London Walking Tour

After being here for nearly a month (!!!) I finally got off my lazy bum and did a 'proper' tour of the typical London sites. I was recommended a 'free' walking of tour of London by Alisha - I'll get to the 'free' part later.

At arriving at Monument station I was greeted by Nick, our bespectacled, frizzy-haired tourguide. He clearly had a passion for his job and proudly announced that he was a Londoner but originally from Cardiff. Good for you!! That means pretty much nothing to me.

A three and a half hour long walking tour sounded a bit long but I really was desperate for the exercise. First stop was..... The Monument, a pillar built as a 'monument' to the Great Fire of London which occurred in 1666.

A bit of writing on the side of the Monument.

If the Monument was ever to fall down towards the east (I think), it would locate the bakery where the fire began. It's interesting to know that the fire also destroyed many of the rats carrying the Bubonic plague, thus ending the period of the Black Death. Hmmm I am sounding much like a medieval history book.

Next, was a trot over to St Magnus-the-Martyr church where we shown a block of wood. Such was my excitement for this wood, that I took a photo. Yay!

Ooooh, but look at the inscription on the wooden piling.... it's from 75 A.D when the Romans occupied London. Aaah who knows, it could be fake.

A short walk to London Bridge was next.

Nope, that's not London Bridge, despite what Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas would have you believe!

Having the guide in the photos was getting a bit annoying.

Here's the real London Bridge:

Boring and utterly plain.

We were then guided through some once-slum alleyways and onto the Royal Exchange which is now a luxury shopping centre. I see this building everyday, as I work about five minutes away.

Just on the steps of the Royal Exchange, a free hugs campaign was running. It wasn't very popular and they only managed to give about two hugs away during the 10 minutes we were standing there, one to a tour group member.

I think they stole their idea from the following Free Hugs campaigner in Sydney.

A quick stop by Temple tube station where we paused at a rather plain structure. This turned out to be the ruins of the ancient Roman (or maybe Pagan) Temple of Mithras, where our guide claimed they would perform human sacrifices.

Just thought I'd include a red telephone box. Whenever I see one of these, I think of Dr. Who and his creepy music.


St. Paul's Cathedral, this time during the day. It was never bombed during WWII because it proved a handy way of locating London from the sky.


The London Eye. Everytime I see this, I always think of the scene in Bride and Prejudice where the sister runs away.

The church of the Knights Templar. Now a popular tourist attraction due to the Da Vinci Code. The tour guide didn't care too much for Dan Brown and neither do I.

The Royal Law Courts. Paul McCartney and gold digging Heather Mills are gonna fight it out here.

The Savoy Hotel. This is where the guide got told off for talking too loudly. Also one of the filming locations of 'Notting Hill'.


Yeah, I'm back at Trafalgar Square. This time I've got the National Gallery in the pic.


Cant remember what this arch was called. But if you go down, it leads to Buckingham Palace.


The back of No. 10 Downing St. Security measures prevents us from going to the front.


The blog would not be complete without a photo of myself with the Nick the guide. Now the 'free' bit. He works for tips. So I guess I could've just left and given him nothing but that would've been just plain cold-hearted and tightass. Five pounds tip from each person in our 25+ group - not a bad taking for 3.5 hours of work!

On the way to the tube station, I just had to take a closer photo of Big Ben.

The National Gallery

The bad thing about the National Gallery is that no photography is allowed indoors. Hmmmph. I could just sit here and type the paintings' names but I'm gonna do my best to hunt down images instead.

Anyhoooooo, to go to the National Gallery does require minimal appreciation of the arts. It would help to at least be familiar with names like Rubens, Caravaggio, Monet and Renoir. I won't even bother mentioning the ubiquitious Da Vinci and Michelangelo because the total number of their paintings was less than 10. If you have no idea about art, I would actually recommend that you stay at home, otherwise it might as well be a tour of building with paintings inside.

The gallery is located at Trafalgar Square. Yep, if you ever see pics of Trafalgar Square, the gallery is the building in the backdrop. If you know me very well, you will know that I have a mysterious disgust for birds - unless it's Nandos or KFC. I especially detest seagulls and pigeons. I think it is partly because they don't really fear humans anymore and they always fly close. Ugh!! Trafalgar Square is full of pigeons! I agree with the 'rats with wings' description.

Trafalgar Square from the front of the gallery.


This tiger wasn't very helpful at keeping the pigeons away.


Another pic of Trafalgar Square.

Again because I was alone, I took an audio tour. It was much more interesting to have someone telling you stuff about the painting.

