London Calling

So I’ve found some similarities between London and Barcelona; We stayed a week in each; we rented an apartment in each (rather than a hotel); I won’t be writing a day by day blog for London (just like Barcelona), and; that’s it. Ok they’re not similar at all, but it was a good starting point to explain the format of this post! So it will cover days 46 to 53, touch on the main sites and experiences. (the post is being written on route from Newcastle to Amsterdam via ferry so if the pictures look a little green, it is simply a reflection of the authors current feelings!)

Our Apartment

Knowing that we had 8 nights in London Katrina managed to book us a studio apartment for the week which is always nice to break up the site of hotel after hotel (or heaven forbid another Peace and Love Hostel!). Set on two, tiny, floors with a double bed and ensuite downstairs, a kitchenette and 2 seater lounge and TV upstairs. It was small, but well heated and centrally located a 5 minute walk from Swiss Cottage Tube station (in Camden Town). One criticism was the noise, with common plumping through all the tiny apartments and paper thin front doors, everytime someone had a shower, used the toilet, used their front door, or the front door of the building, it sounded like they were right there with you! It was contained in what is the Hollywood stereo type London building which was a nice touch for us tourists!

Our 'home' in Camden

London Tower

Lonely Planet will tell you that if you pay (lots of big London sites are free!) for only one site in London, it should be London Tower. Whilst I personally would disagree with this, it is definitely a great starting point for any visit, and indeed was the jump off point for us. Conveniently within sight of both the Tower and London bridges (Tower Bridge is the one I’m pretty sure most people think is London Bridge, see photos) the London Tower has been the seat of the English Monarchs since being united under one king of England in about 1066 (English friends please feel free to correct). It was originally a fortress, turned execution centre, turned gaol, turned treasury, turned mint, turned safe; turned tourist attraction and safe! So in short it’s had a lot of use. Highlights probably the shit jokes of our tour guide (also a beefeater dude), seeing a small collection of the crown jewels and the ‘boys toys’ armoury complete with interactive displays (favourite being drawing a long bow!).

The white tower, the original and centre of London Tower

Tower bridge and the nanook of the north

The white tower... arty...

Buckingham Palace

Unfortuantely no sign of the ‘old girl’ or ‘Kate and Wills’ however there was some visiting/exiting diplomat type people and a bit of the fanfare associated with them. One of the most noticeable things at the palace, and other royal places for that matter, is the lack of a gifts from Australia. Gifts from New Zealand are everywhere, none from Australia. I don’t know whether I should be proud as a republican, or disappointed that people from around the world miss out on being exposed to our awesomeness by this lack of inclusion… Really the palace is a bit ‘meh’ it’s a fence, a fountain and some dudes in funny hats, but another one off the London tourist list! (And since Kate and Will’s Wedding it was nice to relive the day and see where is all unfolded.)

Some royal shit going on...

Buckingham Palace...

St Jame’s Park (not the good one…)

Between Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey is the large and squirrel over populated park of St Jame’s. While infinitely less impressive than the real St Jame’s Park in Newcastle (home of the Toon), it is a pleasant attraction with a shite load of squirrels, water fowls and my arch nemesis geese! Not much to say, the squirrels are tame…

The park

Westminster Abbey

Home of the coronation ceremonies of the royal family since, well forever, and the oldest and longest continual coronation ceremony in Europe Westminster Abbey is all at once as impressive, and just the same, as all the big gothic cathedrals in Europe. Many monarchs have been baptised, confirmed, married and buried all within this one cathedral, most recently the marriage of Will and Kate. The church is also the home to numerous tombs of not only royals but also others who have deemed to have served the empire. Even more still whilst not actually buried here have memorial plaques, including Chaucer (my nemesis from extension English at high school), Jane Austin (likewise nemesis) and the great Winston Churchill.

Westminster Abbey

Big Ben

At one end of the houses of parliament is ‘Big Ben’ most frequently mistaken for the clock tower. However ‘Big Ben’ actually refers to the replacement bell that was installed after the cracking of the original one in the tower. It’s a clock, it tells the time, it’s a tower, and it’s tall…

The tower that holds big ben...

