A couple of days in London.

I saw on the BBC weather today…There is a chance of Blizzards (freezing water showers). Cold winds blowing from Arctic Circle will freeze London. Its generally a practice to watch BBC weather before leaving for office…

I normally run to Kings cross at 8.01, buy a ticket and jump in the 8.06 Train to Foxton. Alight at Hatfield then cross the over bridge and board the 600 or 603 bus to T-mobile. The transport is very punctual...but we need to be careful about the Train doors.

They close exactly 3 sec b4 time... today my friend got stuck in the door because it closed a minute early for some reason. Fortunately he did not get hurt...There is a beeping sound for door closing, he had ignored it.

The food here is not so good… but better than Israel..you have some choice. I have an English breakfast every morning in the hotel. Its a filling meal so kind of replaces lunch as well...Lunch is mainly French fries and rice in
Tmobile canteen or some joint in Galleria, a mall which is five minutes walk.. a gruelling walk in the biting cold wind nevertheless.

Dinner yesterday was a vegge burger in burger king..MacD does not have any veg dishes. All bacon, lamb etc. All English veg dishes are insipid and hence hazardous to Indian taste buds. There are some punjabi restaurants that I have found out near Kings Cross and on Euston road. We plan to try them in the future, infact it will be tonight I believe.

Today, along with Krishna, I plan to visit London Eye and Westminster etc... or atleast travel by tube...If we are able to get out of office early...My room in Novotel is on 7th floor and has an excellent view of the Euston Road
and Kings Cross railroad terminal...The sunrise over the Thames is truly a beautiful sight..

I have not clicked a single photograph as it was just to cold to spend even a minute in the open...I seriously plan to do it from today... I am acclimatizing to the cold weather..

That was the account of the 2 days I have spent in London, England. Well it was more than just an account.. it was verbatim.

A memorable saturday!

It was a great weekend and one I would remember for a long time.
I don’t believe that travelling by London underground is so simple. Tubes are undoubtedly London's life line.

I was lucky to have one weekend to visit London’s awesome attractions. I feel that 2 days are too less a time to visit all parts of this versatile city. You must have at least one week for sight seeing.

I decided on a list of top 5 attractions you will seldom find anywhere else on the globe. The day started with a good breakfast, and I headed off to the local post office for the travel card. I bought an unlimited underground travel card for the day. It was 5 pounds for the pass. With a pass, one may travel to any destination from any source unlimited number of times... it saved me at least 30 pounds.

The most important and a never miss attraction is Madame Tussaud. It is a museum of wax statues of many prominent men and women who have influenced world history in some or the other way. Amitabh and Aishwarya, needless to mention that I am talking about Bachan and Rai, have a statue here.

You view various statues and keep descending lower and lower in the basement. At a point when all the statues are seen you feel that ache in your legs, because of standing in the queue for entry, but more because of the fact that you need to climb 4 floors that you had descended. Just then, there comes ride where you sit in a canopy which takes you around the last part of the museum and later to the top. So you sit for some time and enjoy and don’t have to walk back. I think the museum is well planned. Hence a 10 on 10 and a must visit. After Madame Tussaud I allowed myself an economic lunch of customized burger. And then I decided to move on to the London Eye.
The worlds tallest giant wheel. Ok, don’t think about the Disney land one, this is 10 times as much tall. There was a queue which was about 500 metre long. After standing for 45 min in the queue, it dawned upon my unlimited intelligence that I stood in the wrong queue. This was the queue for getting on the giant wheel and not for getting the tickets!! For that there was another queue. Tired of queuing up on every possible line I could see, I gave up. After all it’s just a giant wheel. And instead I embarked upon the River Cruise over the Thames.

This was an enchanting experience. The cruise takes you quickly to the east bank of the river and you alight in front of a royal powerhouse, The Tower of London. It is surprising that this Royal Palace has witnessed and was an active part of nearly 700 years on English history. And even today it is a royal residence. This is where royal jewels are kept and so is the Kohinoor diamond studded in the Queen Elizabeth II‘s diadem. The guide of the tower eloquently portrayed the history of the Tower and was a master story teller. I enjoyed his speech.

The west bound exit of the Tower leads to the famous tower bridge which is considered as an engineering wonder even today. It splits into two parts in the middle and allows the bigger ships to pass through. As the legend goes, the only time the London Bridge failed to open was on its inauguration ceremony by the Queen. It is by far the most beautiful of the 7 bridges on the Thames. There is one more bridge that has a history, The Millennium Bridge. It was built in 2000 and was open for public by the Queen on a fine summer morning. The next day it was closed by the police as it was unfit for walking! Many people actually fell off the bridge as it swayed too much in the wind. The British Govt spent 6 million pounds to reinforce it. Today it is more than safe.

By now it was evening, on my way back to the railroad terminal, I could not resist the temptation of visiting a floating war museum, The HMS Belfast. This is the only warship in the British Navy that survived the World War II. It was nearing sunset, it seemed as if the Thames had gulped the sun. It was dark. I could see the lights of the London Eye moving on the horizon as I boarded the train back to London Kings Cross.