Category Archives: England

England

Gatwick & Airport Fun (Leaving the UK)

Leave a comment

Well, after about a month in Scotland, it was time to head to Gatwick and take off for Italy!!  After giving my many thanks to Anna for her hospitality, I left Glasgow via train and headed straight down to Gatwick.  I had booked a little B&B for the night (it took almost all day to get from Glasgow to Gatwick so it was a good thing I left the day before my flight!!) called Da Vinci Gatwick Guest House.  For 40 pounds (yea I know it was pricey but I got my own room/bathroom, breakfast and after traveling all day I enjoyed a little pamper:)) I reserved a single room only about 10 minutes from the airport.

Though a little pricey, I really enjoyed the Da Vinci Guest House!!  I found it comfortable, quaint, warming, welcoming and over all just had a great vibe!  The people who owned, or at least who took care of it are Latin American (I could hear them speaking Spanish) and the woman at least was very accommodating, polite and welcoming!  I didn’t get any actual chat time with the man, that’s why I only mention the woman:)  Though when I made my reservation over the phone, I spoke with a man (maybe the same one??) and he was very polite and accommodating too.  They even provided me with a number of a taxi service that they use that costs half what other taxis cost (according to them) and they picked you up right from the train station.

Quick note here though about taxis… CARRY CASH!!!  AT ALL TIMES CARRY CASH TO PAY THE TAXIS!!!!  Otherwise they will charge you a fee of 7 pounds to use a credit card!!!!!!  Yup, it happened to me… I was fuming!!  Though of course that was on the way to the airport, so what could I do??  The fee almost cost as much as the fare!!!  Consider yourselves warned!!

In any event, the night at the B&B was spent picking off ticks from my forearms (only 4 of them and they were babies, so it didn’t take that long!) and going out for a bite to eat at the local (potentially only) pub and restaurant just walking distance down the road.  The food was great (surprisingly very international!!) and the beers were splendid as always.  Needless to say that night was a quiet one as I prepped to take off the next day.

Because my flight was in the afternoon (6pm) but I had to be out of the B&B by 11am, I opted to just go to the airport and wait until my time to board.  Unfortunately, Vueling Airlines only allows people to check-in 2 hours before their flight, so I had to sit and wait (with my very heavy bag since I was carrying gifts) from basically 11am to 4pm before being able to get rid of my bag and go through security… I finally got checked in and through security, then the cutest thing happened…

As anyone who has ever been to the airport knows, past security there are a ton of shops and stores, and restaurants.  The larger the airport, the more there are!  Gatwick was quite busy and had a ton of places to shop and eat!  I stopped by one place to grab a slice of pizza (easy, cheap and I hadn’t eaten all day!!) then wandered around to find a quiet spot to play a game on my tablet…

I was there all of a few minutes when all of a sudden an elderly woman came by and asked “con permiso, habla Espanol?”  Translation: Excuse me, do you speak Spanish?  To which I responded “Yes, a little” (in spanish of course) and that’s all it took!  She was off!!  Thankfully I actually did understand what she was saying despite her speaking a mile a second!!  She was on her way to Orlando but her flight in Gatwick was delayed and she had no way to contact her family because for some reason she couldn’t get her phone to work and no one in the Gatwick airport spoke Spanish and she couldn’t find anyone to help her because she doesn’t speak and English…

I kinda had to chuckle, because she was just too cute!!  In any event, I explained that her phone didn’t work because she did not have a SIM card for the UK (she was from Spain btw) and I offered her to call her family with my Skype account on my tablet.  She was very thankful, made her phone call to let her family know about her situation, thanked me profusely and went on her way.

I simply went back to my game playing when all of a sudden, about 5 minutes later she snuck back around one again asking for help, lol!!  Poor thing!!!  My heart broke for her and loved her all at once!!  Anyway, she handed me two slips of paper and asked if I could tell her what it was all about.  The first was her boarding ticket for the plane.  But there was no gate assigned to the ticket, only the flight number and seat number.  So I explained that because the flight was delayed, they didn’t know what gate the plane would actually be at and that we would have to simply watch the monitors for departures to see what gate it would be once it was announced.  She got a good handle on that, then I looked at the second slip.  It was a voucher for 5 pounds from British Airways to redeem for food or a beverage at any of the food shops to make up for the delay in the flight.  I explained this to her, then asked if she was hungry.  She said yes, and I offered that if she was interested in pizza, I just happened to know of a place that sold a large slice for 5 pounds… She agreed, so I took her to the food shop, ordered her the pizza to go, paid the shop with the food voucher and gave her the slice.

