Saturday 31 May to Monday 2 June 2014
Arrived in London at 4.30 pm on Saturday 31 May after leaving Melbourne at midnight on the same day. Arriving at your destination more than 24 hours after you left, but arriving only 16 hours later by the clock is something l will never get used to. As usual there was the lengthy wait to get through customs and a train that seemed to take forever to get to the city.
After checking in at our hotel, we sought out somewhere to eat (pizza at an Italian restaurant) and soon after eating, crashed into bed.
The next day a visit to Camden market was deemed necessary. That's right, we travelled half way around the world to do some shopping. However this was entirely my fault because l had left my sunglasses and manbag in Australia and l needed both items. Gloria, being the opportunist that she is, tackled the shopping task with great gusto. I couldn't quite work out why she thought l would find a manbag in the jewellery or clothing stalls, but that was where we spent the most time.
After lunch, we decided to pay David Cameron a visit at No 10 Downing Street but the policemen armed with submachine guns took quite a dim view of our plan and we were forced to do something else.
We left there and came across the Queens Horse Guards and were fortunate enough to be in the right spot at the right time and witnessed the pomp and military precision of an inspection of the men and their horses performing guard duty at the barracks.
After viewing this, we progressed to Parliament House with the intention of taking a tour through both houses. We were disappointed to discover that those tours took place only on Saturdays.
Begrudgingly,we walked across to Westminster Abbey to have a look through there - yes, it was closed to the public today as well. Apparently religious services on Sunday take precedence over tourists.
Admitting defeat, we decided to give Liz & Phil a visit, but they were out too.
Mind you, that house they live in still looks pretty good, but I'd hate to do the vacuuming there.
Utterly humiliated by our treatment at English hands, we retreated to our hotel for a few G & Ts and planned our next day. It was during this planning phase that Gloria established that a detour to Primark was a high priority.
On our previous visits, we had not been able to squeeze in a look at the Tower of London, so off we went to have a look. We were horrified to find that entry was £22 per adult so we decided that around $80 just to look at the Crown Jewels and a couple of Beefeaters was a bit steep. Consequently we circumnavigated the castle which was interesting by itself.
After doing a lap of the castle we called into the attached gift shop which we left without any purchases due to the high cost again. A souvenir pen at £5 ($10) is a bit much when you would pay 50 cents for it at Coles. Consequently we decided to leave the gift shop and as we were leaving, we noticed that the beefeaters were busy erecting barriers. We thought that was this was interesting and stopped to have a look. It turned out that there was to be a 62 gun salute to celebrate the coronation of the Queen, 62 years ago today - June 2. We decide to stay for an hour and wait to watch the salute, which was full of pomp and ceremony with an inspection of the gunners prior to the actual salute being fired. Standing within 50 metres of the guns meant it was extremely loud and very smokey.
A visit to a crowded and claustrophobic Primary was next, but even Gloria found it difficult and we left after half an hour.
On our way back to our hotel, we poked our heads into the British Museum for half an hour,which was not enough. We made a mental note to dedicate at least half a day to the Museum on our next London sojourn.
Next stop is Brugge..
