Sunshine in Trafalgar Square

Dearest Libby
How are you today ?? this is the second day we are in London, I finally had a good night sleep !! may be I was really really tired and by the time we arrived at wa willy’s home last night at 20.30, it was already 2.30am in Jakarta. Today, we are planning to take a tour within London to see some point of interests. We were at home when a telephone guy from BT came and we have to wait for wa ibu coming back from dropping off teh laras and fadhlan to the school. Then, we walked from wa willy’s house to southfield underground station. It was still cold and raining… but it wasn’t as cold as last night. The wind was not that bad..and it’s nice talking to mommy while we were walking for about 10 minutes pass along nice victorian houses. Wa willy’s house situated in a new housing and apartment complex but to get to the station we have to go passing by some old houses… but it’s still nice neighborhood. One thing I noticed, the street is usually narrow, 2 lane street with cars being park on both side of the street, leaving only small area for cars to pass by… and british apparently drives their cars quite fast…with these narrow streets, no wonder tube become so popular, otherwise there will be traffic jam everywhere. As I didn’t buy the ticket by myself yesterday, I had to ask the officer to teach me buying the ticket for the tube from the machine. One day pass for zone 1-4 cost us about 5+ pounds per person, so it is really expensive, but in comparison if we have to take taxi wherever we go, it is way way cheaper ….. we had studied the stop , the connecting lines, etc, to ensure that we didn’t loose time getting lost in London. But, it’s very easy to follow the information and getting anywhere, if we got lost we just get off the train and change to other line… it’s that simple…very nice !!! We decided to stop in Picadilly Circus station then there we would buy “Big Bus” city tour ticket. When we got to Picadilly street we looked for bus stop and it’s easy to find. Apparently the bus stop is also the stop for Big Bus City Tour and we could buy the ticket from the officer there. The ticket price of Big Bus City Tour is 22 pound per person (about Rp 400 thousand) and since it was winter they have special offer that the ticket is valid for 48 hours (from usually 24 hours) and we could buy ticket to some of London’s attraction with special price. We decided to buy the Maddame Tussaud’s ticket there as well so we could get discount and we don’t have to queue there. Maddame Tussaud cost us 17 pound per person (in the ticket box it’s 30 pounds) a very significant discount. With this bus we can go to almost all London’s places of interest. We can sit on top of the bus which is open air.. if it’s not raining actually it’s really nice to sit on top of the bus. We decided to take the red route in which we will start the tour from Picadilly street to Trafalgar Square, one of the most famous place of London. We stopped there for a while to…. Take some pictures !!! ha ha ha…. The sun is finally shinning… really shining for about an hour… before it’s raining again… darn !! We also went to National Gallery which is located across Trafalgar Square. I was really excited to go inside since National Gallery has a wide collections of paintings from great painters. My favourite one is of course Van Gogh’s !! there are a lot of Van Gogh’s painting there… I really love ‘em… beside Van Gogh’s, the National Gallery also have collections of Monet, Manet, Cezzane, etc. oh, I could spend full day just to browse around this museum but since we only have limited time in London, we only spend like couple of hours here…before we went to Museum’s shop and picked up 2 posters of Van Gogh’s painting, ready for framing. Then we hopped on the bus again to the next stop which is the Westminster ! here is the Big Ben, The Parliament, and Westminster Abbey church located. On the way there we passed by the Downing Street which is the official residence of England’s Prime Minister. If the time’s right actually we can see the guard’s changing near there. After taking some pictures in Westminster, we continued the journey to London Eye, a gigantic ferish wheel (they said it’s the biggest one in the world) but we decided not to get inside since the weather was not that good anyway, (what will we see ??) so we just passed by and continued the journey to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in which Princes Charles and Lady Diana got married. It was a beautiful cathedral… we had lunch there in Fresh Italy, this part of area seems like a business area since lots of people wearing suits and tie. Fresh Italy is quite nice.. I ordered lasagna and Chilli Shrimp salad, while mommy ordered carbonara which is apparently have lots of pork bacon in it… so she didn’t touch it and just ate my food…again it’s not cheap to have lunch here. We kinda get used to expensive price by now for everything…. He he he… we continued the journey passing the famous London bridge, then we stopped in Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Again looking at the timing we didn’t go inside the Tower of London where they place the crown of the king’s and queen’s. From here, we took a boat cruising along the Thames river.. passing by UNILEVER’s Global Head Office in Black Friar. The guide said “ On the right, there’s a big white building, the home of giant detergent and soap manufacturer Unilever” (giant detergent and soap manufacturer ??? this guide needs more training… he he he…). The HO looks stunning especially with lights start to illuminate the building…suddenly I was proud being an Unileverian. The day has been quite dark although the time just showed 16.00.. the London eye and Big Ben’s looks incredible in lights. The boat stopped at the Westminster pier where we walked passing by Westminster Abbey Church (I think Prince Andrew got married here). We were waiting for the Big bus to take us back to the Picadilly circus station. Oh no…. apparently, the big bus operation stopped at 16.30 so we decided to take regular bus to go back to picadilly street. Thank God, there is the last bus coming so we just hopped in… rejeki mah nggak kemana.. the Officer asked us the destination and when we said we are going to picadilly… he said we were on the wrong bus and suggested to get off in victoria and take the bus to green park which is the last stop for that bus. We just followed his suggestion. But what I found amazing is that the bus officer was very helpful, asking all the passenger and suggesting the best route to take them to their destination. Yeah because it’s already late (19.00). we stopped at the Green Park bus station and went straight to the tube station to go back to Putney. Oooh.. what a day !!!! full of walking, full of pictures taking… not enough shopping… everything’s soooo expensive !!
We’ll catch up again later okay liv…

still miss you a lot..
ayah dicky