Proper English weather.

Friday 6^th September.

It rained through the night, pavements dried by morning then it rained again. It felt so good to be cool after the heat of the past few days. Found a TV show that gave a weather forecast, expecting 17 degrees today and showers clearing. Nothing that will slow us down. Today’s itinerary includes the Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral. The ground under London must look like Swiss cheese, all these Tube lines running this way and that. We’re getting the hang of it now. One good thing about the rain, I think it’s put a lot of people off being tourists today, something we noticed on a rainy day in Melbourne. Very short lines to buy tickets and get into the Tower grounds and on very good advice, we head to the point where the free tours with a Yeoman Guardsman leave from. Us and 50-60 other people!! No thanks, looks like we’ll figure it out ourselves. Show me the Crown Jewels! That’s what I’m here for. What an amazing collection. To finally see precious stones that you’ve read about is really something. No crowds to speak of, we were able to take our time inspecting the actual crowns, I think we went around 3 times! And as impressive as some of the crowns are, I think my favourite was Queen Victoria’s little crown that you see her wearing in the iconic profile image. It’s so tiny, but sooo sparkly. No photos here, for security reasons, but ................. shame.

We spent several hours exploring and seeing as much as we could, we were lucky enough to see Tower Bridge open as well, but it happens rather quickly, so unless you’re in the right spot, you’d miss it.

After finding some lunch, we consult the map again and head for St Paul’s. By now the showers have just about gone so the walk there is pleasant.

St Paul’s is really special, I could sit in the nave or under the dome for ages, looking at the painted ceilings, the carvings on the pulpit, the mosaics in the Quire and the people walking above us in the “Whispering Gallery”.

St Paul's

The audio guide is interesting and points out details and gives lots of background information. Never one to back down from a challenge, we decide to tackle the stairs to the Stone Gallery and sit in the Whispering Gallery. Too much other noise around to see if a whisper really can be heard across on the other side, but one security guard says another’s name in a fairly normal voice and it carries well to the other side.

The view from the very top of St Paul's

After admiring the view from this point, we head for the stairs that will take us as high as we can possibly go in the Cathedral. No need to do any other exercise today, or probably the rest of the week, so many stairs!!  But the view from the very top makes it all worthwhile. And the London Eye is crossed off our list, we don't need it now. We finish our tour with a visit to the Crypt, to see the final resting places of many fine people, including Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul’s, Wellington and Nelson, British military heroes.

On the HOHO bus, we went past the British Museum, which is on our list, but we see signs for an exhibition of Pompeii and Herculaeneum, so we call in on the way home to see if we need to pre-purchase tickets.  While we’re there we notice there is a 20 min tour and talk about the Rosetta Stone, so hang around and listen. It’s around the replica stone in room 1, and we’ll see the real McCoy when we go back.

Back home and having dinner, legs are nearly falling off – we must have had a good day!

Don’t ask me, I’m not the Tour Guide!

Thursday 5^th September.  

You wouldn’t think we’d been planning this trip for 12 months. I should have every day planned with the optimum amount of sightseeing, all organised by locations etc, etc but I don’t. And I certainly don’t know exactly where we are and which way we should turn at the next corner or what Tube line we need or where the station is. So stop asking me,…. Trevor!! Had a bit of a meltdown this morning, again, considering recent events, not doing too badly.

Houses of Parliament

The Tower of London

We easily catch the Tube to Westminster to hop the river cruise, but as the HOHO bus ticket only covers us to Tower Bridge, we need a ticket from TB to Greenwich, and you can’t buy that at Westminster Pier. So we have to do a quick bolt off the ferry at TB, buy a ticket to Greenwich, and luckily make it back on to the same boat. Again, the weather has been amazing, 30 degrees apparently, certainly not what we were expecting. There’s a bar on board and the sun is over the yard arm, so it’s bottoms up! The crew on board take turns to give a commentary as we go and it’s typical Pommie humour.

Tower Bridge

The Thames tide rises 7 metres in 5 hours and the current is really moving, really obvious where the water rushes around bridge pylons.

Off the boat at Greenwich and it’s definitely lunch time. We find our way past the Cutty Sark and in to town. There’s a sign for the Greenwich markets, and where there’s markets, there’s street food, our favourite. We buy 5 Ethiopean vegetarian sambosas (yes, sambosas) for 2 pound and they’re yummy, but not really enough. Looking for a loo, we find the Horse and Coach pub and get a couple of drinks and a Caesar salad before we tackle the hill up to the Observatory. What a view!! And while we were eating lunch, a cruise ship had snuck in and docked. Out the back of the National Maritime Museum is the biggest ship in a bottle we’ve ever seen, on a plinth that is supposed to house a statue of James Cook. Don’t know what became of Jim, well, his statue anyway. The ship in the bottle is far more interesting I think.

Trust me, it really was huge!

Got a text from Hayden at lunchtime, telling me that we had a message on our answering machine that he had recorded and put on facebook so I could hear it. It was from Tony Abbott, a ‘personal’ call drumming up support for the election. Sorry mate, you’re too late, we voted already. It’s bad enough being bombarded with junk mail, but now they’re starting with phone calls? I think that’s just too invasive.

We find our way to the Docklands Light Rail station to negotiate the trip back to Russell Square to do some grocery shopping at the Brunswick Centre on the way home. There’s a Waitrose supermarket, a chain we’ve never heard of with mostly all their own brands and a wide range of products. It’s a taste of what our supermarkets will be like when Coles and Woolies finally crush all other suppliers and brand names and only sell generic products. Armed with dinners for 2 nights and supplies for breakfasts we cleverly find our way home on foot.

