A midnight takeoff for the trip of a lifetime is not to be recommended. Nobody slept between Melbourne & Singapore and when we arrived there were three very tired souls.
After some family disputes that centered around whether we could leave the airport or not (which related entirely to interpreting the accent of the Singaporean airport staff, which Grumps did and the ladies did not)and safely gain access back again to catch our flight, we had the pleasure of seeing Murray & Eily Treseder for about an hour.
After a three hour rest, it was off to London, a journey of some 13 hours. Allow me to tell you that the blonde is not a good long haul traveller......
We met Jac Faz at Heathrow, whereupon the girls took it upon themselves to indulge in a tearful reunion. For Gloria and I it was an hours wait for the bus to take us to our hotel
Arrived in London proper, and we made the hotel, after which we had a quick pub meal and crashed in bed for the night.
The observation made from 3 hours in an English pub is that -
a) They sell Fosters
b) There are no Poms in an English pub - they are all Australians in the majority with a sprinkling of other nationalities. The bar staff were Spanish, I think.
Even in the streets, all you do manage to hear is foreign accents - it's quite unsettling to only hear the occasional English voice. At least the bus drivers were Poms, even if they were of African descent......
Interestingly, this was the situation in every pub we visited, although the pub in which we ate last night did have a cockney couple there for about half an hour! The owner of the pub was a Kiwi, with whom we had a very interesting conversation about remarkable subjects such as Welsh lamb.
We did manage to walk a large portion of London on Monday,checking out the usual tourist sites such as Big Ben, Parliament House, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square and Picadilly Circus. We think we may have walked around 20 kilometers in the round trip from our hotel near Euston Station. We took a hop on hop off bus tour with Chelsea yesterday, visiting the sites we did not see the day before, such as Tower Bridge, Tower of London and St Pauls Cathedral.
Just as I type this, ANOTHER Police car has travelled past, its siren blaring - it seems to be a bit of a hobby for Police over here. The most common vehicle is a double decker red bus !
Anyway, we have to go and catch the train to Paris.
Enjoy work, won't you.....
