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Published: March 23rd 2011
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Next place to visit, the nation's capital!
I departed Bath railway station on Sunday morning, had to catch a bus to Swindon as they were doing trackwork. Then I had to wait 30 minutes at Swindon station for the train to London Paddington, interestingly enough at the station cafe they had pokie machines; for those commuters that plan on betting before the trip to work, here I thought a book was good enough!
I pulled into Paddington approaching midday, bloody freezing at this time... and all the train travelers were packed in like sardines as everyone makes there way down to the underground.
My accommodation was on Oxford St, a youth hostel - YHA, the room was what you would expect for £100 for 2 nights. The curtains didn't really fulfill their duties by providing darkness, the shower drain didn't soak up the water so everything on the floor drowned, a lovely buzzing noise to go to sleep to and the power points stopped working! Oh, and the person in the room next to me knocked on my door at 9:30am on Monday to tell me to shut up because I was on the phone, haha it's 9:30
get over it! The hostel staff were lovely, we had some great chats, though some were hopeless and didn't really offer any help on directions or what to see and do. Had a few brief, very brief, conversations with some German tourists in the hostel dining room simply because we couldn't understand each other.
I decided to do a river walk on Sunday, from Oxford St down alongside the river, past Big Ben at Westminster Pier and down past London Bridge and back again on the other side. I took heaps of snaps, seeing all the touristy icons; Big Ben, St Paul's Cathedral, Marble Arch, London Bridge, Trafalgar Square, The National Museum... and the others! Picked up a take-away pizza from Pizza Express for dinner and brought it back to YHA. The kitchen staff there obviously were plotting how they were going to make my pizza experience somewhat difficult... they didn't slice it, was just one huge pizza! Was quite an achievement, with saucy hands and bits of pizza all over the place; there was none left! By the time Sunday came to an end my feet were ready to fall off, well earned sleep that night!
Monday,
a day of a bit less walking, only a bit though! Bought an open-top double-decker bus ticket, that goes hand in hand with a complimentary river cruise too. The 3 hour return ferry trip was great, the on-board tour guides were so helpful and made the cruise very engaging. So I headed down stream to Greenwich, significant for its 0 degree latitude, it's used to co-ordinate universal time. The town itself is beautiful, the buildings are amazing and the Greenwich park was great for one to sit down and take in the distant views of central London. Took a ride around the town on the bus in the late afternoon and again, like the river cruise the tour guides were amazing, they even had a laugh!
All the stars, past and present were shining even despite the huge cloud cover over the city. Shook hands with Shane Warne, rubbed Shrek's belly and even saw Obama in the Oval Office. Of coarse, final day Tuesday I visited Madame Tussauds, London's wax museum on Baker Street. I loved the museum, well worth the entry fee and definitely a must do on a trip to London. As I'm a solo traveller, I
had to ask a few tourists to take a photo of me with my camera... a few communication differences were apparent when I got this Austrian tourist to take a picture of me and the Queen, told her to press the button hard...
"Hard?"
"Yes, Hard."
"... err, Hard?"
"Push!"
... a confused look was what remained on the poor woman's face. To cut a long story short, I didn't get a photo with the Queen.
I picked up a new travel adaptor too, one I can use on Contiki so is useable throughout Europe. It took a while to find one surprisingly enough, tested it out just now and it works fine - despite the box having plenty of spelling errors (USE IS AFRACA) and was also a grammatical nightmare!
The London underground was my best friend today, used it to get everywhere, not sure if it was its convenience or my sore feet giving in! Picked up an all day pass for £6 and I used it to the max! Alighted at north London in Camden town, had a squizz around The Camden Markets, it was definitely a different atmosphere to Central London with plenty of
hippies and people in fuzzy jumpers. Held back from spending any money, and even more so on these beautiful jumpers that the markets had a huge range of!
Headed back to Oxford St to sit in Hyde Park and read the newspaper (apparently I bought the wrong paper, suitable if I was over the age of 70 so my cousin says). The park is huge, absolutely enormous, had such a relaxing vibe to it with people playing football (soccer) and plenty of other people reading a book or ... The Daily Mail!
It's nice to see the gay community is vastly accepted here in the UK, particularly in London with a number of same-sex couples holding hands down the street without anyone caring. Australia is just a few years behind, being below the equator and all!
Got my kid on too, visiting Hamleys on Oxford St, one of the world's largest toy stores. With 7 levels to the building, visitors aren't short of something to do! Had a bit of fun roaming around the Lego section, and the remote controlled planes too... an hour later I decided to leave.
For the weather, the weather was great...
cloudy most of the time, none of the wet stuff and a fair bit of sunshine. Not enough though to get me on the London Eye unfortunately. Days hit temps of 13, lows of 2 overnight and dare I say it... I'm starting to like this cold weather!
Caught a late train back to Bath this evening where my aunty and cousin came to pick me up!
Oh, and I hate pigeons... they are EVERYWHERE.
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