The Wacky World of a Lazy Pig (AKA Simon)

Eurotrip Day 2 - Plans totally changed!!! Did the bus tour.

I got a good rest and woke up at around 7:30am. I didn't want to wake up Roger and Steve so I basically had to sneak my way around the room. Steve told me later that I woke him up anyway because of the noise the plastic bags in my backpack made. Anyway, I washed up and got ready to leave. Steve and Roger were quick to get up and were ready in about 30 minutes (no I didn't time them).

Steve headed out first to check out the weather and came back screaming "It's raining!!!!!!!!". Kinda sucked. By the time we left the hostel at 9:00am, it was online drizzling. We wanted to get a 3-day travel pass to minimized costs, but the closest tube station didn't sell them. We had to walk to the Baker street station (mentioned in a day 1, around 15 minutes walk) to get the tickets. Just as we were going to go to The Baker street station, someone came up to us and recommended that we take the famour bus tours on the double decker busses. The pass would have been £18, YIKES!! EXPENSIVE AGAIN!!! I didn't want to spend the money at first and Roger as well. But then we figured that we don't always have the opportunity and might as well try it out. The £18 covered the bus for the entire day, so it wasn't bad for transportation. It got us to all the major attractions. The other great thing was that it came with a free tour boat cruise. SWEEEEEET!!!!

Once we hopped on the bus, we got a quick tour of Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Parliament and Westminster Abbey. The double decker busses are great here because they provide a view that is higher than you would normally get from the ground. There was also audio commentary that was somewhat helpful, but would have loved a live tour guide instead. Now that I think about it, I think parliament takes it away with the building that I have taken the most pictures of, especially Big Ben. It seems like London is always filled with tourists.

Once we got off at the Westminster Abbey station, we walked around towards Big Ben again, but not to take more pictures of it. With the wonderful sun shining over London today, we decided that we would totally change our original plan and hop onto our free boat cruise. We had to walk to the Embankment pier to take the tour boat cruise because the one leaving from Westminster pier (the one right beside parliament) only had a circle tour. We wanted to get off at the east side of London where the Tower of London and the Tower bridge were. The boats themselves are very wide with regular seats that can seat to around 150 people I would say.

We took a few pictures before the boat left. During the tour, we had a live tour guide that did a great job of describing all the bridges on the way to the Tower of London. The most obvious bridge is the London Bridge. He said that the "London Bridge is falling down" song is a very valid song because the London Bridge in fact fell 3 times in history. We also came across a "Ladies bridge". This was quite an amazing bridge. The crew that built the bridge was 75% women because most of the men were fighting in WWII when the bridge was being built. Instead of using regular stone bridge materials, they used a special type of stone (I forget the name) that self cleans in the presence of rain, pretty cool. The other bridges we passed by were also so-so interesting.

We arrived at our destination (The Tower of London) and got of to take a look at the landmark. The Tower of London definitely looked tiny and uninteresting. We did take some inital pictures of the outside of the Tower of London. Tower of London is one of the great fortresses of London that was built around year 1000. We hopped onto the tour bus again to visit the rest of the east side of London. The prominent Tower Bridge looked very nice as we passed by on the bus. We got off the bus back at parliament. From there, we took walked around to find the entrance to Westminster Abbey (where some of Harry Potter was filmed). After searching around, we found it right infront of our faces. The line at the front Enrance was long but very fast. I thought that the abbey was open to the public FREE of charge. WRONG! It was £10 for a student ticket. But to be honest, it was worth every penny.

It is quite amazing the see how many statues, tombs and statues of Jesus and Mary were in the abbey. The Abbey itself is enormous!!! There exists over 300 dead bodies laid within the Abbey in sarcophogouses (stone tombs) with enscriptions and stone carvings of the person on the inside. There were kings, queens, prime ministers, generals, princes, adventurers and artists buried in there. The Abbey itself has existed for about 1000 years and has a huge tradition. Since there are so many people buried in the abbey, the sides of the walking path in the first half of the abbey was packed full of well organized tombs. Steve was smart to get an Audio guide. I don't know why I was so cheap not to get one. Next time, if it does seem interesting (which this was) I will spend the money to learn more. Yes, I am stupid, now I regret it :(

I was overwhelmed by the amounts of buried people here and after reading a ton of descriptions. I soon got tired of reading almost the same thing over and over again "King died and is now laid here. He did blah blah blah.....". I glanced at most of them. I was mainly looking at the stone carvings of the special people buried. To my surprise, Rudrick Kipling (I think that is how you spell his name) was also buried there, or so I think. For those of you who don't know, Kipling is the person that wrote the poem for "The calling of an Engineer".

