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Atteeeeennntion!!
How these guys do it I don't know. This guard was defending the Crown Jewels.Roho: Brrrr!
Rich: Yes, lesson learnt.
Roho: Get bigger backpacks?
Rich: You should never underestimate how hot or cold it can be in London...as we found out at the weekend.
Roho: I never underestimated the weather...hello, who's my Daddy? I overestimated the capacity of my backpack for more than one jersey! So why don't you start with Saturday...?
Rich: Our first stop was the Tower of London. This was to be a whirlwind tour, as time was against us with so much to see. The Crown Jewels were absolutely phenomenal and were worth the nearly 60% off it cost us to get in, as Rohani will explain.
Roho: Roho's Top Travelling Tip Number One - bugger getting someone who knows the place to show you around. Get someone WITH A DISABILITY who knows the place to show you around. Lisa and Terence got our Tower of London tickets for us, as being deaf the price drops from £16.50 each to £14 for one deaf person and their 'carer' gets in free. So we then had to decide who got to be the deaf person for the ticket tearers...as Richard has had a lot more practice
London Bridge
Doesn't look like it's falling down to me?? pretending to be deaf, he put his hand up...and I interpreted that as a sign. He he.
Rich: What? ....... See? Practice makes perfect!
Roho: The tower really was awesome, I saw all those famous bits, the Traitor's Gate, the tower where they found the two little murdered Princes and I stood (for quite some time) at the spot where the aristocrats had the dignity of being beheaded away from the public eye - I felt like a bit of a trainspotter for knowing all the names, not just Anne Boleyn's! Unfortunately you couldn't go into the chapel where those half dozen people are all buried, that would've been freaking choice.
Rich: To be honest, all that history crap means nothing to me. To me, it was just a nice old building with carvings in the walls that meant something to someone at some stage.
Roho: How can that stuff not give you the shivers? Those things were carved into those walls as long as 600 years ago by people incarcerated, persecuted and tortured for everything or nothing at all! Doesn't it give you the shits to stand where extraordinarily famous historical figures were executed?!?!
Big Ben
We love their pies!! Rich: Don't get me wrong...I'm not saying it's not important, I was just more thinking about what we were going to have for lunch that day, that's all.
Roho: I'm not saying it IS important...just that it's pretty freaky to touch something so OLD...before that the oldest thing I'd touched was like, Nana....but anyway. After the Tower we made for Westminster and the London Eye. A couple of the lines on the tube were closed so that made things a bit interesting.
Rich: Being that it was the middle of a long weekend, the queues for the London Eye and Westminster Abbey were horrendous, so we took some pretty pictures from the outside and decided to go back during the week when we're back in London in August.
Roho: And we'll hopefully get 'deaf discount' for the London Eye too!
Rich: What? Sorry, just practicing.
Roho: We make a great team.
Rich: We walked past Downing Street, which is now gated off to the public, through some building which we don't know the name of where there were a couple of horse guards and a parade ground, across to St James's Park. As you'll
Big Ben 2
I never knew there was an inscription underneath the clock face?? see from the pictures, there are some great facilities in the park, which you have to pay for, but we snuck a quick picture then made a scamper towards Buckingham Palace. I call it a deaf discount!
Roho: Of course we had to stop for ice cream too. As I had my English soft serve I thought about how I recently learned somewhere that Margaret Thatcher was part of the team of food technologists and scientists who developed soft serve ice cream. For real. As we reached the palace Lisa left her ice cream stick on a lamp post. We thought that was shocking till we noticed there are no bloody rubbish bins around the palace. This is apparently how paranoid they are about bombs. They would rather send people round every evening to pick up litter than risk an exploding bin.
Rich: The Queen was in residence and I looked through every window I could. But I couldn't spot her, even with my long zoom lens. Buckingham Palace and its surrounds are amazing, with the fountain and sculptures and the gates of the palace. It almost makes me want to live there. Then when I'm in residence,
Comparing eyes
London's was bigger...... instead of raising the Union Jack I would raise an All Blacks flag!
Roho: You're getting ahead of yourself...more on the All Blacks soon. After visiting Aunty Lizzie we trotted off to Victoria station so Lisa could show us where our bus to Paris will be on Tuesday morning. Then we went to Borough Market, oh yes yes. For a place set to close an hour after we got there it was absolutely heaving. Richard hated it. But I have never tasted so much divine cheese in my life.
