Monday 18 August 2008

London Day 1

The start of the London trip was not auspicious. We decided to catch the bus to the airport, since it's quite close and much cheaper than a taxi. We were at the bus stop at 5am, and saw the bus go by...along a different route. The bus driver evidently didn't know he was supposed to follow his normal route and not the detour. So we then had to call a taxi after all. And it cost 10 Euro for those 2 or 3 kms. Ah well.

Checking in was no trouble but the customs officer took me to task for not registering my change of address to Singapore in my passport. Tsk. (I removed my dependent pass from my passport on the way back in. So there.) The flight was fine on the cheap airline (Air Berlin). They should do the same thing Virgin does in Australia i.e. make you pay for your food and drinks, rather than offer stale, dry sangers.

The trip with the Stansted Express was really easy and quick. Only, we shouldn't have bought the ticket at the travel agent. We could have saved a few Euros on the plane. Still cheaper than buying it in London though - on the way back we met some people complaining about the over 17 GBP price-tag i.e. more than what we paid at the travelagent.

First stop after Liverpool station was taxi to the hotel, since we didn't know exactly where it was. This cost about 10 GBP, but oh well...

We left our luggage at the hotel and, since we arrived nice and early, we decided to get a hop-on-hop-off day pass for 22 GBP each. We had some time til the buses started, so we explored the Tower Bridge, since our hotel was right next door:

And walked past the Tower of London:
To get to the bus stop for the Hop-on-hop-off bus (The Original, no less). They supposedly go from 9.30 to around 7pm, but it was about 10 before the bus left the Tower of London bus stop and made its way towards Westminster and Trafalgar Square. However, it then stopped on the Embankment again and we were told it would be quicker to walk to Trafalgar Square around the corner than to continue on the bus. Which we did, seeing some imposing and impressive buildings:


The Square was packed with people, as one might expect in London in summer i.e. Tourist season:
Then we managed to find a bus to get back on to do some more sight-seeing orientation.

We hopped off again to have lunch near Victoria Station. Fish and Chips, of course. Mother-in-law actually liked it, but found the peas that come with it to be a strange accompaniment. She'd have prefered salad. So would I, but it's what they feed the tourists for about 10 GBP each.

After lunch, it was back on the bus and see some more sights - mainly so we could decide what we wanted to see during the rest of the week. It started raining again (no, really!) so we ended up sitting downstairs on the bus, from where the view isn't that great, but at least we didn't have to sit in the cold and wet. Just the cold ;-)
We took the tour bus all the way through its circuit and then got off at the Tower of London stop, to go and actually check into the hotel. According to the brochure, every room has a view of the tower or the tower bridge. After getting to know the people across the corridor from us, because I was trying to open their door with our key and hearing their complaints about not having a view of the tower (which they allowed us to confirm), we allowed them to see our magnificent tower view. Those flags you see are on the towers of the Tower of London. Everything else is skyline not belonging to the tower.
Still, the hotel rooms are fine, and its not like we're spending a great deal of time in the room...

Then, since it was still daylight and our bus ticket included a cruise on the Thames, we decided to take advantage of it. While we were waiting for the cruise ship to arrive, we saw the Tower Bridge open to allow a sail boat to go through. Apparently it only opens about 3 times a week these days, so we considered ourselves lucky:
We took the (last of the day) cruise past Canary Wharf (Dr Who! Yay!):
all the way to Greenwich where we could see the college and the observatory (Greenwich Mean Time!) on the hill (which my mother in law surprisingly had never heard of - not even GMT!):
 and then back the other way to Westminster.

We had thought to walk back to the tower from there, but it was a lot further than we thought. Since it had started raining again by this time, we decided to get a taxi back to the hotel (since we knew the Tower Hill tube station was closed, and not how far it was to get back to the hotel), for which we forked out another 12 GBP.

Once back at the hotel, we popped into our rooms to freshen (and warm) up a little, before heading out to find our dinner, which was at the Dickens Inn at St Katherine's Docks:
Dinner was actually very nice and no more expensive than it is in Germany. We paid about 10 GBP for our main meal dishes, and our beers were about 1.60 GBP each.

After dinner, it was back to the hotel, about 5 minutes walk, to fall into our beds, exhausted.