Postcards of London

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My first full day here (Thu) Alex and I walked into Uxbridge. It’s not too far, about a 20 min walk. The weather has been a bit warmer in the day compared to Scotland and so it is actually nice to be outside and walking around! Alex showed me where the train station is, which is also the main bus stop. I got an Oyster card. It is a reloadable travel card and gives me a bit of a discount on the fair compared to paying with cash, and it works for the buses and trains. The other nice thing is that if we do more than 7 pounds 50 worth of travel in 1 day it will not charge us any more than that! Alex and I walked to a restaurant that she used to really like called Nando's. I guess it could be considered Portuguese food. The menu had a wide variety of salad, sandwiches, sides, and main courses that you then add your own Peri-Peri sauce to. You order at a cash register, where they also give you your drink and then you pick up the Peri-Peri sauces you want to try and they bring the food to your table. This is not a place we tip since we are not being served but they did have a little tip jar at the register so I dropped my pound and some change that was left over into it. Alex and I both ordered a chicken wrap and mango juice. The juice is not served very cold, maybe slightly cooler than room temperature, Alex says you have to order ice with your drinks here otherwise you probably won’t get any. We walked over to the shelves and picked out a medium, hot, very hot, and herb Peri-Peri sauce. My favorite was the very hot, it was not unbearably hot and had great flavor! After stuffing ourselves we walked to Salisbury, which is the grocery store in town. We walked up almost every aisle just so I could look at everything. They have a few of the same brands but even then the flavors are different. Alex's grandma likes to have a nice dinner and set up the table every night. This night she was planning on making fish and so we picked up fillets of Plaice at the store. I’m not a big fish person but decide that I would give it a try! I did end up eating it and enjoyed it because it was not a very fishy taste and I didn’t stumble upon any little bones! We called a taxi to come get us from the grocery store to take us back and a blue van type thing pulled up. Alex said "this must be our taxi" I was slightly skeptic though because there were no markings saying it was so, but then the driver stepped out and looked at us funny, like why were we not moving!
Friday was an early morning. We got up at 8am. When you make plans to go anywhere you have to give yourself at least (probably better if you do more though) an hour for transportation. We were going to Hampton Court Palace and the gates open at 10. We didn’t actually get there till just after 11 I would guess. It took us 2 bus transfers and just over an hour to get there. The exciting thing for me was the 2nd bus was a double decker and the 2 front seats on the top level were open!! It is very exciting sitting up there you have a great view, it can be a little nerve wracking though because when the bus is turning it always looks like it is going to smash into something! Hampton Court Palace was originally built for Cardinal Wolsey (King Henry VIII right hand man). King Henry VIII later forced Wolsey to give him the castle due to a falling out. After King Henry VIII was given it he decided to add more and so the castle is in 2 completely different architectural styles. It has not been used by the royal families since the 18th century and is now just another place to visit. The entrance fee includes an audio tour guide thing however, Alex and I didn’t end up finding them till we had walked through most of the palace already! See the thing was that there were a lot of groups of school kids at the Palace and when we walked through the first entrance to the Palace there was a large group of them going to the doors to the left (Queen Elizabeth’s quarters) so we decided to go to the right (Young King Henry VIII area). We thought we were being quite clever but it turns out we walked through the whole thing backwards and therefore never got the audio guides! It was ok though we had a great time wondering around. There was of course lots of areas blocked off and most of the rooms were empty except for a few things. I loved the ornately decorated ceilings and there were still many tapestry’s draped about the walls. I’m sure that if we had the audio guides we would have known when they were made and what the scenes depicted but since we didn’t Alex and I made up our own stories which was a lot of fun! The only room I was not allowed to take photos in was the Chapel and of course it had the most beautiful ceiling of them all! Then we went out to the gardens to walk around, there are different sections and in the largest section there was a guy taking small groups of people around on a covered/open carriage type thin being pulled by 2 beautiful shire horses. We decided to go for it and I’m glad we did. We got to learn a bit more about the original gardens and what was left now. All of what King Henry VIII wanted to add were never finished because they ran out of funds so the two halves were just connected and the rest of King Henry VIII design was never completed. They also had to cut costs elsewhere and so All of the original flowers and vegetation that were in the gardens were pulled out and only the trees were left. By doing this they were able to cut the gardening staff by more than half since it didn’t take nearly as much upkeep as was needed before. Unfortunately they are not as immaculate as they were back then but still serene and peaceful. There was also a maze that we ended up finding our way through fairly quickly due to the fact that we would walk the opposite direction of the loud kids running around! After we were done walking through everything we decided to go look for a place to eat. We found a pub just a little ways down and across the river. I had a steak pie and mash! It was really good and I was once again super full 😊 We were walking to the bus stop and saw the bus we wanted was there already, we tried running for it but we had to cross a busy street to get there and didn’t make it in time. It was ok though we only had to wait 10 min for the next one to show up! We got onto the next bus that arrived but it ended up terminating(stopped) before our destination and we didn’t realize until we pulled into a big bus station we also had not realized that we were supposed to have gotten off at the previous stop! Oops, I just played the stupid tourist card haha and they directed us to an area where we could catch another bus. As we were walking through the parked busses a driver was changing his "to" sign to Uxbridge! Great that was where we needed to go! We asked if we could get on and he said no we had to go to the stop which was across a busy street and then about a block down and we had to run for it cause he was pulling out in a min! So we did! We ran for it and made it in time to catch this one! I was having a hard time staying awake after a while on the bus, it was dark and rush hour so we were not moving anywhere fast. I was fighting to keep my eyes open but I know I dozed a bit here and there. After nap time and about three quarters of the way through our ride on this but the final destination changed.... We didn’t know that the new destination was not as far as Uxbridge and it was not until the driver made the announcement "this bus terminates here" that we realized we had to get off again! The bus driver yelled at us for not listening to the announcements and I played the dumb tourist card again and so he gave us a slip that would get us onto the next bus for free! haha Finally the last bus got us to the Uxbridge station and we decided to walk back to her grandmas because I was having trouble keeping my eyes open again 😊 All in all it took us over 2 hours to get back to Alex's grandma's place. Her grandma made pasta for dinner which put the final blow to my fastly fading consciousness and I went to bed shortly after.
