Thoughts on the trip to the UK

Now that we are back home, I thought I would put together a few thoughts about the trip that may help those of you who are thinking of doing a trip there in the next few years.

Time of year to go
We went in April / May and we were lucky with the weather in that we had very little rain. There was quite often a strong cold and damp breeze from the north or east and most days had cloud. However, in most places we did not experience the crowds that summer brings. Airfare costs are significantly lower than summer as well. Oddly enough, the predictable colder weather helps in packing since you only have to take clothes suitable for cold weather. The biggest negative is that all the flowers are not blooming, but if you suffer from allergies, that can be an advantage.

Personally, I would not go to England in late June through July. There are over 60 million people (and a whole lot of tourists) and the crowding in the tourist attractions can be daunting. Driving a car on the narrow roads would be a nightmare with all the extra holiday traffic.

The locals reckon that September and October are the best months and they are probably correct. However, these are the best months in the US so take your pick.

Getting there
This time we flew Virgin Atlantic and we thought they did pretty well. When coming back, remember to get to the airport well over an hour in advance. Check in finished one hour before departure. Heathrow airport is huge and the walk from the checkin to the gate can be lengthy. We've flown British Airways in the past and they have been fine.

We got to London quite early, before 7am. If it is a weekday, don't rush to go into London because you will be fighting the hoards who are going to work. Wait until at least 9am.

Staying in London
We got one of those deals where you can get three nights in a London hotel added on for not much extra cost. The hotel we used (Central Park Hotel) was fine. Don't expect London hotels to be the same as US hotels, many of them are in very old buildings that were not designed to be hotels. As the sign says 'lower your expectations' and you will be fine. Many of the cheaper hotels include a continental breakfast where you fill up on breadrolls, toast and jam. Many will also offer the full English breakfast for additional cost, usually with eggs, sausage, bacon, tomato and maybe some other delicacy such as baked beans.

We were lucky this time in that we could check in when we arrived at 9am. Most don't allow checking till later in the day, for example after 2pm. You can leave your bags with them however.

Virgin handed out what I call 'goggles' which you slip over your eyes to help you sleep. These can also be useful in hotels to help you go to sleep if it is light outside. Remember to set your alarm for breakfast. London is 5 hours ahead.

Transport.
The London Underground is a great way to get around, but it can be very crowded at times, particularly rush hour. If you have trouble walking up and down stairs, the underground is not for you since although there are escalators and lifts / elevators at some stations, most require that you do some flights of stairs.

The Oyster Card works well and effectively replaces the old "go as you please" card. We just got 20 pound cards which were enough for the three days with a little left over. When we went out to Heathrow on the return journey, it was easy to top up our nearly empty cards to the two pounds 40 pence required.

We saved a lot of money by buying our tickets from London to Yorkshire two to three months in advance. We paid 15 pounds each way against the cheapest fare the day before of 43 pounds each way. Go to this East Coast train site to see how it works. Because we were going to be in the north for three weeks, I booked the one way journey north and then three weeks later, booked the journey south.

Car rental is much the same everywhere, but in the UK, be careful about CDW and whether your credit card covers you. This time we used Hertz. One way rentals can sometimes be very expensive.

Driving is still a pain in most of the UK. Roads are often narrow with lots of traffic. Roundabouts are every where but they are more efficient than traffic lights. You will need a navigator who is good at reading maps and telling the driver where to go next. Petrol is very expensive at roughly $8 per gallon. Rent as small a car as possible to save on fuel costs and to fit on the narrow roads.

Changing money, credit cards and paying.
We used our regular PNC ATM card and it worked fine everywhere at all the ATMs we tried. Our limit appeared to be 100 pounds ($160).

Most credit card companies now tack an additional 3% surcharge (ripoff) on to the cost of any foreign transaction as well as the profit they make on the exchange rate. To avoid this, we used Capital One which does not charge the 3%. It worked fine.

Every pub and restaurant we went to accepted credit cards as do the supermarkets and petrol / gas stations.

Concerts
Since I am a classical music fan, I wanted to go to a concert in London. I use Bachtrack to find out what is on in cities around the globe. It works very well and I booked for my concert well in advance. Do not wait until you get to London to buy your tickets. First, the event may be sold out. Secondly, you do so much walking that you will decide that it is easier to stay back in the hotel and watch TV. IF you really want to see something, get those tickets in advance so that you feel obliged to go.

Food
The UK used to have a lousy reputation for food decades ago. Not any more. There is good food everywhere and it's not really that expensive. Take a walk in the supermarkets and you may be surprised by how inexpensive most ingredients are compared to the US.

