner is another massive and amazing building steeped in hundreds of years of history. I am blown away by it all.
I am quite content to just sit here at the moment as I spent most of my morning trying to get from my friend Errika's house into my hostel in the city. This was no small feat considering I have massively overpacked and probably am now up to about 25kg that I am carrying. 10 minute walk to the station, another 15-20mins once I got to Kings Cross as I got lost in the rain and a random Londoners bad directions. I am sending stuff home asap, expect a big parcel Mum!
So at lunchtime I headed to the Borough markets touted to be a foodie's heaven. This was so true that when I left about 2 hours later I practically had to roll away. I knew I was in the right place when I could smell delicious meats cooking as I walked down the stairs, I spotted Haloumi cooking but knew I needed a balanced diet so I started with a punnet of strawberries and a freshly cooked cinnamon donut, I may have also sampled from various stalls on the way back to get my haloumi roll. I had to! There were brownies, cheese, muslie, more cheese, CUPCAKES, pate spreads, olive oil for dipping.....I was in no way shape or form restrained.... "Would you like a... "Why yes! Thank you!" So after the very tasty haloumi and salad and delicious saiuce...I went back to rescue that poor cupcake from being eated by someone who would not appreciate its loveliness like I would.
That brings me to the slow walk (waddle) back to visit London bridge, my first destination for today. The rain has now cleared and I am sitting in the sunshine. I was so naive I had no idea that the "Tower of London" was in fact London Castle, I thought by the street signs it would be just one tower! Silly Australian. So I was pleasantly amazed at its giantic glory and the fact it was so big I could not fit it in my camera lense in one shot! The sunshine is a welcome change as I am still walking around in gloves. The bridge is amazing, everything I am seeing is far surpassing my expectations. I didn't realise it was so colourful. The bridge structure is dark blue on the base with light blue contrasts for the upper structures and red highlights and gold embellishments. The turrents are very princess castle-like. :-) It looks at though you can climb to the top. The view would be incredible.
I have now settled on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral, easily the biggest and most impressive church I have ever seen. I detoured via Petticoat lane markets which turned out to be awash wit tacky polyester and the whole area seemed a little unsafe, so I took the next subway to St Paul's. I have been wandering and taking photos and just generally people watching and laughing at the children who never tire of chasing pigeons. I feel quite content on these steps. I am not very religious but more spiritual, but I could see how easy it would be to be oustounded and over awed at religion if this was your place of worship. It is very peaceful in the surrounding gardens and the people sitting around me are all laughing and enjoying their time-out. The inside of the cathedral is amazing also but unfortunately you aren't allowed to take photos inside. I happened to be there at their choral singing afternoon so I was delighted to just sit and take in the beautiful harmonies and intricate artworks and architecture. There is just something incredible about the way that church music seems to lock together. I was so overawed I dropped off to sleep...how horrible, it was only for a minute...I was just enjoying the music, feeling peaceful and the next thing I knew they were singing their last song and it was time to go!
It was 5:30 by now and catching the tube in peak hour was a completely new experience! I hopped off in town so I could find a place for dinner and ended up in Tas which turned out to nave great service and great food. 3 course dinner and drinks for 20 pounds. Dinner by myself is ok when I have a good book to read. :-) in my way walking back to the hostel I walked past a garden with a bird chortelling away at 9:30 at night, possibly a nightingale? It was such a beautiful contrast to the noise of the very busy city streets. Unfortunately I then got horribly lost and it took me about an hour to find my hostel. I wrote about 20 postcards as I had bought stamps and had to use them before I left England. So even later I crawled into bed to get a couple of hours sleep, unfortunately the hostel had a massive party going on which was super loud and my roommates liked talking and fiddling around with their suitcases at 3:00 am. I was unimpressed and bleary eyed but really looking forward to Paris!
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