Day 22

Today starts with the glory of Internet. The reception finally had a username and password for us to use. Yay! Although we could only abuse the net for so long as we had to make it to Buckingham palace in time for the changing of the guards.

We had arranged to meet Row for the changing of the guards at the corner of Hyde Park closest to the palace but sadly, due to booking stuff etc., we were running late. We had to get from our apartment to the palace through Hyde park so to make up time, we ran. It was pretty painful - we’re pretty unfit right now. Not doing any aerobic exercise will do that to you I guess. We ran for a while and then walked the rest.

Very interesting...

When we arrived, we couldn’t find Row or my parents (who left at a decent time so that they didn’t have to rush) at all. So we found our place amongst the crowd, and waited for the ceremony to unfold.

All in all the changing of the guard was ok. We spent a fair bit of time trying to decide what all the differently dressed guards actually did. We couldn’t figure it out and still don’t know. Our view was blocked most of the time by this tall American guy who seemed to have made it to the front so that he could purposely block the view of all shorter people.

After the ceremony, we found Row and the folks in the dispersing crowd. Row brought a friend along too whom was currently in town to do some visa stuff. Turns out this was also the guy who helped me at the Hobart immigration office to get all the documents I needed to get my Dutch passport.

So now that we formed the gang, we made our way to the Westminster area. We wanted to find a place to sit down and have a drink. Now, you think this would be relatively easy in London, however, the first place we found said that we had to eat food from them as well so we left and the only other places that we came across were pubs and the like.

After a bit more walking, we finally found a coffee place and got take away drinks and then found a spot across the river with an awesome view of Big Ben and Parliament House to have lunch. We then made our way to the London Eye. Mum wussed out, and dad kept her company and Row’s friend was on a budget, so only Row, Sandra and I decided to go up. The line was humongous so we thought we’d give Stevo a call to see if he could purchase some tickets online for us while we were waiting. The booking system wouldn’t let Stevo book any tickets in the next hour so we decided to come back later so that Stevo could join us when he finished work.

Feeling that we needed to see more churches, we went to look at Westminster abbey. In true London tourist fashion, we had to pay lots to get in (again, worshipers are free). However, St. Margaret’s cathedral was next door and free! So we went in.

Row had a bank appointment so she had to disappear and the folks wanted to head over to the Tate modern gallery so the rest of us decided to check out the Science Museum. This was pretty cool, but after a few hours of wandering around we started to get pretty tired. It’s amazing how pooped you get walking around looking at stuff – plus the impromptu run in the morning. So Sandra and I went home for a napski.

Feeling slightly more refreshed, we made our way back to the London Eye to meet up with Stevo and Row. The booking had advised us to line up about 30 minutes beforehand to be safe. There was also a 4D experience before the ‘ride’, so we decided to get there 50 minutes early. The ‘flight’ (as they call it) was at 7, but there was hardly any line, so we got on at 6:30. The sights of London on the flight were awesome. 

As we came in to land, we saw my parents waiting for us (as we said we’d meet them at 6:30...). We then went to a boat pub for dinner.

We mentioned the cool robot arms in Trafalgar square to Stevo and Row, so we decided to look at them again after dinner. This time, they were setup and had guys there to tell us what they were all about. Turns out that they were part of an art festival, and what you can do is email in some text, and the robot arms would write the text in the air for you. Sounds a bit lame but there was a website where you could watch the robots live and then they slowed down the image so that you could see the individual letters that each robot wrote. The website was www.outrace.org, I don’t know if it’s still there but it was pretty cool.

We then decided to walk aimlessly through the streets of London following the GPS - General Positioning Stevo, thus dubbed due to his ability to generally know where we were going but having no idea how to get there. We ended up in Soho, where it was time to tube it home for sleepy time.