Shopping on Oxford St

Shopping on Oxford St this close to Christmas is both a blessing and a curse! The Lights are pretty, the atmosphere is buzzing but the crowd is CRAZY! We had our first Topshop/Topman experience and I bought a new jacket to deal with the cold. Aside I’d packed plenty of jumpers however jumpers are really not practical when you are constantly coming in and out of the cold, you need something to zip on/off more easily! We also had our first Primark (Thanks to Felicity’s recommendadtion) experience which was equally if not more so crazy as the street outside. People go absolutely nuts for that shitie, 3 pound shirts/pyjamas/jumpers/anything, just cheap cheap cheap. It’s kind of like a fashionable (but still cheaper) target clothes! My one criticism is the repeatativeness of all the stores, you cannot go more than 2 blocks without another Topshop, or H&M or similar and everything is mainly big chain stores rather than anything unique. Having said that, a day spent on Oxford st you could easily knock over your Christmas shopping with pretty much something for everyone!

Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Gallery

Trafalgar square was buzzing and we scored a beautiful day to wander around. Currently home to one of the Olympic countdown clocks and the monument itself also containing a gift from New Zealand, again the Australian’s obviously absent! Not really much to see other than a few happy snaps and then a wander into the National Portrait Gallery which flanks one side of the square. There is currently a Da Vinci exhibition including the famous Last Supper however we were too late to score tickets to it. We did get a nice view of the supper through the door however! Not being arty types, we are both engineers after all, we did a quick wander, Katrina directing us to a couple of famous Monet’s (pronounced Mo-net, like gangsta for more net) and it was back out to enjoy the rare sunshine!

The man himself, and some other guy on a horse...

The square, a giant lion (possibly Azlan or Jesus) and the National Portrait Gallery

St Peter’s (occupied)

The same afternoon it was off to St Peter’s after Jaide and Rowan (see below) said that it was rad and heaps cooler than Westminster Abby. Out the front (and blocking the exit as we’d later find out) were that lovely bunch of hippies around the world known as the ‘occupy’ movement. These particular hippies are lucky that our capitalist ways have invented such things as thermal sleeping bags and wind proof camping tents as otherwise their protest would be a freezing one. Avoiding the temptation to explain to them that me going to work, (like their fellow Englishmen (and women) going to work, pays their (and their Australian counterparts) welfare payments) we went into the church. Home to the arch-bishop guy of the Anglican church and the centre of said faith, also home to the wedding of Prince Charles and the late Dianna princess of Wales. It is definitely an impressive structure although it had to be re-built after The Blitz and hence is a modern building in an old style. Home of the tombs of all the previous Arch Bishop guys, Trafalgar himself, and numerous other friends of the church and recognised great Brits. More still have remembrance plaques etc, especially in the crypt which runs underground the full length of the building. We did the long climb to the roof top for some impressive views and also experienced the ‘whispering galleries’ on the inside of the dome whereby one person whispering can be heard on the opposite side of the dome, pretty cool. (Katrina along with Jaide think Will and Kate should have got married there instead, but Katrina believes they were trying to not copy due to the stigma associated with Kate being the next Dianna…’its definitely prettier’….)

St Peter's

What a view! London's alright too..

Portobello Road Markets, Notting Hill

After dinner with Kate (see below), she recommended a few weekend markets to check out, the first of which were the Portobello Road Markets in Notting Hill. As this had also been recommended by the Fletch we figured two people couldn’t be wrong! We were not disappointed, a crazy busy ‘antiques’ market but home to beautiful fresh food and other non antique goodies awaited us and we whisked away the afternoon before we knew it. We purchased an antique map amongst some other tourist type things. Katrina also fell in love with a store called ‘All Saints’ which whilst located here is popular elsewhere as well, and purchased her Christmas leggings complete with reindeer. Lunch consisted of a huge Paella for Katrina and I sampled some random Mexican wrap thing.

Portobello rd Markets

Night out in Camden

Being so close to the trendy area of Camden, and so close to Chris’ old local we couldn’t pass up a night out down in Camden town. We even did the travellers thing of ‘saving’ and eating dinner before we went out and had some pre-dinner drinks! Starting at Chris’ local at his recommendation, The Elephant Head, where we were greeted by an absolutely packed bar, Christmas revellers, and punks of Chris’ and Henry Rollins’ generation. It was an eclectic mix of people and a great place for a few beers. Nicely topped off by an ‘old’ DJ spinning 7” vinyl classics! Things kind of went down hill for me from there, we bar hopped our way back towards home, Katrina stopped drinking, I started drinking her share I think. Definitely a happening area but feel much more comfortable there than other places because we weren’t the oldest people out, nor the most under dressed! Thanks Camden, you’re rad!

Drinking at Chris' old local!

