Day Four - More History In It's Little Finger

So today we woke up early yet again … I swear 5 am wake-ups are becoming a common occurrence here… however we are falling into a bit of a routine, we wake up struggle to drink the instant coffee provided to us as we plan our day and work out how to get to wherever we are going. We check emails, I write my blog and then we brave the breakfast room downstairs.

The one thing I am struggling with is coffee, the hotel seems to pride itself on the most horrible, sludge like coffee I have ever tasted and even copious amounts of sugar don’t seem to be able to disguise the ‘worse than bad’ taste. So our mission today was to find decent coffee, and we did, what we didn’t realize is that they don’t have flat whites, after receiving a really blank look and a tilt of the head we asked for a cappuchino without the froth …. Again a tilt of the head “Why would you not want froth?”

Anyways, enough about coffee, we took a wander down the Thames with our said coffees and ended up walking across the amazing Tower Bridge…. It was even better close up, there was so much detail to look at (architectural of course) we were just blown away at the skill stone masons had back then, we asked ourselves, if we had to build something like this now … would we still have those skills or are they lost? Would we be able to justify the cost of something like this or would we resort to a simple concrete bridge with no real architectural value? Who has it right, us with our cost conscious simplistic approach or the past with their over the top showing off. I have to say, I really enjoyed walking across the bridge, it was heaven so for me the past wins hands down.

We also spent most of the day at the Tower of London and can I say, it should be a must see on every ones list. I was blown away at the history in this one building (or group of buildings), the Yeoman Warders were hilarious but also gave us so much information I swear by the end of it I thought my head was going to explode, The crown jewels were so … excessive I don’t think you could appreciate them as the real thing, they were so over the top they looked fake…. (apparently I shouldn’t say this but hey, they did) However the punch bowl made of solid gold and took 8 people to lift was almost my favorite moment, I mean really, anyone who is anyone has a solid gold punch bowl.

Oh oh oh, and I think we found our artifact for the UK section of our trip … now don’t laugh but it’s the headpiece of a suit of armour … I thought it looked great and hubby is so excited about actually being able to wear it … I can see all sorts of wrong with that statement including him falling down the stairs because of the limited view but am not going to put the look but don’t touch sign on just yet.

We had a lovely pub lunch where we had what seems to be a very traditional English dish … the pie… and can I say, after eating a one of these our Australian pies are just disappointing, I had a chicken, bacon and tarragon pie and it was so good I almost wanted to order another one!

Finally the London Dungeon. I really need to thank the person who recommended this to us, it was so scary I spent most of the tour hiding behind husband’s shoulder and he split most of his time either laughing at me and trying to push me to the front of the group. It was a very good way of teaching the darker side of history but in all honestly I'm a bit of a fraidy cat and breathed a big sigh of relief when we finally left the building. A must see as long as you don’t have a heart condition. 

Day Three, Part Four - Over Rated or Over The Top

Obviously for me, the queen of shopping Harrods was one of those must see’s on my list and so off we went today. Where do I start, the over the top Egyptian design took me a good 10 minutes of deep breaths before I realized that in this building excess is normal … or was it the Opera Singer entertaining us as we travelled up and down the escalators or the Pizza chef who actually sang while he flipped the dough at the pizza bar… oh oh oh or the food court that had salads and cakes so amazing I was devastated that we had just eaten and finally the Christmas decks which actually made me consider moving to the UK just so I can take them all home. If what I saw today is the fashion for this years Christmas - All White Trees will be a hit!

Day Three, Part Three - M&M World

You think I'm joking but I'm not …. There is a 4 storey M&M world in the middle of London … and its kinds cool. There are stacks and stacks of t shirts, coffee mugs and even coloured golf balls but there is also an entire room with custom coloured M&M’s with colours ranging from Teal, Lavender, Dark Purple and Sky Blue …. I want them all!