Photos and Blogging.
Take spare batteries, a spare SD card and some form of backup. Every day, I transferred my photos for the day (usually over 100) to my little netbook. You don't want to lose these photos like I did a few years ago when my SD card totally died.


The Dell Netbook was very handy. It is very light weight and though it is not very powerful, I can type on the keyboard and it does most of what I want. There is oodles of disk storage. Wireless networking is available in most hotels so you can check email, look up stuff, and of course, do your blogging. One of the new Apple Ipads might work very well.

I really enjoyed the blogging of the trip. Yes it takes some time at the end or start of the day, but I found that my photo taking improved because I was constantly aware of the need to develop some sort of interesting story for the blog and the photos were needed to illustrate it. I found that it was useful to take a photo of the sign at the entrance to castles, churches etc so that I could easily remember where I was when I was going thru all the hundreds of photos.

I did not blog all the places we went to even though many of them deserved a blog entry. Pretty quickly I recognized that themed blogs like the one on the distilleries worked very well.

By the way, if you liked my photos, I took a basic photography course at Cecil Community College twenty-five years ago. It's probably one of the most useful courses I ever took because I learned how to take better photos and how to recognize when a good photo is available and how to compose it. Remember, walk a few yards and the view and composition changes.

Finally
The UK is a wonderful place to visit. It seems like every few miles you are seeing something that you had heard about but never quite knew where it was. It is a very concentrated country and absolutely beautiful in most places. The people are very friendly and though some of the accents can be difficuly to understand, that is just one of the fascinating aspects of the place.

London - South Bank

A number of years ago I learned the lesson that if you are thinking of going out to see a concert or show at night in London, get your tickets in advance so that you have an incentive to get on your tired feet and go out rather than staying back at the hotel say you are too tired. So I had bought tickets for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton conducting, and Freddy Kempff tickling the ivories.

We took the tube to the Embankment tube station and walked across the new Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridge replacing the old pedestrian part of the Hungerford Bridge.

I've always enjoyed crossing over to the south bank on the way to Royal Festival Hall in the late afternoon. The city is just laid out before you and the Thames lies below. This is London!

At half time at the concert, we walked out on to the balcony area at the concert hall and took some photos. Here you can see the new modern pedestrian bridge and the new Charing Cross station.

The first half of the concert (Glinka - Russlan and Ludmilla, Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1 was not too inspiring. Kempff played well but it was obvious that Litton was not a natural Tchaikovsky conductor. He appears to be at his best when the music is fast and loud, but seems to have no idea of how to really shape a phrase when the music is slower. We were sitting behind the orchestra and could see how he interacted with the orchestra. He just looks bored and waggles his wand morosely when the music is slow.

The Rachmaninov Symphony #2 in the 2nd half went much better and the orchestra responded better to him. Obviously, there was a lot more rehearsal for this piece, which is quite normal in concert programs. The orchestra played well, but their string sections are no match for Philadelphia and sounded quite scratchy by comparison. The Philly Orchestra is just made to play Rachmaninov with much more power and a deeper sound. I hope Litton does not become Philly's new conductor.

Interestingly, I thought the Royal Festival Hall was not as big as I remembered.

The London Eye and Big Ben.

One of the two new pedestrian bridges on either side of the railway bridge. There used to be only one pedestrian bridge on the east side of the railway bridge.

The bridge makes for interesting photos.

The next morning we headed off from the Bayswater Underground Station to the south bank at Westminster. One of the features of underground stations used to be looking at the advertisements that lined the walls of the stations. The economic downturn seems to have affected advsertizing budgets since there were not too many advertisments now.

C lived in the house where the Police van is standing.  The James Bond version was known as M.

You can't go to London without taking a photo of Big Ben.

An so, on a gloomy and cold day, we headed off towards the London Eye on the south bank.

The front of the old County Building across the river from Big Ben. It was an area seldom visited by tourists but now there is a constant stream of tourists all along the south bank to Tower Bridge.

The tires on the red device revolve and cause the big wheel to slowly revolve. Watching it, you get the curious sense that the red thing is moving and the big wheel is stationary.

One of the pods was naughty and tried to swim away but it was recaptured.

Underneath one of the new Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridges. The old pedestrian walkway was situated on top of the right hand side of the big red pier that the railway bridge rests on.

Look at the inscription on the seat (click the photo).

Stairway at Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The bus stop on Waterloo Bridge where Georgi Markov was shot with an umbrella.

A Pieminister 'moo and blue' pie. It was a pretty good pie but different from an Aussie pie. Here the pastry is not so flaky, the gravy is runnier and the shape of the pie is deeper.

Some colour.

The outside of the former Bankside Power Station which now houses the Tate Modern.

