I traveled with my family from Værnes airport, setting the course for Oslo. In Oslo we changed plane and our new destination was London.
The flight lasted for about 2 hours and we arrived at Heathrow airport around ten o'clock Wednesday night. The first thing that hit me flying over London, waiting for landing permission, was that London is an enormous city, at least compared to Norwegian cities. With its almost 8 million inhabitans London is the biggest city in Europe measured against population. London is the capitol of the United Kingdom and you can say that the town sprouts out from the river Thames. Many people doesn't know that London actually is a composition of many cities and some smaller areas called towns, which are cities of lower status. So London is formally a region composed of many small, bordered-off communities, but its hard to see where the one ends and another begins, so the entire region today also got the status as a city.
When we finally had our permission to land, the first thing i discovered was that Heathrow was a way to big airport for me, which had one lame foot due to an inflammation. I'm sure we walked for over fifteen minutes before we got to the place where we picked up our luggage. An another thing you notice is that you can't see no Brit at all, which are working at the airport. Due to that Britain was a major country with many colonies as for example India, you can see the result of a policy allowing peoples from the colonies entering Britain, that it has been a huge wave of immigration. In todays London you could see that about 3 of the totally 8 million inhabitans was born in a foreign country (statistics from 2001). That has resulted in that the tertiary industry (service occupations) is dominated by immigrants, and then especially by people from India.
It was around eleven o'clock when we could sit down on the Heathrow Express, heading for Paddington Station. The trip took around fifteen minutes and when we got off, we found ourselves a traditional British cab. Even late on a Wednesday evening it was heavy traffic on the roads, so we used approximately 20 minutes on the just 2-3 kilometers to the hotel. We lived in a hotel in Lancaster gate. The hotel was a typical British hotel with great white marble columns on the front side and a glass wall entrance, whit the hotel name written on it.
This evening we went straight to bed to be well rested and prepared for the next day, 'cause the time was against us and we had a lot of things to visit on our few days in London.
Day two:
We stood up around ten o'clock and went down to the hotel restaurant for some breakfast. We were served a real English meal , which consisted eggs, bacon, some cakes and maybe, if you felt for being even more British; a cup of tea. The food tasted very well, but I'm glad we just stayed for five days, or else we might have had to pay for extra weight on the flight back home .
Our plan for this day was to at least get to visit Oxford Street and go for some shopping. We left the hotel around twelve am and decided to walk instead of taking a cab or use the subway, something that was "great" news for my inflamed and swollen foot. Our "journey" went trough Hyde Park and "speakers corner". It is actually very nice in Hyde Park and I believe that the park (and other big parks in the area) means a lot to the citizens of London. I believe this because it's a place where people can "hide away" when they are tired of their otherwise stressful big city everyday.
When we came to Oxford Street, the street was full of people and the traffic were standing still. We went in and out of shops for a couple of hours, before we reached a shopping mall called "Selfridges & Co". Here I finally found something that I wanted. The time went fast at the mall and suddenly the clock was almost three pm, so we had to hurry. During the day we had decided to visit "Madame Tussaud" famous wax cabinet.
It was really fun to see how well the wax dolls were created and how lively they looked. My family and I walked around in the "museum" taking photo with every celebrity we found worthy to remember. I for example, took a picture with my "separated at birth twin"; Arnold Schwarzenegger.
When we got home around seven o'clock, we laid down for a couple of minutes. Afterwards we went just down the street from the hotel and ate on an Italian restaurant.
I went to bed around midnight and was really looking forward for an another day in the British capitol.
Me and my twin brother at "Madam Tussauds".
Day three:
This morning I went out of bed around half past nine and went down for some British breakfast. It tasted just as good as the day before! The plan for this day was to take a look at some of London most famous buildings and we decided to start with "Buckingham Palace", the Queens resident.
We took the Subway to Victoria station and walked the last kilometers to Buckingham Palace. When we finally got there we first visited the "Buckingham Palace Shop". Here they had everything from raincoats whit the queen's seal to pencils with pictures of the palace. I even found some old coins from the 18th century for my coin collection. After visiting the shop, we went outside the front of the palace and just made it for the changing of the guards. I took some photos of the palace and the great fountain outside. The British flag, "Union Jack", was fluttering in the wind above the Palace square. The flag is actually a composition of the Scottish- and the English flag. This idea was "given birth by" King James of Scotland when he was crowned as king of entire Great Britain in the 16th century. The flag has changed appearance several times during the centuries, but the motives behind each new "look" was always the same.
