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Published: July 10th 2006
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Piccadilly Circus
Oh its a circus alright..... whats with the neon signs on the historical buildings??? Looks cool though hey! Well, it was the weekend again...obviously, (even over there I hear) so it was time for us to hit the road and do some exploring once again.
The weekend started with a sigh of relief that the anniversary of the bombings had finally passed and we could now hopefully ease up on the paranoia. Not sure if you had much coverage of it at home, but here, we were faced with front page articles everyday for the past week, a new video message was released the night before from al quada and, memorial services were to take place all day long in various locations around the city, so we had no chance of getting it out of our minds.
I decided that I'd get off my tube a stop early, as I normally change at kings cross, which happens to be the one that all 4 terrorists boarded, setting off bombs in each direction, so I thought walking would be a safer bet.
I happened to walk out of kings cross station close to 8.50 (the time the first bomb went off at that station a year ago) and 'mrs oblivious' (thanks for pointing that out kev) walked straight into a
Is it a church????
Course not, its a pub, what else!! row of ten thousand or so television cameras and a specially designed walkway for survivors and mourners. I quickly did a u-turn and managed to fight my way through the crowds to get to work on time....where's a phonebox to hide in when you need em! :-) Mick had no such problems as he works miles away from anywhere and heads in the opposite direction to everyone else, so he had a cruisy day like he normally does.
By the way....I take back everything I said about the tube being pleasant....I have since witnessed a teenager punching a middle aged woman for pushing in, a girl in front of me get her head jammed in the door, and a nice bouquet of flowers get their heads chopped off, leaving only the stems due to another fast closing door (actually that one was kinda funny) Its also been so packed that I havent been able to move my arms and whilst I'm face planting the wall......Excellent!!!! :-) Mental note: find a job within walking distance.
Now on a brighter note, London still rocks, and we had a brilliant weekend.
We set off for Covent Garden to explore the markets and check
The good ole tube
How cool is this pic...I should have been a professional photographer hey! out the 'Australia Shop' so I could stock up on tim tams (pass on the vegemite...can live without that) We also took a few wrong turns afterwards and ended up seeing Soho, and Piccadilly Circus, so it was a nice wrong turn!!
Soho is the theatre capital of london (its also the porn capital, every second shop is a porn shop) and is very happening. As is, Picadilly Circus...its not called a 'circus' for nothing, there were people everywhere!!!
We managed to stumble across a very nice church, which as it turns out, had been bought by Aussies and ......restored!
Did they turn it into a shelter for the homeless, I hear you ask?....no......did they turn it into a museum??....no......they did what any kind hearted Aussie would do......they installed a tv screen the size of a tennis court, a huge timber bar, every bottle of booze imagineable and called it the 'walkabout pub'! Apparently Sunday is their busiest day!! :-)
Okay, moving on. We caught the bus down 2hrs South to Portsmouth (Englands answer to a beach) and also caught the ferry across to the lovely Isle of Wight!!!
I havent been to phillip island, but I'm assuming the isle
The Spinnaker Tower
This newly built 'weird looking' construction is supposed to rival the opera house! of Wight would be about the equivalant, only more mediteranean......and no penguins.
We also climbed the brand new Spinnaker Tower at Portsmouth for a nice view of the port.
The weather looked a bit dodgy in the morning but turned into a pearla once again, so we had a lovely day walking up and down the esplanade, and checking out the shops. Everything was so cheap on the island, in comparison to london prices, it was a bargain.
We also ended up catching up with some mates from our Contiki trip at a pub in Piccadilly on Saturday night, so that was good too.
Overall it was another enjoyable weekend (apart from Italy cheating their way to victory.....moving on, cos apart from their great food and beautiful country....we are not their fans at the moment) Also, dont know if its made the papers over there yet, but the reason Zinadan (France's best hope) head butted that guy and got sent off was because the italian guy called him a terrorist......see what I mean about the italians??? Dirty! Play fair boys, or its not a respectable win.
Okay, thats it for now, talked way too much cr*p this time, so til
The view from the Spinnaker Tower
Yes you can take a lift to the top, its 170mtrs tall. The brits were astounded that the lift took just 24secs to go 100mtrs....they obviously dont realise, some people can run faster than that! next time!
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