Once Rob and I had left Australia, we did spend a few wonderful weeks in New Zealand. However, we’ll post about those a bit later. We want to get into the UK travels!
So, we landed in London on the 15th June having spent 24 hours in a plane with a 2 hour layover in Hong Kong. In our first 6 days in London, we did a lot of walking and sight seeing. I love love LOVE that museums are free. XD
Of course, we did the Thames wanderings and saw Big Ben nad parliament buildings (pretty cool architecture) and Westminster Abbey (where the Queen was crowned and royal funerals are held, I think).
The weather was amazing everyday, which has been an unusual scenario and we shouldn’t think it the norm! These summer days feel like a hot NZ summer. Delicious.
Buckingham Palace was *swarming* with tourists, and we werent even there for the changing of the guard, which is meant to be a lot of fun to watch.
This first monument is at Buckingham Palace of Queen Victoria, which is very dramatic and bold. The second monument is of King Albert at Hyde Park, which is stupidly huge and opposite the Royal Albert Hall, where all the big ballet shows are performed.
Wendy took us to Harrods, the big fancy and expensive department store. Unfortunately, it was the first day of the summer sale there when we went and it was *crammed* with people and the shelves were *piled* with excess stock. Was somewhat unappealing for shopping. We left quite quickly.
One of the sights Rob wanted to see was Tower Bridge. We didn’t end up going into the exhibition or walking over the walkways up high, but that’s certainly on the list for the future.
Tower of London was quite expensive to go to, but it was pretty neat to see the crown jewels. You unfortunately can’t photograph the jewels, but they did only have the old 16th century ones on display. We kind of expected modern jewels as well, but these were only the ceremonial jewels that were used in coronations. Pretty awesome though. There were a bunch of other great exhibits at the Tower of London which made the trip worth it (see next blog post!).
This is a monument, called Monument, to the Great Fire of the 17th century that destroyed 13,000 homes of about 70,000 people. After the fires, a great rebuilding went on in the city. St Paul’s Cathedral was one of the many churches rebuilt. However, the buildings had to be recuilt in brick or stone, not wood, to try and prevent any future devastation. Note, I’m standing right at the base of it.
The British Museum is the best one in London and it’s FREE. More on this in the next blog post.
Trafalgar Square is one of the central areas of London, like Aotea Square in Auckland. It has a great tall monument (can’t remember who it was too) and the iconic lions on it. Of course Rob had to climb up for a photo with one.
Was great to see a bunch of the big sights in London and see that part of the fuss! We have so much more too see (museums, palaces, markets, etc) but we’ll get there, I’m sure.
Our next blog post is about some of things we saw at the museums and people we caught up with!
Love and miss you all,
Liz and Rob