After leaving London the first time we felt like we had
unfinished business with this city. Sure we had seen all the key sights but we
didn’t feel as though we had fully experienced what the city had to offer
outside of being a tourist. For this reason we decided to do a round 2
adventure, and we are really glad we did.
It’s easy to see why people fall in love with this city, its
buzzing and there is so much to see and do outside of all the tourist pulls.
Interestingly though whilst there is so much happening we kept in mind that
2013 research has said that Londoners are actually the least happy people in
the UK.
Day 1
We started our day at the famous Hamley’s toy store, where
we unleashed our inner child. Hamley’s is amazing with 6 levels of mayhem. We can
only imagine that this must be one of the best jobs in the world, where you get
to act like a giant kid and interact with kids and do toy demo’s all day. One
of the staff said he loved getting “paid to play”.
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| Simon catches up with the Queen (of Lego) |
Denise had recommended to go to Choccywoccydoodah as they
are famous for their cake and chocolate and their café is decorated with a bit
of an Alice in Wonderland theme. Apparently, they have a particularly popular
TV show based on their chocolate and cake business. One word describes this
place ‘decadent’. We shared an extremely rich chocolate cake which was then
layered with chocolate on top and raspberry coulis, both an unnecessary
addition to an already overly rich cake. Along with the cake we had a peanut
butter thick shake and a hot chocolate. A sugar coma ensued leading to death by
chocolate, the 30 minutes after the food came are somewhat blurry as we hadn’t
had breakfast and after this we certainly weren’t going to have lunch, so we
called it brunch and left it at that. The peanut butter thickshake was amazing
and we will attempt to recreate at home. The cake was the kind you take three
bites of and need a rest, it was very good but definitely not as good as London
round 1 at Harrods.
Moving very slowly we perused Soho, which was very much our
kind of place. It has a great vibe about it, quite arty and nice shops,
restaurants and café’s. Continuing on we walked to the Millenium Bridge which
has beautiful views of St Peters and the Thames, we were lucky enough to catch
it at sunset. We saw an artist creating street art on the bridge between the
steel gaps in the bridge, absolutely tiny fine art. This made us look down as
we walked across the bridge and we found he had done them all over the decking.
I wonder how many people have walked over this bridge everyday without ever
noticing?
As night was falling we stumbled upon Covent Garden Market
which along with the rest of London had gone completely Christmassy and it was
a beautiful sight. We eventually found ourselves in Chinatown where we had
dinner. We kept moving and were soon in Piccadilly circus where they have
enclosed the fountain in a snow globe. With an hour to kill until we saw the
Lion King we spent a little time in the National Portrait Gallery.
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| Covent Garden Market |
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| Piccadilly Snow Globe |
To cap a long day on our feet off we saw the musical version
of the Lion King. It is a FANTASTICAL theatre interpretation and remake of a
classic Disney movie. For once a musical that the leaves you uplifted and
happy. The costumes were vibrant and colourful, the props and stage production
were unbelievable and the show was unforgettable. If you haven’t seen it, see
it.
Day 2
The Kangaroos had made it to the semi-finals of the Rugby
League World Cup so we bought tickets to cheer them on. Honestly, we were
playing against Fiji so it wasn’t a tight competition. Thankfully the tickets
meant we got to see both semi finals which included England vs. New Zealand,
and we had scored unbelievable tickets with an amazing view! This was
electrifying and was full of every emotion you want in a game. NZ won with 22
to 20 in a nail biter right to the end with NZ scoring the try in the last 30
seconds of the game, and then the game hung on the kick for conversion, people
were nearly pulling their hair out with suspension. It was a tough game to
decide who to go for. Do you go for the strategic move and barrack for England
for the win to have the grand final as Aussies vs England? Or do you go for the
nation closest to your home and who we probably have more affection for, NZ? We
took our seats still debating, but we had Kiwis on both sides of us so it was
probably a good move that we decided to cheer the NZ Kiwis on.
We were hoarse and utterly exhausted from the adrenaline
overdose and felt like we had run a marathon by the time the Aussies came onto
the ground. Simon described the game with Fiji as like shooting fish in a
barrel. Aussies took the game 64 to 0, it was actually not a great game to
watch because you knew what the outcome would be.
Wembley definitely has the wow factor, it was huge and
created an amazing atmosphere and it wasn’t even full. Unfortunately as England
played first and lost, most of the stadium being English cleared out to drown
their sorrows, meaning the atmosphere died down a little.
The footy was easily one of the highlights of our time in
London, and it was a lot of fun being surrounded by our own people, we felt at
home and unified.
After the intensity of the game we decided to calm it all
down with a late movie. Hot tip – if you want to see a movie in London do it
out in the ‘burbs’ not in the city. London city wanted 32 pounds for the worst
seats, whereas we paid 21 out with the locals instead.
The night ended on a low note when we realised that one of
our credit card numbers had been stolen, and someone had been living it up on
us. We caught it early and after messing around with the most economical way of
calling an Australian landline we finally got there using Skype. By 2am we had
arranged a new card to meet us in Spain. Luckily we have a number of
contingencies and always planned this as a risk, so it wasn’t too much of a
surprise, but still a pain. We are praying that our card finds us in Spain.
Day 3
Today was about enjoying the wide variety of shopping that
London has to offer, and to find some replacement shoes for Simon. 4 hours of
shopping later we had some shoes, and were completely determined to come back
to London for a shopping holiday. This goes straight onto the bucket list,
along with all the other things we have determined to do after this trip. Hope
we win the Lottery!
The Christmas windows along Oxford street were spectacular,
and we particularly loved one of the Selfridges windows where the entire scene
is made from ginger bread. To be honest though we thought that the Myer windows
in Melbourne still top it! Christmas is on steroids over here, its
unbelievable.
