Trains, planes, and automobiles

We used LOTS of different types of transportation on this trip. Some trips went smooth and some. . . .lets just say, not so smooth. But I do have some funny stories you might enjoy.

On the plane flight over the Atlantic, I was able to get bulkhead seats. Great, I thought, lots of room to stretch out. Well, lots of leg room, but less hip room. Let's just say that the bulkhead seats are for the tall and skinny, of which I am not. It was not the most comfortable trip I have been on. On the way coming back, though, my son and I shared three seats between the two of us. We have plenty of room to spread out sideways. Also, the bulkhead seats were right by the stewardess's cabinets and the area was noisy and buys all the time. Note to self, do not get bulkhead seats again.

The London rail system was fantastic! We could get just about anywhere in the city or even the countryside with the network or National Rail, Underground, or Light Rail systems. The bad thing was the time it would take to move around. It would still take an hour and a half to get from The Globe Theater to Greenwich.

Oh, and you were not instructed to "Watch your step", but instead were told to "Mind the gap."

Yes, that is a bird in the train station.

We took two tour buses. One trip was a three hour panoramic tour of the streets of London. The tour guide was informative, but seemed rather bored. At the end of the trip I asked him about two landmarks he pointed out but didn't give a history. One was the Monument. It was to commemorate the fire of London. The other was the Marble Arch, which was extra stone from building Buckingham Palace. Gee, I wish he would have said that when we passed by.

The other tour bus, was a long distance coach to Windsor, Bath and Stonehenge. Our tour guide here was a delightful woman name Sondra. She had an adorable voice and way of speaking. "Bong, bong. Time to wake up my little pretties," she would say when we were approaching our destination. "The view is just lovely," she said about our decent into Bath.

After we had seen Stonehenge and were heading back to the bus, we were informed our bus had a flat tire. Great . . . not. . . we were stuck in a parking lot. We waited for the truck to fix the flat, then waited from them to actually fix it. And it took forever. . . so "forever" that our driver met his driving time limit. So we had to stop at a rest stop and change drivers. So, with all the delays, we were three hours late getting back to the apartment. Yuk. . . .

And that was the day after we had another late night. Because I had rented a car and got lost in downtown London. . . . .

Yup, we had our wonderful day out in the countryside and then drove around downtown London for two hours! None of the roads in London are straight, they change name for no reason and the traffic circles are guaranteed to confuse the visitor! My sister pulled out her blackberry and fired up the GPS system in it. It gave me directions, like turn left on St. Martin's, but St. Martin's Street was not on the left! Arrrgggh! I knew that if I crossed the river, I could find the way back to the apartment. We did stop and ask directions multiple times. Finally, we found a bridge to cross the Thames. We were home twenty minutes after that. But it was still 11 pm and we were all exhausted.

Our Apartment

Our apartment was great! I would recommend it to anyone. Although, it was not in the city center, we had a fifteen minute train ride to get to Victoria Station or Charing Cross Station. The neighborhood we were in was Catford. Just outside the Catfor train station was many shops and food markets where we could buy food to take home. We saved a lot of money by eating breakfasts and dinners in our apartment. The building was a converted brownstone, once a large house, now broken up into many apartments. We had the largest with four bedrooms.

Greenwich

Greenwich Mean Time has been the standard of time through the years and the world. We were able to go to the Royal Observatory where time began. Were were able to straddle the line between the eastern and western hemisphere. Here is one of the largest telescopes in Europe, 28 inch in diameter. We had some wonderful views of the city from up on the hill.

I got into a conversation with a local gentlemen who was a navigator with the air force during World War II. He showed me this monument that was shot during the war. A German fighter plane came straight down this boulevard shooting bullets, and hit the monument. The statue on top was removed for safekeeping during the war, but the monument show pot marks were the bullets hit its target.

The Globe Theater

Any Shakespearean afficiano knows that the actor built his Globe theater in London in the late 1500s. The original theater was destroyed by fire a few years after it was built. It was rebuilt and only thrived for a few years more years during the 17th century. The Globe theater we visited was a reproduction built about 750 feet away from the site of the original. We wanted to take a tour, but the cost was stupid expensive. Twelve pounds for a two hour tour? Uh, no. . .

But I did get some pictures of the outside and the nearby Thames River. I appeared that the tide was coming in. The Thames (pronounced "tems") has a unique feature in that it is a tidal river. The ocean tide actually flows upstream into London. While looking at the river, we noticed a lot of waves and violent water activity. We were expecting to see the river flowing out to see, but it seemed stationary, and just bobbling around. We were guessing that the tide was pushing against the natural outflow of water as we watched.

The British Museum

London has some of the best museums in the world! And the British Museum is the best of the best. Unfortunately, we were not able to spend a lot of time in here. But we did get to see the few things that I was interested in seeing.

First up was THE Rosetta Stone. It was right there, in the middle of the room, surround by glass and lots of people. I had to queue up too and take pictures. WOW, just wow. . . . I was in awe that me, some nobody, could be within a foot of such an important piece of history and learning.

We also saw the famous Greek Parthenon Marbles, also know as the Elgin Marbles. These marble statues were taken from Greece in the early 1800s and shipped to England by Lord Elgin. You can look up the Wikipedia article for more information. However, they are beautiful examples of classic Greek artistry and the detail is phenomenal.

King's Cross Station

If you don't understand this photo, ask any child about what is at King's Cross train station in London.

Changing of the Guards

One of the big tourist attractions in London is to go to Buckingham Palace and watch the changing of the guard. The guard actually gets changed every four hours, but once a day (in the summer) at 11:30, there is a bug huge deal made of it. How big? Like hundreds of guards, marching bands and horse drawn carriages. I found it all rather lengthy and somewhat boring. All I could see was a lot of marching, stomp-stomp, turn, change gun hands and more stomp-stomp. The crowd was so bad that I was four people back from the fence. I took most of these pictures without seeing what I was taking. Just point and shoot and pray. I culled lots of them already. Anyway, here is what I could capture, including a few shots of the crowd.