Advertisement
Published: August 3rd 2010
Kristy & Jonah
We were quite excited to find Jonah - the only NZer at Madame TussardsWe didn't have a particularly good night. It was quite hot and our room is right next to a road which was busy with traffic all night. During the night we decided to open the curtain and window which cooled things down a bit. Unfortunately in the morning we both woke with an itchy rash! We've decided that tonight we will use our silk sleeping bag liners to counteract the (what we assume) are bed bugs. We're sharing a double bed but we don't think that is causing the heat problems.
No matter. We're in London!
At about 8 we went down for our first English breakfast. Breakfast consisted of a choice of cereal, tea or coffee, orange cordial, a boiled egg, slices of cheese and ham and toast which you make yourself by feeding pieces of bread in the conveyor belt at top and retrieving them from a tray at the bottom. Very cool. It was a very satisfying breakfast. We decided yesterday that we would go to Madame Tussards today so, after breakfast we set out to walk there. I had already bought tickets while I was in NZ and this proved to be really good as we
were able to go through the much faster priority queue. We had a fabulous 3 hours there. We were surprised that all the wax figures are out and can be touched. They are so realistic that, if you bump into one, you are likely to turn and apologise! We got heaps of photos of ourselves with our favorite celebrities and notables. It was quite a surprise seeing the stature of some of the figures which are supposedly true to life. For example, Nelson Mandela is a tall man - taller than me. Kristy had a photo taken of herself with Robert Pattinson - they have photographers set up to take photos of certain popular figures. You get to see them at the end and can decide if you want to buy them or not.
As you leave you all pile into little pretend 'taxis' and are taken through an exhibit of London through the ages. It was really cleverly done and I was quite disappointed that you are taken through rather too fast to get the full benefit. Towards the end of the 'trip' they took a photo of us in our 'taxi'. The end of this ride is
Kristy & Queen Victoria
Kristy thought they got on quite well! the end of your visit to Madame Tussards. We inspected our photos and decided to buy them both. You only get one chance at these things.
We had a fantastic lunch at Nero's which is the cafe attached to Madame Tussards. We had a cheese, basil pesto and tomato panini, a chocolate muffin and a mocha frappe each. Very yummy.
After lunch we walked to the Baker Street station and discovered that we could buy a Travelcard which entitles one to unlimited travel for the day on underground trains and also buses. It cost 5.60 pounds each which is a huge saving over the 4 pounds per ticket that we paid for one ride yesterday.
We bought a Travelcard each and used them to ride the Undergound to Buckingham Palace which was a bit of an anti-climax! I'm not exactly sure what we were expecting but a huge grey building behind a steel fence guarded by mean looking guards with machine guns was a bit disappointing. The only real interest was the Beefeaters who obviously take their job VERY seriously. The locks on the huge gates had me entertained for a while. They were very ornate with
Donna & Nelson Mandela
as fine in wax as in photos. I regret that this is the closest I will ever come to this great man ... lots of cherubs with very detailed little faces. I really liked them and took quite a few photos much to Kristy's disgust.
The queen didn't appear likely to invite us in for tea so we went and sat in Hyde Park for a wee rest and then decided to make our way to London Tower. As we walked from the Tower Bridge underground station to London Tower we found a little shop that sold tickets to the Tower so we stopped and bought some - mindful of how good it was to have advance tickets! The girl advised us that that last guided tour of the day was leaving at 3.30pm - 5 minutes away, so we hurried around and were just in time to join the tour. It was incredible. A lady yeoman (aka Beefeater) regaled us with the history and tales of the Tower for about an hour. Guided tours are very well worth the cost!
After the tour ended at about 4.30 we went to see the Crown Jewels. The thing that most impressed me was the antiquity. A lot of the items on display were from the 1500-1600s. It's hard to comprehend. Obviously the
Queen has no trouble working out her genealogy! We visited a couple more of the towers in the complex where we saw graffitti done by prisoners - some in the 1500s! We also saw the room where Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned and a book he wrote - The History of the World. The doors were quite low - obviously people were a lot shorter then. There was a working porticullis - at 2.5 tons one would not want to be underneath it when it came down. The guide told us that there used to be a moat around the Tower - it was used for defense but also for discharging the Towers effluent into. Twice a day the gates were opened and the Thames flushed the moat. Unfortunately the moat was deeper than the Thames and it became a stinky cesspit. It was filled in about 150 years ago. I chatted to a yeoman for a while. He told me that their uniforms are not exactly the same as they used to be because it was too expensive to make them. They have a cheaper one now but it still looked very smart to me. He did say they
Buckingham Palace
felt a bit sorry for the Queen having to live in this grey, cold looking place were very hot to wear. Kristy took a photo of us talking.
After we got hustled out of the Tower at about 6pm we called in at a souvenir shop where I bought a book about the Tower. After that went to a nearby Subway for dinner. Kristy declared her Sub to be inferior to those of NZ but I thought it was ok.
At about 8pm we staggered off back to our hotel - once again footsore and very weary but well pleased with our wonderful day.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.123s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 5; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0426s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
