Soho

Soho and all that.  Rose wanted to check out a bead shop in Soho, so a walk through Hyde Park was called for. Past Kensington Palace.  Does not seem like a palace, more like a large mansion. Then any old bus going towards Picadilly. Oops, it just made a wrong turn.  Out we get and walk off along Constitution Hill to Buckingham Palace. Just like all the pictures, but as always, different when you actually are there.

Next, a walk through St Jame's Park.  Ooh look: deck chairs. Obviously set out on the grass for us tourists.  Ahhh.  "Excuse me sir, that will be one pound fifty per hour." Tricky bastards, no signs. Through Trafalgar Square, up St  Martin's Lane, past some nicely done theatre facades. I get to prop up a bar stool, while she checks out the bead shop. Hmm. They sell pies for lunch... Back to the bead shop past a really nice looking restaurant called Jamie's.  A bit cheeky catching on to the Jamie Oliver thing.  So we ended up there and thoroughly enjoyed the meal and atmosphere. Then we found out it actually was his restaurant.

Then off to see Rose's sister's son who lives in London.  He came to London twenty years ago for two weeks, and has settled down here.  Dinner with him, his wife and their three month old baby, who slept through an amazing din.

Next day: Museum day. A trudge down through Hyde park past the Serpentine  (a nice long pond/lake) . My cunning plan is to have Rose go to the Victoria and Albert, while I spend two hours in the Natural History.  First, a cup of coffee in the supposedly cute cafe in the V and A.  Yes, very ornate. Well done, whoever.

This is inside the Museum of Natural History:

This is inside the V and A:

There was no queue into the V and A, so I was hoping the same for the Natural History Museum. Nooooo!  One hour in the queue thinking this better be worth it. It was not, for me anyway.  This is not to say that this is not a wonderfully done museum. Just that for my purposes, it was a little disappointing.

My interest was our place in evolution, and they had about 25m of displays of skulls and so on. Maybe it was the lack of time and sore feet.

This is our last night in this hotel, tomorrow we head off to one next to the Albert embankment, which is a lot closer to where the bus tour leaves from. 

Flickr

I have managed to upload a few photos to Flikr, which can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/blecouteur/with/9459801442/

London

Arriving in London. About a 12 hour flight to Frankfurt, then a one hour one to Heathrow.  Quite a contrast in airports- Frankfurt nice and tidy with architectural details well thought out.  The handrails at Heathrow looked like a fitter's mate knocked them up.

The Heathrow express was excellent though, taking only 20 minutes to get us into Paddington station. Our room is fine, near an interesting street called Queensway.

On our first day we went on a Big Bus Tour. Part of the tour was a short trip up the Thames to the Tower of London,  which had a bit of queue, but did not take long to get in.  Once in, more queues, moving at a glacial pace, so we flagged it away and had lunch just by Tower Bridge. Rose had swollen feet,so it was hard going for her.

The second day the plan was to visit the main shops, so I went and bought a 7 day travel card. Our first stop on Oxford street was Selfridges, and it did not disappoint.  Just one problem: all we could afford we're some magazines. My turn for sore feet as I had worn dress shoes-ouch. Back home for recovery, then out to Oxford st again, to have a look at the Burlington Arcade and the Picadilly Arcade. Then off to Trafalgar Square.

It seems like tourists are 50 percent of the population, and big red buses fill the roads.

This bit has been added in July 2015, where I have decided to add photos to the blog (not easy to do at the time on an ipad).  Browsing through them, I am amazed by the photos I did not take, and though I did take pics of Buckingham Palace etc, I think posting them is a waste of time. Rather, I will post just a few that vaugely capture the feel of London.

Our first day in Kyoto

Our first day in Kyoto.  Finding breakfast was easy, just out the door and down the street to  a lift set in a shop front. Something that never occurred to me was how to get photos on to this blog. Real easy if you use  Windows. Not quite so intuitive to me at the moment, so photos may have to sit on Flickr, which although I now have an app for the ipad, I still am having fun with that. I have a suspicion all these things have issues with the Japanese language.

