View from the Observatory Hill at Greenwich
Last Saturday 10th May a bunch of us decided to go to Greenwich. Getting to Greenwich is quite interesting as you have to catch the DLR(Docklands Light Rail) to get there. This is similar to the Monorail back in Sydney and it goes through Canary Wharf with great views of the Docklands. When we arrived in Greenwich all the other guys were waiting for us. The group consisted of Chi, Christina, Minh, Jem, Myle, Pramod and I.
First order of business was lunch. We found a great cheap Chinese restaurant with massive servings. The food was great for the average price of 4.5 pounds! After lunch we headed to the Cutty Sark to begin our podcast walk of Greenwich. The Cutty Sark is the World's last tea clipper ship that famously burnt down last year. Now its in repair so you cant really look at it. We walked past the Cutty Sark by the Thames path through the gardens of the Royal Naval College which has been coverted to a visitor centre, the Trinity College of Music and the Greenwich University. Greenwich University is one of most beautiful universities I've seen with hsitoric buildings, lush green lawns and amazing views of the Thames. We stopped to enjoy the area and take some photos.
The walk then continued inland across the road to the entrance of Greenwich park which leads to the Royal Observatory on top of the hill. The park was very beautiful and full of people. We headed up to the Observatory through a gorgeous tree lined path. At the top of the hill of the Observatory you can enjoy unparalleled views of the Greenwich and greater London in the distance. The Observatory is unique in that it is where the time meridian passes through with longitude of zero degrees, one half of the observatory is in the eastern hemisphere and the other is in the western hemisphere. It also houses a museum of old clocks, telescopes, first sea going chronometers which helped to accurately calculate longitude. This is very interesting if you have the time to go through and look at the displays.
We walked on to the grassy area of the Observatory hill and took some time to relax. The views of Greenwich were beautiful and provided some great photo opportunities. The park was full of people having picnics, throwing frizbies and sun baking. Parks are the London equivalent to the Sydney beaches.
After some dozing on the hill we headed down to the Greenwich markets in the hunt for some ice cream. Greenwich markets are not as large as some of the other markets in London but it still has an interesting collection of stalls of jewellery, decorative items, food, clothes and collectables. At this stage we were quite tired so we had some ice creams and went on the DLR back home. I highly Greenwich for its history, beauty and wide open spaces. If you ever go make sure the weather is good, otherwise the whole experience will be diminished.
See more photos of us out and about in London here.
Last Sunday the 4th May was another gorgeous day in London. People keep telling us that days like those are few and far between but its hard to believe thats the case with the great weather we've been having. One thing good about it is that it makes you really appreciate the good days. Which is why I dragged Pramod with me to do the podcast walk in Marylebone, the area right around where we live in Edgware Rd.
We began our walk near the Marble Arch tube station, on Oxford St and turned into one of the adjacent streets to come into Marylebone. As a side note, the podcast made us realise we've been mispronouncing Marylebone all this time. Its meant to be pronounced as Merry-Le-Bone not Marley-bone. Who knew?
The streets in Marylebone have a mix of everything from very old buildings and housing to modern offices, shops and flats. Though there are some internal streets with very homogeneous old architecture, mostly cream and white in colour. Marylebone was the closest village to the city of London until its development for housing by two landlords in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The early part of the walk took us past several squares. These are basically private gardens in the middle of a circular road where several streets meet. They are about 20-25 sq meters in size and basically allows people paying an annual fee its private use. The squares we saw were immaculately kept with lush green lawns, majestic trees, blooming flowers and shrubs. They looked so idyllic especially seeing families enjoying their time together. I was not jealous at all. One day when I'm rich perhaps.
At the edge of one of these squares is the Wallace Collection. Its a national museum set in a large historic London town house. It has a great collection of French 18th century paintings, furniture and porcelain with Old Master paintings and a great armoury section(European and Eastern). Every gallery is a room that has been immaculately decorated and arranged. There is a nice internal courtyard with a restaurant for those wanting to enjoy the weather and take a break. In the main gallery room upstairs there are many paintings and sculptures, we noticed that one particular French painter had a fascination with game. He had painted dead rabbits, birds, even lobster repeatedly, it gave us a bit of a chuckle.
Entry is free and even being a weekend it was not very busy so I would recommend this hidden treasure to everyone here and visiting London. For more info see http://www.wallacecollection.org/.
We spent about 2-3 hours there looking at all the galleries then continued on with the walk. We passed Wigmore Hall apparently a great small concert venue with good acoustics and down towards Oxford St on a very small but famous shopping strip called St Christopher's Place. Basically it was a small alleyway full of designer shops, restaurants and cafes leading on to the smallest of entry ways to Oxford St. We must have walked past it many times before without realising what it was.
