So the weather in London (although summer) has been unseasonably HOT! Hitting a top of 32⁰ today – A MASSIVE heatwave we are told. Now coming from QLD this is NOTHING – but you see the problem is there is that NO WHERE is airconditioned – not the hotels, info centres, buses, trains – nothing, so you cant escape it. Despite this we decided to carry on with our sightseeing program. Today started with a bus through Mayfair checking out the designed shops and impressive car showrooms (Dave was very excited about the Bugatti Veyron) and continued the trip to St Paul’s Cathedral. After the mistimed visit yesterday our trip was well rewarded this time, allowing us to cec out the impressive architecture, mosaics, quire and high alter. We also saw a C of E Eucharist performed by a woman priest – who Dave said was young and hot, might bring more people back to church! We then walked up the hundreds of stairs to the whispering gallery where you can hear what is whispered on one side of the dome all the way from the other. More stairs brought us to the stone and golden galleries right on the top of the dome. We enjoyd great views of London with St Paul’s being situated on the top of Ludgate Hill in the centre of the old Roman city of Londinium. We were told areas around Londinium were rife with the plague which the people thought was carried by their cats and dog, so the city of London paid them to kill their pets and throw them into howling ditch – safe to say they didn’t do a very good job if the animals were still howling!
From here we crossed the Millennium footbridge named by the Londoners the wobbly bridge as it swayed over 1 foot in each direction when it was first erected. On the southside of the Thames we visited the replica of Shakespeare’s globe theatre. The tour was really fascinating – wish we had that guy when we were doing Shakespeare at school!
We headed back into Westminster to see the Abbey but unfortunately it closed at 3:30pm so we substituted this with a visit to the Royal Mews or stables – where the horses, carriages and cars used by the royals are kept. We checked out the impressive coaches and also learned about how the grooms and carriage keepers work with military precision to get the carriages in and out of their garages – not an easy feat. The VERY impressive Golden state coach takes 2 full days to get out of the room where it is kept.
Finished site seeing we went onto the Queen’s theatre in Westend to see Les Miserables. Althougha wonderful production it was a little hard to take, in the stuffy theatre with no aircon. We literally sweated through with the actors.
Who would have thought we could bring a heat wave to London
The next day the heat broke and the grey skies and rain storms set in – ahh this was the London we had been waiting for. We decided to have more of an administrative day and plan out how we were going to get to the depot to pick up our camper van for the next leg of the trip as well as working out how to buy a ticket for the ferry from Dover to Calai. We also made use of the Wifi at the hotel having a 25min Skype call to Mum and Dad.
We took the rest of the day to do a few more “jobs” including buying another mobile phone – we figured this would be 100% easier to do in an English speaking nation than in the rest of Europe.
We also took a memorable shopping trip at Primark- London’s version of Kmart to buy some clothes for San Fermin AKA the running of the bulls in Pamplona Spain – compulsory white clothes with red sash. I’m not sure if it was due to EOFYS or if this shop is always like this but the word bedlam comes to mind! I wish we had thought to take a picture of the chaos but somehow we managed to come out the other side as survivors – plus we found what we needed!
After this we headed back over to the Globe theatre via the tube (this was the 3rd time we had been there by this stage) to watch a production of Dr Faustus – a Christopher Marlow play about the temptation of the devil and power. It was really excellent and both of us actually enjoyed it far more than the Westend production. We did however have to stand for the entire 3hours in the pleb pit around the stage but it was well worth it. An excellent finish to a beautiful city. We really loved London!
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