We arrived in London after a long flight in the wee hours of the morning, being one of the first planes to land at Heathrow for the day. We immediately sampled the Tube, catching it into the city and finding a locker to stow our bags for the day. Public transport in London isn't up to the same standard as HK, but the sheer size and overlapping nature of the system means there's always a train not far away. In contrast to the culture shock we got when we arrived in HK, this almost felt like we were back home on one of the suburban lines, with open air train stations, brick suburban houses and semi-industrial areas. We went for a wander to the museum precinct at South Kensington, but alas, although we had been up for hours the museums weren't yet open. A quick look around found us Baden Powell House, named after the founder of the Scouting movement, which interestingly had a very cheap hostel inside it. In said hostel we came across a brochure advertising a free walking tour of the city, which sounded like a good way to kill time during the day. We dropped in to the Science museum for an hour, playing with the many hands-on physics demos before meeting our walking tour in Hyde Park.
Now is probably a good time to mention how many bloody Aussies there are here – we heard many familiar accents on the plane from HK, and our carriage on the Tube from the airport was shared with half a dozen blokes backpacking, who had just arrived from the US and lost one of their bags. Our walking tour was no exception – a couple about our age from Sydney, a girl from Wagga who was finishing up her working holiday, and a bloke (Nathan) who had just arrived from Vietnam and Beijing. It was slightly disheartening; we didn't come thousands of kilometres to talk to Australians, but on the flip side it made the tour very enjoyable as our friendliness seemed to break the ice and start conversation a bit. Our 'New Europe Walking Tour' guide was Pip, a shaggy looking Brit from a tiny town outside London, who was informative, fun, knew his city and its landmarks well, and most importantly knew his audience. Being advertised as a free tour, it tended to attract many more people like us (ie cheapskates). Pip gave us helpful advice about what was good value, what was overpriced, and some ways to make the most of your time in London. The two-and-a-half hour tour took us to all the major attractions – Hyde Park and the Wellington Arch, Buckingham Palace (where we stood in the crowd while the changing of the guard happened, a very underwhelming experience), the National Gallery, Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square, St Martins, the Royal Cavalry Museum, Downing St, and Westminster. At the end all Pip asked for was a voluntary tip, which everyone seemed more than happy to provide. We will investigate more of these tours, as this one was incredible value.
After the tour finished we joined up with Nathan and went to the National Gallery. The collection there is very impressive and there are some genuinely brilliant works, but our dedication waned after an hour and a half so we went across the road to St Martin-in-the-Fields, a famous church. There is a café underground in the crypt, with incredible bricked vaults, and we looked upstairs for a few minutes while a service was on, but obviously couldn't explore the chapel further.
Tired, partially due to the fact that it was almost dark by 4:30, we returned to Victoria Station, got a coffee and an all-you-can-eat from a greasy, very unsatisfying pizza place, and hopped on our bus to the airport. Another plane ride, another check-in, another security check, finally we were in Edinburgh. Although it was late at night, it wasn't as cold as I had thought it might be, although it was very windy, and disappointingly not snowing. In fact, London itself was very bearable, much like a Melbourne autumn or winter, and we were too tired to really care about the cold in Edinburgh. Our respective jackets will make this a lot better though.
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1 comment:
Please tell me you're going to check out the awesome Europe club scene, like Ibeza or something...
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