After a short walk along busy Oxford St we turned into another adjacent street that lead into the heart of Marylebone. This area in Marylebone historically has had a significant connection with the medical profession with the Royal College of Ophthalmologists and Royal College of Physicians as well as 3 hospitals situated in the area. Even today there are many doctors, dentists, physiotherapists etc in the area. There are quite a few houses with blue plaques on their walls where famous surgeons, architects, poets etc lived. Next we arrived in Marylebone High Street bustling of shops, restaurants, cafes and pubs. The area almost had a feel of Balmain back in Sydney. I would like to go back there again.
The end of High St leads to St Marylebone church where Charles Wesley(leader of the Methodist movement) is buried. There is a path across the Church ground which leads to busy Marylebone Road just before the junction with Baker St.
Overall a very interesting walk I thought.
Yesterday was another beautiful day in the city of London. Pramod had I were meeting an old uni friend of mine for lunch at Covent Garden. We hadn't been to Covent Garden before but had heard a lot about it from other people. Being a nice day it was full of people out and about.
We had lunch away on the quieter side, in a very nice Greek restaurant which had tasty, fresh good food quite cheap by London standards. We had a very nice meal catching up with my friend who I hadn't seen in about 6 years!
Covent Garden is made up of small cobblestone streets with many shops, eateries and pubs. There is a market comprising of flowers, plants, jewellery, art, bags, decorations and anything and everything you can think of. There are lots of street performers, miming, juggling etc keeping the crowds entertained. We came across a big crowd surrounding a man joking about and juggling various items. He was quite funny and engaged the crowd well. While we were watching him Pramod with two other men got picked out from the crowd to assist with his act. The performer ended up getting on the shoulder of one of the helpers and juggling some not so sharp daggers. The whole experience was quite a laugh.
The market is surrounded by cafe's and restaurants with alfresco dining available for all their patrons. Every cafe, restaurant and pub was brimming with people eating and drinking the gorgeous day away. In front of the market there are two massive peacock statues sitting on two tangly bit of tree trunk. The head and main body of the peacocks were made out of painted paper mache. The feathers of the peacock were actually small flowering plants with flowers in varying shades of purple, pink and blue all being grown on a lush green bit of lawn twisting down to ground level. It was quite beautiful.
We wondered in and out of shops in the area and headed home for a well earned rest before going to dinner at a friend's place in Hammersmith. I think we will be returning to Covent Garden again :)
Its a long weekend here in the UK. A bank holiday on Monday. The plan was to go to Bath for the day, but there is so much to see and do there a day was not going to be enough. So we postponed Bath until we can stay for a weekend.
We (Pramod and I) decided to do another London Walk, this one starting at Tower Hill and ending at St Paul's Cathedral. The day was again quite nice. Sunny periods and temperatures around 20 degrees. I used my sunglasses here for the first time since I got here.
We caught the Number 15 bus on Edgware Rd which makes its way to Tower Hill via Oxford St. Oxford and Regent streets were packed with people here for the long weekend. There are a lot of tourists about with their fold out maps stopped in all sorts of places and filling up the London tour buses. I realised that I forgot to re-sych my ipod after I added the walking tour mp3 to iTunes, so we had to head back home to get it. We were walking about on Regent St trying to get a bus back home when we went right past Elle McPherson with her kids. She is so bloody tall. Anyway, we caught a bus back home, had some sandwiches from the M&S near our place and headed back to the start of the walk.
We began the walk outside Tower Hill tube station. The first thing we saw was the big sundial on the observation deck made from stone and bronze. The sundial is about 6m in diameter and on the outer edge there were very details carvings on the history of transport in London. To the left of the observation desk is the remains of the ancient Roman wall which used to surround London.
Across the road is the Tower of London. The Tower of London is a set of buildings and towers surrounded by defensive walls and a moat(now drained). The Tower of London was used as a royal palace, a fortress and a prison with some very high profile prisoners such as Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn and Catharine Howard. The White Tower was built by William the Conquerer to protect the City of London from outside invaders. Currently the Crown Jewels are held there.
We walked under the road on a walkway which emerged next to the Tower of London. We followed the path around the Tower of London to the Tower Bridge. The Tower Bridge is famous for the fact that it lifts to let tall ships and tankers through. There is a Tower Bridge exhibition that you can visit, but we didn't go in as there were two many people. The history of this bridge is interesting and I think its worth going to the exhibition if you're an engineering buff. We continued across the Tower Bridge with nice views of the Thames on either side. Then we followed the Thames path on the south bank past the snail like City Hall building and the permanently docked HMS Belfast (a WWII gunship converted to a museum). There were tonnes of people about eating ice cream and sitting around the lush green park area.
