England 1
We arrived in England at the rather tired looking Heatrow airport early in the afternoon. I tried calling friends of ours whom we had met in Nepal 4 years before but they were unavailable so we jumped on the internet with the intention of booking a room in a hostel near the Tower of London. Everything was booked out. So - much to my great sadness (yeah right!) - we had to book into a 5 star hotel. It was bliss. Though the room was small it was so clean and comfortable and beautiful. I was in love with it! It even had a pen to steal :) Not that I would do a thing like that of course. After cleaning up a little we went down and walked around the tower. We found an old piece of wall in one corner that dated back to Roman times. I was falling in love with more than our bedroom now. We found an Indian restaurant around the corner from our hotel and feasted royally. We tehn walked along the Thames, stopping for a drink in a small bar tucked under the London bridge.
The next morning when we could finaly drag ourselves out of bed, we went over to the Tower of London and took a tour. The Yeoman Warder who gave us a talk and tour was hilarious - he gave all the children a lot of giggles with his talk of chopping off people's heads. We queued up and saw the Crown Jewels with some of the biggest diamonds and precious stones in the world. After wandering through the towers for ages we finaly dragged ourselves away to see a few more of London's great sights. We took a subway across to the Parliment buildings and saw Big Ben, the Westminister Abbey (only from the outside as it was closed), the Parliment buildings and the London Eye. The London Eye is a huge ferris wheel that takes you up high so you can see for miles over London town and out to the countryside. The visibility wasn't great so we saved our pennies on that one. We went down to a tourist office and got brochures on the Lakes District and on Cornwall, the two areas we hoped to visit. We had lunch at an English pub. Marty had a delicous looking pie and I ate minestrone soup - trying to be good. We walked on from there to Buckingham Palace where there was a sandwhich board up saying 'No Changing of the Guard Today'. The place looked pretty quiet, some one told us the queen spends most of her days out at Windsor Castle these days so I suspect she wasn't in at Buckingham Palace when we walked by. We went on to Harrods and wandered around the bottom floor of the huge deparment store. I was pleased to see quite a few things from NZ there - like Bluff Oysters. It had been a long day so we caught the subway home and spent the evening resting in our lovely room. I had a long bath and Marty watched TV - in English! It was brilliant. We looked at our timetable and figured out that if we wanted to spend any time in the wine regions of France we would have to leave the next day so the Lakes District and Cornwall will have to wait for another time.
The next morning we packed up, checked out and headed down to the Euro Star train station. We had tickets on the next train to France within minutes. I was a little nervous as the train line went through the tunnel under the channel. I couldn't get my head around how we would be able to breathe down there underneath the ocean - and what if the ocean broke through the tunnel while we were in it?
