Lords cricket oval

It was a big day today as we had a lot of things to see as it would be our last day in London due to a couple of country trips on the weekend.
Started off with a coffee just around the corner to plan where to head off to first.

As we finally got confident with the bus and train systems we headed to Lords in St James Wood. Initially it was just to look at the ground and keep moving. But when we arrived there were just starting a tour so we jumped in and spent nearly two hours listening to the stories of the the players and about the ground itself. It was very interesting.

Next on our agenda was to walk around to Abbey Road and walk the crossing and grab a photo off Abbey Road Studios.

It was then a long walk back to the bus stop at Marylebone station. 

Unfortunately they were doing some road works and so we had to walk around it for about a klm. We finally got a bus to Picadilly Circus, had lunch at Jamie Oliver's restaurant and then walked up to Fortnum & Mason department store for a look around. 

Quite a nice store with high teas and a bar on the 3rd floor, didn't quite get the bar in a department store, but the rich do odd things.

 
It was then off to St Paul's church, what a long walk this was from Picadilly circus.

It 's  worth the trip as the inside of the church is magnificent. But l must admit, l'm a bit all churches out. I've got a sore neck from looking at the ceilings.
As we had been on our feet all day, Gabriella wanted to go over to the Borough market. This only added to our already weary legs .I think we walked close to 20ks today.

As we walked across to the market, we were reminded of the terror attack that occurred on London Bridge and the Borough Market not so  long ago and felt sombred by the memory. We walked on the London Bridge on our way back and it was clear that people had nowhere to escape to when  the van drove through the crowds and luck saved some but sadly not  all including Australians.

There are now permanent bollards at either end so that this incident cannot be repeated.

Tonight we're off to the Royal Albert Hall. I will update this part tomorrow. Sir Tom Jones will be performing.

Tomorrow we are spending the day in rural England visiting Oxford, Statford on Avon and the Cotswolds . Looking forward to getting out of London to see the country side. 

Kensington palace

Up early this morning and off to meet up with Gabriella's friend Koorina  who moved to England over 30 years ago. Once all the pleasantries were out of the way it was off to Saatchi gallery in Chelsea, as it didn't open until 10am it was into the cafe and Gab & Koorina were off on memory lane reminiscing.

The Saatchi gallery was interesting with a major focus 🤳 selfies. One entire room was dedicated to FaceTime with thousands of images being screened in the walls. Al you could hear was people chatting and their images portrayed in all the walls.

After the gallery it was on the 452 bus to Kensington palace. Now how freeky is this, we hadn't planned to go to the palace today, and it turned out to be Diana's 20 anniversary of her passing. As much as there was a lot of people at the gates where the flowers had been laid, l think everyone I cluding the media expected a lot more people to attend.

 

We headed inside the palace with our own local tour guide. As much as these buildings look grand from the outside, they're have a very sombre feeling as you walk through the rooms.

They had Diana's dresses that she had worn on display but funnaly enough they actually didn't look all that nice until you looked at the photos of her wearing them. It wasn't the dress that made Diana, but Diana making the dress look good. She really was a good sort.

It was then off to lunch. Koorina knew of a couple of local pubs that she use to visit when she lived on this side of town so we headed of on foot to find them. The first one was the Churchill which is a lovely pub but unfortunately it only served Thai food so it was on to the next one. The Hill gate which is just on the boarder of Notting Hill. These pubs have a great feel to them so it order the food and have a few pints and sit and talk for several hours.

Out of the pub and on the bus to Harrod. Well as much as the history of the building is what you do to see, it's just another building that outsiders choose to destroy inside. It has that look of wealth but feel of Myers, ok David Jones. Tick it of the bucket list.

During our walks and beers, Koorina told us to head to Royal Albert Hall just to see the inside. She looked up the website to see who was playing their and tomorrow we're going to see Jools Holland along with Booker T, Steve Cropper, James Morrison & the legendary Sir Tom Jones perform. All for a fee of £40.

