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Published: October 23rd 2009
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Heading to london :
Began with reading (in the flight) about the heated debate on reducing the maximum limit of 24 week within which abortions are legal. This is pretty strange… why would women want to abort their 6 month old baby ! even more astonishing were the surveys that were conducted in this regard which indicated over 2 lac abortions p a in UK …. Out of which most women had had over 4 abortions… some upto a staggering 8 times. crazy !
Plus there was a write up on woody allen’s new movie Vicky cristina Barcelona which was being show cased at cannes (damn! Why didn’t I plan cannes) - looks like a pretty good movie- marked into my wish list
Touristy stuff: Seeing the sights !!!
The 1st 2 days we bored ourselves running around London bridge, Tower bridge, HMS Belfast, Westminster Abbey, Big ben, Trafalgar Chowk, National Gallery, ScienceMuseum, Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace la la la …. The issue was that after the splendid italy (venice, roma, vatican) and up country england (warwick, stratford, solihull), the architecture of London looked extremely plain & highly overrated
! Nothing compared to the beautiful piazzas, basilicas & churches in italy ! the fashion sense was absolutely ordinary compared to the sexy couture in athens ! So we did it to avoid people yelling shockingly "you didnt see the buckingham palace!!!"
So we moved our attention to the ’brighter’ side…
Great relief and in fact a boost in enthusiasm watching the energy, vibe at Leicester square, oxford street, Wembley stadium (so what if we didn’t get the tickets) etc ! I was in awe of London all my life and the vibe brought the awe back in me !!!
Stand up Comedy at Leicester square ~
A 1st for me- by a funny chap called Inkey Jones - making digs and anything & everything in the world !! from countries to people specific to the advertising world to child molesting - anything & everything ! must say it would be great to be a comedian ! screw all the diplomacy, speak your mind & make people laugh ! a nice weightless mind ….aaaaaaah ! Hilarious & poora paisa vasool
We walked through some interesting street performers, china town & settled at scotch steak house
for some good steak.
Pubs & Guinness beer ~ If U’ve come to England, you gotta go to an english pub! If you’re in an english pub, you gotta try the guinness beer !!
Football ~ The chelsea v/s manchester united match created quite a frenzy in the country ... (we watched in a pub at victoria).., Headlines next day: chelsea fans in a london riot !
London in the earlier centuries~ Now if you’ve been to the "London dungeon", or even watched Sweeney Todd the movie, you will get a peep into the London’s dark murky past. In the dark dingy "London Dungeon", The Tusauds group created an innovative & out of the box experience by recreating the horrors of Sweeney Todd, Jack the Ripper, the London Fire. Along with that, there are "live" ghosts whizzing across the rooms, sudden screams, shouts and all the special effects jazz. (By live ghosts I mean live actors acting like ghosts!). It could be frightening to some and definitely entertaining to all. A similar experience is created by the same group in Madame Tussauds and WarwickCastle (at Warwick).
Talking of Madame Tussauds, probably the scary effect was to
be carried forward by the celebrity wax statues too ! Travolta, lopez, and the whole bollywood gang looked like dead bodies pulled out of the graves and painted with plastic !!!! I’m serious !
But hey, it was fun overall. SO WHAT if I’d to que up for 1.5 hour and so what if the mad rush from around the world was real crazy, Tom Cruise looked really good & so does the snap of me with him 😉
Wimbledon stadium ~ we did spend half a day around various courts, the bbc broadcast room, press room, and the museum full of interesting stuff like sharapova’s gold shoes to federers shorts !!
Aur bhi ~
~ Most of the buildings had a familiar air of colaba …. "felt like home’ should I say?
~ The famous rains: Yes !! it did rain ! and I may I mention again how much I love the rains !
~ Moving around in the city : The underground : super efficient ! Breathable - with air conditions (unlike paris!) and waiting period not more than a minute or two ! every place is connected. And one very beneficial
thing is all the metros/ underground trains in Europe are connected with the major airports. Take a 7 pound day pass and travel all day by bus/tube/southern trains etc
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