Day 53 London, England

Day 53 London, England

Rain, grey, green, traffic, traffic jams, tourists, tour buses, English speaking guide, heritage and history.

I think the potential excitement and anticipation of visiting London extinguished when entered the traffic jams of London. Our tour bus had to continually wait for the traffic at the next set of traffic lights to move before it could proceed through each first set. Rarely did we move off when the lights turned green on the first occasion. Our driver continually changed directions to avoid the traffic jams only to find we were caught up in another. Tour buses were everywhere, clogging the streets. I know we are part of the fault; however I think London needs to find a solution to this bedlam.  Sitting in a bus for half an hour while it travels two blocks became a tad annoying. Our poor guide did a marvellous job adlibbing as our route changed and our driver did a fantastic job driving this huge, awkward vehicle through the narrow and congested streets of London. We travelled 2 ¼ hours from Dover so by the time we arrived in London we were ready to see the sights, not traffic.

Enough! We travelled through green and lush countryside on the way from Dover to London. The greens are a lot more juicer here than at home. Australian greens seem to hold a little bit of golden yellow in its mix, appearing drier. In comparison to the road we travelled yesterday in France, the system needs a little more tweaking. We arrived in London without any delay but once there…ugh. The Olympics are being held here in 2012 and I hope it will be sorted out by then.

Our tour consisted of a city drive past most of the attractions with a couple of stops in between. Then lunch in an English Pub before another group of attractions. First stop (when we got there), took in Westminster Abbey and its surrounds. People were everywhere making it easy to lose our group but we managed to keep a tight unit until it poured with rain and everyone scattered to various forms of shelter. Paul and I were not prepared for the English rain burst and ended up soaked. By the time we got on the bus, water was still dripping from our hair into our shirts. Our jackets were soaked, along with our shoes, collars and bottom part of our jeans. Mmmm. Fortunately our next stop happened to be lunch, so we both positioned ourselves under the hand dryers in the toilets to dry our hair!  Lunch consisted of English fish and chips with a glass of beer and apple pie and cream followed by a cup of tea. Once we finished lunch I headed back to the hand dryer with Paul's jacket and managed to dry most of it. My jacket had been left to dry on the bus….yeh? Anyway happy and much wiser we headed off again in the bulky chariot for more sights.

Next stop happened to be the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. It had not rained for at least ½ an hour but black clouds still threatened, so this time we took our plastic ponchos and umbrella along with us. The changing of the guards had not finished when down it came. Paul managed to find me and gave me his poncho bag to open for him. As I struggled with the zip lock on the bag, Paul opened the umbrella which immediately turned inside out! We got drenched again before we could open the umbrella correctly this time! It was bucketing. While Paul held the umbrella, I tried to get the poncho on him. He had the umbrella angled so the rain ran off onto my poncho, then onto my jeans, filling my shoes up with water. All the time this occurred we were laughing hysterically. Paul got drenched and angry so stormed back through puddles of water, to the bus. I just stood there looking at all of the tourists huddled in groups under their umbrellas, only keeping their heads and shoulders dry whilst the bottom part of their bodies and feet became drenched. I did notice before I left to go back to the bus, the guards had retreated into their little huts and were not to be seen.

Wet again; traffic jams again, before we stopped off to see the Tower of London. It was raining when we arrived but this time it stopped raining whilst we were there. This happened to be our last stop before be travelled through Southwark and headed back to Dover.

900 odd people left DP when we docked at Dover. 842 joined the ship, some Aussies, New Zealanders, English and Americans. Our neighbours are from New Zealand and arrived after 24 hours direct flights from Auckland. I suspect they will be early to bed tonight.

Well that has been our experience of London. Maybe it would be best if we return and spend some time travelling around London by walking and travelling by the Tube. 

 

 

Day 54, NO Amsterdam, Netherlands.

We prepared for our tour of Rotterdam, Delft and The Hague first thing this morning only to have Captain McBain announce the strong winds we were experiencing, were hampering the DP entry into the canals of Amsterdam. He also mentioned the Port Authority recommended the ship would not be able to enter safely under this morning's wind conditions. Bummer, we are now sailing to Bergen, Norway and will arrive on the 20^th July.