At this point, as chance would have it I checked the monitor to see if my flight was announced yet, and in fact both mine AND her flight were announced, lol!!  So I told her that the gate for her flight was ready, walked her to her gate (mine was on the way anyway!) then went on to mine:)  She was very thankful, but honestly the whole experience just warmed my heart to be able to help her, so really I thank her!!

On to Italy

On to Europe

Back to United Kingdom

Back to Homepage

England

Areas Not Covered

Leave a comment

Once the tour was over I headed out to see the places not covered by the tour.  Granted there really wasn’t much as we covered quite a bit!!  I was accompanied by another single traveler and together we headed toward the eye o f London.   We walked along the river Thames and viewed the Eye of London from across the street.  It is really MUCH more impressive at night!!  I only had the chance to see it in a nighttime view 4 years ago when I had a 16 hour lay-over in in London and opted to speed walk the city at night instead of just hanging about the airport.  So the pictures of the nighttime shots are from 4 years ago just after new year- not during the current trip of August 2014.

The Eye of London is currently Europe’s tallest Ferris wheel and each passenger capsule (which holds up to 25 people) represents one of the London Boroughs- 35 in total!  From the Eye of London we swung inward toward Piccadilly Circus, one of the best known areas for shopping, shopping and more shopping!!!  It honestly reminds me of Times Square in N.Y.C. since the streets are oddly angled in the center and there is a HUGE TV screen with adverts, etc constantly going.

Anyway, since I’m not a shopping fan I really didn’t have much business there… I just went there so I could see it during the daytime:)  Anyway, at this point it was quite on in the day and both myself and my companion were hungry.  So we set off to Brick Lane, which I had heard from several locals that it was THE PLACE to go for Curry.  Getting there was quite interesting however… We opted to hop an underground train which was no problem at all… However once we got out on to our exit we had a humorous time finding the street!  We walked out of the station and headed aimlessly down the road in the direction that the map “suggested” to go down.  I spotted a street called Brick Street and thought, hey, that must be it!

So down we walked… and walked… and walked… and walked…… The sceneries changed, the scents in the air changed and we thought for sure we HAD to be in the area!!  However, apparently we ended up in a Moroccan area and after several attempts to find someone who spoke English we discovered that Brick STREET was where we were and Brick LANE was where we were supposed to be… So back to the train station we went and lo and behold, had we taken a left out of the station instead of a right, we would have been on the correct street in all of 2 seconds flat!  It really was a good thing I had a patient person walking with me, otherwise the detour could have turned sour!!

Once on the correct path, Brick Lane stretched for what seemed like forever with endless Indian food restaurants on both sides of the “Lane” and each place had a huge banner that hung out front claiming they were voted the BEST Indian food from TripAdvisor in 20XX or the BEST value from TripAdvisor in 20XX and to boot each place also had a man standing in the doorway trying to lure each person in their place!  To be honest it was all just a little overwhelming and though we were hungry trying to choose a place sent my head in a tailspin!  We did eventually settle on a place that seemed to offer the best deal but honestly I wasn’t impressed at all.  The place was fairly packed with people who sounded British so I thought for sure that it should have been a good place.  But then again because we were ordering off the “tourist” menu and not off-roading from their full menu, maybe the quality wasn’t as good… who knows… Anyway Brick Lane to me personally was a bust.  Nothing that special and just over the top with restaurants!!

Once done with lunch it was beer time, so we headed back to the hostel for a little break, then to get a drink!

On to Edinburgh: Inspiration from Afar

Back to London Walking Tour

Back to United Kingdom 

England

Horse Garden, PM House, Westminster & Big Ben

Leave a comment

Horse Garden

  • To be honest I was too distracted by the horses to hear whether there were any interesting stories on this particular area… oh well!!
  • Once again the fur seen on the saddle blankets are real bear though 😦

Prime Minister House

  • We got some interesting stories about this area…one of which involved the placement of where the Prime Minister lived… it is directly across from a park that has quite the reputation to be able to solicit prostitutes at night… so needless to say, many a rumor flew that the reason he picked that house was so he would have close and more discreet access to the ladies of the park
  • Another interesting story: The large yard in front of the house was actually ear marked to have the equestrian events during the Olympics.  However, not wanting his view soiled by the look of hundreds of horses and the smell of them to boot , the venue for the equestrian events was moved to another location and tons upon tons of sand was brought in to that location so that the Prime Ministers view could be that of… Women’s beach volleyball… Obviously he had only the best intentions for the horses when choosing a different venue for them…
  • See the pictures of the Horse Guard Palace to see where the equestrian events were supposed to be (and where the women’s volleyball competition did happen).  It is all just in front of the Prime Ministers house
  • By the way, I can’t say exactly which of the Prime Ministers were the ones involved in the above activities… I can’t say mainly just because I can’t remember, lol!!