We left the Thames path momentarily to go through the Hayes Galleria (converted old wharf) with its beautiful ceiling and past the Clink prison to arrive near the London Dungeon and Britain At War exhibition. The area around here is close to several hospitals including the Guys Hospital. We rejoined the Thames path and followed it through to the Globe theatre. Here we stopped the podcast momentarily to sit by the theatre and take a look around. The Globe seems quite small from the outside. The entrance has a beautifully gothic iron gate with miniature figures of animals and symbols etc. While we were sitting by the water a performance of King Lear finished. The doors opened and we could see into the theatre stage where the actors were taking their bows. I can't wait for next month when we go to see A Midsummer Nights Dream :) at the Globe. Loads of people filed out of the Globe and followed the Thames path along the south bank to cross via the Millennium bridge.
We waited for a while people watching then continued on to across the Millennium bridge(aka wobbly bridge) which famously had to be closed a few days after it opened due to oscillations (unfortunately its quite stable now). The Millennium bridge starts on the side of Tate Modern which is an art gallery in a converted old power station, and quite hideous looking. The walk across the bridge gives great views of the Thames to either side. Looking straight on we are faced with the dome of the St Paul's cathedral getting bigger and clearer with each step.
St Paul's cathedral is a beautiful bit of architecture to say the least. The current version was built by Christopher Wren after the previous one was burnt down in the great London fire. St Paul's is the main Anglican cathedral in London which housed some very famous events such as the wedding of Charles and Diana, the funerals of Winston Churchill, Lord Nelson & Duke of Wellington. Its free to go inside the main section. A must see for everyone I think for its beauty, tranquility, amazing architecture and history. Its also possible to get great views of London from the various viewing galleries at different levels of the cathedral. I think you have to pay for that priviledge also there are some 500 steps to get there, another time maybe. The cathedral steps are a nice spot to stop and take a breather which is what we did.
The walk then lead us to the other side of the cathedral to the Temple Bar, a structure that marked the gateway to the City of London some 200 years ago. This structure was originally on Fleet st, but since had many homes before it was moved to its current location. The Temple Bar leads to the Paternoster Square with a tall decorative column and a statue of "Shepherd and Sheep".. hmmm. Of course there is a Starbucks in there too just like everywhere else in London.
So overall a very nice walk/tour of some London sights. Learned a lot of history and interesting facts. Its amazing how so many interesting things are in such a concentrated area. So it was back on the bus home before the now darkened sky opened up. Hmmmm what should we have for dinner?
Yesterday was a special day. It was the first real sunny day in London since we got here more than a month ago. People were in singlets, t-shirts, dresses and shorts. The skies were blue, temperature was about 20 degrees with a slight cooling breeze. Days are like these are special, they bring everyone outdoors to enjoy the sunshine. We were no different. The plan was simple, meet up with friends at Bayswater, have lunch and then take a walking tour of London together.
Walking tours are a great way to see London, places you might not get to see in the normal tourist sweep, learning history and little anecdotes about things you see. You can go with a guide, a good option if really want to learn about the history and if you don't mind spending money to do it, this is well worth it. There is also the el cheapo version where you download a walking tour podcast from this website http://www.londonwalks.libsyn.com/ and walk along listening to someone explaining the sights and sounds.A bunch of us (Jem, Yui, Myle, Jason, Pramo, Lee and myself) did the ipod thing. We had lunch at The Waterway pub near Little Venice, right by the canal. Then we proceeded to Warwick tube station exit to start the Little Venice to Camden Lock walking tour. First we had to synchorize out ipods then off we went, all the girls with ipods in their ears and the guys walking by listening to our directions(and useful or not so useful facts) and Pramo running back and forth with Jem's SLR taking paparazzi style photos of the walking party and our surrounds. The walk was along the canal path all the way from Little Venice to Camden Lock where the famous Camden markets are situated.
The canals were completed in 1820 and used to transport heavy goods to all parts of London(the part we were walking along were just a small part of them) including coal. They became less important as the railway network came into place in 1837. The boats used in the canal are narrow, wooden and long(10 to 15m) so they can fit through some of the narrow parts of the canal. Many people live in these boats, which are moored along the two sides of the canal and some of the mooring stations allow you to connect to mains power.
Our walk took us under old rickety bridges, over a 250m long canal tunnel, past huge mansions backing on to the canal of the wealthy elite, behind the London Zoo, around Regents Park(named so because the Regent paid the Prince to name it after himself), past bushlands and sloping green lawns. The canal goes right by the London Zoo with certain enclosures(wild boar, hyenas, birds) backing on to the canal, so people walking along a canal path are able to see some of these animals.
The day was gorgeous so the canal path was quite busy with people walking and cycling by. The walk lasted about an hour and half ending up smack bang in the middle of Camden markets buzzing with people and wonderful smells of all kinds of food.
