London Day 2 – Wimbledon and Westminster.

The students wear these jackets so they don't get lost!

Proof of theater!

Abby road

The famous balcony at Lords Cricket ground

Wimbledon center court

We got up early to see a few certain sites in London  - our first (unofficial) site was the tube (again) the amount of people that were packed into the train was astounding. Of course I don’[t think that it can rival some Asian countries, but it was still impressive, especially when we try and suggest solutions to the commuters. We were lucky that we didn’t have any bags with us, which would have been very fun getting that on the train. Our first stop was the Churchill war rooms and museum. This was the situation room where lots of decisions were made by the English planning teams etc. They also had an extensive museum about churchill’s life and how he came to be the leader of the war effort. It was interesting. It costs 13.50 to get in I think.  It was a good museum, mainly I think because all the newspaper articles and things were in English. Westminster abby was our next destination – located very close to war rooms, it cost 19 pounds to enter, and you weren’t even allowed to take photos! I found that very annoying, it was impressive – but nothing that we haven’t seen anywhere else really. We then left to go to on a Wimbledon tour. This was about 30 minutes on the train to get there. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour at Wimbledon (20 pounds), the women taking us around knew her stuff, and we saw all the sites there, Henman hill, the show courts, the major stadium and the museum there. An interesting fact is how prestige everything is, the club is only allowed to have 500 members – and to enter they have a vote to see if you are allowed to be a member! We left there after a look through the museum (a little underwhelming) and left to go back into the city. We then went bowling (10 pounds) and tarks pipped me on the last bowl 111 to 110! My hand came back to haunt me a little though – I guess resting for 3 months doesn’t fix things all the time! Oh well, we then went on to find a film to go to – but the we missed the times so we went home – thoroughly tired from walking around the and seeing things all day.

The next day our plans were to go to Lords – cricket ground and then see abby road – the Beatles famous picture site. We arrived at Lords (about 30 mins train) to see the cricket ground there – ‘The home of cricket’ it was pretty cool to see the Australian dressing room (otherwise known as the away dressing room) and he told us where all the players used to sit etc. Such a place covered in cricket history – the museum was crap really – the Ashes were there (which you weren’t allowed to take a photo of which I think is ridiculous photo’s without flash have no chance of damaging anything, just stupid. Damn English) but you saw the Ashes on the tour before you got a chance to see the museum alone anyway. So in summary – tour of Lords : Excellent. Museum – poor.

We then went to Abby road (much to kind of my dismay) as I don’t really like the Beatles or their music, and the fact that it is a road that has not even a plaque to look at – I thought it was useless. There was though multiple people trying to recreate the photo, much to the annoyance of the local traffic going over the crossing.

We walked on to have lunch at a place near London bridge – the microwave lunch that says ‘home cooked meals on the front. A bit ordinary.  Well I have popped into a macca’s – so I will send this and then continue writing in the car.

Resuming

So I was in the center of London eating I had just eaten some crap café food, and we headed off to see tower bridge (8.50). The bridge itself it pretty cool, mainly because it is so old, and looks pretty cool. When reaching the top of the tower you get shown a short film on the bridge, and then get to walk along the top platform that shows various other bridges and other lots of information about the bridge. The most disappointing thing is that it is fully enclosed.
If you don’t want to hear my next rant – then skip this paragraph.