Westminster Abbey

  • Most recently famous for being the site of Prince William and Princess Kate’s marriage
  • Housed the Stone of Destiny for many years until taken back and returned to Scotland (more on this story in the Edinburgh castle section)

Big Ben

  • Big Ben is actually the name of the bell, not the tower.  There are several bells that are up in the tower, 4 small ones if memory serves and one large bell: Big ben
  • Big ben actually has a hole in it from being struck so many times.  It now makes somewhat of a dull ‘gong’ sound that it never used to
  • The actual tower is called simply Queen Elizabeth (if memory serves, lol!!)

Ok, now I know that for many of these areas there are a ton of more interesting facts about each place, but if I gave everything away there wouldn’t be any reason for any readers to either want to find out more or go on a tour themselves when in London!  Also, it is quite difficult to recall EVERYTHING from the tour, especially toward the end as my mind and body were getting quite tired!!

On to Areas Not Covered

Back to London Walking Tour

Back to United Kingdom

England

Trafalgar Square

2 Comments

Here we come to another fun little story…  The man on the top of the column in Trafalgar square is indeed a man named Nelson, NOT Napoleon…  However Nelson was responsible for winning one of the battles against Napoleon.  Sadly, he also lost his life in that particular battle.  The location of the battle, as you may know (it was news to me!!) took place in Trafalgar, Egypt.

So the story goes (as told by my tour guide) that Nelson fought bravely and valiantly, and with the Royal Navy at his command was able to defeat Napoleon in the battle at Trafalgar.  When Nelson lost his life in the battle, the soldiers, well really all of the United Kingdom wanted to honor his brave acts and his victory on his behalf.  So they decided to bring his body back to England so that it could be properly buried.

However, there was one little issue… The body was on a ship in the waters near Egypt, and it would take several days to actually get back to England… So preserving the body became an interesting challenge.  No worries however, they had several barrels of whisky on board!!  And what is the best way to preserve a body??  Well, dunk it in whiskey!  So they opened a barrel of whiskey (they had 5 or 6 in all) and placed Nelson’s body inside.  They replaced the cap of the barrel and marked it so that they would know which barrel had his body inside, and which were just full of whiskey…

When the ship got back to London, they cracked the barrel labeled with Nelson’s body inside and found it to be curiously only half full of whiskey… hmmm… What happened to the other half???  I thought perhaps the body simply absorbed the whiskey up and the body would therefore be a bloated yucky mess.  However, this was not the case.  What apparently happened instead was that the crew, having been so happy at their victory decided to celebrate all the way back to London.  Along the journey they managed to run out of all the whisky (they drank up 4 or 5 barrels of whiskey on their own!!)…

So… what else were they to do after running out of whiskey yet still wanting more??  Yup, they started to drink out of the whiskey barrel with Nelson’s body inside!!  They apparently felt the best way perhaps to really honor Nelson was to literally drink from him… “eeeewwwwwwww!!!!!”  is all I have to say!!!  And, as my guide noted, it certainly gives a new meaning to the term “full bodied” when describing imbibes!!!

On to Horse Garden, PM House, Westminster & Big Ben

Back to London Walking Tour

Back to United Kingdom

England

Red Coats & Gentlemen’s Club

Leave a comment

Red Coat Soldiers:

  • The hats are made of real bear fur (poor bears)
  • The soldiers are actual real trained soldiers with skills (one was awarded the longest shot in recorded history- something like 200 meters and he made the target!!) and the weapons are loaded
  • Their coats are red because it was an easier color to spot in the smoke of battlefield gunfire (could tell friend from foe easily) and because it was harder to see if one was injured (a little bit of ego there…)
  • Changed positions every 5 (or was it 10?) minutes to keep skills sharp and their muscles from atrophy
  • There is now a rope and guards between tourists and the soldiers… No more being able to get right in their faces and do silly things to try and make them laugh or break their concentration!!