We had a well earned drink from the Japanese stall called Sunshine(orange, lemon and raspberry juice) which had a lot of zing. Then the group split up with Yui and Myle opting to have some food and return home while the rest of us walked to Primrose Hill located on the north side of Regent's Park. The hill is 78m high in the middle of the park. The top of the hill gives unparalleled 360 degree views of Central London. The park was full of people enjoying the nice weather and gorgeous views, flying kites and having picnics. We picked out some of the famous London landmarks from the distance and then decided to return to Bayswater on a bus.
Chi and Christina joined us for dinner at one of local Chinese restaurants. It was a nice end to a beautiful day out and about in London. Cannot wait to do another ipod walking tour with the gang. Or more so cannot wait for another beautiful day :) because its raining and cold again today :(.
Cheese stall at Spitalfields markets.
There are lots of weekend markets in London. Each has its own unique style and characteristics. So far we've been to a few; Camden, Portobello and SpitalFields. Camden is perhaps the most interesting. Its really huge and very busy and full of grungy/goth folk. The main section has tiny stalls crammed together selling everything from clothes, accessories, music and ornaments. Its not ideal for claustrophobic people but well worth getting lost in the maze if you can handle the closeness of the stalls and other shoppers. But you dont have to be stuck in this maze. The main street is full of shops and there are more stalls and shops near the Camden lock including some glorious food stalls. We had jerk chicken for lunch from a Caribbean stall with beautiful hot sauce and marinated/preserved banana(?). It was delicious.
The people you see at Camden markets are just as interesting as what you find in the shops. Guys covered in piercings stand around corners holding ads for piercing parlors. Seriously there 's no part of their face or body left un-pierced. Then there are the goth groupies clad all in black and platforms walking around looking very unhappy to be there. So far the people might sound scary but they are really quite charming. You will also run into a few Rastafarians at Camden markets and there are quite a few stalls/shops with reggae music, clothes and posters for sale. I was very happy to see that.
Portobello markets are geared towards food and antique lovers. Stalls are full of organic produce, a fantastic range of healthy looking fruit and veg some of which you never see in the prepackaged world of the supermarkets. Its also very cheap, especially if you're willing to buy bulk. The food you can eat on the spot is also fantastic. We bought boneless chicken thigh fillet burgers from a German stall, which was huge, hot and delicious. There are pancake stalls, giant paella pans and a famous cup cake shop will a long line of customers. Towards the back of the markets you will find many antiques and ornaments. Everything you can think of from very old cameras, cricket balls and bats to jewellery, lace and china. Time seems to slip away when you peruse through these intriguing stalls.
Spitalfields markets are pretty much all under cover. This is handy on rainy London weekends. Its catered towards more upmarket shoppers with many exotic cheeses and wines, vintage clothes and jewellery, some organic produce and mouth watering pasty and cake stalls. The area covered by these markets is not huge so it doesn't take all day to look through the stalls.
I can't wait to visit the other markets here in London and write about it. I'm becoming a bit of a market junkie.
Check out photos here.
This is my first real post it seems. So much for the title of my blog.
But I guess its never too late.
So what are my first impressions of London?.. Well, not exactly first impressions since I've been here before on a short holiday, nevertheless this place looks much different when you look at it from a non-tourist point of view.
As we got off our flight at Heathrow and caught the tube to our Hotel in Paddington the first thing we noticed were the weird and wonderful names the British have given to some of the places here. Some you read and want to laugh out loud. I mean what poor person can say with a straight face that they live in a place called Cockfosters! Not only that imagine it being pronounced in a very British accent by the tube announcements lady... 'This is the Piccadilly line train to CockFosters." As a side note the tube announcements lady Emma Clarke has done some hilarious spoof announcements, which she ended up being fired for by British Rail. Check them out at her website http://www.emmaclarke.com/. Some people have no sense of humour.
Anyway, getting back to the unusual names thing. There is a tube station called Mudchute. I mean how unimaginative are these people. I want to call home and tell my mum I live in Mudchute. She's worried enough that I'm slumming it here in the UK.
Here's some more that caught my eye:
- Nunhead (poor nun)
- St John's Wood (oh dear)
- Tooting (excuse me)
- Elephant & Castle (umm..?)
Weird names aside the transport in London is top notch. At any tube station here there is a train every 4 minutes. Yes 4 minutes! People still run for trains.. I don't get it.
Apparently 1 billion people use the tube every year, more than 3 million a day. Seriously this is what Sydney needs to aim at if we are ever going to rely on public transport there. In central London, the bus services are also great. Bus stops have estimated time of arrival of the next bus. How good is that? And who doesn't love double deckers?
Trains and buses are all good but when it comes down to it Londoners walk a great deal. Not a lot of people have cars in central London, its not worth driving anyway because of the congestion tax. Coming from Sydney where every person and their dog has a car it takes a while to get used to walking everywhere. I don't mind at all especially if I have sensible shoes on. Speaking of shoes, I better sign off for now. That topic deserves a whole new entry :)
