London, where there is always something to see and do (A delayed and lengthy update)

It’s been a while since the last post. All is good, nothing’s wrong. Pedr’s arm hasn’t fallen off or anything like that. It’s mainly because we settled down in London for a month and a bit and went to a lot of museums so there wasn’t too much to write about. And I was also busy preparing for the next part of our trip: we’re off to South America next year!

So, London. We really liked London the first time we were there, there was so much to see and do and it felt like we didn’t get to see enough of it. So when we had to leave Europe for visa reasons we decided to wait out our time in London. We thought we’d get to see more of it rather than rush through from sight to sight. One of the things we did quite a few times was to go for a stroll along the Thames River. (At least when it wasn’t raining!)

There’s a nice path you can follow along the Thames and it takes you past famous attractions like Tate Modern and other lesser known ones like Southwark Cathedral or Borough Food Market. And you also get to see plenty of buskers performing along the way. It’s a very nice day out, and it seems like plenty of Londoners do the same thing on weekends.

The first day we went to Borough Market it was full of stalls selling all sorts of snacks from around the world along with a good chunk of them selling chocolates, cakes and other delicious sweets.

We didn’t get too much food the first time we were there, but we decided to go back the next week and make a proper lunch out of it. When we got there all we could see was a carpark. No food stalls. Nothing! I felt like I was taking crazy pills. A bit of research told me that I wasn’t crazy and that it was normally closed on Sundays. Fortunately Maltby Food Market was only 10 minutes walk away and they’re always open on the weekends.

We did a very London thing and went to see a show on the West End. We saw The Book of Mormon which is hilarious and now I have to get the soundtrack. And we also got to see our favourite comedian Ross Noble performing at the Apollo Theatre. So now we’re feeling very cultured. But there’s so many more shows you can see in London, half the ads in the Underground seem to be for shows.

So in between all the wandering around and doing cultural stuff we still went and did your typical tourist sightseeing. There are a LOT of museums in London and the best bit is that most of them are free. Attractions that aren’t free are generally hideously expensive so we spent quite a bit of time checking out places like the British Museum, National Gallery and V&A Museum which were free. The V&A is a museum for decorative arts, so it’s full of very fancy versions of everyday objects like plates, cups, furniture, clothing. There is so much gold, silver, and sparkling jewels all made by master craftsmen that you get overwhelmed from seeing so many shiny things.

We also checked out some of the (slightly) less visited attractions like the Wallace Collection, Museum of London, Science Museum and Natural History Museum. Did I mention that London has a lot of museums? The Natural History Museum has dinosaur bones as well as some very important objects like a fossil of the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx (and you can clearly see its feathers), and a mineral collection that was far more interesting than I thought it was going to be. It has a piece of Mars, lots of shiny gemstones and interesting and colourful pretty crystal formations.

After to going to a bunch of art galleries in this trip through Europe we’d come to the conclusion that we don’t like most modern and contemporary art so now we normally don’t bother. But since the Tate Modern was free we thought we’d check it out. There were a few good things worth seeing, but we’d definitely feel ripped off if we paid to go there.

Just a few days before we left we finally got around to seeing the changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Turns out that it’s still super popular even in late November when it’s cold and windy. So if you go, get there nice and early and get a spot at the fence around the front of the palace. Otherwise you won’t see much. Also, the palace is only open for tourists in summer so we were very annoyed that we didn’t go inside when we were there earlier in the year.

When the time finally came for us to leave our London flat on a cold November morning I was feeling sad as we walked down the street with our bags on our backs. The flat was nice and comfortable, the area was mostly residential. We’d got a bit of a routine going and actually started to settle in properly. It had actually started to feel like home. London’s very much alive, people are out and about enjoying themselves. You can see it anywhere you go, especially in the evenings. Maybe one day we’ll be back, we definitely won’t need much convincing.