Update City, Part Three: Playing Host

Come one, come all to visit us in London! Only two have been brave enough to take us up on this offer so far... but I am hoping to entice you on the Raw Banana walking tour bus with this posting. We not only provide your transportation (telling you to bring good walking shoes) and take you to the best [read: cheapest] places to eat, we also add historical commentary to the tour. Here is a just a taste of what we can provide.

Rob's sister, Kathryn, and her boyfriend Andre had a 9-hour stop-over London on their way to Dubai. So, we were up for 5:30, and on our way to the airport by 6:00 (what service!). Although it was an earlier than usual start to the day, it was a great way to sight-see. No other tourists were up and at it at 7am on a Wednesday, so we got in a whole day's worth of sight-seeing in just one morning!

9:00
Fill on a good breakfast and get ready to tackle Green Park, Buckingham Palace, and St. James' Park. The Queen was home that day, as indicated by the Union Jack flying at the Palace. (Interesting historical fact Number one.)

9:30
Walk past No.10 Downing Street, old Scotland Yard, various legal buildings, watch teenaged French students do mortifyingly embarassing things to the Horse guards, and make it to Big Ben in time to hear it strike 10:00! Interesting Historical fact number two: the Houses of Parliament (just to the right in the picture below) are the buildings on the HP sauce label. (You don't get that kind of commentary on the double-decker bus tour, even if they do provide the tour in eight languages...)

10:20
Buy a ticket for the London Eye the world's largest observation wheel. Watch a little kid in the queue pretend to bean a wax statue of Pierce Brosnan (as James Bond) in the goolies. Laugh at the dad, but inside, quietly worry for the future of Britain's children (not only because of the child's violent tendencies, but also because all men of Pierce Brosnan height are at risk of losing child-bearing potential from this young lad).

Intersting fact Number Three: Did you know that the wheel is designed so that if it ever falls over, the pods will pop off of the wheel and float along the surface of the Thames? (These are just small samples of the kinds of amazing knowledge we can share about London - you will come away chock-a-bloc with good stuff like this!)

The Weston "children" on the London Eye

Not only is the London Eye a great way to see all of the sights of London in one go - you also can take family photos (see above) and you get to watch London's anti-terrorism in action! Before you enter the pod, a guard will ask you if you are carrying scissors in your purse. Anti-terrorism! In action! ... Maybe they should have been more concerned about the briefcase-toting, uber-serious gentleman who arrived with no friends or family, didn't take a single picture during the whole ride, smile, or comment on the sights, but who just stared at the ground, as if searching for a person on the run.

Speaking of searching the ground...

11:30
Go to the Tate Modern museum, and stare at a giant crack in the floor and debate about whether or not it is "art", and how the heck they made a big crack in the floor! Get utterly lost in the maze of escalators which skip floors.

12:30
Head over The Wobbly Bridge with hundreds of joggers, and take a gander at St. Paul's Cathedral before hopping on the tube to Covent Garden, where we can eat lunch and begin to watch a street performer, but leave because he has spent more than 30 minutes just trying to get people to form a neat circle around his space, and hasn't done anything interesting the whole time.
2:30
Meet old friends, because everyone knows someone in London (Andre's someone was his childhood friend Richard, who came up from Brighton!) and spend a couple of hours in a pub drinking beer and demanding scientific knowledge of British beer from the barmen. Interesting fact Number Four: Beers like Guiness and Caffrey's get their disctinctive thick, foamy head from a particular tip on the beer tap. It is a tiny, fine-meshed tip, which causes the beer to come out extra foamy. Wait a few minutes for the beer to settle, and enjoy!

5:30
Say goodbye at Piccadilly Circus, a single train away from Heathrow Airport. For a little extra, we can arrange a little bit of "adventure" like forgetting your passport in our bag, so that we chase you in the next train to the airport, only to find out you didn't need that passport anyway... something like that.

So what do you think - sightseeing, good company, and "Interesting Facts". What more could you ask for? Who's next??

Thanks for coming, Kathryn and Andre!
(06 Feb, 2008: Statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus)