London - days 1&2

Arrival, Kensington gardens, bus tour, Tower of London.

We arrived in London after a short visit to the ancient roman city of St. Albans. We were advised to go to St Albans to have a look at this ancient roman city. We were a bit underwhelmed. Possibly we had seen too many ancient roman sites. To be fair we did walk around the roman theatre and drove around what is a pretty town, but having had enough of old rocks and holes, we left for London and the final leg of our journey.

This is to be quite an epic 10 days by way of sightseeing, walking, eating and drinking. So sit back dear reader and we will try to do it justice.

 

We arrived at our lodgings....the London House Hotel on the leafy street of Kensington Gardens Square in the suburb of Bayswater (it boarders Paddington and Notting Hill and of course Kensington Gardens). We checked in by literally throwing our bags at reception to look after, after we were informed to immediately remove our car as it would be clamped, they are very strict here and it's £80 to get the clamps removed. We took the car to the Bayswater Europe Car Hire depot without crossing the invisible line for congestion tax. We had a moment of sheer panic when working out where to put the car at the depot, a garage under a hotel really, Greg drove through a gate and we heard what sounded like a tyre being punctured. We came to an immediate halt, 2 guys sitting eating their lunch looked at us with horror on their faces and Greg, mirroring that horror, announced with many expletives that we had run over drive way spikes and punctured our 2 front tyres! He promptly reversed back creating the same noise and the same horror on the men's faces and put the car into a no standing zone on the right. After some examination there were no driveway spikes there was however one sharp piece of metal sticking up from the ground, painted florescent green. We examined the tyre and discovered that at this moment in time, God was smiling on us, and for the time being, there was no hole. We passed the car into the office and prayed that the tyre would hold out until we hastily fled the premises.

 

We walked back to our hotel and checked in properly, then went for a walk through Kensington gardens.

 

Kensington Palace, where Lady Di lived and now Kate and Will live, is about 500yards from where we live. We are neighbours! Might go borrow a cup of sugar?

In the gardens, which join Hyde park to the north east, are found the Lady Di memorial playground, the Lady Di memorial fountain and the Peter Pan statue. Also the Prince Albert memorial which is one of the largest we have seen, is at the main gate opposite the Royal Albert hall. Victoria must have really loved him, the statue and Hall are enormous.

It was quite warm and there were scads of people out in the park enjoying the sunshine.

By this time it was getting late so we found a pub and had some food and a few bevvies.

 

Up the next day we went in search of the big red bus tour, dutifully paid or £24 each (need to check price) after discount each and took off on tour. There are 4 different routes, we did 2 this afternoon to familiarise ourselves, then stopped to do the Tower of London tour.

The Tower is currently the centre of the WWI commemorations and they have a fabulous photographic display, along with filling the now dry moat with 888,246 ceramic poppies. One poppie for every soldier of Britain and the Commonwealth killed during WWI. Interestingly, the Tower has always been, and officially still is, a prison. Of course, all the stories of the famous people sent there and eventually beheaded or hung, WWII prisoner, Rudholf Hess, was also held there, as were a couple of notorious local gangsters (they ended up joining the army 'voluntarily'!). As our photos show, the Tower was also used as a training ground and barracks for WWI soldiers.

 

 

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