Royal Wedding weekend

OK, so I've been really lax and I'm still only blogging the start of May when it's the end of June. This one's about the few days after the Royal Wedding and what we got up to. On the Sunday we made a trip out to the Tate Britain, which houses - among other things - some lovely pre-Raphaelite paintings and a large concave mirror that causes extreme disorientation.

After checking this out we headed up along the bank of the river towards the houses of parliament and then across the river to Southwark for the first time. Here we found a lot of tourists as well as an amazing artist who was making giant pastel reproductions of famous art works on sheets of paper on the pavement. It was a very sunny day, one of the many we had over the month of April and the place had a very beachy feel, even though there isn't all that much sand.

We did duck down behind a gallery and find a mecca of food stalls where we were able to procure the most extreme chocolate brownie and icecream experience. From there we walked further along the bank until we crossed over at the Millennium bridge and I believe we limped back home (this version of events is corroborated by google latitude which tracks my every movement).

The next day we got up early as we had booked ourselves on a tour bus! It picked us up from the lobby of the Hilton hotel in Holland Park and it was then that we heard (I think I saw it on Twitter) that Bin Laden had been killed. We were taken to Victoria station where we were ushered onto our particular tour bus.

Our first stop after being guided through the city by our old and rather conservative guide was the castle at Windsor. I work in Maidenhead, which is literally the next town over, so it is funny that I'd not been over that way before. I'd definitely go again. We were only permitted to take pictures of the outside, which is a shame as the inside is the most amazing thing I've seen so far. The dolls house alone is worth the price of admission. It's the size of most bedrooms in London, seriously. Google it now.

Now that you're back, I'll go on. The various rooms of the castle that can be walked through by the public are pretty much all the spectacular ones. There are ornate dinner sets from throughout history, gifted from strange and almost mythical empires. There's a room of paintings that's worth more than it's possible to comprehend. There are halls dedicated to swords, or armour, or guns, or thrones. There's even a couple suits of armour made for two young princes who would have promptly grown out of them. Without a doubt, a must see of England.

But it doesn't stop there, as we drove onwards to Salisbury plain where we began to see strange artificial hills popping up on the countryside. Burial mounds. Then the stones! I'll never forget that moment when we came over the rise and saw Stonehenge just sitting there. Waiting. Just hanging out for the last 5000 years or so. It could be considered a bit boring as it doesn't jump up and leap around or anything. But to me it's just one of those things that has to be seen. One of the earliest reminders perhaps that the most grandiose and permanent structures we build are those meant to outlive our flesh and bear us on the the afterlife? After all, what purpose does a pyramid, a mausoleum, an obelisk, a triumphal arch or a cathedral serve if not to venerate the dead?

Anyhow, I'll stop waxing philosophical as it's late and I still have to cover Bath. The approach to the town is amazing as the terrain is far hillier than expected. Once we arrived, there wasn't time to see much more than just the Roman Baths, but that's amazing enough. They're built on a natural hot spring and the use of them pre-dates the Romans. A lot of excavation has been done under the baths and a lot of the original set up can be seen. It would have been luxurious in its day.

A quite random surprise we found in Bath was the Sally Lunn bakery. To people from certain parts of NZ, a Sally Lunn is a kind of bun with coconut icing on it. This bakery in Bath is the original place where this type of bread was made, although it differs almost completely from what is seen in NZ.

Anyhow, we left Bath and a very full day for the long trip back home.[gallery link="file" orderby="ID"]

The Royal Wedding

So the magical day was finally upon us when the current second in line the the throne of England was to be wed to the lovely Kate Middleton. Sentiment from the locals on the lead-up to the day was mostly along the lines of "Thanks for the day off" and little else, which took the wind out of our sails just a little. But while all the locals headed out of town (during the unseasonably good weather) we ventured inwards to Hyde Park.

There were, of course, the nutters who came into town to sleep on the streets along the path to the cathedral to catch a glimpse of the couple and the Queen. We had almost contemplated it, but by the time we arrived at Hyde Park we were told that the police had closed off the Mall to any new people.

So we settled in down in front of the massive TV screens erected for the event and joined in with the crowd, gradually drinking in a sedate manner. Don't be fooled by what you saw on the telly, because the only time the crowd really got animated was when the camera was on us. Even so, it was an amazing atmosphere and when the flags were waving about and the people were cheering it gave a real feeling of national pride.

