London

We arrive in London at 6am in the morning after 17 hour flight from Perth - did I mention Business Class upgrade at last minute! Our hotel room isn't ready (understandably) so we wander along the Thames and around the streets of central London. We walked to Tower Bridge (pretty impressive old bridge), along and across London Bridge, Leadenhall Market, Lloyd's Building and up to a viewing level at Horizon 22 where we had an amazing view of the whole city. Would you believe we did 21,000 steps!!

Kerrie with view of the Tower Bridge in background

Tower Bridge

Archway lined with poppies at The Tower

Entrance to The Tower

Timber bridge across moat to The Tower

Old Navy ship along Thames

The "Gherkin" Building

Lloyd's Building - very industrial

Leadenhall Market

Impressive view of city of London from Horizon 22 building

We're pretty buggered and finally able to check in at about midday so we have a lie down for a couple of hours. Then we wander off to a local pub downstairs "The Crutched Friars" - which is choc-a-block full of people having a drink after work. We grab a table and have what we both agreed were the worst pork sausages with mash we've ever had!! Oh well, time to go back to our hotel for hopefully a good night's sleep.

Next day we go to the Borough Markets which aren't too far away from our hotel. Wow, we were so impressed - we wandered around for a couple of hours. Bob had the biggest cookie known to man - I had a "few" bites. We wander around Borough Yards, Dirty Lane, Southwark Cathedral, Shakespeare's Glove, across Millennium Bridge, walked around St Paul's Cathedral and then bus it home. That night we go to another pub "Hoop and Grapes" - hopefully for a better meal than the previous night. Well, we weren't disappointed - I had a HUGE beef and red wine pie and Bob and a beef and pale ale pie. Both were absolutely delicious.

Borough Markets

Huge cookie at Borough Markets

Nice old cathedral

Inside Cathedral

Inside lovely cathedral

Pudding Lane, London

Old Pub

Lamb Tavern

Bob about to enjoy his beef & pale ale pie + beer

Kerrie about to enjoy her HUGE beef pie with red wine + rose

Kerrie - very satisfied after huge been and red wine pie

On our third day, we decide to go to the Camden markets to check them out, hmmmm...... What a contrast to the Borough Markets. The Camden markets were much more grungy and touristy. We decided to have coffee and coke and then head back into the city. From there were catch a ferry down the Thames to Greenwich. What an interesting district Greenwich is - historical Navy Base and the Cutty Sark (old ship) etc. Beautiful green town with lots of parks and trees. We also try their small local markets where they have lots of hand made products (nice fudge!) and have a bite to eat for late lunch. We then set off through the Naval yards to museum but we were a bit too tired to spend much time there. We walked past Queens House (huge) and then up a steep hill to Royal Observatory (big tick) and then back down through lovely park to ferry. We meet a lovely young English couple on the ferry. We heard them talking about Brisbane - so interrupted them and told them we were from Brisbane. They couldn't believe it. We had a long chat about Brisbane - and their lives in London. They said they loved the city cats in Brisbane and reckon the Thames needed some of them!

Camden Markets

Camden Markets

Interesting lads at Camden Markets

Queen's House in Greenwich

View from Royal Observatory on top of Greenwich

We head back to our hotel room for a short rest. Then we rode a very old London Bus to West End, had some dinner at a little Mediterranean restaurant. Then off to a very old Theatre (just beautiful - tiny and ornate) to see Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" show. We had an gelato at intermission (we deserved it, OK!). Really good show but quite tired in the end - caught the bus home about 10.30pm (West End was still alive and pumping) and straight to bed!

Day 4 turned out to be a travel day - we spend the whole day getting to our flight to Lisbon - train to Heathrow, navigating huge and busy Heathrow Airport, delayed flight to Lisbon (cyber attack in Heathrow and other airports), then navigating through customs out of Lisbon Airport. The escalators were not working so we had about 400 people with about 8 bags each trying (OK, might be slight exaggeration) to get into 3 lifts to take us out of the airport - mayhem! Luckily we had arranged a driver to take us from the Airport to our apartment. The apartment is very new and looks good - but is a little soul-less. Never mind - can't complain. We meet two lovely German girls downstairs from our apartment where there is a wine bar (we must try it!). We asked them were the nearest supermarket was, but got confused directions (too many wines?) but eventually found one at the end of the street. Bought pizza for dinner - but couldn't work the oven!! So ended up across the road where they had takeaway, handmade pasta and beef ragu - you beauty! After a beer for Bob and a wine for Kerrie, we became less grumpy - and to bed!