Day 4 - London, England

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Monday August 21st, 2006
Day 4
London, England

I was up early today; got up at 7:30am had my shower, had my vegemite toast and left the house by 9:00am. I made my way on the DLR then on the Tube to meet Kate, then we we're meeting up with another of her friends at midday at Euston Station.
On the way through, we did the expect; with that I mean: I my photo taken in the red phone box, the photo of the double decker bus and one of the well known tube/underground sign.
We met up with Kate’s friend then had to wait in the station for about 10minutes as it absolutely bucketed down with rain. Welcome to London! haha
When it finally stopped raining, we made our way out for some sightseeing. (On the way I discovered a brilliant store which I already love, it's called 'Boots'. It's kind of like our 'Priceline'. It has everything you want and combines that with a pharmacy. After this we went for sightseeing; First stop: The London Eye.
I didn't actually go on it as I didn't have time, too much else to see, and it takes about 45minutes to do a full rotation in it.
After this, we went to take some photos of Big Ben.
Big Ben was really cool; so amazing to finally see it in person after so many years of seeing it on movies. It was funny to see all the people, like us, taking photos of and with it. I'm sure we got in the way of plenty of locals, interrupted their everyday lives but oh well, that's what you get for living in such an amazing, well known city.
After out photo session with Big Ben, we made our way back on the tube out to Buckingham Palace.
This really was a sight. Seeing the guard standing out the front guarding it, again, like I've always seen on the TV. The stunning fountain out the front was being worked on but we still managed to get some really good photos out the front and of the guards. After this, we made our way over to Hyde Park which is right next to Buckingham Palace.
The entrance to Hyde Park on the Buckingham Palace side is amazing, great big black and gold gates welcoming you into such a grand park.
Inside Hyde park was also amazing, so beautiful.
We walked for a while without a map trying to find the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain and also the Peter Pan Statue. While doing this we came across a lovely bobby who pointed us in the right direction. We got halfway across Hyde Park when it (once again) started pouring with rain so we took shelter in a little cafe on the lake. After the rain calmed a little, we gave up on finding the Peter Pan Statue and the Memorial Fountain and made our way across to the Wellington Arch.
George IV originally commissioned this massive monument as a grand outer entrance to Buckingham Palace. It was completed in 1830 by architect Decimus Burton, and moved to it's present site in 1882. The statue on top is the largest bronze sculpture in Europe, and depicts the angel of peace descending on the chariot of war. After this we moved on to the site of the Australian War Memorial.
On Remembrance Day in 2003 (85 years after it was first suggested) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister of Australia, the Right Honourable John Howard, opened the memorial in Hyde Park that commemorates the service of Australian Service Personnel of two World Wars. There are 24,000 place names on this stunning memorial, a living record of where all Australians who served had enlisted from.
After the war memorial we headed across the park to try and find 'Harrods'. On the way we came across a massive tree which we decided to go under to cut off the corner, only to come out the other side to see a guy sitting on to of the tree, just eating his lunch.
After we found our way out of the Hyde Park we made our way down the street, past Emporio Armani and finally found 'Harrods' Department Store.
Inside Harrods was Amazing! Unfortunately you aren’t allowed to take photos inside but you have to see it in person to understand how beautiful it is anyway.
The grand centrepiece was the Egyptian Escalator; a magnificent £20million homage to ancient Egypt, designed alongside experts from the British Museum for authenticity. There was also a £6million overhaul done during the 1980's,the hair and beauty department was reborn as 'Urban Retreat', Europe’s largest health and beauty salon; £4million was lavished on the 'Cosmetics Hall' to create London's premier beauty destination. Harrods covers 4.5 acres, with over 1million square feet of selling space. It is truly incredible.
After spending quite a bit of time trying on Louis Vuitton sunglasses (crazy, I know), getting sprayed with about 100 different perfumes and sampling a few different lollies we found something to buy that we could afford (just to show that we had been there). After, we our way out of the shop to find our next attraction: Abbey Road.
We took the tube and headed out to Abbey Road for the world known zebra crossing, made famous by The Beatles.
Granted, we did have a very 'blonde moment'; we came up to the zebra crossing and had to ask someone where it was... we were standing at it! Derrr!
It was extremely hard to get a good picture walking across the crossing as it's actually quite a busy road and you feel bad for the cars making them stop solely for the purpose of getting a photo. We did do it a few times and the best photo we could get was one that had someone else in it too. Only to work out that it was also taken from the wrong angle to 'The Beatles' one.
After this we made out way round a few corners to Lords Cricket Ground. Now, crickets not something I'd usually go out of my way for but, for Lords I made an exception.
After, we jumped on a double decker bus, then on to the tube (I stopped off at Krispy Kreme on the way) and I went back to Nick's for dinner.
An early start lay ahead of me tomorrow as I was heading to Rome, Italy. I needed to be at Stanstead Airport by 10:40am for my flight at 12:40pm.

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