Photos!

Hey all,

I've been posting a few photos throughout my blogs, but sometimes the hotel internet just won't let me do it. So feel free to have a look at my facebook page. I've allowed 'everyone' to see my Europe photos, so they should be able to be viewed by those who don't have facebook.
However, if this isn't the case please let me know asap through a comment on the blog! My facebook page address is facebook.com/mia.allwright

By the way guys, feel free to leave comments! I'd love to hear anything you have to say :)

More blogs to come!

Love,
Mia

London - The tower! (Day 3)

Our 3rd day in London was just as good as thee days before :)

With the strike over, we were able to use the underground and save a few pounds, which was excellent :) It was a freezing cold day... and snowing. It basically never snows in London, especially not at this time of year! So, basically this was a very cold, wet, white and special day :)

We started our day by again, enoying a continental breakfast and I thankfully got to also contact my boyfriend David back in Australia via skype :) We then headed over to King's Cross station, coats on and hoods up. We then took the Moorgate line to Tower Hill only to find the snow had increased! We walked straight out of the station into the cold and purchased a small umbrella each from some touristy store next to the station. In the travelling spirit and all, Sam and I chose a very cool/incredibly dorky (depending on your view of cheesy tourists) union jack umbrella, Mum and Dad on the other hand got boring maroon ones. I have discovered on this trip that snow is just as annoying as rain, it is just prettier and colder.

We headed over just to the Tower of London, which over the years has been home to many monarchs and prisoners, but now it is a museum that houses the Crown Jewels. This exibit was equally as fascinating as the Abbey, just not as beautiful. I loved it. I'm a big reader and love history, so this kind of thing, is my type of tourist attraction :)

The four of us managed to travel throughout the entirity of the tower, in a period of 3.5 hours, but it didn't feel that long! Our umbrellas were of much use to us whilst moving through the outdoor areas in between the different segments, but as they were cheap ones, they eventually broke. The tower was fantastic! It's very large, but the arrows and signs made it really easy to find which way to go, otherwise we would have been completely overwhelmed and have not known where to go next.

According to our travel book, "For much of its 900-year history the Tower was an object of fear. Those who committed treason or threatened the throne were held within its dark walls and often executed." Therefore, throughout the tower there was a lot of engravings on the walls made by prisoners over the years, that had been preserved and were covered over with glass. The majority of the inscriptions were of bible verses but some reffered to some of the people who had been hanged etc. or fellow prisoners e.g. Lady Jane Grey("Jane" was engraved quite often on the walls). It was all very interesting.

There is a place in the castle called The Bloody Tower which is associated with the disappearance of two Princes in 1483. Basically the story is that Prince Edward and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York were mysteriously killed, just as Prince Edward (13 at the time) was living in the tower to prepare for his coronation. It is suspected that Richard III or Henry VII ordered for their death.
They had a whole few rooms in the tower completely dedicated to the tale of the Princes and even had a button you could press to vote for who you thought the culprit was.

There was also an amazing exibition at the tower called "Fit for a King". Basically this consisted of "five hundred years of spectacular royal armour, offering a fascinating insight into the personalities, power and physical size of England’s king." That's right, the real thing guys! The real armour of the King's and Princes from hundreds of years ago. They even had an interactive section where you could feel the wait of weapons and attempt to shoot a bow and arrow (simulator, not real haha). It was really cool :) And I definately knew that all the guys at home would be particularly jealous haha.

We saw a lot of things in the tower, a lot of history and a lot of stories, we even got to see torture methods :S but our favourite exibit by far was the Crown Jewels! Just like Westminster Abbey, no photos were allowed to be taken in this section, but wow. It was incredible.

They put on display not only the coronation crown, the crown's of previous King's and Queen's etc. but also the special dining ornaments (gold engraved and shaped plates and goblets etc.) from right back in the 1400s. They even had the orb and scepter held by Queens and Kings right back through the monarchy, at every coronation, including the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was so incredible, yet so surreal! It was hard to believe that the ginormous jewels in front of you were real and not just cheapo fake ones, but having said that you could definately tell that they were authentic! This was by far our favourite part of the tower :)

We saw a large group of ravens all in a particular section of the tower. Legend states that if they leave the tower, the kingdom of England will fall. Hence why all their wings are clipped. Poor things.