Day Three, Part Two - A City of Contrasts

Sounds a bit like a clichéd title however it really is an amazingly contrasted city. Obviously there is all the amazing elements like Big Ben, Mayfair and Old London however there is also some really dark almost commercial sections where its all old red brickwork, old machinery and so much graffiti its almost its own art form.

Day Three, Part One - London at a Glance

I really don’t know how this diary is going to work, I like the idea of one post per day however then its going to be really long because I want to jot down all my thoughts before I lose them … and we all know just how talented I am at losing things.

So hubby woke me up at 5am this morning because he had been up since 3am and thought it was only fair that I was awake as well. After rearranging the room to fit two suitcases we went down to breakfast and then decided to brave the London Underground, which is amazingly easy to use (Thank you Mr Oyster Card) but really outdated, There is no room for Prams on the trains and the step down is almost too much for a short ass like myself. But we did it and did it well because we didn’t even get lost trying to get to Trafalgar.

We spent most of the day on the hop on hop off bus and I can safely say I now have a basic idea of the city and how its laid out. We did the obligatory drive by big ben, St Peters Cathedral, The Monument, the eye and Thames river cruise which are just as lovely in person as in all the pictures. We also saw so many statues or monuments I swear that the iron workers in the city must be millionaires by now. After the river cruise we took a walk down the river and came across a really cute food festival which was to die for. .. I swear it was heaven in a Styrofoam bowl!

So they day went well, we saw everything and are now plotting our plan for the next few days and hoping to fit way to much in in a very small amount of time.

XOX

Miss V

Day Two - We Survived

Well I can safely say we survived. I can’t say we enjoyed 27 hours of travel, the 2am wake up call, ridiculously bad airline food or the 3 ½ hours of delays in Dubai but we did it and we are here.

The first flight was fairly smooth, we had amazing seats, entertainment was great and the flights were all on time and fairly painless however when we hit Dubai the trouble started. It seems instead of being able to shop while you wait for your flight the aim of all airlines these days is to herd you (as sheep) into these holding areas which you are supposed to sit for a few minutes before you board. Now that is ok until you get delays … and boy did we get delays, we had 3 ½ hours of PA announcements saying that the flight would be ready in 10 minutes … as you can imagine this gets old fairly quickly … what is entertaining though is watching how people react to this. You have the loud Australian cracking sarcastic jokes, you have the little old lady going on about how this never used to happen when she used to fly and you have the kids who just decide its not fair and scream for the entire 3 hours. We were given complimentary drinks and cake while we waited and as you can imagine an entire A380 flight of people lining up for food is going to be crazy, but the fact that some people decide they are going to take six bottles of water instead of one and backpackers seem to think if they get enough of that cake, they wont need to buy food for a few days just adds to the hilarious nature of the situation.

Suffice to say we were very happy to be getting on the plane … except the plane was hot …. When I say hot please don’t misunderstand and think that I am being a winger … when I say hot I mean, midday in Dubai and it seems the aircon was left off for the entire 3 hours of delays so when we got on I swear I felt like I was walking into an oven…. But again, out travel agent did us well, we had amazing seats at the partition and the world … while hot seemed good. Until the seats behind were filled and the first words out of dads mouth was … “let me say in advance, I’m so sorry”  They had a little boy sitting on their lap, an overheated, over tired three year old who was just a little bit over it all.

And this is where my head and my heart started arguing. The right thing to do would be to swap seats with the family so the little boy can go to sleep on the floor at their feet. It was the practical thing to do but remember at this point I’m hot, tired and grumpy and I really was not willing to give up my little bit of comfort… however during take off where said boy screaming solidly for 20 minutes hubby and I looked at each other and there wasn’t really a decision to make. We swapped, they were grateful, boy went to sleep and we spend the next 7 hours shifting uncomfortably in seats way to small to allow for any movement other than swapping weight from one bum cheek to the other.

So people, let us hope that this good deed added a few karma brownie points to the tally and lets get the holiday started!