Rich: I didn't hate it, I actually thought it was quite good, just all the people made it impossible to get anywhere and taste anything and actually enjoy it. In fact I'm quite looking forward to heading back there when we get back in August. So hah!
Roho: Whatever. I can't stop thinking about that Caerphilly and that Parmesan...omg....
Rich: Then upon good instructions we trotted down the George Inn on Borough High Street. And I have to commend Rohani. Not only did she drink a beer, but she decided to have a local brew, which did not look at all appealing while it was being poured.
Westminster Abbey
Just look at the lines..... It was like the lines at the pork bun caravan at the Otara Markets. In fact it looked a little like stew.
Roho: It was the George Inn Ale, it was only a half pint, I was hot, tired and thirsty (my criteria for any beer drinking) and yes, it was flat! But not warm. I finished it by the time my friend Myfi arrived and moved on to an Argentinian Viognier - yes, I know, but it was 'buy two glasses of the wine of the month and get the rest of the bottle free'! It was great to see Myfi and have a gossip, I'm glad she came out to meet us.
Rich: The courtyard had a great atmosphere and is obviously very popular with the locals. The three pints were almost the highlight of my day.
Roho: What WAS the highlight of your day?
Rich: The fourth pint!
Roho: Yeah, your gout says so too.
Rich: On Sunday Terence and Lisa drove us up to Leicester after Rohani stumbled upon a Classic All Blacks game being played there.
Roho: You make it sound like I was lurching about the English countryside...
Rich: Can I finish? Rohani picked up the latest TNT magazine and
St James's Park
You have to pay to sit on these loungers..... we took this photo then split quick smart!!! saw an ad for this game. I do wish she'd stumbled on some other rugby action, which I'll explain later.
Roho: TNT Magazine is a free weekly for the antipodeans here. Lisa has a huge stack of them.
Rich: I don't know why she keeps them.
Roho: So mugs like us can find rugby games when we visit?
Rich: Leicester is a two and a half hour drive up the M25 onto the M1 and according to road signs there will be delays until December 2008 and if they're anything like the delays we encountered on a Sunday morning, then God help the motoring public of England.
Roho: But we got there. It was raining. There was rain. And wind. And cold. And prebooked tickets for the standing uncovered section.
Rich: Yes, OK. So my money saving attempt on this occasion was not a good one. But we got covered seats in the end and we settled in to watch the Classic All Blacks take on the Leicester Tigers. The CABs featured players such as Carlos Spencer, Carl Hayman. Troy Flavell, Josh Blackie, Lome Fa'atau and Isa Nacewa.
Roho: And Justin Marshall.
Buckingham Palace
This is me showing some respect outside the great palace, and for the record that is my sister in the background. Rich: Not that it matters, but just for the record, the score was 41-26 to the CABs, although Leicester scored some good tries too, which the crowd went absolutely mad over. All in all it was a game of two halves and rugby was the winner on the day, as Sean Fitzpatrick, manager of the side, would've said.
Roho: And I touched Isa Nacewa's bottom. Sort of.
Rich: That may be the case, but you still came home with me.
Roho: Yeah well his Missus was there...
Rich: I think that was his sister...
Roho: Let me have my moment...
Rich: Tomorrow (Tuesday) we spend 8 hours on a bus travelling to Paris, where on Wednesday we start the whole reason of our trip.
Roho: Yeah, Kartina, Nadiah, Lisa...all just incidental.
Rich: You know what I mean.
Roho: You mean the Busabout bit. In two days we'll be in Belgium - weird.
Rich: And I'm sure we'll be stopping in every chocolate shop you can find.
Roho: Are you kidding? I'm still buzzing over going to Tesco today!
Rich: Oh how you bring me so much joy.
The George Inn
A great place for a beer, and although we didn't eat, the food looked really good! Roho: OK everyone's bored now, let's get some photos up.
Rich: We'll chat in a few days from some other country where we don't understand the language.
Roho: I understand cheese. Well it's been fantastic staying with Lisa and Terence, they've been wonderful hosts. And it's been really really good catching up with friends and chatting with those we couldn't see.
Rich: Hope everything is well back home.
Love Rich and Roho
xx
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The R and R Show
Rohani & Richard
So about the other rugby stuff...
When we got home from Leicester we checked some NZ news sites to see if they reported the game - of course not, there was much better rugby to talk about...the London Sevens at Twickenham. Yes, we feel like twats for missing that one but we still had a great time.