A day in London town

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  London, United Kingdom
Monday, July 23, 2007

Woke up very late after a good 12 hours sleep - good for us, but unfortunately meant we were too late to talk to family in NZ - *sniff*

Had Marmite on toast for breakfast (wow!), and finally got our act together and got out the door to explore London. Caught a train into Waterloo, and then began our meander through the centre of London.

Started out walking across the Thames and along the banks, seeing the London Eye, and the MI5 and MI6 buildings on the banks - curious to think of all those James Bonds and Q's scurrying around spying on people! If yesterday was weird being back in the first world, today was crazy - it was like walking through Disneyland seeing all these buildings we recognise so easily!!

Walked past Big Ben and the parliament buildings, 10 Downing Street and Trafalgar Square - feeling very sorry for the poor guards being endlessly and enthusiastically photographed outside the government buildings. And so it was that we felt more than our ounce of shame for joining the throngs and snapping away at the rather ridiculously dressed gents ourselves.

Afterwards, spent the rest of afternoon strolling through St James and Hyde Parks - stopping briefly outside Buckingham Palace and at the new New Zealand war memorial at Hyde Park Corner. The memorial almost brought a tear to the eye - very well done, with the inscriptions and pictures on the stark steel girders evoking thoughts of those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and the things they cherished and fought to protect for us - if you're a Kiwi and in London, you have to go and pay it a visit.

Unfortunately, we discovered on trying to catch the tube that we had bought the wrong train pass and couldn't catch anything in Zone 1 - nice one! To think that morning we had been so smug about being 'experienced' travellers, and we couldn't even figure out something simple written in English! So a long and soggy walk ensued through High St Kensington, past windows full of £30 t-shirts and crowds of Kate Moss wannabes to the nearest Zone 2 station, Kensington Olympia.

Day was capped off nicely with an enormous juicy Kebab from Mick's local - think the Middle East will have to feature somewhere in our travels at some stage after that superb meal!!

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