Day One.
It’s 6.30am on a cold Saturday morning, Myself and Ste awake to a very crisp February morning, we make sure we have packed all our essentials for London. We decided to travel light and try and survive on just a small backpack each as we were going on the train and intended to see a lot of the sights and did not want to lug around a hefty suitcase.
It is just starting to get light as we set off on the first leg of our journey to London at 7:05am. We walk to Birchwood station I never realised how beautiful Birchwood can sound first thing in the morning, the bird chorus was something else. We catch the 7.35 train to Warrington Central and then walked the short distance across Warrington to Bank Quay.
We arrived at Bank Quay with plenty of time and sat down in one of the waiting rooms which had the heating on until our train journey at 8.07 the train arrived on time. The last time I caught the train to London was Helens’ hen do back in January 2007 and this train was pretty empty. I said to Ste that the train should be quiet so we could have a quick kip and arrive in London a little more awake – That was the plan anyway. We found our seats behind the luggage rack in a set of two so we had nobody behind us as such and had a set of four seats in front of us with a table in the middle, on this table were three middle aged women. Now I am a woman but even I from time to time enjoy a good natter but I kid you not, these three women did not shut up all the way to London!! I think we put up with it for about half an hour before we put on our Ipods just to get some peace.
The train arrived on time, in-fact it was a few minutes early. On my way home from work on Friday I decided to nip into Warrington to buy “an Essential Guide to London” this little book proved very helpful and even at £5.99 proved to be money well spent. We left the station and headed into London, the weather was lovely although cold. Even Ste had a woolly hat on. It was sunny and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Perfect!
We decided to walk to the Tower of London as we both had been to London before and it was one of the places that we had both never been. As the weather was so nice we decided we would walk everywhere so off we went to visit the crown jewels. We arrived at the Tower of London just after lunch and decided we should eat something considering we hadn’t eaten since earlier in the morning. I spotted a Subway just facing the tower, now we decided that we wouldn’t carry cash around London we would just use our cards as and when. So we ordered an Italian BMT foot long to share. As our sandwich was being made the card machine broke so we had no way of paying for the food. We asked where the nearest cash machine was which was just round the corner, so I stayed in Subway while Ste went to get some cash out. There must have been something wrong with the phone/data lines in that area because the cash machine wasn’t working either. So Ste walked back in to Subway to tell me the bad news and we both looked at each other and said ‘what can we do’ we went to apologies to the people behind the counter and to tell them that the cash machine wasn’t working, only for them to hand over the food for FREE!!! Get in free food!!!
After eating our FREE subway we headed into the Tower of London where we listened to the Beefeaters tell stories of the tower and the famous executions that happened there, and what do you have to do to become a beefeater. We went into the chapel where Henry VIII many wives and pretty much anyone else who jeopardised the King’s good name or was a threat to the sovereign was executed. We then went into the tower known as the ‘white tower’ viewed past kings’ armour and other weaponry used in days gone by. The queue to see the crown jewels was huge but it’s what we came to see so we joined the queue, and it was really worth the wait they sparkle in such a way its every girls dream to wear such beautiful gems. I even think some of the men were impressed.
We left the Tower at about 15:30 we toyed with the idea of catching the tube to our hotel but decided that we were up for the walk, so we walked across Tower Bridge and along the Themes back towards the centre of London. I am really glad that we walked along the Themes as we saw so much that we would have missed if we had caught the tube. We walked passed the London Dungeons, Tate Modern, OXO Building, Jubilee Gardens, London eye, the Namco Centre, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Our hotel was about 2 minutes walk away from the Houses of Parliament. We arrived at our hotel at about 16:30 just as Liverpool was losing to Barnsley 2-0. Poor Ste. We checked in and our room was lovely had a quick shower and changed and headed back out into the big smoke.
18:15. We walked back passed the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben and Westminster Abbey they light them up really well during the night and look spectacular. We walked passed Nelsons column and into the Theatre district. We picked up our tickets, but it was still a little early so we went to see what food we could get every where was pretty busy but we found a Pizza Express which was busy and a Pret a Manager so we decided to get a coffee and a cake in Pret and have dinner after the show.
Phantom of the opera was truly amazing and we had really good seats in the stalls. We were about 12 rows back in the aisle so we had a really good view. Ste had never been to the Theatre before and he really enjoyed it as did I it’s a very emotional play and seeing it performed there in front of you, it just make your heart jump and in some places make you heart skip a beat its was wonderful the best play I have ever seen even better than Grease.
We left the Palace Theatre at about 22:30 and headed for pizza express by this time me and Ste were flagging and the left hand side didn’t really know what the right was doing having been awake since 6:30 and walked about 15 miles in one day we decided to get Pizza Express to take away back to the hotel, so mission impossible sneak the pizza back in to the hotel room under Ste’s coat. We crashed out on the bed with pizza and the end of match of the day.
Day Two
The hotel was a nice 4* hotel and a nice surprise was the Full English breakfast which was delivered fairly quickly. Although we did get bubble & squeak with our full English? Which I thought was pretty strange but Ste cleared his plate plus my sausage so it can’t have been that bad. We timed Breakfast just right as the queue to get a table by the time we had finished was huge. We went back to our room to plan our day and to let our humongous breakfast settle before setting out on another walkathon around London.
We took a closer look at the Houses of parliament and Big Ben and stood in front of Westminster Abbey. We then took a walk through St James Park where we found a whole group of Pelican’s which were a bit of a surprise, the park was full of daffodils which were beautiful and really made it look like spring had arrived, even though the lakes were frozen. We walked up to Buckingham Palace just after 11am and it looked like the whole of London had the same idea as it was the change of the guard we managed to see them walk out in there uniform well timed we thought.
We then walked towards Harrods and bought some cakes for lunch. After Harrods we then walked to the Natural History Museum and looked at the Dinosaurs. London Fashion week was due to start the next day so it was really busy, but we didn’t get to see anyone famous. We headed to the Royal Albert Hall and had our cakes on the stairs outside the hall and on the stairs of the Albert Memorial and then walked through Hyde park and around the Princess Diana Fountain. After the fountain we then walked through the other half of the park and out past Marble Arch and on to Oxford Street and then down Regent St to Hamleys Toy Shop, after all the walking and the shopping we needed a hot chocolate so we dived into Marks & Spencer. We slowly drank our chocolate to rest our tired feet. We decided to buy some dinner that we could eat on the train, then slowly made our way to the Station to catch the train home…..
I remember 10 years ago we would have had at least 3 or 4 inches of snow this time of year .. I guess its all that global warming’s fault. Curses!