Sat, I slept in a bit and then Alex and I walked into the other town near her grandma’s house, Ickenham. We walked through a big park with a pond and fed the ducks and swan with some bread that Alex had brought. Alex took me down a side path, it was muddy and covered in leaves, if you didn’t know the area you would probably walk right past it! The path curved its way around the other side of the pond and then opened up to a large lawn and a huge Manor House. After taking a picture we headed back and then walked to her favorite pub, Couch and Hourses Pub to have a drink and some food. I got a cider called Strongbow, it’s like apple cider beer. We found a table near a fire place and snagged it quickly! We got a few snack type things and ended up hanging out there all day by the fire talking about a bunch of different things, mostly serial killers and other crazy people, wondering about their thought process and the different books, movies and museums dedicated to gruesome people in history. The sun was starting to set and so we headed back before dark since we had to walk through the park again to get back.
Sunday Alex had plans to meet up with her childhood friend Halie. The buses do not run as frequently on Sundays and so we walked into Uxbridge. The trains also have weird schedules on weekends to do any maintenance work and so we had to take 2 trains to get to Putney, where Halie would be waiting for us. She was very nice and talkative, we had a coffee near the river Thames and then we walked to a Spanish restaurant that Halie wanted to try. Alex and her ordered mussels and I figured I would try it... Bad idea! I didn’t like it at all! Had I not been in a public place, in a restaurant with cloth napkins, I probably would have spit it out! However that was not an option and so I swallowed the beggary texture down with a glass of sangria and tried to not think about it! My lunch was really nice after that and I had a few more glasses of sangria since Alex and I were sharing a pitcher. By the end of lunch I was feeling happy! We walked around for a little while and then stopped in a little coffee shop. We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon there before Haile took us back to the train station.
Yesterday(Mon) was a big day as far as seeing the buildings you think of, and see on post cards, when you think London. We took the train into town and walked around Harrods. Alex says that Harrods was the first department store in the world. And it was huge! The building was an entire block around and like 7 floors! Once you were inside you could wonder around the maze of rooms and departments for hours. Even the floor with food there was like 4 different restaurants and all sorts of specialty things. Alex said that their motto used to be "Anything you want, you can get here" she said that if they didn’t have what people wanted they would specially order it in for them from anywhere in the world. The top floor was a world class spa with an area where you could have a perfume made just for you, and this of course was Very Expensive. After that we went to one of Alex's favorite places called The Old Dutch. They do what they call Pancakes. It is very thin pastry that is soft with toppings, similar to a creep but they don’t roll it up, most of it was savory flavors. We picked one veggie and one meaty one to split. They also had a variety of unique beer and I got a Banana one and a Coconut one, Alex got a Strawberry and a mixed berry one. Between the 4 the mixed berry was the best! After that we took the bus over to Westminster. We jumped off once we got to Westminster Abby, we didn’t go in cause it was past their last entrance time. When you walk around to the back of it you come to face The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. The Houses of Parliament is beautiful and spans quite a ways down the river. We walked towards Big Ben which is also quite stunning with all the gold and decorative pieces and then across the river towards the London Eye! The line was massive and the prices were more than what we had seen online so we are going to buy tickets online and go back another time! You can tell you are in the tourist center of London, there are people everywhere and little curio shops as well. We took the walk down along the river and had an ice cream with a Flake in it! Which was absolutely Divine! The ice cream was a lot thicker and creamier and not as sweet as what you get in the states, I loved it! We walked along the river till we got to the Millennium Bridge which I was very excited about! It is the bridge that the Death Eaters destroy in the Harry Potter movie! From the bridge you can see St. Paul’s Cathedral which we walked towards, but didn’t go right up to since we figured it was also closed and so we would go back to that one as well. We continued walking up along the river and headed for Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. Tower of London is a very large castle with a bloody history that we will be going back to as well to do the tour of! We got to Tower Bridge at the perfect time being able to see it in the day light and then as the sun set the lights were turned on and it was really quite beautiful. We hung out there for a while and then decided to continue walking to find a pub for a drink! After our short rest at the pub and an Irish Coffee we made our way back to the train station to get back to Nana's (Alex's grandma, I think it is grandma in Italian since that is where she is originally from) house! We unfortunately had to switch trains twice because the main train line we would have taken back was closed due to a jumper, which they announced over the loudspeaker "the Picadilly line is temporarily closed due to a body being stuck under the train". We decided after our long day yesterday that today would be a lazy day and so we stayed up late watching a movie on TV. Today ended up being perfect for a lazy day because it rained all day long. Now just need to decide what to do tomorrow! 😊

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Comments

[Bill]

Ahhhh, the old stomping grounds! Looks delightful..... Hope you are having a grand time and enjoying everything that the U.K. has to offer. Safe travels my friend!