Brick Lane and Spittelfield Markets

Another one of Kate’s recommendations was to head out Brick lane markets and once again facebook connected us with Ange who also mentioned Spittelfield while we were there! Lucky really because it was raining on and off and Spittelfield is under cover. More of the same generic wares at Spittelfield and a healthy mix of Vintage clothes at Brick Lane (please don’t get vintage confused with Retro, they are different!) coupled with some awesome ‘ethnic’ (this is not racial, just a wide variety of different cuisenes were present!) food. Including an awesome curry that I proceeded to spill all over my new jacket, much to it’s detriment! We continued our shopping, like we needed anything more to carry, and enjoyed a day out just cruising (and me recovering from Camden!) and met up with Kate for Dinner.

Obviously...

London Eye

The London Eye was an odd one. We knew we needed a nice clear day to enjoy it, but had also been warned off it, and recommended it in equal doses from friends and wellwishers. Our last day in London dawned with clear blue skies and glorious (for England) sunshine so we threw caution to the wind and made for the eye. OK it’s just a giant Ferris wheel, but on the day we had it was truly amazing views, not too time consuming, and a nice way to spend our final morning high above the Thames. I’ll let the pictures do the talking here…

One of my arty views from the Eye

The eye from the ground

Churchill War Rooms

After the London Eye I left Katrina to go get her hair done and headed for the Churchill War Rooms, the underground command centre of Churchill and his War Cabinet during WW2. The story goes that once peace was finally secured in Europe, the war rooms were simply tidied and then locked up. So in theory what you get is the map rooms etc as they were that day in 1945. In truth they have added wax models of people, and a few other more ‘corny’ touches however the exerts of actual transcripts received in the rooms etc make up for this. My personal favourite is the first ever secure telephone line which linked with the White House, housed inside a fake toilet cubicle. The rumour goes that everyone else in the rooms thought it was the only underground flushing toilet in the rooms and therefore was strictly reserved for Churchill, however everytime he entered there he was actually calling the Presdient of the USA. Besides, who shits for that long…

A more recent addition to the War Rooms is the Churchill Museum which chronicles Churchill’s life and has some really cool interactive displays including, and the parents will love this, a real life working type writer! What’s that you may ask, well it’s like analog Microsoft Word… In all seriousness there are some good multimedia touches and I learned a bit I didn’t know about Churchill including his part in planning the infamous (at least for Australian’s) Gallipoli campaign which forced him to resign from the head of the Admirilaty, and the subsequent similar failure to keep Norway free (although he dodged responsibility for this one, and Chamberlin fell partially because of it). All in all a highly rewarding visit to a museum, Katrina would’ve been bored, but her new slightly darker hair looks a treat!

Priscilla Queen of the Desert!

Felicity and Angela were nice enough to shout us tickets to the Priscilla show for Katrina’s birthday, at the Palace theatre, complete with Alf Stewart (let’s face it, does anybody know his real name? I sure don’t!). The show was a good adaptation of the well known and loved Australian movie of the same name. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, but grew a little bit tired of being called a lady (the ‘narrator’ always said welcome, ‘Ladies and Ladies’ or ‘come on girls’). The set was awesome, including an awesome full size bus! Our seats were really high!! The theatre was quite small but seats were practically stacked on top of each other…if you have vertigo issues buy ground floor seats. The night was great especially with our Chinese Dim Sum in China Town enjoyed before the show.

The happy birthday girl! and Alf...

Australians in London

Well it’s true what they say, London is full of Aussies! We had the pleasure of catching up with some of the ones known to us. Dinner with Mark Christopher (formally of Thiess Services) and his wife Vin (sorry if spelt wrong!) was combined with our first catch up with Jaide and Rowan (I think the cold was a bit of a change for the native Cairns residents!). More shopping and a second dinner followed during the week with Jaide and Rowan and it was nice to see some fellow travellers! Then it was school reunion time, myself meeting up with Kate Lewis for dinner both on Friday and Sunday nights after probably close to 10 years after we used to hang out at Dudley! Closely followed by the primary school reunion with Katrina’s friend Tom Clerke and his partner Dilmar. It was awesome to see some familiar (if sometimes nearly forgotten!) faces and share some travel stories with people other than each other. Thanks to you all for making our week in London that bit more comfortable and like home!

Tom, Katrina and I

Kate and I

And that’s a wrap folks, a bit of a long winded wrap at that. It was another adventure in a car and the London countryside which awaited us!

All our Love

M&K