Photos were not permitted in the Abbey, but that didn't stop me when there weren't people looking. I took a picture of the Pyx chamber, where Kings kept their Treaures. It was a real rundown stone room, but was just beautiful. I sneaked a picture of that. I also took 3-4 pictures of the outside courtyard, why? It was used in Harry Potter.

This Entry seems more like an entry about the Abbey right? yeah well, we spent around 2-3 Hours here. There is still more. I also got to see the room where they do part of the coronation ceremonies. It was full of people and had special parliament like wooden seats lined on the walls of the room. Apparently, they use it once in a while for making decisions. Finally, I reached the High Altar and Quire area. This is where coronations and royal funerals took place. It looked amazing. There was a golden altar and golden altar pieces surrounded by paintings. I think the middle painting was a really nice one of the last supper. Too bad there were 2-3 poeple guarding the area, so I couldn't sneak a picture here. One guy did try (no it wasn't Steve) and got yelled at.

Steve and Roger went through the entire thing really quickly and was waiting for me. I really feel bad because it seems like I make them waste time that they could be using to see other attractions of THEIR interest. We left the Westminster abbey shortly after 1:00pm. I had not planned to stay so long on the Abbey so the schedule was more scewed up than I originally thought. Anyway, we had to carry on with the historic walk by going up Parliament street. The two most important thing we encountered on the way was the Prime Minister's residence (it wasn't interesting so no pictures) and the horse guards. These guards are not the ones with the big long black hats, so we couldn't play with them. I wouldn't want to because they were sitting very still on a large horse, which couldn't stop trying to bite toursists, and had a large sword on the other hand. Steve got a quick picture of them. I waited behind this group of 4 stupid chicks who couldn't take a good picture because they freaked out whenever the horse moved, even though the horse was still far away. I got my shot afterwaiting a whol 10 minutes or so. Big waste of time.

We continued walking up Parliament st until we got to Trafalgar Square (for the 3RD time!!!). This time, we were there to go to The National Gallery. The greatest thing was that this was free and open to the public. Another very great thing was that they had an enormous set of art paintings. The bad thing was that there were TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much. I am into art, but Steve and Roger didn't. Once again, I felt bad in each room because they would finish looking through the paintings in the room quickly while I liked to read the descriptions and understand the paintings. I am sure they just weren't interested in the art style or theme. The amount of Christian Catholic related paintings were amazing. I would say that atleast 1/3 of the painting collections in the gallery were of Jesus, Mary, Saint Jerome, Saint Peter, Saint Francis and many other saints. All were so well done that it was hard to remember them all. The ones that I really like the most were the unfinished ones. They left an element of mystery to the paintings.

I thought we were going to finish in about 2-3 hours, nop. We were probably in the fallery for about 4 hours. And for the 4 hours, I would say Steve Roger and I stood up for around 3.5 hours straight. It was soooooo tiring but the paintings were gorgeous. They were all highly recommended.

We left the Gallery and hopped on the tour bus again. This time, we wanted to get a good view of Buckingham Palace, instead, we only got to see part of the front lawn. Sigh. We got off a few stops later trying to take another type of bus tour which would give us an overview of some of the museums in London. We walked aimlessly for around 1 hour. Steve and I were lost. I think this made Roger kind of upset. I felt so sorry that we got lost and has wasted some time. But we did see some of the shopping district I guess. We later found out that the tour bus had ended around 1 hour ago and that there were no more coming for the rest of the day. We also found out that the regular tour bus, which someone told use ran to atleast 7:00pm, had also finished running. The time was 7:30pm. We didn't want to spend the money to buy a tube tickey so we decided to walk all the way to Chinatown to eat. Chinatown is nothing like Vancouver's or Toronto's. Food was mediocre to normal and wasn't worth the money. I do have a picture of the restaurant though, just so I know not to go there again.

After that, we were all burnt out. We walked fron Chinatown all the way home. I stopped by an internet cafe to type up a blog (yesterdays). I am doing that today too. The second I got home after writing the entry I fell asleep. My feet were so sore and legs were once again incapable of carrying my body anymore.

This day was indeed fun. Thanks to the weather, it was great. The only crappy part was getting lost. We will learn. Hopefully I won't be stupid.

Labels: eurotrip

posted by lazypig @ 2:43 PM