Over due update - part 1 England

It has been a while since I have been able to write on here so there is a few weeks of news to update you all on. Firstly our departure from Adelaide was a delayed one thanks to the strike with Qantas. We finally left almost 5 hours after our departure time which meant all the connections with other flights were all missed. Thankfully it was all sorted out for us and was put on another flight that actually meant we arrived in England before our original flight was expected!!

Murray and I had a fantastic time with my family in England, visiting castles and grand houses, going for walks and shopping and of course being able to catch up with grandparents, aunts and new uncles and cousins. After a suitable time of being fed, driven around sightseeing and enjoying birthday parties it was time to leave and the train took us to sunny London.

London felt like another country. Here was the summer we were expecting, even got a little sun burnt. The 3 days were a blur of movement as we moved from one sight to the next trying to squeeze in as much as possible. Our first day, we went past Buckingham palace, Murray was very excited as he spotted the flag indicating that the Queen was at home. We then walked past Westminster and Big Ben and heard him chime the hour. The London eye was our final destination that night and had a ‘flight’ as the sun was beginning to set over London. We got some great views of the city before us. Our youth hostel was greatly looked forward to, to rest our tired feet, and was fairly good. Very well placed with only 30 seconds to walk to the centre of Piccadilly Circus. Although getting our suitcases up in the tiny elevator and through all the swinging doors was quite a challenge and kept bumping into sorry passerby’s!! After a good sleep we braved the city again, having a quick breakfast then trying out the tube to the Tower of London. This was a place that you could easily have spent the whole day exploring but by lunch time with weary legs and knowing there were other things to experience we said goodbye to the history of executions and crown jewels and headed for Tower Bridge. Although only just over 100 years old, unlike the Tower of London with a history spanning back to William 1 and 1066, it was a magnificent sight up close. We saw the view from the top and the engine rooms below. As we were starting to wilt a little by the end we decided to start our bus tour around the city. We hopped of not long after though to look at the replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. It was amazing to think of the history and what the original would have been like. We spent the rest of our afternoon back on the bus, enjoying to chance to sit and soak up the city as it rolled past with a great commentary telling us all the important places, buildings, history and of course pointing out the shops where the Queen bought her clothes!! After dinner in Leicester square we were suitably exhausted and ready for bed. The next day started with breakfast back in Leicester square and watching everyone heading to work, while we waited for the ticket booth to open for the day to buy tickets to see the musical Chicago. With our seats assured we headed to look for our trusty bus to take us out to look at the famed Notting Hill. Well the bus took us half way and when we found out it would be a half hour wait for the one to take us down the road we decided to take a leisurely walk through St James Park in the right direction. We had lunch on the main street, but hadn’t realized that the Portobello markets were even further away and we just didn’t have the time to reach them and do everything else we had planned. So after a quick bus ride we arrived at Madame Tussauds. Now this was a tourist attraction. The line was not so bad as we had pre-bought tickets, but the other line looked long! But arriving inside was overwhelming. I had never seen so many people mushed into one big room – maybe if I had gone clubbing with my brother like he often suggested I might not have been so shocked!! The first room was set up like an A-list party with all the celebs but it was a mosh pit to try and have your photo taken with any of them. I just wanted to get out. Murray was quite content to stay in his pouch and watch from my bag. We wound around the rooms and finally made our way out after meeting a few famous people, but there weren’t as many as I had expected and was disappointed by the organisation of it. I thought the rolling mosh pit of the Vatican City last year was better organised! After finally popping out we hopped on a bus that was going to take us to Westminster to get the ferry cruise down the river, but it turned a different way so we jumped off at St Pauls, had a 5 min look at the magnificent cathedral then walked rather hurriedly to Tower pier to catch the ferry as it came past but there was no way we were going to make the 40 min leisurely walk in 20 mins hurriedly!! So we waited for the next one to come. The cruise was a nice relaxed way to see the city from the river all the way down to Greenwich, which if we had had more days an time would have been nice to see more of again as I only remember bits from when I visited it as a child. The ferry carried us all the way back up towards Big Ben from where we walked back up Covent Garden for our appointment at the theatre. Not looking quite in the best of shape for a West End show we tried to smarten up the bathrooms before realising that there weren’t that many smartly dressed anyway!! After a fantastic show, that I could easily see again, and a very late dinner in a little Chinese restaurant we were asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows. Our last day in London was a fairly relaxed on. We got up slowly and packed our bags, squeezing everything in and hoping we weren’t too over the limit. We juggled our bags down one flight of stairs to the storage room for the morning while we did a few more sights before being picked up for the airport at 2.30pm. We walked down towards Buckingham Palace via the Ritz and Green Park where we ate our breakfast. Then to the palace in time to mosh in with the hundreds of other tourists who had come out to watch the changing of the guard. After a few good photos and not much else to see on our side of the gates we walked off down towards Westminster again to look in the cathedral. We discovered that a communion service was about to start so instead of paying the extortionate price to see the whole cathedral (which I am sure is probably worth it) we decided to go into the service (which you can do for free, but you’re not allowed to hang around afterwards and check out the rest of the cathedral). We were so blessed by doing this. We got to experience to the cathedral as it is made to be. It was a simple service with prayers and readings and Holy Communion given. We sat and looked up at the magnificent architecture and stained glass windows and marvelled at where we were, and the journey God was taking us on. After a hasty walk up through London we made it to the hostel with time to spare, bumped our bags out through the elevator and to the waiting airport shuttle. Finally we could relax, we checked in our bags and waited for our flight to be called by having lunch at 4.30! We had a relatively uneventful flight with a stop in Casablanca, and feeling like we stuck out like a sore thumb by being to only white people arrived in Niger, Africa – but that part of the story is going to have to wait until the next blog, which will follow today or tomorrow as this one is long enough already!