Me and my headphones, looking much perplexed. The lady at the audio tour desk, who took this photo thought I was weird. Hehe

I was in much awe again, mainly in disbelief that I was finally seeing such pieces of work after many years of only being able to view them in textbooks and postcards. I AM A NERD. These works included The Virgin of the Rocks, The Arnolfini Portrait, Belshazzar's Feast, The Supper at Emmaus, The Ambassadors (wow! the distorted skull!!!), Monet's Water Lily Pond, Van Gogh's Chair and Renoir's Umbrellas. There was more but I can't be bothered finding more images.

After my three hour wander, Trafalgar Square at dusk.

A big thumbs up for the National Gallery from me. Now, I still have yet to vist the Portrait Gallery and the Tate Museums.

The British Museum

I'd finally had enough of the over-rated shopping experience here in London. Meandering along the shops was getting a bit tiresome and repetitive. Ok, I admit, you can get stuff that you don't get back home and the men's clothing range is so much better here (which benefits me zero) but I had unfortunately set my hopes too high. It was about time I did some proper touristy stuff and the British Museum was first on my list.

The excellent thing about a lot of the museums and galleries in London is that they are free! Wow, could I be more asian? Or Oriental as they say here.

While I am happy to pay good money to see some rotten old artefact, there are plenty of non-geeks who would find that more than unworthy, thus keeping it free might find the inner geek in all of us. Me being a geek (an ultra cool one mind you :P) I went to the museum alone. In a way, I'm kinda glad I went to the museum solo because I think if anyone else accompanied me, apart from Mally (hai moo!), I would totally shit them up the wall with my snail-like pace.

On the downside, going to the museum alone means that I have no one to take silly photos of me posing with old rotten artefacts - all which makes for a very exciting blog. Hence, here is my boring *yawn* British Museum blog. I will do my best to make it *exciting* for you all.

Duh, it's the front of the museum.

Inside the museum. Nice ceiling eh?

As a first timer, I figured I should get some guidance and took an audio highlights tour. It was ok, but kinda over-represented the Korean and African art stakes. Next time I visit the museum I plan to wander the rooms sans audio commentary.

WOW!!! The Rosetta Stone! I can't believe I'm seeing the real thing!! Such history, such awe! And my picture is waaay better than the one on the Wikipedia entry.

As a little chinky girl, I always wanted to see the Egyptian mummies up close and now my dream has come true! *clap clap* I'm not sure why, but the pyramid sculptures were displayed on separate floors to the mummies. Somewhat illogical, but I'm sure the museum have their reasons for doing so.

Ummm, I don't know which pharaoh this is.

And I don't know who these three are either.

Someone's sarcophagus.

Bust of Ramesses the Great

And now, Ramesses without the camera flash on. Looks more scary now eh? I momentarily had a childhood nightmare of the Neverending Story.

The inside of someone's sarcophagus.

Part of the Nereid Monument from Ancient Greece. I don't know why I didn't take any photos of the Parthenon.

At this point in time, I slowed down the photographing as I figured that anyone who saw these photos would just be disinterested as the experience would be equivalent to looking at pictures in a textbook.

Onwards from Ancient Greece and onto Asia. A bronze figure of the Hindu god, Shiva. I resisted taking photos of the Chinese stuff as it just looked like stuff that we have at home.

Now, here I am with the mummies. Somewhat macabre to photograph the dead, but I finally got to see a real mummy!! That woman ruined my photo.

Some pharoah queen.

Oooh, I got really excited here. It's "Ginger" the pre-dynastic Egyptian man whose body was preserved naturally (like a dried salty fish) in the desert. He has red hair, hence the nickname. Wow, he's from about 3400 BC!!!!

Errrm, ok, again I got a bit excited at photographing the dead.

Later, the Egyptians decided to put people in coffins and in doing so, disrupted the natural preservation procedures. Hmmm, just all bones and not a scrap of flesh. Fascinating!!! 8-) *geek*

I then went through all of Medieval Europe, Persian and some classical Roman pieces without taking a single photo. I was very disappointed at not being able to see the Lindow Man aka Bog man as they are currently renovating :(

Finally I finished up with the African art. To my ignorant brain, it all just looked like souvenirs. I guess it is kinda like how I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a souvenir didgeridoo and a real one.

And now to finish up, here's a photo of some African pottery.

The main conclusion I made (yes I am a geek who likes writing conclusions) about the British Museum was that Britain was mighty good at plundering (and sometimes destroying) valuable, sentimental, culturally identifying goods from other nations. Terrible isn't it? Tsk tsk. On the plus side, I liked seeing all these stolen goodies! Australian museums suck so much.