Hi Everybody,
Well, i'm back in London yet again.
Had an overnight stopover in Tokyo on the way here, so now i
can say i've
been to Japan too! From the air it seems to be covered with
either rice
paddies or golf courses - i've never seen so many golf courses
in all my
life. It seems quite possible that the majority of trees in
Japan seem to be
surrounding fairways & greens!
My hotel tv was showing the
local version of
'who wants to be a millionare' (mill-yen- aire?), which they
seem to have
merged with 'funniest home video's (i can't possibly explain
here). Anyway,
there doesn't seem to be a point in using the 'phone a friend'
lifeline (a
live video cross!), as by the time they have said the question
in Japanese,
and the friend has repeated the question, all the time is up!
The hotel room was small but fine, and I was amused to see that
in place of
the ubiquitous 'Guidions bible' they had 'The teachings of
Buddha'.
Dinner
of boiled Rice & a tiny bit of seafood cost me about $34, and it
was almost
the cheapest thing on the menu. You think they would be able to
make a
decent cup of tea too - home of the tea ceremony an all, but
they seem to be
badly influenced by the Americans in this department - using
some alien
concoction instead of milk and not even hot. Yes, I'm a tea
addict but you
knew that already.
So onto London...
Amazingly, the weather here is warm & sunny! (a surprise for me
as I've only
ever been here in late autumn/winter). Clear skies, up to 28
degrees and a
bit humid. I don't think I'm going to need my thermals in a
hurry (Though my umbrella
has found use already, no suprise there). Somehow i manged to
get sunburnt
within my first 24hrs in London, probably a neat trick for an Australian!
Went for a drive up to Cambridge with Ed & Clare in their
classic old
triumph - a great car to see the English countryside in.
Cambridge is very
pretty, lots of grand Uni buildings, colleges, churches. parks,
canals &
cute ducks. I'll do a comparison with Oxford when I go there &
decide which
is the nicer. Unfortunately we didn't have time to go for a punt on the river.
Went to Madame Tussauds, I've always avoided it previously due
to the queues
& cost. So I queued up for over an hour, paid nearly $50 and was
quite
underwhelmed, battling for space & a view between the hordes of
overweight
tourists (mostly American & Arabic). I did chuckle when I saw
little Johnie
Howards figure standing behind Saddam Hussein's.
The live actors in the chamber of horrors was a nice touch, the
fake
taxi-ride though the animatronics was good, but I got the most
amusement out
of a wax figure that looked like an ordinary tourist with
daypack & camera,
posed to take a picture of one of the wax celebrities (it was
Buffy). All
the real tourists kept moving out of the way (& even
apologising), so the
fake 'tourist' could get a clear picture.
Have done a cruise on the Thames to add to my suntan/burn, as
well as much
wandering about London.
Took a spin on the 'eye of London' (aka millennium wheel,
worlds biggest
ferris wheel) and got a very good view over very clear London,
and a peek
into the ceremony in buckingham palace for the Russian prime minister.
Checked out the RAF Museum, lots of old planes and a few 'touch
& go'
landings by a pair of Chinook helicopters next to the car park
was a nice
bonus. It nearly blew over a few of the smaller cars and did
overturn a
picnic table.
The tv here is interesting, with shows like 'Death by
gardening' (watching
burkes backyard, surely), and documentaries on custard
wrestling. Things
could get scary if i start getting into eastenders...
Anyway, i will be heading off to the south of England sometime
next week,
then through Cornwall & wales and back to London again, so will
probably
write again then.
Hope everybody is well, and will write back!
Cheers,
