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Published: April 22nd 2007
First of all - an apology for the delay in getting these blogs up. As you've probably worked out by now, by the time an entry gets up, we've moved on (we're probably about a month behind in general). But just to say we really appreciate all the comments you leave, as it reassures us that you are interested and care! Of course we haven't replied to one of them, but don't let that put you off! We're reading them, and are checking regularly for them!
Back to our travels... we had 3 flights between Cusco and our next stop, London. The flights were much better spaced than our previous 3 flight-combos, but it wasn't all to go smoothly at all. Cusco-Lima - no problems. Lima airport (who by the way like to charge everyone leaving the airport on an international flight a massive $30 USD departure tax - what's with that?!) - first sign of a problem. Our flight to Miami is delayed 2 hours. Don't worry, LAN tell us, everything will be OK. There'll be someone to meet you at Miami and take you to the gate for your connection to London. 2 and a half hours
Westminster Abbey
No flying buttresses visible...later, our plane takes off. En route - LAN staff seem clueless, and don't think we're going to make the flight. What? But we were told... Anyway, there'll be someone waiting for us when we land. Hopes beginning to fade. Miami airport - no one there to meet us, what seems like kilometres of terminal between the arrival gate and baggage, no one at baggage, and 6 or so LAN staff later we have exited the USA officially, are at British Airways check-in (who LAN conveniently bounced us off to), Elle in tears (which I was hoping to use as leverage for an upgrade to business, but not enough time!), no bags, and are getting seats for the next BA flight to London.
Love it! We weren't really surprised when our bags didn't show up at Heathrow. We put in our lost baggage claim, and were reassured by Elle's relatives (who picked us up) and her Gran (who we were staying with) that BA were notorious for losing baggage, and that there had been stuff in the media about it recently. After a tumultous day of travelling though, it was good to see friendly faces on the other side
Watching London go by...
The Horse Guard's Parade (Elle's aunt and uncle Caroline and Steve) to get us out of Heathrow (which I don't really like at all) as quickly as possible, and about an hour later we pulled into a dainty little cottage in Epsom, Surrey, where Elle's Gran lives.
Now my English geography was terrible before our time there, but I'm glad to say it's got a little better since then, after driving through a good deal of the country with my lovely wife navigating (to come in the next blog). Can I just say at this point that while she is pretty good at reading a map, that innate sense of direction (which says "I have no idea where we are, but we're going the wrong way") seems unique to males, and is a vital skill, probably the most important even, for finding your way around. Anyway, for all you who are wondering, Surrey is south of the centre of London, about forty minutes by train.
The next few days were very cruisy, which was perfect after all the tourist hassle of our last day in Cusco. We went out to find the cheapest underwear we could, and short of getting the disposable
ones that seem to be made out of some kind of paper, found some nice cotton ones at Wilkinson's (a cheap variety store). We drunk lots of tea (my bladder wondered what had hit it) which was practically on tap, helped ourselves to a fridge overstuffed by a keen Granny with Marks and Spencer food (which I have to say, is one of my favourite shops in England), slept in, met up with Elle's cousins (Becky and Jonathan) who live only down the road, met up with her great aunt, and drunk more tea. Mmmm... tea. It really is the simple things that do it for you.
After a few days being very lazy and shunning the tourist thing, we hopped on a train to London to do a bit of sightseeing. Elle loves her motherland, and was very keen to take me around. First day on the sights - a Marks and Spencer picnic (mmm...) at the lovely St James Park. Westminster Abbey, which we didn't go in, cos it costs money and we were being cheap! Charging to get into a church - what's with that! It is very impressive though, and I especially love the flying
Gran at leisure
The painted hall of the Old Naval College buttresses. Elle and I were having fun doing our own impressions of flying buttresses afterwards as well. Houses of Parliament next - quite overwhelming in their detail and scale (which we saw portrayed in not so much detail by Monet a few weeks later in Paris - very eerie), and I was equally impressed by the number of new Mercedes S-classes scooting around, which I supposed contained politicians of some description. On from there, we walked through Whitehall (not a hall, and not white), a street of government buildings, and passed by the Horse Guard's Parade - three guys dressed up splendidly on horses. They don't seem to do all that much - just stand there and pose for photos. One guard was doing the falling-asleep nods very subtlely. We weren't all that sure what they were guarding either.
A walk through Whitehall takes you to Trafalgar Square, where Nelson's column stands proudly. It's a very nice bit of the city, surrounded by old buildings, with this great column in the middle of it all, a fountain next to it (can't remember the name) and the National Gallery in the background, which was the next stop.