Later we went down to the Thames and on the way we visited the old Westminister Abbey Cathedral, where British kings and queens have been crown for centuries. Afterwards we continued down the street and came to the "House of Parliament" and "Big Ben". One thing is to see those buildings on photographs, an totally another thing is to see them for real. I was really amazed by those huge and well decorated old fashion buildings. As the good tourists we are, we ended up taking a lot of photos here also. So on we found ourselves a pub, so we could enjoy a real British lunch. I really love the pub atmosphere, it is something special about it, but I can't really explain the magic of it.
After a great lunch we decided that our destination was Trafalgar Square and the column of Admiral Horatio Nelson. On our way down to Nelson's column we passed the "Horse Guard Parade", which is the headquarter and a parade square of the Household cavalry, which duty is to protect the monarch. We were so lucky to catch up the end of their parade, but unfortunately we didn't see much due to all the people standing in front of us, blocking our view.
Fifteen minutes later we finally got to Trafalgar Square and had a look on the old statue of Lord Nelson.
Lord Nelson was a famous Admiral in the Royal British Navy and won many important battles for the terrifying British navy. He is well known for his way of going against "normal" behave and tactics during battles and I think this may be what made him to the great admiral as he was. The battle Lord Nelson is most known for, is the battle of Trafalgar. It was the British fleet against the French. If the British had lost this battle, France would have had a free entrance to set in their land armies on British soil. During this battle Lord Nelson was badly wounded due to a shot in the back, but although he lead his fleet to victory before he died of his injuries. So today it exists a street named by this very important naval battle and in this street the famous Admiral still stands tall on a great collum and keeps a watchfull eye on everyone scurrying around beneeth his feet.
Later on we went back to the hotel, before we around eight o'clock left for the nearby pub to have our dinner. I ordered a "beef burger" and was served almost half a cow between to slices of bread and a mountain of pommes frites and salad. I wonder why the Brits ain't bigger than they are.
Day four:
This day we ate breakfast at eleven o'clock. Later, after taking a shower and relaxing for a moment, we went down to the West End, which are London's theater district. We thought of buying tickets for "The Phantom of The Opera", but unfortunately it was fully booked, so we bought tickets for "the best musical of 2010"; "We Will Rock You".
I do not feel sorrow at all for missing " The Phantom of The Opera", 'cause "We Will Rock You" is maybe the most catching and entertaining musical I've ever seen. We got to hear famous Queen songs as "Don't Stop Me Now" and "Killer Queen" preformed by impressive musicians/actors. Although no one can sing as well as "Freddy" (Farooq Bulsara, aka Freddie Mercury), the actors did not bring shame over his masterpieces and I think they were good substitutes to him.
After watching the musical, we went for some more shopping. I found myself a nice couple of leather gloves and a warm woolen sweather. This evening it started to rain heavily, so when we was on our way home it was people everywhere trying to neither get on a bus or get down to the subway instead of walking home from work. Typical.
When we finally got home we went down to "our" local pub for dinner. The food there is actually not so bad and the prices wasn't too bad either. I ordered something everyone has to taste while visiting Britain; "Fish and Chips". To be honest it tasted like one big fish stick, served with pommes frites and some salad. Not to much to brag about, but anyways, now I've tried it.
Day five:
The time had passed far to quickly and suddenly it was departure day. This morning we just had enough time to eat our breakfast, before we had to make the receptionist call for a chauffeur to drive us Paddington Station.
From Paddington Station we traveled with the "Heathrow Express" to the airport. When we was there after 10-15 minutes, we were fast to check in our luggage, because then we would have more time on the Duty-Free.
In the Duty-Free they had a small "clock department", where I bought myself a new and pretty Fossil watch, since I had crushed the watch-glass on my old Casio.
When we were flying home we had to change plane at Sola Airport in Stavanger. We thought that we didn't need to pass the security check again and go straight to our new plane, as we did on our last flight. That was not the reality. We had to go off the plane, wait for our luggage and so on pass the security check once again, all this on only twenty minutes. What a mess!
My father had of course forgotten to pack his dear British whiskey in the luggage, so the security guard took it. I'm sure he's going to be angry for a couple of weeks. He had waited four years for this bottle of whiskey he said, so in some ways it's understandable.
The weather had been nice the whole weekend, except from some rain on Saturday. The temperature was between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius during our stay. We had been lucky, 'cause it often rains more in London as a result of it's position at the coast (temperated marine climate). The fact that London is placed at the coast makes the winters very chilly (but nearly never below 0 degrees Celsius) and the summers is generally warm, with temperatures around 25 degrees and sometimes even up to 30 degrees.
We had a really nice weekend in London this autumn and I'm really looking forward to visit London again sometime in the nearest future.
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