As I sit in my hotel room at the end of a
long weekend in London, here are some reflections on what we have seen.
1
London can be a very tiring
place:
We were looking
round the bookshops on Charing Cross Road and visited Leicester Square as part
of our Saturday afternoon. We discovered a new Nickelodeon shop as well as
M&M world (which we planned to visit because I wanted a new T shirt!) and
found them to be very (very, very) busy which was quite exhausting. It is also
possible, however, to find a seat and watch the world go by. We watched the
dancing fountains in Leicester Square and the tourists in Trafalgar Square.
2
London is a lot friendlier than
it was 20 years ago:
When we visited
London a long time ago we were struck by how unfriendly people in shops and
restaurants were. This trip has shown us how things have changed. In every shop
and restaurant (except one) we have been to the staff have been very friendly.
The exception surprisingly was in a café/restaurant close to Harrods where the
staff didn’t even look at us, the food was the most expensive we experienced in
our whole visit and it wasn’t very nice. Everywhere else we found the food to
be delicious and everyone very helpful and chatty.
3
The toilets that you pay for
are not very nice:
We found free
toilets in most parts of London, notably Trafalgar Square, that were very well
cared for and pleasant to visit. In Covent Garden and beside Westminster Bridge
we had to pay 50p to visit, which I wouldn’t mind if the money was spent
looking after them, but they were the most disgusting toilets we visited! To
pay for them and then be faced with dirty toilets and overflowing sanitary bins
was not pleasant.
4
Contactless payment on public
transport is the way to go:
I researched
ways to pay on London Transport before we visited and discovered that you can
now use contactless payment on TFL services in the way that you used to use an
Oyster Card. You still get the benefit of daily and weekly capping, but don’t
need to go to the hassle of ordering and topping up an Oyster Card. My debit
card was due to be renewed in September and Gordon had conveniently lost his in
July so I phoned the bank and asked for new cards and we were ready to go. I
registered my cards with the TFL website because that meant that I could check
what we had been charged (and that suits my control freak tendencies) and we
were ready to go. A quick beep as we held our cards to the scanner as we got on
a bus (or on and off the tube) and it was that easy. A London bus journey cost
£1.50 so if you do 3 trips in a day you are winning, as the cap on bus journeys
in the day is £4.40. There is a certain satisfaction to looking at the website
to check you haven’t been overcharged and finding out that you have had 3 free
bus journeys! I have still to check yesterday when we ventured onto the tube
and DLR to see how much we spent.
5
There are places that you don’t
find unless you have inside information:
We met my
brother and sister-in-law who live in London for an afternoon. The plan was to
meet on the Southbank for lunch and go for a wander. Following the directions
we were given, we went past the normal southbank haunt of Giraffe (which is
still very nice as we proved this afternoon when we ate there) and met them at
the Southbank food market. There are a large number of stalls with too much
food to choose from! I decided to have a chicken satay burger with rice, salad
and peanut sauce. It was yummy. Others in our group had curry, a duck burger
and pasta with pesto sauce. Lovely food and a very good price. Next we walked
up the south bank of the river and visited Borough market. The variety of food
on offer was amazing and my only disappointment was that we couldn’t buy any of
the cheese or other varieties of food on offer because we had no way to store
them or get them home before they spoiled! There are also free toilets in the Southbank
Centre, which are very nice.
6
You can’t keep going at this
pace for long:
We have had an
amazing weekend, but I am now exhausted and need to go home for a rest. Gordon
and Catherine went for a walk after dinner and ended up walking up The Strand,
Fleet Street and Gray’s Inn Road on their way back to the hotel. I was
shattered and got the bus back to King’s Cross and a much shorter walk home
where I could write this blog post
Now to get the
train home tomorrow and start researching Google to work out what we are going
to do on our trip to Nice in September. Any suggestions would be welcome.
