London Town

---

Our first day in London was pretty much recovery from our flight. The next morning after a good night's sleep we were ready to see some sights in good old London Town. We met up with Pange and Mike at the Tower of London and explored this for a few hours, where we visited the crown jewels (impressive) and saw the famous ravens. Then after a quick wander through Covent Garden, Piccadily Circus and Leicester Square we went and had a rest in St James's Park, as it was bloody hot and all of our legs were sore from our flights. When we had restored some energy we walked past the end of Downing St (as this is as close as you can get) and then past Big Ben and Parliament, both of which are amazing buildings. Next on our whistle stop tour of London was afternoon tea with the queen at Buckingham Palace, unfortunately she hadn't left our names with the guard at the gate so we couldn't go in for a cuppa. That evening we meet up with one the many kiwis in London and had dinner.

Our next few days were spent catching up with people and having a bit more of a look round the sights like Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral. Overall impressions of London, full of awesome buildings and extremely busy but built around an impressive public transport system that allows you to go pretty much anywhere you need, either by tube or bus.

On Saturday morning we got up at 7am put on All blacks Jerseys or anything else we could find that was black and made our way down to the Walkabout Bar in Putney to watch the first game of the Tri-Nations with Joe and Mandy. We arrived to find a cue of about 50 other kiwis and a handful of Aussies. It felt strange being in a pub, full of people in All Blacks gear at 8am, having a drink and watching a live game of rugby from the other side of the world.

The only problem we had with the transport was trying to get to Stanstead airport to get catch our flight to Dublin. It was at 8am on Sunday morning and the tube was not working yet and the bus line had some work being done with it as it was Sunday, so we organised a taxi. The guy at the taxi company told us it would take us 2 hours to get to the airport in a cab, so we arranged to get picked up about 4am. We got up bright and early and made our way down to the street and strangely enough no taxi! We waited and waited and at 4.30 eventually rang them, they said it was on the way and would be there in 15mins, we waited and waited and still nothing. Eventually at 5am Jared had to talk to the driver and give him directions! The driver eventually arrived and told us to put on our seatbelts as he was going to drive very fast to get us to the airport on time, fortunately we made it in one piece and on time. There with no further dramas and we got on our flight to Dublin.

---

Comments

[Ryan foote]

great read great photos can see your havin a great time lookin forward to the next edition,