London diaries

 London Diaries

 

UK was never on my mind as a tourist destination. Why pay again to people who have already looted so much from us? Well! The best thing I learnt from this trip is to let go. Let bygones be bygones. We live in a different world today where our economy has given them a beating for the first time. Our choice of destination was first Rome and then we thought about Greece but then we found out that Schengen visa dates are not available at all and we won’t even get an appointment before our travel date. That's when the travel agent suggested UK. “4 din mein mil raha hai visa”, she said. When I started researching the place to finalize an itinerary (yup we didn't go through that agent, UK doesn’t need one), I realized UK is in a big mess. Inflation is sky high, veggies are being rationed (only 4 carrots per buyer, you can read the story here https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/rationing-of-fruit-veggies-in-the-uk-the-politics-and-economy-behind-it/articleshow/98233209.cms?from=mdr üôÅ), compulsory 15% service charge in restaurants (instead of customary 10%), strikes going on especially in the medical fraternity etc. Paris too btw was in dumps due to strikes (even garbage picking employees were on strike so the city was stinking it seems). This was the situation 2-3 months before my travel date when I was researching. After much back and forth and checking many more options, this seemed to be the easiest trip to plan. Air travel, hotel and 4 days for visa. Initially we wanted to do London plus Edinburgh but we made it even more easy by sticking to London. Our itinerary was flexible.

 

Day 1 - We started from Mumbai by Kuwait airways. I had seen many pics of the new interiors of Mumbai airport but it was my first time to see it in person. It's been a long time since I travelled internationally, Corona chi krupa. We had friends for company on the airport to chit chat since this friend (with his family) was travelling to US on the same night, same time. So the wait wasn't boring at all.

 

Day 2- Surprise surprise!! Our flight was to depart half an hour before schedule. So we took off at 1:45am and dinner was served at 3am. Sabko utha utha ke dinner de rahe the. Dinner was okay. Nishad was fast asleep and didn't bother to eat. Kuwait airport, at least what I saw, was ordinary. Nothing fancy. The moment we landed the azaan started. We took the connection to London after around 2+ hours. Breakfast was again okay. Typical English breakfast with scrambled eggs (my hubby definitely makes them better), sausages (beef so I skipped), juice, yoghurt, croissant, bun maska jam (now it's sounding Irani) and tea/coffee. What happened to those spices for which they made others life hell! Atleast, some black pepper. Anyway. I watched 2 movies in 10 hours. I watched "The intern" and "Thalaivi". Both movies are good. I did try sleeping but I rarely get a full sleep when I am traveling.

On landing, we took the underground from Heathrow to Earl's court. We stayed in a very basic hotel called Manor. One tip here for first timers. While researching (applicable to budget hotels only), I came across hotels where a shower was attached to the room but the toilet wasn't. Funny and stupid. I was glad to get a full bathroom attached to my room. I have been to Europe before but had never come across something like this. Thank God, I didn't miss this detail. My hotel was a stone’s throw away from the underground and secondly you have a bunch of restaurants around. So 5 stars from me on the location. A shop exactly next to the underground called “Earl's court food and wine” sells packed Indian food eg chicken curry and rice or biryani Or veg options with authentic Indian taste. So our food problem was immediately solved. We love to eat other cuisines but we knew we had a "go to" place for food. This same shop sells souvenirs and also rain cards aka pocket raincoats. I had purchased it in India and taken along.

 

Today we had planned Madame Tussauds (station Baker Street), not for the wax statues but for its Marvel 4d experience. This was on my kids list. It was good. My kid enjoyed a lot. As far as the statues are concerned, frankly there were many which I didn't like especially Deepika Padukone, Shahrukh and Katrina. My question is, did Deepika go to them for measurements and colour matching with such horrible make up or has the quality of the wax artists dropped? Shahrukh was recognisable but not an exact replica. Katrina was better amongst the three. More than a decade ago, I had visited Tussauds in Amsterdam and it was good, much better than what we saw here. 

 

Next, we saw Sherlock Holmes Museum. This was on my list of places to visit. Undeniably the most famous address in the literary world, I loved the museum especially because the lady who gave us a walkthrough had a captivating style and she brought Sherlock Holmes to life. Sherlock’s house, Dr’s equipment bag with all his surgical things in it, the letters written by Holmes, all made it seem that these two men (along with Moriarty etc) were alive. The museum is a just a tiny walk away from Tussauds.

 

Regents Park was close by so we dropped in there. Lovely park. Total greenery, serene, well-kept and I love it when a park has a water body with ducks in it. Birds chirping. It was a bright sunny day hence the Brits too were cheerful.

