And Now, London.

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Geo: 51.4989, -0.127287

After a leisurely start on Sunday morning we caught up with the unchanging Andrew Bailey who kindly chauffeured us from the rental car drop off to the Reading train station. It was great to see him again and we swapped 'remember so and so from BCL' stories over coffee.

We arrived at Paddington station all wide eyed and touristy but made our way without much drama to the Ambassador Hotel near Earl's Court. We ditched our bags and went exploring into Kensington Gardens which are just a 10 minute walk away. We joined the many folks enjoying the Sunday sun and took in the sights of Princess Diana Fountain, the Serpentine gallery and of course Kensington Palace. The wide open spaces are almost at odds with the elaborate adjacent architecture of the Albert Hall and memorial and the many many old buildings. In the same way, our cheap and cheerful hotel is so close to Harrods, apartments worth thousands of pounds a week in rent for 2 bedrooms and three reception rooms!

Today we hopped on and off the hop on hop off bus and travelled all around. We took advantage of the Royal Walking Tour, which was actually a sprint between the various changing of the guard spots but our quirky guide was entertaining and we saw lots of men in red coats and funny hats. A bit of an eye opener for us naive Kiwis to see armed police everywhere.

We also did a very quick visit to the Natural History Museum - absolutely stunning building and I couldn't take photos to do it justice, and a wonderful dinosaur display, and then next door the the V&A as we locals call it - the Victoria and Albert Museum. Another amazing building and we only saw a snippet of the treasures on display. I could easily spend a day at just these two alone.

Next stop was the London Eye and our bus took us past all manner of other sights to get there. It really is a great way to get an overview of London and far less scary than the Ferris wheel at Caroline Bay in Timaru.

The buildings - and sense of history - here continue to overwhelm me. I could easily spend another week just wandering around gawping like the tourist I am. So many museums, galleries, parks and places to go and only one day left.

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