Category: England

After almost a year I finally had time to go back to London, always a great pleasure. I stayed with my oldest friend Cindy and her boo, which allowed me perfect access to the city. Met up with several friends, took in the culture (most notably Greenwich and a Sherlock Holmes exhibition at the Museum of London), went shopping (not too much, though, because I only had carry-on luggage) – and even spent a day in Oxford (the Bodeleian! Tolkien! cream tea!), which was just as beautiful as I remembered. Altogether I had a blast!

> Check out all photos on Flickr.

I've scanned some of the pics I took – not a lot of tourist sights, as we did them in 98 and didn't bother taking the same pics yet again…. Sibylle has also taken some, which are not yet developped, but I thought I'd go ahead and post some of mine anyway.

Me in the British Museum – I love all things Egyptian, so this was heaven!

After the England-Denmark match the whole city was celebrating and singing “Football's coming home…” – here on Trafalgar Square. Well, thanks to Brazil it didn't exactly turn out that way.

Feeding animals was very big on our todo list – we came to St.James's park not mainly to see the Changing of the Guard, Buckingham palace or the Queen at a parade, but to handfeed squirrels and birds. Sibylle did take pics at that parade – I'll post them as soon as I have them, promised! *g*

On the Portobello Road Market we found some really nice tops – and it's a very pretty part of London as well.

Well, this last pic (for now) was not taken in London but right after our return to Basel, when we realized that we don't have a single pic of the two of us together. We came from maximum 25°C in London to almost 40°C – and promptly went to our favorite place in summer: our local open air pool.

That's it for the moment – the next planned trip is a weekend in Austria, a big family meeting, to which I'm not exactly looking forward…

Well, I'm back home again after five great days in London. Not everything went the way we planned or imagined it, but all in all we had a good time!

One thing first – London is incredibly expensive! Suddenly Switzerland doesn't seem all that bad… *g*

We spent a lot of time walking around, seeing sights (though most of them not from the inside because they want horrendous entrance fees) and strolling over various markets like the Covent I didn't buy a lot – just two tops (which are both very special!) and some really cute panties. Enjoyed seeing all the 70ies stuff and some of the tourist merchandise is really funny.

All that walking around was terribly exhausting – I had completely forgotten how hard the tourist thing is on your feet… So we ended up only going out twice and just once to a club (again – the money…). But we did watch the England – Netherlands game in a pub, which was a blast!
Before that we even got to see the Queen and Prince Andrew and William at a parade – really impressive, all those wonderfully archaic uniforms and beautiful horses!

A couple of times we went to St. James's Park (right at Buckingham Palace) to fed the birds and squirrels – they are so tame, they eat right out of one's hand! It was such a great experience – specially the squirrels!

Our sleeping arrangements turned out good, too – we stayed at Juliette's (Sibylle's boyfriend's cousin) place a bit outside of the city only the first and the last night, the other three nights we had the appartment of a friend of Juliette's for ourselves. That was perfect – in the West of the city with the tube and a super market nearby. Sibylle and I were almost overwhelmed by Juliette's and her friend's (whom we didn't even meet!) generosity – we were incredibly lucky!

We didn't meet Rolly at all – we text messaged back and forth and I called him once, but it simply didn't work out. Oh well, maybe next time… Same thing was with Jan, but we didn't get bored anyway.

On Sunday (after a very short night!), our last real day in London, Sibylle was a bit sick so we didn't do a lot. We went to the London Dungeons (yuck, torture and murder – gruesome stuff!) and then to Juliette instead of doing some more sightseeing. But since we'd been to London already four years ago it wasn't so bad and we enjoyed watching TV shows in English – I even caught the end of an “Enterprise” episode!

Well, that was probably about it – I'll scan some pictures as soon as I have them developped…

With seventeen me and Sibylle went up to Britain and all around the island by train – and in a tiny tent, despite the mostly very cold and rainy weather…

Home, sweet tent… on a day when the weather was decent for a change! *g* (The weird shape comes from this pic being a part of a huge collage Sibylle made me.)

Amsterdam – a really beautiful city and I'd love to go there again one day! (And no, we didn't buy any grass in one of the coffee shops… LOL)

I loved Cambridge – it's a dream of mine to study there one day…

Edinburgh was great – but incredibly cold, even in July… We left it after only one night of freezing in our tent! But I'd love to go back one day…

The coast of Cumbria – the train follows the coast line, it's a very very beautiful part of the country!

Naturally we had to go to Stonehenge – very fascinating place, but also very crowded… (Don't know how I managed to take a picture with no people in it!)

Naturally we also spent some days in London – didn't have any money, had fun anyway… (Btw, this is on the bridge next to the House of Parliament.)