London - Autumn 2009
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2008
1
45
60
Trip End
??? ??, 2010
London, England, United Kingdom
Monday, November 30, 2009
In September we went to see the Queen at Buckingham Palace, it is open from about mid July till mid September for tourists to have a look around. The Queen wasn't home (as usual - she was a no show at Windsor in January too!) and we weren't allowed to take pictures inside (typical), but it was well worth a look to be able to say you've been inside Buckingham Palace. The interior decorating was pretty impressive as you could imagine and each room usually had a different theme and colour scheme - my favourite was probably the yellow drawing room.
We also went to Greenwich for the first time and caught the London clipper via the Thames to get there too, which was also our first time out on the water. Greenwich was lovely, autumn had just begun so the leaves were just starting to turn but Greenwich Park was still nice and lush. We had a quick walk around the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College, a brief look around inside the National Maritime Museum and made our way up the hill to the Royal Observatory. We made our way across the field and when we got to the view point up top we took some great pics... however when we headed over to the observatory to check out the Meridian line (Greenwich meantime on which the whole worlds time is based!!! P.S. I know that you well educated people all know that but I just wanted to make the point... pretty impressive spot to be when you think about it!)... anyhoo it was about to close for the day so they weren't letting anymore people in :-( damn days getting shorter... so this just means we'll have to head back there again... which doesn't worry us, well go on a really nice summers day... hopefully. They're also some great little markets at Greenwich on the weekends, we of course went to the food stands!
As we had been to Madame Tussuad's in Amsterdam over a year ago, we thought we'd do the touristy thing and check out the one in London. Check out our pictures for the highlights of what we saw. We had 2-4-2 tickets so it was well worth it. When even got a cheesy picture taken on their scary train ride thing.
My good school friend Sarah Greenwell, who has been living in the UK for 3 years) had moved from London to her favourite city of Bath, so I made a trip out to visit her and to have a more leisurely look around Bath. No wonder Sarah loves Bath so much, it is a gorgeous town with grand old Gregorian buildings... it has a real charm about it. One of the good things too is that any new buildings being built in the town must be built from Bath stone, therefore it keeps its olde worlde charm! Sarah and I did the touristy thing together and had a look around Abbey Bath - which is a stunning old Norman Cathedral.
We also had a look around the Roman Baths - obviously built by the Romans... these were cool!!! Unfortunately though you could go in the water. We also popped into the Bath Fashion Museum - which is a world-class collection of contemporary and historical dress. The displays include 150 dressed figures to illustrate the changing styles in fashionable clothes from the late 16th century to the present day, chosen from the museum's collection of 30,000 original items.
Autumn was a lovely time to visit Bath and as you can see by my photos the change in the foliage is gorgeous! While I was away in Bath, Trent went to the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms Museum in London, he did his thing, I did mine... which is always good :-)
In November we also went to dinner at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Restaurant. It was a bit pricey as you would imaging however the food was great and all the profits from the restaurant go to his charities, which is great. We only brought our video camera for some reason so we used it to take a few photos... unfortunately there is no flash and it was quite dark so the photos aren't that great, but you can still make it out a bit.
We also went for ANOTHER visit to our favourite park - Regent's Park! It was great to see it in all season as the changing scenery is brilliant. As you can see by the pics all the foliage is changing to a variety of browns, yellows and purples and you can even feel the chill and change in the air just by looking at the photos... oh London how we will miss you...
Next up, another winter... brrrrr!