It made me wish that there was something that could cause everyone in New Zealand to just get out on the streets and wave flags and feel proud to be New Zealanders, even if just every once in a while. Thing is, no matter what you feel about royalty, the British royal family are symbol of a nation and a reminder to the people of a time when this country was the greatest in the universe.

And that was the feeling of the crowd as we waited patiently for the carefully orchestrated events to unfold. I doubt I need to go into the details of what happened on the screen, as it was beamed live around the world. But there were moments there where the whole crowd of over 100,000 people (if I remember correctly) laughed and cheered and cried(?) together.

At the final moment, cannons fired confetti out all over the crowd and there was a flyover by some old WW2 fighter planes and some newer RAF ones (on their way to Libya?).

After the park, we headed away from where we expected the crowds to be and went to Regent St to see the banners that were strung up there. They do different ones every Christmas, with lights and everything and it's always spectacular when they put them up. From there we headed back into Westminster and down the Mall, which had cleared out considerably, except for the crowd still gathered around Buckingham Palace.

I'll end this one here with some pictures from the day. Next: Windsor, Stonehenge and Bath.

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Easter, Part Deux

So, I believe I've covered Saturday at Kew Gardens. Now it's time for Sunday at the zoo. This being of course Sunday the 24th of April, and again it was a scorcher of a day.

We arrived in the vicinity of the zoo, getting off at Camden Town stop on the tube if I remember correctly. We quickly got our bearings, passing by the famous World's End tavern and the not at all famous Spread Eagle and on towards Regent's Park. The zoo was fairly busy, but we finally got to give them our money so we could get inside after about 15 minutes in line.

Our first stop was the lizard house, which contained snakes, frogs and reptiles from all over the world. From there I do recall seeing some gorillas and lions and tigers, as well as some bearded pigs. The penguins were particularly enjoyable as they were being fed as we arrived. They actually formed an orderly queue to be fed little fishes.

Perhaps most impressive was the Galapagos turtles, one of which was massive and born some time in the 1940s it is believed. The life expectancy for these turtles is at least 100 years. Also, I saw my first mongoose, which looked different to what I'd imagined somehow. The butterfly hut was also breathtaking. Hundreds of fragile and beautiful butterflies flying around us as we were allowed to walk right through them.

I'll give some pictures now to round off this double post. I think next I'll go over the royal wedding weekend, if memory serves.

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Easter Weekend

I'm still a few weeks behind on updates, so here's quick one covering Easter weekend.

We didn't do anything until the Saturday, as Friday was spent at home nursing a hangover. When we did leave the house on Saturday, we ended up catching the tube to the mail depot to pick up a parcel and then making an epic walking journey to Kew Gardens. The epic journey was my fault as I severely misjudged the distance on the map from Acton town to Kew.

When we finally made it to Kew, we went to the local Tesco and bought ourselves a picnic lunch and made for the garden gate. The queue was only about 20 minutes to get in as the day itself was spectacularly sunny. By the time we got in we were half starved, so we headed for the nearest shaded area beneath a tree to tuck into our cured ham and cheese and baguette and whatever else we got.

The grounds of Kew Garden are immense, so even though there were a lot of people in the park, it hardly felt like it. There is nothing quite like the massive expanses of green lawn that are called 'parks' in England - it's nothing like the botanical gardens in New Zealand which tend to run steeply down a hillside. If I had to compare it to anywhere, it would have to be Hagley Park in Chch.

There are a lot of very picturesque areas to be found walking amongst the gardens. There are little groves of different flowers such as rhododendrons and azaleas; there's an arial walkway high above the tree tops;  tropical glass greenhouses that allow you to climb around the steamy upper rim; and our favourite of the day - the fields of bluebells.

Note: I've just come back to writing this after a few weeks hiatus, so I apologise for any disjointedness.

After the gardens, we headed back on the district line when it began bucketing down with rain, lightning and all. We had tickets that night to go see Hamlet at the globe theatre and were concerned it might have been rained out. We got there in time for the show, which is definitely the best way to see the inside of the theatre. We had the 5 pound tickets for the ground in front of the stage, so if it had rained we'd have been soaked. There was only a very light bit of drizzle though.

The show itself was amazing and everything that I'd imagined a Shakespeare play at the globe to be like.

I'll dump a whole lot of pictures at the end here. Sorry, I don't have photoshop installed, so I can't make them look pretty so they will have a slightly washed out grayish quality to them.

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