Kids in the old generating room. This was a week of school holidays and the place was overrun with school children. We did not linger and headed on.

The new Millenium Bridge for pedestrians heading over from tate Modern to St Paul's Cathedral. We did not bother to walk on it however since it was quite cold and windy.

Unfortunately, the Globe Theatre was not open so we didn't get to go inside. Perhaps next time when we are in London we will get to go there.

I liked the slogan on the icecream truck. Despite the cold and wind, there were plenty of people licking their icecreams. Only the English!!

Replica of Drake's Golden Hind. We could hear a group of children being sworn in as pirates as we walked past. They seemed to be enthusiastic.

When I first came to London in 1974, this whole area was docks and warehouses. Now the docks are gone and in this case, the dock has been filled in, a fancy roof added, and it is now a shopping arcade.

So on past HMS Belfast which I explored years ago and on to Tower Bridge.

But first we have to walk past the end of a big pickle.

Using Google Earth, I calculated that the walk along the south bank was just two and a quarter miles but in reality it is a lot more as you have to go out of your way in a number of places and of course you don't wlk in a straight line when you are site seeing. Expect to walk over five miles from the Embankment tube station to the Tower Bridge tube station. For a fee you can take a tour of the bridge and an associated museum which I did years ago but not this time. If you are interested in how the bridge works, it is worth it.

The centre of the bridge where the spans separate and lift up.

Mind the gap!

The moat at the Tower of London. You only go there once as the crowds are always horrendous.

Dinner at Kiasu on Queensway. Mine in front is the Nonya Laksa which I merrily splashed all over my shirt. The white rice noodles were deliciously crisp. In the background is whatever Marianne ordered. It wasn't as good or splashy as the Laksa.

 

For one pound you could order their durian icecream. If you don't know what it is, read the link to see why I felt I needed to try it once. When I had finished it, the waitress came over to see what I thought of it. I'm not sure how I would go eating the fruit by itself, but made into an icecream, it was quite edible but as Marianne said, it reminded her of onions. Definitely better than the black sapote icecream Robin and I tasted in Australia that made you think you were eating excrement.

London - Portobello and Festival Hall

We went for a late afternoon stroll over to Notting Hill and Portobello Road.

When you walk down the back streets you come across interesting sights. We were amused by all this rubbish piled up in the portico.

A grand entrance way to keep you dry when it is raining. Probably gets a lot of use in the English climate.

An old Mini spiffed up.

Most of the stalls were not set up in Portobello Road when we walked down it, so we did not get the full flavour of the place. However there was an interesting shop that sold jeans and clothing of that nature, but their decoration both outside in the windows and inside was hundreds of sewing machines, mostly of the Singer brand.

A pizza oven.

For dinner we went to the Mahal restaurant about half way between Queensway and Notting Hill Gate underground stations. The food was really good especially what was in the right bowl, Sali Jardaloo which is a very popular parsee dish served on festive occasions such as weddings. Lamb and dried indian apricots cooked with chilli, cinnamon and coriander seeds.

London - Hampstead Heath

We had never been to Hampstead Heath so we got on the tube and journied up to Hampstead.

Fortunately it was a nice day and the wind wasn't too cold.

We came across St John at Hampstead which has a very interesting graveyard with a few notables buried there including Constable and Harrison.

The grave stones in this cemetary are mostly very old and many are falling over with inscriptions that are impossible to read, but it all looks very tranquil.

John Constable's grave.

John Harrison's grave. One of the most influential men who ever lived. If you ever go to Greenwich, make sure to see his clocks at the museum. They are gorgeous.

Inside the church.

If you read the Wikipedia entry on Hampstead, you would have noticed that this is the most expensive area of London for houses with better examples costing up to fifty million pounds. I suspect this house would bring a tidy sum.

I liked the sign.

Notice how the tree roots have been exposed by the arch in the brick wall.

It's time for a bit of colour. No doubt the language was colourful when the owner returned.

I had envisaged Hampstead Heath being open fields and was quite surprised to find that there was quite a lot of wooded area with path ways everywhere.

The pond at Vale of Heath which is a little village within the Heath about a mile away from Hampstead.

Most of the people we saw were young ladies in their twenties or thirties exercising themselves and their dogs. It was a beautiful day to be out after the gloom of the previous day and the dogs were having a wonderful time.

An open area which was what I was expecting to find at the Heath.

An old trough. If you click on the photo you will get a large image and you may be able to decipher that this trough was also used for cattle.

We enjoyed walking around Hampstead, but once was enough. Oddly enough, it was a very noisy place because of all the remodelling going on in the expensive houses. There was a constant din of circular saws.