Welcome to London.

Wednesday 4^th September.  

Refreshed and ready for the next challenge, it wasn’t too hard to get back to Heathrow, find the Tube, get tickets and head into London. Our accommodation is right near Kings Cross St Pancras station, so a direct train ride and once we find our way through the construction zone at the station and get our bearings, Judd St is just a block away.

Our apartment is an absolute delight. Bigger than I had expected from the photos on the net, a good sized bedroom, good sized living room, small but functional kitchen and the  bathroom, well, I don’t think you can call it a bathroom …… it’s the one disappointment, but you can’t have everything. It’s crammed in to the funny shaped little space that’s left and the shower is certainly a challenge. Gotta go up 2 steps to get into it, must be an English thing. There’s a pub across the road on the corner, one up the road on the next corner and one around the corner and at the end of the block.

London is having a bit of a heatwave, temperatures in the high 20’s when it was supposed to be the high teens! But I have been reassured that the weather will turn to rubbish by the weekend. While the sun shines we decide to do the Hop-on, Hop-off bus, something we weren’t going to do, but we were still tired and it was hot so it was a worthwhile thing to do without much effort. And it gives us a river cruise as part of the deal which we’ll use tomorrow when we go to Greenwich.

Takeaway pizza for dinner, with a bottle of wine from the off-licence downstairs (how handy is that?) and off to bed. Day 1 in London, officially over.

What a difference a day makes.

Tuesday 3^rd September, 2013.

Who needs an alarm clock when you’ve got ears ‘like a wild horse’? Apparently, a few leaves had collected in the guttering outside our bedroom and made a little dam and the dew that dribbled off our beautiful new roof, backed up and backed up until it pushed it’s way through the dam and ran down the downpipe. Now I guess ordinarily, I wouldn’t have heard it, but I must have been sleeping lightly and I thought the solar hot water had sprung a leak, which would have just topped things off nicely after the events of the past 6 weeks. Anyway, false alarm, no leak, but as we’re awake …….. so our early start turns into a 12.30am start. Not happy Jan.

All goes to plan and we’re checked in and boarding the Emirates behemoth, the bloody big  Airbus, the double decker one, appropriate as we’re going to the home of the double decker bus. There IS more leg room, and wider, comfy seats and when you recline the seat moves forward too, so that makes it more comfortable as well. We had seats 46 A & B from Sydney to Dubai and 43 A & B from Dubai to London. Now that is a very important little piece of information for those who plan everything to the last detail. Why you ask? The 2^nd plane was configured slightly differently but I think the same info applies. The overhead lockers above row 43 and forward were smaller as the front of the plane curves in to the nose, so row 46 and back are the better seats for overhead locker room.

All up though, I think the less said about the flight, the better. The cabin crew Sydney to Dubai were lovely and attentive, but the hot food was barely warm and I wondered if anyone ever got sick eating it. We sat next to a young lady from Tehran returning home after a holiday in Australia with a souvenir  broken arm, so keeping an eye on her and helping her out when she needed it gave me something useful to do. Boy, is her mother in for a surprise! Not unlike the mother of a young guy on the flight, also heading home with an arm he broke the night before the flight. Fell off his skateboard. Ouch! If he’d stayed in Sydney to have it attended to, he would have missed his flight, so he cobbled together a sling and along he came. “Mum, can you pick me up from the airport? And BTW, we need to stop off at the hospital on the way home.”

The foyer of the plane was a very sociable place, people standing around talking and doing their leg stretches and other exercises. I chatted to a couple of people there for quite a while, which certainly beat sitting watching endless movies. There was a very extensive choice of movies, TV shows, music and games on the  personal  in-seat system as well as a USB charging point and access to wi-fi once airborne. (Wi-fi charges apply)

The change-over in Dubai went smoothly enough, but seated on the flight to London, we heard people discussing how Emirates had overbooked the flight by about 20 people and were desperately trying to fob some people off into a hotel for the night. The plane was therefore chockers and there was a very loud ‘discussion’ on the airbridge, between (I assume) passenger/s and Emirates staff. 2 men were shown their seats, they didn’t like them and left the plane, then we heard lots of yelling. We were asked if we’d like to move to the front row on the other side of the plane, an exit row. More leg room etc, etc.  Not likely mate, we picked these seats in January, and after having an exit row once, we vowed we’d never ask for another. So the crew asked the couple behind us. They asked if there were any children near those seats and when it turned out there were, they said no too. Anyway, the men eventually took the seats, all that fuss over getting a window! Grow up! You were damned lucky to even get on the plane!

Dubai airport reminds me very much of Bangkok’s airport. Except for the people. There weren’t any in Dubai, but there were all these planes coming and going. And from what we could see, there’s nothing there to make us want to visit. The air quality looked pretty poor, we could barely see the water when we took off.

My eyes were so dry, it hurt to keep them open. I must buy some eye drops for the trip home. The Hoppa bus from Heathrow to our hotel was terrific, once we found it. The website said bus stop 11, 12 and 13, which was out the back side of the terminal, where all the crew buses left from. Wrong! The Hoppa bus goes from stop 18 near the taxis. Our hotel was one of the first drop offs and our room was ready and waiting. After over 30 hours awake, apart from a few naps, it was sooo good to get into a proper bed.

Zero hour

Monday 2^nd September, 2013.

Tomorrow is the big day, we’re off to Europe. The airport transfer company phoned as they said they would, to tell us what time they would be picking us up, and, as I expected/feared, 2.30am was the designated time. So, early dinner, last minute packing and early bed is the way to go.