Little Old London Town

Well, it's not really. Quite big actually, with a population ranging between 12 and 14 million depending on where you stop counting. We're not sure how many British we actually met though, as London is packed full of Australians and everyone else from around the world...but it probably didn't help that we were staying with Aussie mates while we were there.

So anyway, we left ourselves a week and a half for London - a good amount of time to catch up with people, but not so good for the finances. We couldn't believe just how expensive London was, no matter how much we had been warned. But enough about money - we'll worry about all that when we get home...

Highlights of our time in English capital include:

*Visting many museums - the natural history museum, with it's stuffed animals and skeletons of those long dead. Cam particularly liked the icthyosaurs (fish lizards), which makes sense considering his love of all things from the sea.



We also went on a behind the scenes Darwin tour, where we saw some of Darwin's original specimens from his voyage on the Beagle , as well as specimens of Coelacanths (very old, thought-to-be-extinct fish); and a 8.7m specimen of Archy the Giant Squid (Architeuthis). Very Bloody Cool.

*The Victoria and Albert museum. Of particular interest was the fashion through the ages exhibition. No really, it was interesting. Particularly liked the underpants and glove set. There were also cool sculptures and an Oriental Exhibition.



*The Science Museum. A place Cam could have visited many times. Of particular interest were the Spitfire exhibition (interesting for Jane too, as she found out they were mostly made by women during the war), the boat exhibition, and of course the Scuba Diving exhibition. Even the Maths stuff was interesting, and quite pretty too. And of course, there was an awesome gift shop, which included some useful stuff, being a science museum and all...



*The Greenwich Meridian Line. We were only there for a short period, but we had lots of fun being in both the East and West hemispheres at the same time...we also didn't buy anything from the first shop in the world.



*The theatre scene. You can't go to London and not visit West End! Even Cam was enthused about it. We saw Avenue Q together - a musical with puppets made for people who aren't usually musical fans. Very funny. And Jane went to see Wicked by herself, so that Cam didn't get a musical overdose. We also went to see Othello at Shakespeares Globe Theatre. We paid for standing room only, and while it was great to experience it as many once did, it would probably be preferable to see any other 3 1/2 hour performance sitting down.



Of course there was lots of site seeing - we went to Hyde Park and watched all the sun-starved Londoners in their bikinis on a surprisingly fair weekend. We walked past Buckingham Palace, watched some great street performers at Covent Garden, ate dinner at Brick Lane, and tried to collect as many 'monopoly places' as possible (we were still missing a few when we left).

The best thing was definately the catch ups though. Thanks to those who took us out and put us up (hopefully we weren't there too long for you to put up with us). We had a great time. This last photo is in honour of friends - for those who bring Papua New Guinean penis gourds across the world for their mates, and for those mates who try them on enthusiastically as soon as the gift is received (yes, alcohol was involved). We just want it known, that it was requested by the wearer of this penis gourd to post this picture. Cheers Alex - you would make the Papua New Guineans...proud...