Sunday 13 March 2011

London - again!

I love London. So when the chance came to spend the day there without 45 children I jumped at it. My friend Sarka, from the Czech Republic, came over for the weekend and asked me to be here guide. She wanted to see the sights.


So our first stop was Madame Tussauds, which I haven't been in since I was a student. The first room was a melee, the one with all the most famous celebrities, but a distinct lack of teenaged girls meant I had no trouble at all having my photo taken with Robert Pattinson. Unfortunately Taylor Lautner wasn't there. Sarka had to wrestle through a huge crowd to have her photo taken with George Clooney.

After a coffee break at Covent Garden we went on 'The Grand Tour': Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, quick glance at the Thames, Downing Street, Horse Guards Parade, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and Piccadilly Circus. My feet were killing me, but Sarka didn't complain. I hope she's not feeling it too much today.
London conspired against us on several occassions. Everywhere you go they are digging up, so roads you expect to be able to cross suddenly become impassable. At least half the tube lines were only running a partial service. And the Subway sandwich shop in Trafalgar Square seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Then I was not quite the guide I should have been in the afternoon. We stopped for a drink in a pub in Victoria and Sarka spotted a bus to Paddington. A better option that the tube, we'd see more sights. So we leapt on one without bothering to check in which direction it was going. Stupid me. It was going south, we wanted to go north. Never mind. We switched buses at Vauxhall, so we got a nice view of the Thames again, London Eye one way, Battersea Power station the other, the MI6 building right behind us. For anyone else wanting to see a few sights this is a good route to take. We drove up Park Lane, with Hyde Park to our left, and past Marble Arch and Oxford Street.
Then the day was done. Sarka has promised me a day in Prague. I am looking forward to it. I hope she had as good a day in London as I did.

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