Can I
A well nice place
The chapel of the Old Naval College say how wonderful it is for most of London's museums to be free of charge! It was especially appreciated by the lowly backpacker on a budget. I seriously overbudgeted for London, where we really spent nothing on admissions into cool places. That said, eating is expensive here, and for some reason whenever I come to London I fail to make the conversion from pounds to Aussie dollars, because the numerical value of the prices are so similar in both countries. Coffee in Sydney - $3. Coffee in London - £3 (actually $7.50!)
The National Gallery is full of cool stuff. It has a few of one of Ellie's favourite painters Constable, the famous Fighting Termarine (did I get that right?) by Turner (apparently voted by the English as their favourite painting), and some great French Impressionist works too. My favourite was a big one with a family crowded around a father showing them a pigeon inside a vacuum tube. Not sure what it was called or who painted it...
That night we met up with my cousins, Alan and Amy, over here in the UK working. Alan claims that in some 8 months of being in London he
The Bad Cat
Complete with long hair and random Chinese tourist hasn't seen Big Ben. A terrible tourist. We were treated to Thai, and headed on after to Leicester Square's big Haagen Daaz cafe, where the service is consistently terrible. The ice cream on the other hand, is something else. Yum!
Next day - more sights. We ventured in to London armed with Gran and took a Thames cruise from Westminster Bridge all the way down to Maritime Greenwich, a world heritage listed area. Greenwich is a great place. The painted hall and chapel of the Old Royal Naval College are stunning. There is the National Maritime Museum, with amongst other things amazing scale models of passenger cruise liners. A great place for boys! A walk up a steep hill (we'd had quite enough of walking against gravity after Peru... oh well) and there's the Royal Observatory, home of Greenwich mean time. After a little while we worked out what that actually meant, and had great fun standing on the mean time line. The celebrations were dampened a little by the fact that British summer time put us out of mean time by about an hour. That night - more cousin hook-ups! My cousin Bec and her fiancee Cam made
More cousins...
This time Elle's - Lizzy and Katie us a lovely meal, and we talked about cricket and the family goss.
Our last day of London sightseeing took us to the Tate Modern in the morning (quite a remarkably ugly building, although the great brick chimney stretching out of nowhere is fun). I enjoyed the Pollocks, but most of the stuff there had Elle and I going "OK... not sure what you were getting at there... or what you were on at the time..." The real reason we went was to go on the big metal slippery dips they had constructed there in the big hallway, and were bummed that we were about a week too late! From the Tate we crossed the Milennium bridge (apparently closed a day after it was opened, as it was swaying too much in the wind) and made it to Picadilly Circus, where we met up with one of our friends, Dave George, better known as the Bad Cat. From there we hightailed it to the Natural History Museum, and wowed at their collection of stuffed animals. The birds in particular were very cool. Elle had a very fun time, revisiting a place full of memory. We loved the diplodoccus in the main hall, and were a little disappointed that the blue whale model was closed for refurbishment. That night we had dinner with some more of Elle's relatives (it was a very social week!) - her uncle and aunty Clive and Sue and cousins Lizzy and Katie.
I spent most of the next day getting to Heathrow on public transport, to pick up our Budget car, in which we would tour the rest of England. Train to Waterloo... connection to Picadilly Circus... what seemed like forever on the Picadilly Line to Heathrow... which terminal? I took a gamble at terminal 4... Budget counter closed - take a shuttle bus... Starbucks Caramel Macchiato (not like a macchiato at all, but much appreciated anyhow)... shuttle bus eventually showed up. I needed more ID than just my Aussie driver's license, and not having brought my passport of International Driver's License with me I was glad to dig up a copy of our marriage certificate in my bag, which we had thoughtfully packed back in Sydney! Anyway, I got the keys to the zippy Ford Fiesta, and zipped about a half a kilometre before getting stuck in afternoon greater London traffic, barely moving through London's infamous M25 ring road. There was lots of radio-channel surfing during the 2 hours back to Epsom, but I made it! I was especially nervous because I declined the option to pay for daily insurance to reduce to excess from £500 to £100. Anyway, back in Epsom Ellie was a bit concerned I was late (good, caring wife!), but had Gran to reassure her I'd be OK. Bags into the boot, bye to Granny (who was amazing in putting us up and feeding us for the week, saving us lots of pounds!), and we were off motoring around England.
Oh... by the way, our bags were delivered to Gran's door (actually her neighbour's door!) a few days after we arrived, in very good condition. Thanks BA! Don't know what the critics were talking about. No thanks to LAN!
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Kit
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How fun - sounds like you had a nice time in the motherland - can't believe the blue whale exhibition was out of action - my favourite bit!! am in india atm so thanks for the company on the blogs!! stay safe in egypt - don't leave each other alone!! love xx kit