Delicious! See photos.  I thought this might be a good time to try out my new cash passport card. Imagine my surprise and shock when she took it,scanned It, and gave it back with no need for a pin or signature!

Breakfast!

Oh well, just better not lose that one. 

The number one attraction in Kyoto is the Kinkakuji Temple. Which from the map seemed miles away. So we decided to go have a look at the Imperial Palace as it seemed to be just North of us. To keep walking to a minimum, i planned to catch a subway train,just across the river. I expected a polluted fairly deep river because it was quite wide. Nope. About metre deep and crystal clear.

Rubbish bins: there are none.  Park benches to sit on-none of these either.

Here is the river:

Down into the subway and no, you have JR pass, not subway pass.  Grr! Time for a coffee. Drag mrs sore feet in direction of Imperial Palace. Nice grandiose gates, but no way to get inside, and someone's feet dictated a return to hotel needed. Rose reckons the temp was 35. High humidity too, so beer consumption was recommended.

Nice Gates:

All the way down Karasuma st, and Bill the famous navigator took a wrong turn, which was not relayed to the troops as these were a little tetchy. Think bright red face. My pedometer showed 27,000 that day,a personal best ( hi Martin!).

Dinner at Korean restaurant. You don't order, you buy tickets, which we messed up but still enjoyed whatever it was. Crab shells and noodles.

The street naming and layout was hard to get a hang of, being on a grid and with names like Kawaramachi. The tourist maps have very small print and are very cluttered. In hindsight, I should have memorised all the street names in the area of the hotel.

Typical street corner in Kyoto:

Well hello..

Seems like a good title for what has happened so far.
It all started when I realised with a shock that the plane's leaving time was no 10.00 am, but 8.45 am. Fortunately we are enjoyer's of the Auckland Airport leaving experience, so we were within time at the end and got on ok.
Once on board the time passed quite quickly watching movies and eating breakfast and dinner. Not sure what happened to lunch, there was none. The Air NZ cabin crew were great.
I managed to see two and a half movies, Cloud Atlas starring Tom Hanks which I found confusing as it jumped all over the place in time, but came right in the end. The other was I Anna, a detective story set in London,  which took a while to get going , but proved a good watch.  The last one was Upside Down, which was a rather strange SF story, which I liked.( me strange? No!)
Customs at Kansai was no fun. The queue took an hour of standing in what seemed 30 degree heat.

Catching the train proved easy enough, once we were pointed in the direction of the ticket office.
There were a load of confusing offers, and I selected one that gave us a freedom to us all of the JR network in the area.  Very nice, but I found out that it did not include the Kyoto subways, a glaring mistake as it turned out. At the taxi stand the fun began as driver after driver did not know where the Best Western Hotel Kyoto was located. My problems were solved when one driver at the end of a large and growing queue leapt out of his cab and ordered one of the don't knows to take us any way.
Turns out he could not speak English. Good grief, what is wrong with these people?
Somewhere he used the word walk, which I took to mean we may as well walk, as he could not take us, but what he meant was he could take us, but we would have to walk a bit at the end.
In the end he used the novel idea of consulting his map to locate the hotel.

Here it is, not easy to see, just to the right of the van. This is not a road, but an alley.

Before I came here, I had this idea that Kyoto was a small town, say about the size of Tauranga.
Not so as it turned out. Think of Auckland CBD.  Now multiply that by about at least 20.
We are up a little alley off one of the main streets.  You would think an alley would be a dusty grimy place with rubbish everywhere.  NO.  This part of Japan is amazingly clean and tidy. There is no litter.
The inhabitants are all well dressed and none are overweight.  Must be the food.

This is a typical street corner:

Tips for travellers

Scan your passport and email it to yourself.

Trip to Australia

We went for 9 days, 3 in Melbourne, 3 travelling up coast road, and 3 staying with brother Allan in Sydney.