Princess Adventures A little something-something to run around the world with....

I prepared for my follow up cycle around London by arriving very early and watching the clouds tear over Holborn Circus with a coffee in my hand and face soaking up any  sunshine trying to peer through the grey murk of the morning. I'm getting used to this trend of cloudy mornings and fine days filled with sunshine and coffee that doesn't require a mortgage. It's not always GOOD coffee, but it's better than the rubbish that most Dubai vendors serve, and it doesn't cost me the better part of US$6.00. There's better things I could spend my money on - like clothes, sunglasses and endless sales in the malls! I've grown to love just sitting back in the green spaces throughout London and watching the world go by with a coffee or a sandwich and bottle of water (I'm generally very easy to please when it comes to food around here). Professionals race across the streets trying to get back to their offices, workers enjoy their well-earned 10am smoko-break and it's nice knowing that each and every one of these people get at least a minimum wage, unlike the discrepancy in Dubai. Gosh, I keep going on tangents. When it comes down to it, from that moment, all I could think about was the blissful temperatures and watching the trees and greenery sway in the gentle breeze as the day began to embrace the city.

Returning to my trusty guide Matthew in Shoe Lane, I found myself being measured up for another bike and winced at the pain that remained in my rear from the last eight hours of cycling I'd done just two days before. That said, if that's my worst problem all day, I'm living the high life.  I met the photographer and journalist accompanying the tour and felt grateful that I wasn't the person with the biggest camera of the day. I don't feel quite so extravagant when that's the case, and heck, it's nice to see someone else doing all the hard work racing around trying to get shots with the pressure of a final product deadline to meet. All I had to do was take pretty pictures to show Andrew, maybe load a few on iStockPhoto and then pick out the best for Christmas cards at the end of the year. Tough life eh?

I met the other girls joining the tour that morning, had a few thoughts to myself at the journalist's choice of a playsuit for cycling attire and raced off after Matthew to ride along the Southbank. It's a little tough doing the same tour twice - the jokes are the same for the different groups (it's like the time you find out that little secret about Santa) and the highlights and stories just don't have the same sparkle. That said, it was indeed my choice to roll through on the tour again and I THOROUGHLY enjoyed snapping away like a mad monkey on a banana high. I find the snippets of information that tour guides include far more interesting than trying to decipher tomes of history information. If museums are four steps up from yawning your way through history textbooks, then tour guides have walked up the entire staircase to give you just enough information to get interested in something, maybe remember it, and hopefully tell someone else one day, without boring you out of your brains. Neat work guys, that takes some serious skill.

We rode adeptly around the crowds to pass by the London Eye, a year 2000 celebratory temporary landmark that never seemed to go away, and down to the Houses of Parliament but from the side away from the hordes of tourists on Westminster Bridge. Not only does an opportunity like this give you a completely new angle to shoot from, but it also means you get to relax, take your time, snap away and soak up some cool information about the government's inability to contract a bell in the clock tower that would actually hold together. The solution? Hit it with a softer hammer. Yup, that'll do it guys. Can't build the bell right, then just hit it with a little pansy push. She'll be right mate.

Next up we scoot past Lambeth Palace to hear about the importance of exotic fruit and pineapples in medieval times (would you really pay US$7,500 for a pineapple?!?!) and about King Henry VIII's habits of writing in the margins of the books he was reading. Amazingly, the very first public library in London was open for viewing at the time and you could go and check out what ol' Henry had been doodling in the corners. Probably something about another of his floozies. Kings are so naughty! We keep making our way along, on a slightly different political bent, to Smith Square where it is said that much of politics happened after dark over a whisky. We also found out about the completely nutty Gin-craze that swept the city, whereby a London General found a loophole in the laws of serving gin, cut a hole in a wall and piped it out to locals for a coin fed through a slot. He then disappeared one day, assumed to be a very rich man somewhere in a foreign country. Funnily enough, it also happened right by the bomb shelters nearby to Smith's Square, where the signs pointing in their direction still remain to this day.

A jaunt through the back roads brings us to Westminster Abbey for a bit of a gawp, then down to Buckingham Palace to catch the end of the Royal Guard marching down the Mall after the changing of the guard. When your guide is telling you to cross in a hurry otherwise the police might yell at everyone, you can only give him extra cred. Cool guy he is. Once the procession had passed by our uber-awesome viewing spot, we raced around the back of all the crowds to catch them again as they turned the corner and continued on their way. Only a constant traveller does that kind of cool stuff! We swept back past St James' Palace to check out the Horse Guard on their penalty duty for not keeping their horses and tack in check before crashing down on our butts in St James' Park for a sandwich and a stare at strange people with ferrets on leashes. Oh, dear.

Looping back through the gardens, we scoot out to Trafalgar Square, roam our way through Georgian and Victorian back alleys, quaint antique bookshops and pubs that survived the Great Fire of 1666, but also the great amount of fighting that was once so popular. A quick skim past the very cute Covent Garden Markets, the same place that inspired Pygmalion and where My Fair Lady was filmed, and we were on our way back to Shoe Lane with a quick drop in to see Hodge, the cat of Dr Johnson, the man who wrote the first English Dictionary. If it had not been for him, I'm sure we'd all still be making words up on the spot like that semi-educated dirty-minded deviant William Shakespeare. I have serious pride for the barely literate plagiarising scallywag that he was, if only just for the fact that some people still refer to him as one of the greatest writers of all time and he was just a wayward floozy-hungry scrawler. Heck, some people still don't think we've actually got the spelling of his name right. Well done Billy ol' man, you've got the whole world trumped. How I got onto that Literature bent, I'm not sure, but what I do know is it's time for me to hit the sack and to rest up in order to venture on for another day. Not before mentioning of course, that my post-cycling afternoon was filled with a luscious red velvet cupcake, cups of tea and wandering the Portobello Road markets with Amelia at the much more sensible weekday pace. Divine and utterly unmissable - do NOT come to London without finding your way to a Hummingbird Bakery (and of course finding yourself an Amelia)!

Now, I must sleep - adventures ahoy! Next blog, read all about what I really thought of Stonehenge, the INCREDIBLE cowhenge and my first thoughts on hostel travelling.....