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I’ve just spent 15 minutes in a tunnel under the water on the Eurostar, and out the window I can see rolling French countryside and villages. The Eurostar from London is pretty cool. Almost silent, and only partially deafening as the train goes in and out of tunnels, causing a big change in air pressure. I’m sitting with a bunch of French school kids, but they’re not willing to let me practice my really bad French on them… oh well. Now we’re in France, the train is really picking up speed. 300km/h I believe. I have to say they (might) do it smoother and quieter than the Japanese…
London is a big city, full of very familiar sights, and for the short time I’ve spent here, a pretty good place to visit. I spent most of my time “doing the sights”, but I think it’s something you can’t avoid, particularly on your first visit. Also given that this city is so full of icons, it’s hard to miss them. Buses. Big double-deckered red ones. Lots of them, going to bizarrely named destinations like Tooting Bec or Wapping.. Only outnumbered by taxis, some old, some new, but all the same body
I had to pinch myself
Look! There's Big Ben! style that’s pretty unique to London. Lots of them are now plastered in advertising , which kind of took the image away.
Red phone booths like the ones we used to have in Melbourne are everywhere, which was a surprise in this day and age of mobile phones in the pocket of every ten year old. In Australia, we’ve been pulling public phones out, because the vandalism costs often far outweigh the amount of calls used by them. Here there’s three in a row, and if you look down the street, there’s another 4 in sight.
London didn’t make me go Wow too often, but I enjoyed the city. The weather was also uncharacteristically nice, about 25 degrees each day. I had to pinch myself and smile a few times though, such as when I saw the Tower bridge in the distance on the first night. I had to waste most of one day attending to some administrivia on the computer, which was a bugger, and catching a cold on the first day didn’t help either. (Must be swine flu…) As a result of the nice weather, none of the numerous galleries and museums
London Eye
Shortly after this I discovered that the tube shuts down *really* early for such a big city... were graced with my presence, apart from the Tate Modern for a short time. They’ll have to wait.
I went to see the play “As you like it” at the Globe Theatre, along with Ioana, Mischa and Casey, who were all from the Scotland trip. The Globe is a recreation of the theatre built for Shakespearean plays from about the 1600s. It’s a great place to see a play, apart from the sore bum you get from two hours sitting on wooden seats. Mind you, the really cheap tickets are having to stand for all that time at the foot of the stage. Definitely worth organizing yourself to see a play there.
On Wednesday I caught up with JP from the Japan trip at Trafalgar Square, and we had a mini photographic tour around Westminster, and we even sat through some of the ramblings of the backbenchers of the House of Representatives inside Parliament house. No pictures of that one though. We had to leave cameras, water, maps, everything in storage before we could enter the gallery. Nice room though! Pollies sure can crap on about nothing much in their ten allocated minutes. After
that, we visited the Winston Churchill museum, and the Cabinet War Rooms. This is a series of underground bunkers that was built during WW2, and was the place that Winston Churchill and his ministry conducted the war, with the safety of a metre or more of reinforced concrete above them . On the walls are maps that were full of pinholes that they used to show where the shipping convoys were at any time. After peace was declared, the lights were turned off and the rooms were locked and left as they were. Well worth a visit.
That night, JP and I met Jennie, also from the Japan tour, and her boyfriend , and we went to Nobu for a Japan Tour reunion. Nobu was a top rated Japanese restaurant, and it didn’t disappoint. I can’t say it was anything like any of the meals that I had while I was in Japan, but then I had such a wide variety of meals there too. I stayed on the floor in Jennie’s loungeroom for two nights while I was in London. Many, many thanks, Jen, and her flatmate Vicki for putting up with me!
Keeping an eye on the time
Two things London is famous for... I also managed to catch up with my cousin-in-law(!) Marnie and her boyfriend Dan for an evening meal in one of their local pubs. I haven’t seen Marnie for a few years, so it was good to catch up on what she’d been up to.
That day, I also made it down to Greenwich by ferry, which was a relaxing way to spend the day. It’s not far out of London, being served by buses and rail too. I visited the Royal Observatory there, which was pretty cool. It was primarily set up a few hundred years ago to map the stars, in an effort to provide navigation references for sailors way back when GPS was unheard of… It also became the home for the UK’s time reference, and is the time reference I use on a daily basis at work; GMT. In more recent years, it became the point for zero degrees of Longitude. There is a line in the ground and on the wall that you can stand over, and be in the Western and Eastern hemispheres of the world simultaneously. A popular point for photos… I wish I’d had more time in Greenwich. There’s
a maritime museum there too which I didn’t get to see, but wish I had.
London had a great mix of architecture and style. My time there felt very short, due in part to having to waste a day on the computer, and feeling crap with a cold. Thanks to Ioana for dragging me around St Paul’s cathedral, the Tate, and the Globe. I would have vegged at the hostel and missed heaps if it wasn’t for your shorter-than-mine deadline.
There’s lots of museums, districts and markets to see and do next time I visit, when I’m sure the weather will be far more normal; grey and wet.
Looking forward to it.
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Ann Sanders
non-member comment
Better than Japan??
Hi Paul. Trainspotter trivia... when U.K. & France built the Chunnel, they didn't meet at the designated point under the English channel! Better than Japan you say? Impossible! Love watching the orange striped shirt touring the world. My movie of the Fish Market has the same shirt in it. Awesome you met up with J.P. & Jenny; I'm so jealous. Which Nobu was J.P. more excited about? Skip T.O. & come west. Waterton, Banff and the Icefields are brilliant. Happy trails, Ann