Walking in London

Somebody once told me, the best way to visit a place is to buy an all day bus pass, sit and just keep traveling, irrespective of where the bus takes you. I must say, I concur heartily. The same philosophy, should be applied to walking.

There is a term called “being happily lost”. I must confess, that term fits me to a tee, for most of the time for me in London. I have no clue as to where I am! And the bloody weather being so finicky, at most times, I cannot figure out where North is by looking at the sun.

My touristy sights are over. spent about four hours yesterday just walking and taking snaps. I whacked my friend’s camera for this purpose and I have no clue if its working or not, all I keep doing is clicking and hope that the snaps come out all right!

There is this concept called the “Oyster pass” here. Very very neat. It assures you that no matter how much you travel, it automatically calculates your lowest fare. I seriously think the MTA is about ten years behind what the tube/bus is here, in terms of service! And yes, another childhood dream fulfilled, I sat on a double decker bus!

There is so much history here. I’ve only seen America, where unfortunately, there is an unerring sameness to each street. Over here, there’s so much character on the roads, the buildings, there’s almost a look of “I’ve seen so much of the world, who are you, you little punk traveller, to come gaze at me?”.

Sightseeing over, me and my friend decided to do what is called the “pub crawl”. apparently after cricket and football, its a national sport here. There are websites dedicated to this! Apparently you pick a spot on the thames and a pub near it, drink and head off to the next pub, all the way, tottering across the river Thames. Three Stella’s later, the world was a happy place and I felt I could swim across!

HMS Belfast is also marooned on the Thames; a funny bit of information, her guns had to be trained somewhere, so they trained it on a bus depot on the A4. Nobody knows why and there are a lot of conspiracy theories going about, but thats that.

We ended up in Soho for drinks and dinner. Every fourth shop in london is a tandoori special. One amazing sight was seeing “tandoori and nepalese cuisine”!!

Today we’re off to see “Taming of the Shrew” at the Open Air gallery, tomorrow, the london eye and a bit more of sightseeing, then I’m off for my great hike across the highlands of scotland!