We also visited the Tower Green which was "where aristocratic prisoners were executed, away from the ghoulish crowds on Tower Hill....Execution inside the Tower, away from the gawping crowds, was a privilege reserved for those of high rank, or for those who had dangerously strong popular support.

The best-known among those executed on or near the site of the memorial are the three queens of England: Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, who was in her early thirties, Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, barely in her twenties, and Lady Jane Grey, who was only sixteen." Soooo amazing (and slightly disturbing) to think that I have stood where all of these famous women were killed.

I encourage you to find out more information about the tower at either http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon/stories.aspx or http://www.toweroflondontour.com/ It's worth it! :)

We then all moved up to the Tower Bridge. We walked up lots of slippery steps and continued to walk right to the middle of the bridge, where usually it where the roadway would seperate when big ships have to pass through. We were all really enjoying just standing on the bridge, so chose not to spend the extra money to look at the exhibiton. It was lovely :)

We then walked through the bitter cold, windy, snowy, FREEZING weather(...not pleasant) along the riverside embarkment to The Golden Hind, a replica of Sir Francis Drake's boat. The boys enjoyed that one.
We had already had lunch whilst at the tower, so we then went into a nearby pub for a quick drink and a bit of a warm up, which was very nice, but unfortunately we soon had to return to the freezer awaiting us outside.

The four of us then walked to the nearest station and took a train back to Covent Gardens (which we had visited on day 1) to go back to Pineapple Studios. Whilst the boys went up and looked around the studios, Mum and I went into the store that was closed the last time we went through the area. It was a really awesome shop with great dance gear, but I just chose to get a simple T-shirt that said 'Pineapple Dance Studios' just for a bit of memorabilia and for something to wear in Egypt and Singapore in the coming weeks. The girl at the desk told us that the weather was so bad that she couldn't drive home that night and was having to find accomodation in the area :S very odd weather for November!

We then hopped promptly back on the underground trains, on the Picadilly Line back to King's Cross to get ready for our night out on London's West End :)

London - Day 2

We woke up in our second day in London, ready for an action packed day of sightseeing :) only to look out our hotel window to see crowds and crowds of people around the train station. This was followed by turning on the television and finding out that the underground workers were on strike. Excellent timing. This meant that basically, we had to either walk everywhere, take buses or get taxis.

After having our continental breakfast at the hotel (not too shabby by the way) we walked over to King's Cross to look more into the situation. Basically no trains were running, and the ones that were packed! Luckily the majority of the work crowd had cleared off by that point, but it was still busy! We chose to get a taxi due to our lack of knowledge of the bus lines and the ridiculous amount of time and energy it would take to walk all the way to our first destination, Westminster Abbey. The taxi line was ridiculous, it bended all the way past the 4 rows of the line up area designated to it and went half way down the walkway into the station. The line was very long and was made up of very angry looking people with ugly expressions on their face, yelling into their phones whilst holding suitcases. We decided that we might head back over to the fake platform 9&3/4 that we had found the other day and take some pictures :) Unfortunately there was construction taking place around the photos, so they're not as good as they could be, but oh well :)

Yes we all look a bit dorky haha, but I still think that it's pretty awesome :)

Anyways, we headed back to the line for the taxi's to see had decreased by about a 5th. It wasn't great, but it was better than nothing. We waited in line for a while, but not really too long, between about 10 and 15 minutes. We hopped in a traditional style London taxi... but with some not so traditonal advertising and headed over to Westminster. The cabby was a really nice man :) He had a nice general chat with us about the city of London, a few stories about some celebrities he's driven (btw Sean Connery, is apparently one to stear clear of...) and we told him a bit about Australia. During the drive we even got to see the Horse Guards at the Whitehall :) It was a lovely chat/drive and before we new it we had a arrived at Westminster Abbey.

This place is honestly one of the beautiful places I've ever been in my life. It was marvelous. Now for anyone who doesn't know what this place is, it's basically a resting-place of Britian's monarchs and has been the setting for all the coronations since 1066. Some of you might think it's a bit morbid, but anyone who is familiar with the architecture of the churches here in Europe knows what I mean. The architecture of this church in particular is an example of medieval architecture and it was marvelous!

