London - Day 3

As Kiasu Singaporeans, we work up super early again. Today's plan is to visit Greenwich where the line of Meridian is.

Took the tube and the light rail (DLR) to Greenwich, a quaint little town outside of London City centre. Once there we suffered from hunger pangs and hunted for a good breakfast... It's really serendipity that we found a Weatherspoon pub just beside the DLR station. I was researching for cheap food places in London where I can across this pub chain. Apparently they sell really value for money meals that later saved us a lot of our budget.


Full english breakfast at Weatherspoon (Yummy!!!)

With breakfast settling in our tummies and energized enough for the day, we walked to the Greenwich Park. It's a really peaceful park with open green fields. We can see from afar several happy dogs running across the field. The breeze is cool and gentle. BUT, the Greenwich musuem and observatory is on TOP OF A HILL. And it's quite a climb for our tired bodies. But since we came so far, it's up we go...


Maritime Museum


Greenwich park (background)


Greenwich Museum on top of the hill


what goes up, must go down...

After having a leisurely stroll in Greenwich, it's back to the city centre to finish ticking off the rest of the sights from our lists. After some debat, we decided to go to Tate Modern first, the Tate Britain next, since it was mentioned in the guide that there was some shuttle bus connecting the two.

Tate Modern was actually converted from a old warehouse (if I am remembered correctly), and the exterior is really nondescript. Inside, you can see this huge hall as a entrance and it houses some many modern art.

To be honest, modern art appeals even less to me than old paintings. Sometimes, I think pple read too much (or pretend that they do) into some messy doodles and frankly, if one really wants to portray some social injustice or reflect life, they should have done something that really change the world than draw some nonsensical stuff to be hang on the wall of some fancy museum. At least the old paintings depict what actually was and can be some part of pictorial history.


Tate Modern (special exhibit: Dali (one of the few that make some sense), but I really DISLIKE modern art)

Since Tate Modern is such a dismay, we wanted to go to Tate Britain since it was said that there's better exhibits there, only to find that we need to pay quite a sum to get onto a boat to get there. (remember we are on a budget). So we changed plans to go to the Convent Garden instead.

First impression of Convent Garden - Wow, I like. We can almost imagine what it was like in the old times. It's really quaint. There're some really interesting shops selling local stuff like porcelain, old fashion toys, coins etc...The atmosphere is really jovial, and you can see busker performing at several spots. The best thing is that there's no crowd (at least not much), so we can truly enjoy the place.

Convent Garden

After convent garden we returned to catch up with what we missed yesterday at the British Museum and on the way home we stopped at Harrods (which is said to be a must go when in London). It's difficult to describe Harrods. It's like it's trying to be too many things at one time, a shopping place, a grocery place, a memorial (for Diana) and even a sort of museum? Really I find the interior a bit too gaudy and over done. I mean there's the Egyptian area which the face of the current owner on the sphinx. But it's not an exaggeration that it has packed everything and nearly all of London's population within the walls almost close to explosion. It's really hard to imagine that it started out as a small wholescale grocery shop.

But well, we had an enjoyable freshly made Krispy Creem donut at Harrods so that makes up for everything.

After Harrods, we went on home to prepare for a overnight bus trip to Edinburg with the Megabus. Megabus is really an interesting idea. It provide cheap intercity transport all around UK (we bought our tickets at only 1 pound each..if you are the first two persons who booked). Booking can be done online and you need only show the printout or booking no. to the coach driver to board.

We had a hard time looking for the bus station as it was not at the main bus station but a small one beside. And there's no shelter from a cold chilly night while waiting. We were initially quite concerned that we were waiting in the night outside. Fortunately, there're quite a number of pple also at the station.

While waiting, we met one friendly Scot, Louis, who is on the same trip with us to Edinburgh. He said that he was a native Edinburgh and was here in London for an interview to pursue his master in ecology. We chatted about what to see in Edinburg and where we have traveled to. He complained that the coach was the worse trip in his life and if he had the money he would have taken a flight home. Louis, if you ever came across this blog, hope the university has contacted you.

After boarding the coach, I can understand what he meant. Well, being an "Ang Moh" he is quite tall and the seats are truly too small for him to fit in comfortably. But being petite Asians, we find the seats alright, nothing worse than the coach we take to KL from Singapore and the gentle rocking of the coach when on the road had hypnotize us to sleep....ZZZZZzZZZzzz....