 

This much site seeing was enough today. We went back to the hotel totally tired and sleep deprived with jet lag as a bonus. So my take - go to Tussauds for the marvel experience but not for the statues or the history of London or other phalana. I will recommend Sherlock Holmes museum and regents park. I liked it. Btw, do you know that London has a pigeon menace. Back at the hotel, we slept like logs.

 

Day 3 - The day is quite longer and starts early too. Today we had booked a tour to Warner Brothers Harry Potter studio in the afternoon. So in the morning slot we went to Hyde Park (station Hyde Park corner). My husband and kid loved this park more than regents. It's a huge park and we could not explore it in entirety. The internal roads of the park were filled with horse poop so it was a little disgusting. However the greenery is to die for and the squirrels were so adorable. My kid had fun clicking the squirrels. Overall, London has so many huge green spaces right inside the city. Please keep contactless cards handy. The public toilet here did not take coins and my international credit card (contactless card) did not work here since ICICI has not entered into a partnership here. For the same reason, we purchased oyster cards for the metro travel. The drawback with oyster is that they charge a 7-pound fee per card. However, you can keep the card with you for life. Con of having an international contactless card is that you will pay fees per transaction since it will be considered international transaction. So find out what works best for you.

 

My first impression of London - keeping the history aside, I loved the city. Loved the houses, the huge office buildings, the carvings on them, well planned transport system and since it was start of summer - the weather too. London otherwise is a gloomy place with people who are not upbeat during those winter months. All people dress elegantly and this is something that really distinguishes Americans from the Europeans. BTW, I have never seen such wholesale long noses on people's faces. They really do have extraordinarily long noses. Women’s faces can more or less be put in 6-7 moulds but they are good looking although I found women in Paris are a notch more good looking. I also saw lots of children everywhere. The only person I spoke English with, is my son who like an angrez has stopped speaking in Marathi for some reason. I have to bring him back to becoming a Puneri. My hotel guy was Indian. The underground help desk guy was a Sikh. After entering Mc Donalds, the person at the counter exclaimed “Tumhi Marathi aahat”. He was overjoyed to hear Marathi. He was aapla Mumbai cha mulga. He was so happy that he gave few extra fries to my son. The nearby shopkeeper too knew Hindi.

Now bring in the history and I felt yeh sab humare paise se banaya hai aur yeh bakiyon ko loot ke banaya hai. Aish hai. Irrespective, from builders and architects point of view, everything is tastefully done. As for the weather, it was the start of the summer and but the wind was cold. My method of judging if the season has properly changed or not is by looking at locals. There was a sizeable number of locals who were still wearing jackets and that meant it was only early days of summer. The wind was blowing and it was quite cold.

 

Harry Potter studio - The buses are called coaches and start from the Victoria coach terminus. So you have to first reach Victoria underground station then it's a little walk to the bus stop. My son is a big fan of the books but somehow he was not drawn towards the movies. Most of the experience here is about the movie making. Kids and adults alike love Harry Potter and the craze is evident and still going strong even after so many years have passed. As the bus leaves London, you immediately see vast open green spaces suggesting that the population here is still low. If we leave Mumbai or even Pune for that matter, the urban sprawl continues for a very long time before you finally hit an open patch either agricultural or otherwise. The urban sprawl is limited. Back to Harry Potter, the studio gave good insights into film making. The sets, drapery, mechanics e.g., how the iron moves over clothes automatically and the knife chops vegetables automatically. It is good info for kids. In fact after knowing how it works, Nishad was fully relaxed in that forbidden forest. The green room is a highlight. Unfortunately, they charge you separately for filming you on the broom and the queue is  really long. We decided to skip it because my kiddo was interested in every single detail and we had limited time on hands. We could not stop at every place. Each kid gets an activity passport and you can put a stamp of every house on house on it. BTW, my kid is in Ravenclaws house. The souvenir shop is highly overpriced even by UK standards. 34 pounds for a wand is ridiculous considering half of them were just moulded plastic and quality was worth Rs150. Some had beads on them but I won't give it more than Rs 200. Anyway the hysteria associated with it makes you keep logic away and buy so many things. As for the weather, although yesterday was bright and sunny and today it was quite cold. English weather! The next day was back to being sunny.

