Easter in London

Easter rolled around quickly and gave us 5 days to explore London. We took an extra days leave to extend our trip and give the beast that is London our full attention. Besides, it was both our birthdays and we had a long list of sights to see. We took the car and did battle with the M40 traffic to the parents place which was nice and vacant with them being in NZ for two weeks. From Sonning, we caught the train in to London each day and tubed around the city. The weather was cracking considering the time of year and remained that way for the rest of our trip.

London is huge but thanks to the great many underground tunnels and trains, you can quickly get to many parts of the city in no time. We decided an open bus tour of London would be the way to go in order to get used to the layout of the city. Although the tubes are the quicker way to travel, you never know where you are until you pop up to the surface. The bus tour let us piece the parts of the city together and get a good history lesson from the guide at the same time. We saw all the big sites from the top of our open double decker - Big Ben, Parliament, The London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, Scotland Yard and the great Thames which divides them all. You get the feeling that you are walking around a monopoly board sometimes with all the names familiar from our childhood board games.

London really is a spectacular city. It is so large and vibrant and welcoming to all kinds of people that it seems like if you were to get to see it all, by the time you have finished it would be different all over again. We loved the history of London which is very evident in all the ancient buildings. Some of the flats in London were fetching 40 million pounds which would probably buy you the south island of New Zealand if you threw in a few dozen beers. One thing we had no real sense of was the money floating around in this city. London is one of the money capitols of the world, if the average family sold their possessions and moved to NZ, they would be millionaires there but here, they are just the norm. I can see why every man and his dog wants to emigrate here, the currency is the strongest in the world and even begging would bring in a pretty decent wage.

Speaking of wealth, we stopped at Buckingham palace to have a look at the Queens pad. It was very flash around the front, huge gates, massive manicured gardens, gold plated statues and guards with machine guns. If you were driving past this place in a bus, you would be very impressed but a quick look around the side tells a different story. It seems the Queen has been too busy to get the mower out round the side of her place. Not a good look lizzy, not a good look.

So, after our bus touring and Thames river cruise, we checked out the national science museum. All I can say is this place was a tad boring. Too many people and not enough interesting stuff. The British museum was a little better, particularly in the Egyptian section with all the mummy's. But, like the Oxford museum we went to a while back, we came away feeling again like it was a large collection of pilfered goods from other countries during the time when Britain came, saw and conquered the world in the last century. So, all that was left to do was to go see the couple of shows we had tickets for. We managed to get tickets off Ebay to Billy Elliot and The Sound of Music. Both shows were sold out for 6 months in advance so we were stoked to score tickets at face value from people who couldn't go at the last minute.

Billy Elliot was absolutely fantastic. If you liked the movie, the stage show was unbelievable. The show had many scenes developed just for the stage and the choreography was outstanding. Becs, who is a dancing critique was very impressed indeed. We saw the Sound of Music a couple of days later and although we liked it, we felt that it was almost exactly like watching the movie so didn't find it spectacular in any way. I think because there are so many Sound of Music story fans out there, they were careful to keep it exactly as it was in the movie, who knows. It was good but not as good as Billy Elliot.

The last night we spent at our parents small village in Sonning, we decided to celebrate the good weekend weather and our birthdays with a barbecue. We had my sister Sonia staying with us and had a great time cooking out dinner on the traditional English charcoal barby. By the time we finished we were ready to continue our celebrations down the lane at the local old pub. Upon arrival and to my sisters horror, the pub didn't play any music as the juke box had been removed 14 years earlier due to lack of interest. The locals were mainly rich old fuddy duddys who obviously didn't like to listen to music while they drank their sherry. So upon hearing this Sonia declared that we should finish our drinks, leave this rubbish pub and venture to a pub across the river. Upon our arrival at the pub across the river I was quickly approached by a snobby looking woman who looked at me like I was a tramp. I asked her where the public bar was and she promptly informed me this was not a public bar. Sonia and Becs then said we must have been in the wrong place when they read the menu board. With entrees starting at £40, this was no bar I wanted to buy a drink at, apparently it was a very expensive french restaurant. We eventually found the real pub closed and decided to head back home when we came across Jimmy Pages mansion. My sister and I saw a light on inside and stood outside his gate egging each other on as to who should pull the large bell handle. We figured for some random reason he might ask us in for a drink. Meanwhile Becs was singing out his name at the top of her voice while sitting in his neighbours front garden. All to no avail as he didn't answer our calls. Just as we were about to leave, Sonia spotted a couple walking and approached them to ask where we could find a decent pub that played music. She didn't realise he was actually the bar tender from the original pub and when she described the crappiest bar she had ever been to, he told her that it was the only one left open. She was pretty embarrassed when we told her but thought nothing more of it as he must have been heading home. When we arrived back at the original pub, the bartender returned and Sonia decided we should all be friends and we ended up having a beer with them all and talking about NZ. It was a great night out which ended a spectacular weekend away in London. We hope to get back to London for another show and another look around soon.