Skip to main content

A day in the life of the Big Smoke...


A wee mini adventure in-between house clearing chores took us to London town to enjoy and rather stunning space spectacular concert at the Royal Albert Hall this last weekend.  This was my first visit to this venue and we had a brilliant night out.    Dr Fred and I were guests of two very dear pals who treated us to a private box, we made a serious effort - you know brushing hair and  proper clobber and all looking the bees knees we had a very enjoyable evening - fab meal at a nearby Lebanese restaurant and then superb music from various composers (including John Williams) performed by the London Concert Orchestra with Raymond Gubbay, accompanied by a laser light show and indoor fireworks.  ET turned up as did Superman and Darth Vader - the music was amazing - varied and it surprised me how much of it I instantly recognized from the various film sound tracks - many movies that I have grown up with over the years...


The next day we got up and organised and went to the Tower of London - another place I had not visited before. we have always felt that if we did ever get in power as a group of dissidents we would rounding up a lot of people and sending them to the Tower so it would be a good idea to scope it out!!!  

It was heaving with tourists!!! So we joined the various queues and had a really informative day out... we wandered around with one of the Beefeater tours - very entertaining and full of the gory details so often associated with the Tower (less than I'd imagined) - the Crown Jewels were very sparkly and seemingly lacking much security but we decided not to test this theory - bloomin thick doors on each end of display room but we had expected more visible armed protection - after all the single diamond in the sceptre is worth a mere 400 million squids!!!


The ravens were evident but really not happy to pose for photographs - I expect it gets a bit wearing being so responsible - legend has it if they leave the tower it will fall and the country will be ruined - they are well cared for ... meanwhile their wings are clipped, but they are on rations ... probably get fed better then some families....

The Tower is a institution, run on routines and rituals.  Its not quite as fanciful as Gormanghast but similarities emerge... traditions are upheld and played out daily, there is even a room with bright carvings - the wooden horses date back to the 17th century (some earlier) and they are quite exquisite and beautiful. 

It was a long day - so much to see - we got museum leg after about 4 hours, just couldn't take any more in so we headed of to a very fancy patisserie to eat lovely french cakes and coffee before returning to the car to head back into everyday life...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Almost last chapter... In which our Go Stargazing team watch Astonishing Aurora Borealis seen from the deck of the Astonishing Borealis!!!

The weather brightened considerably and the snowy peaks lining our sail down the fjiords  looked glorious and sparkly in the sunshine against a (mainly) blue sky back drop.   More awesome scenary.... the Go Stargazing team wrapt up their lectures ... only searching for the illusive Northern Lights remained.  The tension from the night before dissolved in the sunshine the forecast for Aurora borealis was looking fairly positive - it was the captains farewell cocktsil party so everyone had their gladrags on.. We ate dinner and sky remained clear so we headed back to our room and donned as many layers as we could move in and proceeded to deck 10 in anticipation of stars and northern lights..... it did not dissappiont - just we got there as the bridge announced that the lights could be seen on the starboard side of the ship. It was stunning. Slowly the intensity built. The auroral green became brighter and bigger areas appe...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town.  Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now.  The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art....  Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

verdant lushness

Its a never ending island hop... today we hopped of the boat at Kingstown, on the island St. Vincents and Grenadine. Once through the usual port duty free - cheap booze and diamonds to go milarkey we were straight into the town... crazy noisy smelly chaos... refreshingly no tat shops for tourists, just local markets and street traders all vying for local sales.  Music blasting from everywhere, cars (very battered and often very pimped) all over the roads - parked in the middle of the street, loading, unloading, chatting seemingly oblivious to the total traffic jam caused behind them...  We walked through this mayhem - the temperatures were rising probably about 30 degrees - tourists evident by trying to walk on the shady side of the street - even when we turned off the main drag and there were less people it was still like carnival time with music blasting everywhere. Its very atmospheric and mostly promotes a good vibe although I have heard '3 little birds' everywhich way a...