Gentlemen’s Club:

  • Some of the most expensive real estate properties in all of London
  • True gentlemen’s club, i.e. no ladies allowed ever, or anywhere in the building- this included workers!
  • To join you also had to be filthy rich (in addition to being male) and in some cases had to wait upwards of 20 years to get in!
  • The clubs have nothing to do with strippers or other female entertainment.  Simply a club where the good ol’ boys could get together, drink their liquor, smoke cigars and talk about the affairs of the world… sounds sinister to me if you ask me…

Random comment: Golf (the game) was first invented in Scotland as it’s own “gentlemen’s club” in a way… apparently it’s an acronym (GOLF) that stands for Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden!  who knew…

On to Trafalgar Square

Back to London Walking Tour

Back to United Kingdom

England

The Palaces

Leave a comment

We met at Green Park then headed out toward Buckingham Palace just in time for the changing of the guards! Now what I had assumed is that the changing of the guards happens hourly.  This is not so.  It apparently only happens officially once daily at 11am in front of Buckingham Palace.  People line up for hours on end (as early as 6 or 7am) to get a good spot to see all the action.  Our guide had a different plan for us… Basically he had us rush a spot (which basically meant elbow our way to the front for a few seconds) take the necessary picts then rush back to him for some stories, then we hauled across the lawn toward Prince Charles’ place to wait for the guards to come and walk right past us without any crowds at all:)  Clever guide…

The only bits I will share from this part of the tour are as follows: First, the original palace wasn’t at all Buckingham palace.  Buckingham palace was built as a private house by the Duke of Buckingham and it was called Buckingham House.  He was quite wealthy and didn’t blink twice about the cost of erecting his home of over 700 rooms…  The actual palace at the time was quite humble and petite compared to the Buckingham House… King George the III occupied the palace and though the history books say that Buckingham House was purchased by legal and proper means, our guide suggested basically that King George III wanted the place for himself, so he took it!  Subsequently the place became called Buckingham Palace.  Ok, well it went through another name change first- it was the Queen’s House after Buckingham House, then to Buckingham Palace.

Moving on, the second story is one of my favorites.  Apparently in the summer of 1982 an Irishman named Michael scaled the gates of Buckingham Palace… Or more correctly, around 5am a very drunk and disorderly Irishman named Michael scaled the gates… While the security alarms did go off to alert that something was very wrong, the security chief (new on the job after only 2 weeks) thought that surely there must be a mistake… a glitch in the system of sorts since there is NO WAY that at 5am someone would try to break in!  So instead of checking the alarm out, he simply had the staff shut the alarm OFF… So Michael scaled the wall and wandered inside the Palace.  Apparently there are signs all over the walls for staff (since it’s such a large place to navigate!!) and Michael, after his exhausting feat of climbing the Palace gate decided he needed a drink!!  Mind you, he was drunk already upon entering and police later even estimated he had been drinking for over 18 hours!!  So he followed the signs on the walls that led to the basement where they had the very best of ports and wines and whiskeys, etc, etc, etc…

After indulging in some more beverages, Michael eventually became hungry.  So he wandered back upstairs and followed the signs to the kitchen.  There he made himself a sandwich.  How he was never spotted by anyone is beyond me, but I guess it just shows how large the place really is!!  And it was quite early still… In any event, after his snack and booze he wandered out into the halls and saw signs for… the Queen’s Bedroom… He wandered into Queen Elizabeth II’s room and sat of the end of her bed.

The Queen woke to find a drunk, smelly, dirty and bloody Irishman on her bed.  The blood he got from scaling the gates, the drunk and smell and dirt was accumulated by his drinking, falling, and eating food sloppily… She miraculously kept her cool and simply greeted a good morning to the man.  He was apparently quite cordial to her and they started to have a pleasant chat (what else could you do I guess??).  During this chat, the Queen was hitting a secret button near her bed to alert security that she needed help.  However, if you recall from above, the security chief had the system turned off, so while she pushed the button, it wasn’t heard by anyone!!

After about 10-15 minutes of no one arriving, the Queen realized that something was not right.  But again she just calmly chatted with Michael and kept her cool.  She offered Michael a cigarette to which he accepted.  So the Queen picked up her phone and asked the reception to bring her a cigarette.  Thankfully the gentlemen on the reception line had some wits about him!!  He knew that the Queen does not smoke and that she would be asking for a cigarette was very strange behavior.  He called the police and had them enter the Queen’s room where they found and arrested Michael.