 

Day 4 - Today we went to Greenwich Royal observatory. This was on my husband’s TODO list. You must take the tube to North Greenwich and then take the bus to Trafalgar Estate (and not Trafalgar Road, these two stops are adjacent but different). After you alight from the bus, just enter the bylane on the same foot path and keep walking till you reach a park. Enter the park and in the middle of the park, you have to climb a small hill. The observatory sits atop this hill. All in all, it is a bit of walk and a climb so do keep that in mind. A wheelchair accessible road is available but it quite a longish route. I can proudly say that quite a few of my friends have referred to my travelogues before they planned their trips and hence, I write these tips in case they have senior citizens with them. A note for senior citizens – All my trips where we have used public transport in Europe and Singapore requires a lot of walking and hence, they should consider their fitness level. Truth in today’s era is that some senior citizens are more fit than me. In my defence I have walked in the waree for 21km. LOL.

 

Anyway. Back to the topic. The park is huge and a delight for pet dogs. The observatory had a fair number of visitors, especially a school picnic although it is not a typical touristy place.  This was a must visit location for my husband who was interested in knowing all about the clocks made by John Harrison to solve the longitude problem over the sea. The clock actually went through four versions before being declared perfect and won the coveted award of 20k pounds to whoever solved this issue. My son was age appropriately interested in standing with two feet on the two sides of the meridian and making a reel.  I will recommend this place. They do have a deer enclosure somewhere but we had to skip that. Kiddo had a great time rolling on the grass. Parks across England need a special mention and accolades. They are extremely well kept and are huge in size. Most belong to the Royal family.

 

Today we also went to Wimbledon. You might ask what kind of planning is this? We had two locations on the opposite side planned in a day. Well, we had plans to do Wimbledon on the weekend but a friend with a good know-how asked us to change our plan because 1. It is overwhelmingly crowded on weekends 2. this was a long weekend and 3. you get a family ticket on weekday which is far less than the price on weekend. Remember that to go to Wimbledon, you should not go to Wimbledon station but get down at Southfields. Further we were told it's just a few minutes walk from the station but boss take my word. It's not "just a few minutes" for a Punekar although it could be for a Londoner. You better take bus 493 and get down at Gate 4, Wimbledon Stadium. The tour of the courts goes on 90 minutes which includes some fabulous history of the game, the passion of the players and staff alike, technical aspects about maintaining the grass and Rufus - the hawk. We saw multiple courts including the prestigious centre court. The place was in full action mode since the tournament is not far away. This was followed by the museum which is in the same complex. We were exhausted that day but it was a day well spent. Wimbledon was on my bucket list. However McEnroe's ghost was nowhere visible. Either I missed it or a change has happened. Please google the terms if you are not aware. We crashed on our beds that night and our eyes were closed the minute we hit the bed.

 

Day 5 - Today we decided to sleep an hour extra in the morning. Humari vaat lag chuki thi. Today was a special day for us. Windsor Castle was to be followed by a visit to my husband’s very dear friend. We took the tube to London Paddington National Rail after which you have to take the GWR rail, basically the inter-city railway as against the local metro. Your final station is Windsor and Eton. The castle is just outside the station and thank God, no walking today. Please do not miss the Royal shopping area at the station. A special mention to Hobbs. I loved every piece of apparel on display.  The castle is as expected.... Grand. The variety of weapons on display made my kid go crazy. He loves history. Swords, pistols, armours in huge numbers and very well arranged. The entrance moat and courtyard are good too. The beautifully decorated halls are a highlight. However, same cannot be said about its architecture. The halls were dimly lit artificially using lamps in spite of the beautiful sunny day outside. The King's closet was huge as expected followed by a dressing room which didn't have any mirror (maybe they had one in olden days). The next room however had two huge mirrors on the wall. They were placed next to the windows and did not help at all in bringing the natural light into the room. Secondly they were placed at such a height that the king would have hardly seen his face in it, not a full self. These were the flaws I found in one glimpse and based on common sense. The lone security guy in the funny red outfit and a hat covering his eyes was standing like a doll. What a redundant job! BTW, he is known as the royal guard.

 

The gift shops are as usual overpriced and nothing exquisite to buy. The new addition are coronation memorabilia or the Queens photo merchandise after her demise.  The castle has a chapel adjacent to it. First, excuse my lack of knowledge about difference between a church, chapel, cathedral, abbey etc. 1. They all seem same to me on the outside 2. I don't know the meaning of these words. 3. I am not going to make any attempt to find out the difference even now. Moot. After entering, we realized we were walking on graves. Most of them are in the path and all the visitors were walking on the graves because there was no choice. That was the only path to move inside the chapel. There is no other way. The place was totally crowded due to 1. Sun was out and 2. Long weekend. Only the recently expired queen and her husband’s graves are on the side. Apne ko ajeeb lagta hai woh.

