The
Big Walkabout
Cromwell Road -> Hyde Park -> Oxford
St -> New Bond St. -> Old Bond St. -> Piccadilly St. -> Piccadilly
Market -> Trafalgar Square -> Parliament Square- > Westminster Abbey
-> Big Ben -> Across the Thames -> London Eye -> London Bridge ->
London Tower Bridge -> wander down old streets -> back up old streets and
City Centre -> London Bridge Underground -> Ticket machine -> Train
-> Green Park Station -> Piccadilly Line -> Gloucester Road Station
-> shops and bought dinner -> Cromwell Road and back into hotel room.
Did you read all that? Well done. Because
this huge walk took us from 11am-8:30pm.
So really, we have seen it all pretty much.
From men holding hands to smelly trees, and from being kissed by a squirrel to
seeing the London Eye. And yes, I actually DID get kissed by a squirrel today, believe
it or not. Parci and I were in Hyde Park on
our way to Oxford St,
and we saw a squirrel near the pathway in the bushes. It ran up to Parci and
sniffed him and ran around him a bit. Then another came up to me and when I
held out my hand, it leant forward and sniffed me, then pressed its nose onto
my finger and licked me. Parci got a really good picture of it so I will upload
that later on when the cameras are charged.
After this we went through Oxford again and walked and walked and found
the Piccadilly Markets. There was so much cool stuff there! Jewellery made from
vegetable ivory was something i liked, and another favourite that I wished I
had the money to buy was a zip bag. These were bags that were made entirely of
ONE zip and u could unzip it and then do it up again. I liked a small black one
which was 12pounds and a big green and blue one that cost 20.
Then we got to Trafalgar Square. There wasn't anything
there really. Nothing like what it looks like in Mary Poppins where the old
lady feeds the pigeons. There were no more pigeons there than there was in any
other part of London.
The only significant thing was two fountains. So we took some pix and went on
our way to Big Ben and his fellow landmarks. By this time, we were hungry and
thirsty and getting tired and burnt. But we carried on. And we saw Parliament Square
and Westminster Abbey and then someone told us that the clock was Big Ben. Yes,
we actually had to ask someone if this was Big Ben. I'd imagined it to be
somewhat bigger.And so we crosses a bridge across the Thames
and Saw the ferris wheel, aka, London Eye. The queue was huge and we have not
much money and need money for train ticket and food for tomorrow. So we did not
go on the ferris wheel. We kept walking and walking and walking and reached
some bridges. We were told that the London
Bridge was a lot further
on so we kept walking. And I saw Shakespeares Globe Theatre and realised that
the drawing/model that Lydia
and I made of it in year 10 really did not look much like it. Of course though,
it is different now, due to it being more fire proofed since it burnt down two
or three times and had to be rebuilt.
And we still hadn't seen that damn bridge
so we kept walking. We passed it without noticing it because did I mention
earlier that the tourst attractions here are'nt as big and special as they
seem? And also that nothing is really signposted or labelled. We kept walking
and found a man doing a little puppet show. We sat down and watched it. The
adults enjoyed it more than the kids though, it was very good. The man had a
very dry sense of humour and had made up a funny little story about a man
turning his cows into puppets so he could make money by having lots of milk and
never dying cows, but they didnt make milk, they could only dance, and they
could do the hokey pokey and the tango and even fly around whilst dancing! It
was a really odd show but Parci and I both loved it. Sometimes we were the only
ones laughing but that didn’t matter.
When it was finished we kept walking. It
was roughly about 5:30pm by now I think and about half an hour later we reached
the Tower Bridge. We thought it was London Bridge
but it wasn't, and we realised afterwards. It was really cool though when a
boat went through it and we saw the bridge opening up.
I know I might be sounding very negative
about London,
and like I was angry all day but I wasn't. We walked for nearly nine hours and
we had a great time. We came over here and are going backpacking and
sightseeing and now that I have seen all I wanted to over here, I'm satisfied
and feel happy. Trudging from one end of London
to the other is exciting I got to see a lot of things I haven't seen before.
I think a problem with London is that
everyone talks about it, and everyone knows what it's landmarks are and that
because its something we all seem to know about, we picture them as being a bit
bigger and more magnificent than they actually are, when really, they look the
same as everything else there, and they're not much grander, and they're not
that much bigger or better than the other sights that no one talks about. The
highlight of my day was the squirrel and the food I bought at the supermarket.
But I haven't gotten to that part yet so bear with me. Now back to the story
telling.
After seeing this bridge, we walked a bit
more and tried to decide whether to walk back or not. we were both incredibly
tired, as you can imagine, since we walked from our hotel in West London, all
the way past Tower Bridge in East London (I'm assuming it's east london, but it was very
far away!) We asked someone about buses but because we were in the other side
of London,
nothing would take us very far in the direction we needed to go and we only
knew a few street names. so we walked on until we found a train station and
ended up paying 4pounds for a train back to Gloucester Road. Then we went into
Waitrose Shops and spent a while choosing our feast. Mine came to £5.50 which
is pretty good when we had to spend £7 each just for the cheapest fish and
chips around here. I bought a premade chicken, onion, and sage sandwich which
was very good, a jelly pot with raspberries, bag of lollies, sherbet, a
snickers bar, and a nectarine, and a bag of chips. I haven’t eaten it all yet
though. The lollies are for today and on the train so everyone can drool at the
sight of my sugary feast.
Then we came home and ate and watched
scrubs and i fell asleep during scrubs. i think it was now about 11pm.
And that, is what we did on the 4th
of July 2008. I’ll upload some photos after breakfast (I fell asleep before I
finished this journal entry so half has been written on the 5th of
July)
Tata for now
Lauren xox