Out of respect and also not to damage the quality of the paintings etc. photos were not allowed to be taken inside, which I thought was completely understandable. Have a look at some pictures/info/history on it at http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history it's definately worth a look.
The experience we had at Westminster Abbey was one I'll never forget. We were given a free audio guide that talked you through the whole place, going into detail about the main areas and people. You get to walk past the crypts of many of the royal in the church, such as Elizabeth I and her sister Mary, who are burried together, Henry VII and his wife, Edward the Contessor as well as a lot of other monarchs. There were many other people buried there or at least commemorated through some sort of plaque or monument.

There was a specific place called poets corner, that includes the crypts or memorials of poets, writers, musicians, actors etc. such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and a whole heap of other people. Throughout the place people are buried everywhere, in the floor, the walls, just everywhere. The building is sooo unbelievably beautiful and still in such good condition. Westminster  Abbey by the way, is where Princess Diana's funeral took place. There is so much I could say about Westminster, but I would be here forever! So have a look at the website and have a look at some of the pictures etc :)

We then headed over to the houses of parliament, which is located really close to the Abbey. So we had a bit of a walk over there and took a few photos of the massive building. By the way, this makes parliament house in Australia look rather pathetic. For those of you who aren't aware of what this building looks like, think about the scene in Harry Potter 5, when the Order of the Pheonix were flying next to this magnificent looking building next to a river....well that was the houses of parliament. (You can see it here for a brief second on the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKC0W3mF1wA ) As you can see in the photo below, the famous Big Ben is a part of the building and was just as magnificent as you would assume it would be. Sam in particular was looking forward to seeing Big Ben, so he was very pleased :) 

As you can see from the photo above, the Westminster bridge was right near the Houses of Parliament. From the bridge we could see a great view of the London Eye, along with the other more industrial side of London.

We decided that despite the distance we would walk from Westminster all the way to Buckingham Palace and then head over to the marble arch. The walk up to the palace seemed to last forever but it was worth it :) The palace was beautiful! But we all agreed that it didn't have the same grandeur as the Abbey. The guards were rather amusing, and we had the pleasure of watching them do a guard change. Unfortunately the Queen wasn't polite enough to come out and say hi.

We then walked towards the Marble Arch. Now this was not a short walk and a rather painful one for me as my back had started playing up again, but we made it. On the walk we got a chance to look at the wealthier areas of London and walk past a whole heap of fancy-smancy car dealerships. Understandably, the boys enjoyed this part of the walk and took a few photos of some of the cars.
When we reached the Arch, we were more fascinated with the amount of pigeons that inhabited the area, than the arch itself, but nonetheless it was very beautiful. Just by the way, the pigeons here are ridiculous, they're like rats with wings. But anyway, we took a few happy snaps and headed down Oxford St.

By this point we still hadn't had lunch and it was around 3:30pm, so we were keen for a warm place to sit down, eat and have a bit of a rest. We walked up the street for a fair while and still hadn't found anywhere other than Maccas, which we really weren't interested in. We were desperate so we headed into a large and expensive department store called Selfridges, which we knew would have somewhere to eat. As we walked through the designer brand clothes, bags and perfumes, feeling very much like street urchins in comparison to the Barbie doll like sales people, we finally located a restaurant on the top floor. We looked at the menu and as we had expected, it was a tad pricy, but Mum and Dad decided that we'd treat ourselves to something nice.

We were seated on the table next to two french women, baring Louis Vitton handbags and Prada and Dior shopping bags, who were speaking french. We felt just a tad out of place. Mum and I ordered a nice mushroom risotto, Sam had chicken nugget type things and Dad had garlic prawns. The meals were all very nice, Dad's of course was too small for him, but we all enjoyed having a break from walking and being somewhere warm.

We then left to go look for a cinema to go and see Harry Potter, but unfortunately the next showing was in 2 hours, so we decided to head back to the hotel and have a restful evening after a long day. Due to the underground strike we had to take a taxi, but again we had a lovely cabby :) He told us that his wife owns a property over in Redcliffe in Qld, which we thought was pretty cool haha.

So, after a long day we finally got home and pretty much just crashed, ready for London, day 3.