First impressions

After two more very active days in London I have some questions and comments:

The Underground is underground, deep underground. The newer Melbourne city loop is serviced by a wonderful escalator system, here there are an awful lot of stairs. But it’s a wonderful, cheap and efficient way of moving a lot of people around in a hurry.

In our experience it never rains in London.

A walk along the Thames as the sun sets, even when it's cold, is a wonderful experience.

If you want to see the Crown Jewels alone and without standing in a queue for hours go at 9.00 a.m. in March. No-one else was there when we went. It was pretty funny to stand on the people-mover footpath in front of the crowns – we could have stayed there as long as we wanted to without holding anyone up.\

It’s impossible to see everything in London in four days.

The squirrels in Hyde Park can move very fast.

Not everything in London costs a packet of money. We’ve seen some great free stuff.


We've been busy. Some of the things we've done:
• Had two wonderful days with Glenn, our son, whom we hadn’t seen in over two years.
• Watched the Tower Bridge being lifted to allow traffic though (except it was a maintenance lift)

• Visited Tower of London (which has twenty towers)

• Seen the first shop in the world near Greenwich Observatory
• Visited the Maritime Museum at Greenwich
• Watched a performance of ‘The Mousetrap’ from the balcony built on the side of a cliff. And no, I’m not going to tell you who dunnit.
• Visited the RAF museum which is free and not listed in Lonely Planet but should be.

We also had a look in the Church of St George the Martyr at Southwark where my ancestors, Zachary Perryman and Ellen Stock, were married in 1849 shortly before they migrated to Adelaide. The Sunday morning service was about to start but they allowed us in to just wander around and told us a bit about the history. I hadn't realised it is mentioned in one of Dicken's books. Little Dorrit slept in the vestry.

London (via Incheon)

We've been in London 24 hours and I still haven't got over the excitement of seeing the Monopoly board for real. We've walked up Regent Street, shopped in Oxford Street and got caught up in the lunch crowd at Pall Mall. Haven't seen Old Kent Road yet.

They changed the guard at Buckingham Palace and we went to have a look, along with a few other tourists. I loved the good humour of the crowd controllers. "Schnell, schnell please" I heard one say. It was very cold but almost sunny. At Incheon in Korea, where we stayed one night on the way over, we were delighted to wake up to a snow-covered landscape. This is the view from the window of our hotel there.

This morning we had breakfast in a little nook at our hotel overlooking Hyde Park and walked through the park to get to Buck House. And we've taken the self-guided tour of the wonderful Wesminster Abbey. My feet are sore.

Please don't tell me the ending

Glenn asked me yesterday what stage shows we were planning to see in London. "Well, none. I'd love to have seen Mousetrap but I think we've left it a wee bit late to get tickets." That's my usual modus operandi.

Today I got an email from him. He's got us tickets to Mousetrap! London just gets better and better.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the play

The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in the West End of London in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. It has had the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 24,000 performances so far. It is the longest running show (of any type) of the modern era. The play is also known for its twist ending, which at the end of every performance the audience is asked not to reveal.

It's OK Tess - you're still young. It'll still be running when you get to go to London.

A bonus

Checked my emails this morning and found one from Glenn, our son who lives in Zurich, telling me he'll be working in London while we're there and free on the following weekend to spend some time with us. Fantastic news - it's more than two years since we've seen him. I was already excited about exploring London but this will be icing on the cake.