The best part about this is that Michael never saw more than a few days in jail.  This is so because in fact, up until this incident all royal property was considered public property.  So Michael was not trespassing!  He didn’t even really break and enter since nothing was broken and it was public domain!  He only got charged for drinking the ports and for stealing food from the kitchen, LOL!!!  The laws have obviously changed since then and it IS now considered trespassing if you try and get into the Palace without an invite…

On to Red Coats & Gentlemen’s Club

Back to London Walking Tour

Back to United Kingdom

England

London Walking Tour

Leave a comment

On my first official morning I opted to take part in a “free” walking tour of the “TV” “London”.  I will explain in further detail why quotes are around the three words in the previous sentence in a bit…

Upon first checking into the hostel they mentioned that there was a “free” walking tour that operated daily leaving the hostel at 10am.  They said that the tour covered central London, but that the main attractions (for example Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, etc) would not be covered, but that the tour would end so close to those areas that they would be easy enough to explore after the tour.

Ok, so here was a great example as to the incompetence of the staff (sadly) at the Generator hostel… First off, the “free” walking tour required a not-free train or bus ticket to get you to the meeting point (Green Park) from which the tour would actually begin.  Now, I’m not complaining about having to buy a train ticket, because as it turned out it came in quite handy for the rest of the day (I bought a day pass from the hostel for 9 pounds that allowed unlimited access to all buses and trains for the entire day, and after my day it was definitely worth its price!) I was just irritated that this little bit of important information wasn’t explained to me when the staff talked about the free walking tour.  Now, I’ve been told I’m too literal a person taking what people say quite literally and to that point I admit that I literally did think that the walking tour would be entirely that… walking.  So when the lady who came to pick up the people participating in the walking tour from the hostel (on foot I may add) we started walking out toward the next hostel where we were to pick up more people when she thankfully asked “do you have a train ticket?”.  My first question of course was “For what?  This is a walking tour, yes?”  To which she explained that we would need a train ticket to get to the meeting point.

So I turned around as she waited outside for me while I worked out the details and purchased the all day train pass.  I’m just saying, if the whole procedure for the “free” walking tour was explained to begin with then that little bit of confusion and wasted time would never had occurred… Oh, and one other little thing… Goes along with the incompetence of the staff at the Generator (who otherwise were very friendly) per their knowledge of this free walking tour that they at least informed people about… ok, so a few more points… #1 no one knew how long the tour would last #2 no one knew exactly what time it started (I was told 10am, at 10am asked where the tour met and was told -by the same person who told me 10am- that it met at 10:15… 10:15 rolled around and I was told once again by the same person, “oh they meet between 10:15 and 10:30… GRRRRR!!!!!) #3 the areas that they said would be covered on the tour in fact were NOT covered at all… I’m not complaining on this point again because the tour actually did cover all the areas I wanted to know more about, i.e. the “TV” areas of London (Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, etc).  All I’m saying again is that there was just a HUGE lack of knowledge from the staff at the Generator hostel about this tour.

Now, to the perhaps credit of the staff, the lady that picked me up from there on foot said that the regular staff were on vacation and that she’d never seen the ones that were there that morning before… so maybe the regular staff are more knowledgeable than the apparently new ones that were there… But I will never know for sure…

Ok, so I’m done venting about the frustrating start to the tour… The tour itself was in one word: brilliant!  The tour guide was funny, friendly and incredibly informative!  As I mentioned above we all met (turned out to be about 30 people in total from various hostels around London) at Green Park and from there began the two hour tour entirely on foot:)

Oh, I almost forgot… the above words in quotes!  So “Free” is in quotes above because as you guessed, the tour wasn’t “free”.  It required a train/bus ticket and a tip for the tour guide.  The guides aren’t paid by the organization that provides the free tours, so they only rely on tips.  “TV” is in quotes simply to mean that the areas covered were in fact the most popular tourist destinations in London, and “London” is in quotes because all the areas we went to (TV areas) are actually in Westminster… London, the REAL London is only one about square mile!!  The rest of what people consider to be London is Westminster.  That’s your first bit of info I got from the tour…

To make it a bit easier for reading perhaps, I’m going to break down each part of the tour and associated stories for each area into links below.  That way this page doesn’t drag on forever!  I’m not going to tell every story told during the tour (I’ve got to leave something out to make you all want to go to London and do the tour yourselves!!) but will give you my favorites.  Cheers and happy reading your free tour with accompanying pictures:)

The Palaces

Red Coats & Gentlemen’s Club

Trafalgar Square

Horse Garden/PM House/Westminster Abbey/Big Ben

Areas Not covered (Eye of London/Brick Lane/Piccadilly Circus)

 

Back to United Kingdom