 

Once done Kaustubh’s dear friend was kind enough to come all the way to Windsor to pick us up. So kind of him to do that especially because we were quite far away from his place of residence. At the friend’s house, Nishad was the happiest because he got friends of his age with the same hobby.... Reading. Also they love the same authors. Lots of catching up for the guys and as for me, I am so glad to have found such wonderful friend. Although I was meeting them for the first time, I never felt so. It was as if I knew them forever. Thoroughly enjoyed their hospitality, yum food, gifts and the gappa in their beautiful garden. I am so glad we didn’t do any walking today because my kid was actually exhausted. Our friends dropped us back to the station. Thank you for this enjoyable and memorable evening.

 

Day 6 - Today was our popat day. We had planned for a hop on hop off bus tour along with Thames river cruise. This would ensure that we cover all photo stops inside London. We reached the pick-up point and were told that due to a cycle race, the bus tour has been called off. We could either use same ticket on a different route (which I was not interested in) or we could do the tour on the next day. Next day too wasn't an option since we had already made plans with another dear friend (number 2) of ours. We cancelled the ticket. So we decided to go to the Natural History Museum. We were shocked to see the queue spilling right on to the footpath. Hai re Sun and long weekend. Also, this was unplanned so we didn't even have a ticket. We got scared of the queue. Btw, the museum is free but still you need an entry ticket. That is the museums way of controlling the numbers being let in.  So plan C kicked in and we started walking towards Harrods. Harrods was quite fun. The perfumery hall was filled with perfume smells and I was wondering if people were able to differentiate one from the other. The ladies section did have a good designer collection with a wow factor but same was not true with the men’s section. We ended Harrods with a good ice-cream.

 

Next we went to Picadilly. The entire area was closed due to the cycle race. We got to see the race. We walked along up to Trafalgar square. It took us longer than usual because road crossing was not allowed unless all the cycles passed. We were invited by friend 3 for dinner tonight but we had to cancel the plan since my kid was really exhausted. A big apology to him. The only good part was that we were supposed to eat at a restaurant so no food was wasted.

 

Day 7 - Today was yet another amazing day since we were to meet another friend of ours. He picked us up at Richmond and we travelled in his Tesla. I loved his car. The fully transparent roof was ‘ek number’. Plan was to go to the countryside. So exciting!

We first went to a model village called Bekonscot. It’s a cute little model of 6 villages complete with a working train network, stations, working railway crossings, working cable cars, lakes, windmills etc. It just gave a glimpse of country life. Later we went to Little Marlow park where we were joined by his wife, daughter and a cutie patootie doggy. Nishad was so happy to pet the dog. He is generally scared of dogs, although he does love them. This doggy made him comfortable. The rest of the day Nishad along with his new friend spent to day enjoying with the doggy. Doggy was super excited when he saw ducks and chased them right into the water. He went swimming behind them. Secondly he was sniffing away, checking for any duck eggs. We had a picnic by the lakeside. Good food, amazing company. Mast. Later we went on a long drive in the country side.  All the greenery was so therapeutic for the computer strained eyes.

 

Next stop we went to Bushy park, another royal park. You are totally one with nature here. We saw a variety of birds and lots and lots of deer. I didn’t see these many deer even in Jim Corbett. Gappa, tappa, jokes, laughter, and nature. What more do you want. Perfect. After dinner, our friend dropped us back to the hotel. Thank you, guys. We spent an amazing day with you.

 

Day 8 - Today was our last day in London. We did not have any specific itinerary today. There were many places which we had not seen, especially because we lost one day of sightseeing due to cycle race but now we did not have enough time left. We had to meet one friend (number 4) for coffee. So, before that I made a quick trip to a music shop in Kensington called Kensington Chimes. I purchased some strings for mandolin and violin for my father. We also had to check out of the hotel. Well, the checkout also was early at 11 am as compared to India. The hotel kindly agreed to our request to keep our luggage with them for few hours. So glad that we managed to meet this friend although it was a working day for him. After coffee, we had some time on hand before we head to the airport. So we took the metro to Big Ben. There wasn't much to do and not much time on hand. We grabbed some go to lunch. It was time to say goodbye.

At the airport, I got a refund on my oyster card balance. I had to take help from the staff because the machine was not dispensing cash. So the man helped me to a machine which was working and said that I should not take a refund. “You will again have to pay 7 pound fees when you come back”, he said. I just smiled. I hope that I do come back sooner for another trip and this time go to Edinburgh. Bye bye London, till we meet again.