London: Day 1
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| Tina in front of Rashu's Place. |
The next day began with us meeting Tina's really old friend, Tameera. We had bought Oyster cards at the newspaper store at the entrance to the Tube and used the northern line to make our way to King's Cross. It was our ill-fortune that the two nearest tube lines, the jubilee and the metropolitan were both shut down for the weekend. Kings Cross was a nice train hub connected to the St Pancras International Station. The very large concourse could meet all traveller's needs including nice breakfast joints. Our favorite was La Pain Quotidien, this would mark the beginning of both our days in London.
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| Tina introducing me to her love of breakfast. |
After breakfast we headed to Westminster Abbey, we took in the neighboring sites like the House of Parliament and London eye, and got into a line that seemed to stretch forever. I think in our whole trip, the Westminster line was one of the longest, the absolute worst was Versailles. We chatted and the line moved fairly quickly. The doors and the curved arches of the abbey are very much like those of Notre Dame in Paris. And save a few, all coronations of the crown of England, since the early 11th century have happened at this church.
As I entered the building, I was struck with awe. To the eye, it appeared much more of a mausoleum to England's powerful families than a church. This was the first time I had been inside a European church in over 5 years, and I was really impressed. It was unfortunate that no photographs were allowed inside, so we just followed the numbered audio guide. More than a decade ago, when I had been to London with my father, I had been inside this very same church, but I remember little of it. I believe we had a private tour guide and most of the abbey was closed, so we see saw very little of it. The Abbey was really a collection of grave sites of the rich and powerful over the English middle ages. It seemed odd that we were literally walking on the tombs of these "once-august" nobility. Some of the interesting things I remember were the ancient thrones of the old English monarchs. The simplicity of some of these seats of power provide an interesting insight. Despite all their power, kings of yester-years probably had a less luxurious life in comparison to a semi-affluent professional of modern times. This is the true gift of technology and progress.
After the abbey, we did a quick tour of all the attached exhibits and displays including one about "The Royal Wedding" ( Roll eyes) We then made our way back to the metro and. once again, we found that the most direct line to our next destination was under repair, so the three of us took a roundabout route to the British Museum. We did a quick stopover to pick up a hair iron for Tina, before getting to the Museum. I was pretty excited about this place, since it had so many of the famous artifacts that I had read about. The only problem was that we had only a few hours before the place would close and the place was HUGE. We did some of the sections on the ground level, before heading into a pretty frugal lunch at the cafeteria. After lunch, Tameera bid us goodbye as she had a long train ride back home.
While we continued on with the rest of the massive collection, Rashu joined us. We saw the outcome of the colonial plunder of the ancient eastern civilizations. Reliefs from Athens, entire temples from the middle east, Sculptures from Assyria, Sarcophagus from Egypt, the Rosetta stone, and countless other gems.
After essentially rushing through 4000 years of human history in less than a few hours, they ushered us out of the place because it closed. We then let Rashu lead us through the heart of London on foot and bus, where we got a brief glimpse of the city's bustling vibe. Rashu then took us out to a very nice resturant, fairly close to Trafalgar square, where we had some delicious Indian food and then we were back on our way to her place. She had some plans for the night, but we opted out cause we were really beat and had a fairly early morning to plan for the next day. We stayed up again and chatted away before Rashu left for dinner.
London: Day 2
The next morning, we watched in horror as it started to rain. We had plans to be at the Tower of London that morning, so it was going to be fairly disappointing. We only had one day left in the city and wanted to make the most of it. Fortunately, it cleared up just a few minutes later. Tina and I walk the 10-15 minute walk to the metro and repeated out delicious breakfast at King's Cross. I am fairly certain that this would have ranked on one of Tina's favorite activities in Europe. From there we took the trains to the Tower of London, it was a good thing I had bought the pre booked tickets and we were in fairly quickly. We armed ourselves with Audio guide and off we went. The place was very large and the highlights were the crown jewels and some of the quarters inside the tower. The beef-eater tours were hilarious, and both Tina and I really enjoyed the performances. There was also the fairly large group of bengali tourists in maaaflaars and maaankeey caps that briefly hijacked the crown jewels with their complete disregard for civic sense and personal space.
The picture below shows a royal bathroom where 'the model' illustrates how to take a royal dump... I would take my bathroom any day.
After spending several hours at the site, we had another very frugal lunch of sandwiches by the Thames. Our plans to walk through "The City" were cut short, and instead we headed straight to Trafalgar square and then to the National Gallery. Tina quite liked this one. We saw paintings by several masters, and it was clear that Tina could appreciate the subtleties I could not. We called it an early day and headed back to Rashu's place.
We spent the rest of the day just chatting and resting. The next day we took a cab early morning with all our luggage to King's Cross one last time to catch the Eurostar to Paris..... ooooh la la!!!
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