London - After 1 week

Hey all,

Thought we would drop a note to let you know what we think of the big smoke after a week.

Well we have done heaps of walking! We have been doing the tourist thing this week. There is definitely no shortage of things to do in London.

This week we have seen London at it's crazy shopping peak (on Good Friday, that's right they shop even harder here on a bank holiday!) Think of the Perth post Xmas sales and triple 'em! Madness.

We took on an adventure walk listed in our trusty Lonely Planet guide. Checked out Saint James' Palace (This is where Prince Charles and the lads hang out). Then off to the mother load, Buckingham Palace. It was madness. There was thousands of people to see the changing of the guard (what a fluke!). It wasn't anything that special! It was hilarious even! Marching bands, police on horses, the works! Well after escaping the madness there, we headed through St James park, quite pretty. Got to see squirrels for the first time. Funny little critters!

Then off to Westminster Abbey. We will be heading inside a bit later, but got a few snaps of the outside. Man that Christian religion must pay well, that is one impressive building!

Trekked to the Houses of Parliament. That place shows up our Government House. Eat it for breakfast even! After a quick bite and a pint at a local (pints are only about $5 anywhere :) ) we headed down to see Big Ben, took heaps of photos, and then passed 10 Downing Street. What a day!!

On Saturday we checked out Tate Modern Art Gallery. Some pretty freaky art works in there! I was having trouble understanding how they called some bits 'art'. But this was the modern art gallery after all. Again thousands of people from all over the world. We got to check out the Southbank where this is located. The biiigggggg London Eye. Lucky we didn't book for that day as it was a crappy weather day and couldn't see very far at all. Walked the millennium bridge back into the city over the Thames. A fine bridge indeed!

We checked out St Pauls Cathedral. And we thought that that Westminster Abbey was impressive, this place would of swallowed that up! We will be going back to that one as well shortly. After all this walking we needed to replenish the liquids, so we met up with Craig, Nat's cousin. He is now a local after living in London for a couple of years. He took us to this pub in a back alley. It has oodles of history, including a 'house' ghost haunting it. And the Guinness was great. Nothing like the Aussie Guinness!

We then headed off to this pub in the suburbs not far from where we live. It is in Notting Hill! Although Hugh was nowhere to be seen, and no blue door either... This was a great little pub, and was used by Winston Churchill in WW2 for his speeches to the nation. How very British! This place has a Thai restaurant attached. They served us the hottest Thai Green Curry we have ever had! Even hotter than in Thailand! Still it tasted great, and made the Guinness go down even easier! It turns out that Craig lives only a 10 minute walk from where we are staying. In this huge capital that is pretty freaky! We are staggered by the amount of Aussies, Kiwis, Saffas and Americans here.

Today - We headed to the Imperial War Museum. What a place! We got there at opening time and there was already a queue to get in! This place has WW1 and 2 planes hanging from the ceiling, V2 rockets, gun turrets and bomber fuselages to ogle over. After a coffee and a muffin, we took on the masses at some of the exhibits. Damn those kids can get on ya nerves! They have some great exhibits 'The Trenches' was one of them. You head into a darkened area that looks exactly like the trench (without the mud and diseases). There is a captain doing his radio commands, a nurse bandaging up a wounded soldier etc. It has all the sound effects and stuff and was great.

But by far the best bit we went to was the 'Holocaust' exhibit. It was an entire floor of the museum. This was all about the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. The massacre of the Jews, the storming of Poland and the atrocious conditions experienced by the POW's. There is screens all around the place near different exhibitions with stories from the survivors, old movies from the Nazi archives and stuff. We had no idea of the time, but were approaching the end of the exhibition when they announced it was closing time! We had to rush the last part which was a shame. It was a very moving and overwhelming exhibition. At times it was just a little too disturbing Nat couldn't watch the screens anymore. We left feeling emotionally drained. There were lot's of other exhibits that we didn't get to see. Overall, we learned about wars that didn't know existed! And learned details of the great wars in detail. It was a truly amazing place. We would recommend anyone who comes to London to go there.

That's it for the moment. We will try to add a few pictures into the blog soon.

All the best.

Cam & Nat