Hi All,
Raining again. Very Melbourne like with the weather. It is foolish to leave without a hat, coat and umbrella as the seasons change throughout the day. It rained in the morning and stayed overcast during the day and was cool but had the sky cleared it would have been hot. Vanessa did not bring her coat and was cool all day as it felt more like autumn than summer.
Downtown London people are slobs. We were thinking Australians were slobs after being in EU Europe for a few months until we hit London and then we realised that the influence must have come from the mother country. Unflattering tights, tracksuits, T-shirts, thongs and even ugg boots are not rare on the streets and they are not tourists. Anything that they can scoop off the floor it seems. Colour matching. Not likely.
Review written by two people who have been alternating between two sets of fashionable wearing clothes for almost 12 months.
It was hard going down Oxford street today. Chaos. There is a tube (metro) strike for 3 days and many people were just walking to work. Many didn’t seem to know the city but only how to get to their offices from the closest metro station and the footpaths were packed.
We had lunch in Grosvenor park across from the USA embassy and found a free wifi signal. The only problem was that the signal was weak and I was walking around near the embassy with the laptop in my hand, headphones on chatting away to my father. Guess that would have alerted the secret service. They probably took my image and identified me while I was walking around…
We looked around the Portrait gallery which was alright and then went back to the British Museum to visit a section that we neglected last time only to get booted out an hour into our visit as it was closing. We barely got to the medieval section as we were side tracked on the cool old clocks but one question that I had was answered. How did Christianity get to England? A roman missionary arrived in 597 to spread the word.
We try and walk down different streets and places each day. Sometime we say it to disguise that we have just gotten lost but it reveals surprises. This time we intended to walk through Regent park. The first surprise is that some of it is a private park and has a key lock for residents only. The rest is public access and is beautiful. There was a section with every rose variety that I had heard of and more and there would have been thousands of roses in a well laid out garden. We found a squirrel to amuse us for a while before heading along the park to the playing fields and watching some sub average touch football but I guess that they don’t get much time to practice with all the rain that London has been having.
Today
as the weather was clearing revealing some almost forgotten blue skies.
We walked through hyde park again. It is a pleasant walk. All big cities need a large green centre piece; large enough to hide the buildings; a piece of the country to relax and forget the nearby frenetic pace. London does it well and for me it has the feeling of a very large traditional Spanish house with the city buildings as the house walls and the park in the middle as the courtyard. It gives good balance.
So we walked. The sun was shining brightly and yet the air was cool and had only a hint of warmth so we were quite surprised to see not one but two or three pairs of great tits bouncing around in the park . David was rather captivated by them and even tried to photograph a pair or two. It has been said that when the great tits are out in Hyde Park spring has sprung. You might be interested to know that there were other birds at the seed feeders as well.
Science Museum
What a fantastic display. London is truly the best city we have been for museums and galleries and we still haven’t run out yet. This one is truly the domain of the geek and we revelled in exploring it for hours and hours. Sure the interactive parts were probably for kids but that didn’t stop us jumping in and having fun.
I really like the information cards that give an explanation against the items. I found out that both IBM and Toyota grew from automated weaving machine companies. IBM from the pattern card readers and Toyota from the first automatic shuttle loader.
We wandered again in Hyde park and stopped for dinner on the grass under a couple of trees. It wasn’t long before we had a visit from the resident squirrels who I hand fed ginger nut biscuits and a apple core.
Bye,
David and Vanessa