Later in the evening we went along on a Jack the Ripper
walking tour in London’s East End. We found it incredibly interesting, full of
facts, history and Rippervision (mini
projector that works on the walls of London with slides on Jack the Ripper)! It was put together in a very
theatrical way, which made it all come to life a lot more, and made it a very
enjoyable night.
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| Yes that is Amy's head |
There are over 30 tours that run each night in the East End
making it at times a little ridiculous to have bands of mobs roaming the
streets in the dark. There is clearly still a massive demand to know about
Jack, and we can only guess it’s because there are so many unknowns. People
perhaps want to be the one who figures out who did this, and why. This tour
really reminded us of how unbelievably traumatising this man was to the people,
and how horrific his crimes were.
We ate a late dinner in Brick Lane which has over FORTY
curry houses and you can smell the fabulous aromas as you walk down the street.
Not to mention that all the competition and the location drives the prices
down, so it is possibly one of the cheaper places to eat in London.
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| A night time view of 'the pickle' |
Day 4
Our day started at the magnificent and free British museum. From the
outside it is glorious in design, but the main foyer is something else and sets
the tone for the extent of things to see. The size and breadth of the
collections in this museum is overwhelming.
We think the free tours are one of the best ways to see the
museum. We did 2 one hour tours, Ancient Greece and the Age of Enlightenment,
along with exploring the key sights independently. If you’re short on time you
can apparently do the highlights in one hour, but that does not do this place
justice. We spent 5 hours in total here, and feel we did little more than
scratch the surface. If you lived in London and could spend a few hours a week
looking at the museum we think it would probably take about 6 months to not see
it all, but read all the information.
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| Original pieces from the Parthenon |
To add the excitement, about 3 hours in, the whole museum
was evacuated for an unknown reason. We returned an hour later, everything
seemed fine and we still don’t know what happened.
For us the museum highlight was the enlightenment museum. This
describes how in around the 1700 people actually started to get into history in
an inquisitive way, areas of interest turned into science, people were no
longer only philosophers they were now scientists who not just had theories but
were fact finding. It was a remarkable era and it really is because of this
time that history is treated as respectfully as it is today. There were no
boring parts of this museum!
We of course saw the real Rosetta stone, people flocked around it, which is probably why we enjoyed the replica model a lot more, which you can touch and interact with. The Rosetta stone is essentially an ancient Egyptian tablet with hieroglyphics, Greek, and a local Egyptian language on it. It was because of this stone that we were able to interpret hieroglyphics which then in turn was able to unlock a lot of Egyptian history – pretty incredible. Please note that we are simplifying this a bit too much, apologies.
Our night was filled at the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park.
This was almost a winter Christmas version of Oktoberfest with the beer
replaced by delicious mulled wine and honey mead. There is fake snow being
blown through the air, everything is illuminated with fairy lights, and the night
comes alive with brilliant live music and ridiculously expensive rides and
Christmas markets.
We had pre-booked tickets for the very popular ice skating.
Take the awful generic skates, and our group of 150 being herded around like
cats before we hit the ice out of the picture and it was amazing. We skated on
a rink around a giant Christmas tree, under fairy lights, with live music
playing as we skated – it felt like a scene from a movie. Somehow we managed to
stay upright and were one of the last on the rink who lasted the full hour.
It truly lived up to its name as a winter wonderland, and it
was the best way to finish off our time in the UK.
Just a few UK Parting
Thoughts
- There appears to be a social hierarchy system for everything, in particular supermarkets and shopping chains. Marcs and Spencer and Waitrose are the high end ideal in supermarkets. You’d never need to cook from these shops just buy the readymade restaurant quality everything. Other supermarkets are focused on the more budget end and others entirely on frozen goods. CHOICE PEOPLE! A duopoly is no good for anyone.
- Clothes shopping has so many levels that we don’t have from super cheap to high end. Incredible variety of choice. A bigger range in Australia would be wonderful, as there seems to be a gap somewhere between Cotton On and Zara. Or have we missed something?
- Why is Australian shopping so expensive? There is amazing and comparatively cheap shopping available everywhere. Next time we come to the UK it will be with empty suitcases to fill.
- Australia needs to have more sandwich options. Sandwiches are a great and cheap way of eating and they are delicious and hugely popular and available everywhere. We have had some of the best sandwiches we have eaten from supermarkets for a few dollars. Why are Aussie companies not doing this more?
- This is still the place for Aussies, we meet them everywhere and apparently this is still the place to pack up your life and find work. It’s easy to understand why, you get all the benefits of a new and exciting country, with all the benefits of home. That is there is minimal culture shock, everyone speaks English, the protocols are relatively the same, they drive on the same side of the road, and they have a love of pubs and sport. Essentially, its like home but with a funny accent, different flag, cold and easily forged money.
- We loved the busking culture, which even the smallest towns get into. There is amazing talent everywhere and its such a pleasure to walk around the streets and hear it.
- Christmas is much more suited to Winter than Summer.
- Driving in Australia is a dream compared to the UK. Everything is well signed, clearly marked and orderly. Believe it or not I think people in Aus would use their indicators 80% more than people in the UK. It can be mental at times! 4 lane roundabouts with 7 exits… crazy! We really didn’t appreciate those little yellow suggested corner speed signs back home until we didn’t have them anymore. Massively helpful.
- Unfortunately (excluding the sandwiches) the British really did live up to the reputation of not being the greatest cooks. We had no memorable meals in the UK and definitely had some forgettable ones. Sure we didn’t eat in high end places but we did not eat in budget establishments either. We’re sure London would be the exception and next time we would certainly like to explore the dining options in a bigger way.
Simon and Amy xoxo
