First impressions

After two more very active days in London I have some questions and comments:

The Underground is underground, deep underground. The newer Melbourne city loop is serviced by a wonderful escalator system, here there are an awful lot of stairs. But it’s a wonderful, cheap and efficient way of moving a lot of people around in a hurry.

In our experience it never rains in London.

A walk along the Thames as the sun sets, even when it's cold, is a wonderful experience.

If you want to see the Crown Jewels alone and without standing in a queue for hours go at 9.00 a.m. in March. No-one else was there when we went. It was pretty funny to stand on the people-mover footpath in front of the crowns – we could have stayed there as long as we wanted to without holding anyone up.\

It’s impossible to see everything in London in four days.

The squirrels in Hyde Park can move very fast.

Not everything in London costs a packet of money. We’ve seen some great free stuff.


We've been busy. Some of the things we've done:
• Had two wonderful days with Glenn, our son, whom we hadn’t seen in over two years.
• Watched the Tower Bridge being lifted to allow traffic though (except it was a maintenance lift)

• Visited Tower of London (which has twenty towers)

• Seen the first shop in the world near Greenwich Observatory
• Visited the Maritime Museum at Greenwich
• Watched a performance of ‘The Mousetrap’ from the balcony built on the side of a cliff. And no, I’m not going to tell you who dunnit.
• Visited the RAF museum which is free and not listed in Lonely Planet but should be.

We also had a look in the Church of St George the Martyr at Southwark where my ancestors, Zachary Perryman and Ellen Stock, were married in 1849 shortly before they migrated to Adelaide. The Sunday morning service was about to start but they allowed us in to just wander around and told us a bit about the history. I hadn't realised it is mentioned in one of Dicken's books. Little Dorrit slept in the vestry.