Farewell London

Our last day in London and the UK. Initially this meant packing, a slightly more difficult task at this end of the trip given all the stuff we've bought since we arrived. Mercifully, our lovely hostess here at Cap'n Bligh's has allowed us full use of our rooms here today until we have to go to the airport. A shower just before we leave will be just wonderful after a day of running around.

With all the packing, we left our rooms quite late. This was fine, since we wanted to avoid the crush of the rush hour, and get a cheaper non-peak public transport ticket which can only be used after 9:30am. First we headed to the British Museum, where Phil had some specific things he wanted to see. First was the display of finds from the Sutton Hoo ship burial (around 600AD), especially the hugely famous helmet...

He also wanted to check out the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon friezes...

Petra was immensely patient with all of this, and found many of the displays were quite interesting. We were both impressed by the museum building though. In one of those "small world" moments, Phil saw someone he knew from the ANU at the Museum.

After a few hours, we had lunch at yet another nearby pub and then caught the Underground to Southwark. Phil wanted to have a look at the Tate Modern, a fairly new gallery of modern art which is housed in a former power station south of the river across from St. Paul's. Petra decided to take in the sights and sounds of the riverbank while Phil did a quick tour through the gallery.

We then decided to take a final walk back to Lambeth. Now all we have to do is get ourselves ready, get to the airport and get going home.

Three hours later...

We have made it to the airport. Car arrived on time, but because it was afternoon peak hour it took just over an hour to get to Heathrow. We then spent the next half hour going through check-in and security. What fun! Petra has gone off to do some duty free shopping to recover from the security ordeal. Phil sits patiently. Plane boards in a little less than an hour and a half. Can't wait...

So what haven't we done yet?

With only two more days in London we decided that we needed to throw away Phil's ambitious daily programs and devote our days to those things we haven't managed to fit in yet that we absolutely have to do.

So first thing we walked over to Westminster and did our tour of Westminster Abbey. A much less impressive building than St. Paul's, Phil says. Really all it is is a collection of tombs and monuments. Mind you, there are some pretty amazing tombs - Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, Queen Mary, Henry VII, Chaucer, Churchill, Edward I, Richard II, Henry III, Isaac Newton...the list just goes on. Again though, photographers are discriminated against, so no pictures.

After going all through the Abbey we walked up to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard - we missed this last time we were at the Palace because it coincided with our Palace tour. We got to see a lot of men in fuzzy hats and red coats march by us...

...and amused ourselves by trying to work out which regiment they belonged to by the arrangement of buttons on their tunics. The chaps above were Welsh Guards, while the ones below were, we believe, Grenadier Guards...

...or not. We were pretty sure that these were Horse Guards...

After the guards were all changed we walked through Green Park to Hyde Park, even though it was raining a bit by then and we were getting wet because we believed the internet weather forecasts. We stopped for lunch at The Serpentine Bar & Kitchen which overlooked the eastern tip of The Serpentine, which itself was very pretty even in nasty weather...

A bit further on we found the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, but we didn't go as far as Kensington Palace as we had sort of planned. Rain does that to you.

So off we trudged to Harrods, which was yet another over-the-top retail outlet with prices that made Phil just chuckle to himself. The only part of the store that was crowded with shoppers was the Harrods merchandise section, jam packed with tourists like us buying the only things in Harrods which had less than three figures to the left of the decimal point in the price tag.

Having been retail-shocked by Harrods, we sought a dose of reality by catching a bus to Debenhams department store in Oxford Street, a few blocks down from that other icon of retail excess, Selfridge's. Petra much enjoyed wandering through the shoe section there, particularly since the prices didn't make Phil chuckle with disbelief.

So back to Lambeth for our last night at Cap'n Bligh's. Oh, and we went to the pub for dinner...

The Tower, St.Paul's and the Globe

Almost made a full week without rain, but it was a bit drizzly this morning. Nothing to cause us much distress though.

We had our first experience of peak hour travel on the tube this morning, since we wanted to get to the Tower of London in time for their 9am opening. At Lambeth North station we watched in awe as dozens of people crammed themselves into an already overpacked train. We, well we chose to wait for the next train which was shown as arriving three minutes later and was marginally less overpacked.

In any case, we arrived at the Tower soon after 9am and stayed there until almost 1:30pm.

Again, wow. We started off with the Crown Jewels, which were amazing even to a suburban-socialist-republican like Phil. Unfortunately no photography allowed, so we can't show you how truly beautiful it all is. Phil loved the St. Edward's Crown (the one used for the coronation of QEII), while Petra was smitten by the Anointing Spoon, of all things.

After having a coffee to recover from all that wealth and ostentation, we then wandered through the walls and towers pretty much at random. The armoury displays were very nice...

...and some of the towers had some excellent short historical videos and explanations of great historical events that are supposed to have happened there. Many towers had graffiti carved into the stone by famous prisoners...

Then there was Tower Green, where people such as two of Henry VIII's wives and Lady Jane Grey (Queen for about 9 days) were executed.

Eventually we ran out of Tower to look at, so we walked down to The Monument (which commemorates the Great Fire of London in 1666) and St. Paul's Cathedral. 

Petra was a bit footsore, so Phil Looked around inside St. Paul's while she recovered. A truly amazing building with lots of monuments to some very famous people. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Nelson are both interred in the crypt, but Phil though the drama of their magnificent tombs was somewhat cheapened by the souvenir shop, toilets and (can you believe it) noisy cafe not 50 feet away.

From St. Paul's we walked across the Millennium Bridge (pedestrian only) to the south bank and visited the Globe Theatre, a reconstruction of the theatre where many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed. Unfortunately we were too late to tour the theatre itself, but we went through the museum and watched a demonstration of dressing an actor (or in this case a hapless tourist plucked from the audience) in Ophelia's costume from one of the productions of Hamlet. It was an authentic Elizabethan-period costume, and quite interesting to see how it all held together before buttons, zippers and velcro.

After walking back to our rooms for a bit of a rest, we walked up to another nearby pub and had an excellent Thai meal...just for something different...