Greg and Deb's Travel Blog

Left home at 9am and caught a bus to Westminster Bridge and ferry to Greenwich. The ferry had an amusing and very informative commentary on the past and present state of the Thames and the buildings that line it.

Was another enjoyable day today, headed out around 9.30am, walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to The Natural History Museum (no catching the wrong bus for us today ? in fact I don’t think we took a wrong turn, things are looking up! ?)

I bought tickets this morning to the Photographic exhibition they have at the moment on Wildlife, there were more than 45,000 entries from 95 countries, the exhibition showed the top 100 entries. We loved the photos and the description of each one. There were also some entries from children aged 10+ that were impressive too.

We left the flat at 8:30am to get a bus to Vauxhall where we connected with a train to Kingston so we could have a look at the Kings Stone and then cruise to Hampton Court on the Thames. Well that was the plan, and as they are with well laid out plans, ours didn’t quite work out as we planned. Before we knew it we were pulling into Hampton Court Station, the end of the line!! No, we hadn’t missed our planned stop, this train just didn’t go the right way! Turns out, Kingston is on a spur line this train sped past!

This morning we went to the London War Rooms, Churchills headquarters during WWII.

This is the top tourist attraction in London. Neither of us are really interested in war, but we were surprised at how much we enjoyed the war rooms. We decided that it was more that it was about Churchill the man/PM than the war. The suggested time to go through the rooms was 1.5hrs, we took 1.75hrs, much better than the 30 mins I expected.

It has taken a week, I had a great sleep last night 91/2 hours, very happy.  Woke up at  7.45am, much better than 3am!  

We had a great morning, we eventually worked out how to get to the Columbia Road Flower Market, had to change buses along the way, even helped another couple who were going to the market too ? about a one hour trip, arrived around 10.30am.  This market only runs on Sundays.  It was fabulous, wish we had one at home.  There was a 6 piece band playing who we listened to for a while, was great music and a female Double Bass player.   The market was full of flowers and plants, and people, lots of people. The stall holders were funny characters.  I loved it.

We caught the 148 bus to Westminster. Silly us we got off 1 stop early.
We arrived at Westminster around 10am, imagine that, us being early!
The tour was due to start at 11am with admission 20 minutes beforehand. Lucky for us we were allowed to go in early.
Unfortunately due to all the restoration work being carried out a lot of the buildings are covered in scaffolding, and parts will continue to be covered until 2021.

Did a few loads of washing this morning, grateful to be staying somewhere, we can do it. It is not going to be so easy for most of the holiday.

We have a Sandeman tour of London at 10am this morning. We caught the bus again on Park Lane, near the Dorchester hotel, to Covent Garden then walked to the Apple store for the start of the tour. It should have been a few minutes walk – took us at least 10! And that is with GPS ??

Woke at 3am, Greg 4.45am. Good job I had a nanna nap yesterday. ?

As we walked to the bus stop this morning, walking through the gorgeous streets of Mayfair, all I could think was, I am in London!  Was a wonderful moment.

We both slept pretty well last night. Deb was up at 3:15 and me at 5:30. It’s light here from 4:30am to 9:30pm (sunrise and sunset are a bit after and before these times).
We had prebooked The Tower of London for today and a guided tour started there at 10am.
After we got ourselves ready for the day, we set out on foot for the Tower, about 4 miles away at around 8am. It was a very interesting walk, through many famous areas and Monopoly properties.

It’s  been a long day, we both woke at around 4:30am this morning. A busy day before our 9:50pm flight. But at least with the early start we had plenty of time to get through Deb’s list. ?
Apartment cleaned, washing done, quick trip into town, lunch with a friend and then a fair bit of thumb twiddling through to 6:45pm when we were picked up and whisked off to the airport.
Checked in and in the Qantas lounge by 7:15pm.
I got my lounge special, Jack & coke, we must be on holiday.
This is going to be our longest trip away yet, 101 days in total, but we don’t  quite miss all of winter.