Well Hello, London Town

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So this morning we check out, catch a taxi to the train station and bid France farewell.

It’s a huge train station, we check in and go through security and Customs. We finally get our passports stamped again, no stamps when we went to Holland or France, damn them! UK passport control is done here as well. Then we just wait…

Catch Eurostar train to London. It’s a nice train, complete with meals, power points and internet! We go under English Channel - Tim slept through it and was upset that I didn’t wake him up for it, wasn’t anything to see anyway - it was a tunnel! It’s another nice speedy train that goes along at 300kph; my 130kph to Mandurah doesn’t seem as exciting now!

An announcement is made that someone has stolen cable from the train line so our train will be diverted, will be maybe 20 minutes late. At least now we know it doesn’t just happen at home.

Finally get to London, it’s a huge station. Pretty easy to get around it though.

Queue up for ages and get our train tickets for the rest of our stay and then catch train to Green Park Station, hopefully near our hotel.

The underground trains are very old and not air conditioned. It is very warm once your underground, great if your homeless or in winter though.

No escalators at station (that we can find) so have to drag our bags up the last couple of dozen stairs. Too bad if you’re disabled in London! A lovely Chinese guy helps me; the damsel in distress thing is good sometimes. I would have felt bad if Tim had to do both suitcases! Hotel is only 5 minutes walk from station.

Our room has been up-graded (nice!) and won’t be ready for a couple of hours, so armed with a map and Carmen the Garmin we head off to get some lunch.

At least the cars here travel on the same side of the road as us, and at all the pedestrian crossings they have painted on the road with way to look for traffic!

We walk to the Hard Rock Café, there are 2 huge lines, one for the shop and one for the café. I wait in shop line while Tim gets our name down for lunch, they give you a buzzer and when your table comes free they buzz you, the wait is around an hour.

So we have a bit of a hunt through the shop and then head back tot the restaurant. With our All-Access Hard Rock Membership card we get in straight away, we signed up for it last year in Kuala Lumpur - it gets you 10% discount off all food, drink and shop stuff and priority access if there is a queue. It’s a huge restaurant, 2 floors up and 1 floor down and we’re seated downstairs, probably not the best Hard Rock as far as view and ambience go.

Again a great meal though, our waitress is a Canadian from Vancouver who will be travelling for 3 months around Europe in motor home with boyfriend she met in New Zealand and his mother before settling in New Zealand together. She’s been travelling around for the last 2 years and met him at her first stop in New Zealand.

We went for a walk through Hyde Park, surprising the grass was all brown and dead, not how I pictured it would be. There are people sunbaking everywhere, picnicing or playing sport. There’s a lake in the centre with hire row boats and paddle boats. We noticed it was all the women that were rowing the boats while men sat back and enjoyed the ride!

After much hunting (it seemed so simple on the map!) we found Lady Diana’s memorial fountain. It’s a large circular pond with the water flowing and at different depths, from ankle to knee deep. There are loads of people swimming about in it so shoes off and in I go. Surprisingly it’s not freezing cold, it’s quite pleasant. It’s one of the very few places in the whole of Hyde Park that is all beautifully maintained and green.

Tonight we’re off to see Mamma Mia at West End, getting there just in time for it to start as the traffic was busy and the taxi was about walking speed. The show was better than Moulin Rouge and even Tim agrees and has a great time. We sat in the centre of the third row and performance was great (Perth’s was great too, but this had something a little extra) - all the songs were great and the story flowed so even Tim could follow it no problem. All through the show people were singing along quietly (including me!) which Tim thought was hilarious. At the end of the show when they did the encore I got our whole row standing up singing and dancing!

Awesome night!!!!

Go to sleep excited because we’re spending the day with Anna and Jon tomorrow!!!!!!!!

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