Everywhere we have been the high structures have been enclosed so (I assume) people don’t throw themselves off it. (so many bridges now have these measures in place. Eiffel tower, Koln cathedral, harbour bridge, Berlin tower, even thinking back, the Bendigo tower in the park has a huge fence to stop people from jumping off – now you can’t tell me that it is to stop people from falling. A fence that is chest height is sufficient enough to stop people from falling off. Now usually when writing you can’t write things are not politically correct, but I think that for at least a few people I share my thoughts on this. When people die from a car accident in Australia, the media is all over it – more funding for roads, stricter road laws, lower the drink driving limit, etc etc. Now I agree that the death toll of ~ 400 a year is tragic, and the related cost to the community is up into the hundreds of millions of dollars – making TAC advertise more so they don’t have to pay out as much money. What goes on behind closed doors (the media’s doors if you catch my angle there) is that hundreds of people are committing suicide every year, but we hear nothing of it. Should it become a published event? We plaster the smashed up car on the front page of the newspaper – probably to the distress of the families who are ‘touched by this road toll’, whereby we are erecting fences and barriers on all sorts of things that people don’t question or ever hear about. Why do we have a higher fence on the Westgate bridge now? Why do train drivers have mnay sleepless nights and endless counselling after striking someone who has decided to end their life.It is only recently that some high profile athletes and sportspersons have stepped forward and said that they suffered from depression. Jeff Kennett and his beyond blue foundation is a start, but I guess my point is that a huge amount of money and publicity is being spent on road safety heavily outweighs the amount of funding that is put into mental health and trying to prevent people from wanting to end their life. I can’t quote a number but it is over 1000 per year for Australia. Someone should work out the $ per death for cars and for suicides.

Anyway – enough of that, back to a brighter topic. We then ventured over to The Tower of London (18 pounds) which holds the Crown jewels, when you pay your entry fee you get a free tour (leaves every 30 mins) and then you can walk around with a guy in uniform who tells you things about the monarch and the castle walls etc etc. You can also get a free audioguide which seems to be the norm when you go to tourist sites nowdays. (usually for a fee) We then went almost reluctantly into see the Crown jewels – which if we had of gone in June or July I believe would have been unbearable, there was 4 rooms of Queues – all of which we could walk through unimpeded (thankfully). We were treated to some pretty cool stuff in the Crown Jewel chamber, Jewel encrusted swords, crowns, and that like, I was actually impressed at how nice it was. Would I go again if I was there – probably, which says something for it. Andrew didn’t come with us because he had already seen it, we then went and saw the weapons exhibitions and the chapel. I didn’t care much for the weapons section as we had seen multiple things that were similar in the various museums and castles that we had been to before – pistols, swords, spears, shields etc. Andrew went home after that – must have been tired, so Mark and I went took the tour boat along the Thames back to Westminster and walked into Leicester Square to buy some tickets to a musical. After some convincing mark agreed to come, and we saw Pricilla – Queen of the Desert. It was good, but I have seen other shows that are better. I think Mark enjoyed it to – exceeded his expectations by 1.2 so must have been better then he thought it was going to be J Kabab for dinner and home on the not so crowded train now to bed.

The final day Andrew wanted to go out to see stadiums  (Chelsea and Wimberley) but Mark and I wanted to go to see Windsor Castle (19 pounds). We drove the car out to the castle (foud some cheaper public parking (2 poundss an hour though) and hoofed in wading through bunches of French school kids. We got ourselves a free tour also which was included like with the Tower of London. The size of Windsor castle was impressive, as well as how much security was around. They had lots of rooms that you could walk through to see – including the long room used for formal dinners for the royal family, golden rooms, rooms with crazy portraits and other things. It was nice to see – but I think that seeing another castle with that stuff would have been too much. We then took the car back to our hostel and took the train into the city. We went straight to the London bridge experience (23Pounds) which was pretty terrible. Laughable is a more accurate word. It is basically the history of the London bridge put together by some actors trying to make it scary with a ghost train style walk through a series of rooms with guys in masks jumping out and trying to scare you…  There was no jumping done by either of us, it was more amusing to see the girls being scared. For the scariest place in the UK (3 years in a row it claims)– it has a lot of work to do. We then left to go to the war experience museum(13.50) which we missed the light show (supposed to give you a experience like the place is being bombed) we just got the museum, but it was still interesting enough. We left – grabbed some dinner and saw an independent film (12 pounds)  titled ‘tyrannosaur’ which was ok, lots of themes going on, but not so easy going on the happy story telling.

Back to our hostel – almost knowing our way around the stations by now, the tube is pretty easy to navigate and then to bed.

The only way that we could afford to see all those sites (prices I put next to them) was to buy the London card for 3 days. It cost us 64 pounds for 3 days, and we used 155 of a possible 180 pounds worth of value. (only restricted by time) I enjoyed London, and it might be a place I go back to again.

The next day we were leaving, which is the day I am writing this – but I will leave that for a few days because we haven’t done much today.