Off to see the Crown Jewels

Well what an interesting day. The weather turned it on for the locals (rain) and it was constant drizzle all day. I made the mistake when we left in the morning and chose shorts and tee shirt. I soon found out that England's weather isn't like Melbourne's where we get the four seasons in one day. We just ended up with Frankie Valli.
Gabriella did warn me but l didn't take her advise and paid the price.
Then we struggled to work out the public transport system, which then ended in a bit of a discussion (argument) about where we had to go. Finally a bus driver gave us directions and we were on our way. The hop on hop off bus didn't really work due to heavy traffic and long waits between pickups.

We finally made it to Westminster Abbey with only a small queue waiting to get in.

Another of the beautiful buildings in Trafalgar Square

One of the local taverns that are everywhere throughout London. They all have the exterior planted out with flowers.

We decided to stop at Piccadilly to find an information centre only to find out that we probably knew more about what we were asking about. Thought we might catch a show, the book of morons, but they wanted over a hundred quid each, and as the man said to us, it's expensive to go to the theatre here. So we chose to go and eat.

We decided to venture into a place we ate at in Singapore called Pizza express as the food was good, unfortunately the service at this one was not. The waiter took our order and after waiting  a while notices people getting their meals who came after us. We asked the waiter what was happening with our meals and when he returned said, "someone gave your meals to another table" and walked off. Gabriella then noticed another lot of food going to someone and got up to check what was going on. The waiter had reorder our meals so we decided to leave. There was no apologies, the waiter just turned to the cook and said cancel the order and walked away. Will they get a spray on Tripadvisor.

It was then off to the Tower of London and walked around there for about an hour. There wasn't a lot of people which was good so it was easy to move around, I think the weather had a lot to do with people staying indoors.

A couple of portly Beefeaters on security duty.

The grounds and buildings are absolutely beautiful and you wonder how the current architects sometimes get it wrong when designing buildings.

It was funny watching these guys as they scared the crap out of one woman who wasn't expecting him to move. When he stamped his foot to Start his March, she jumped.

This was interesting, with all that glitters isn't just gold. Amazing that all those items are for royalty. Reminds me of that saying , the rich get richer and the poor just stay that way. Rob from Peter to get richer more like it.

We jumped on a ferry to take us back to Westminster so we could get our hop on hop off bus.

 

 

Unfortunately there was no hop on. The bus just didn't get to our stop. Others that were waiting were getting told to get on the next bus.  So off we went to get the train not knowing if we were heading in the right direction. One of the locals kindly helped and we were heading back to Sloane station for a well deserved coffee.

London

Today we arrived in London at 630 am . Needless to say we were tired from our flights . We had to kill some time because we couldn't leave our bags in the room until 11 00 so we sat in a cafe for a short time. Rodney being the super sleuth that he is noticed a crime take place right before his very investigative nose. He witnessed two men come into the cafe and steal some food and take off. Tranport to the colonies I say ! Not only did they do it once, they returned for more 30 minutes later to commit the same crime. 50 lashes each and send them to Christmas island detention centre.

We finally got into the room not apartment, as that would be bigger than a shoe box. I suppose it does the job and it's very close to some of the sites we wish to visit.

We first went for a stroll around Chelsea Which is a very nice area. We stopped off and had lunch at the Chelsea Potter pub and had the local delicacy of fish, chips & mushy peas. I must admit it was pretty good.

Better still, I thought it was the dealership for Range Rover as there were more of these vehicles parked and driven around the area. If I'm right there's more people in debt than ones not.

We walked over to Prince Albert bridge an they actually have working phone booths, the ones we got rid off in the early 80s. How times have changed.

We also walked through the residence for retired service people. It was interesting as to the manner they live, but it's a grand place. I spoke to several of the old fella's and had a bit of a laugh. Gabriella keeps saying "you'll talk to anyone".

The Thames was a bit dirty today so left the pics for another day. We are absolutely knackered, as Gabs is out of it and asleep. Once l finish this, l'm with her.




Oh yeah, an apartment in the area is around 1.7million GBP, and that was for probably two shoeboxes and a garage. This area is beautiful but way out of our price range.

Anyway on the more important things. We managed to walk 13kms before 2pm and then did a return work to see Lizzy & Philip at their residence. We should have known that they had gone out for Chinese tonight and then onto one of their other landmark residences in London. I hope it wasn't too far their takeaway might've got cold, so we sat and had a scone and coffee all at over inflated prices.

Tomorrow it's on the hop on hop off bus. Less walking l hope.