It was raining when we woke up….we were not prepared

It was a good (and cheap) night all in all but on the Sunday we had to get up and go to the megabus for a 2.5 hour ride to bristol. I love megabus, it was 6 pound and gets you along way, anyway we then were walking along the street to catch a bus to bath were we were going to watch the cricket, and staying 2 nights. I was yelled at by someone on a stopped bus, she sounded like she had been smoking and drinking all her life, which is exactly what she has been doing.

London to Bath at EveryTrailMap created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

It was Stacy beare. I new I would see her in bath but was not prepaired to see her again so soon after the alaska fam trip. So we got on the bus with her and continued to bath, checked in at the hostel and went to see the sights (pubs). There are a lot of pubs in bath, and england but many in bath. We did a pub crawl to see the city then went on a guided city walk that was a comedian showing us all over the place, it was hella funny.

The Gang

We went out and had a few more drinks that night but realising we had the cricket the next day we had a sleep.

a bridge in bath that has shops and a pub on it

On waking up it was raining…..heavy and it didn’t look like it was going to stop. We walked to the bath cricket ground and were told that it had been canceled, ryan cried. So we went and sat in one of the many pubs.

Kylie took many more photos both days so you can see them on her facebook. All the photos I have to date I have taken and uploaded to flickr, I will probably work on putting up Ryan’s soon as he has some good ones.

]]> http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/location/bath/party-time-in-london-and-bath-scary-women-from-the-ship/feed/ 0 http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/the-healing-of-the-armnot-so-much/ http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/the-healing-of-the-armnot-so-much/#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 17:32:44 +0000 Brodie McCulloch http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/?p=157 I took someones advice (sam and rachel) and took my stitches out of my arm. I had a piece of skin taken to make sure I don’t have the cancer, I have been telling people here that I was bitten by a white tale spider and the flesh eating venom has just been neutrilized by my bodies natural enzymes, now I can get it stitched up.

This was done in Perth and I needed to have the stitches out 7 days later. Following their advice I took them out myself, I thought all was well until I woke up covered in blood (flash backs) and my wound reopened. After 12 hours of bleeding I decided the doctor needed to be seen. We found a walk in doctor and he said it all looked good and to come back in 7 days to have some more stitches in…..If I want. Anyway I will see what happens in the next week, I hope I don’t need to use the penicillin meds he prescribed for me.

Once we had finished at the the doctor and a reading of a very informative “drink responsibly” book we went to have lunch in a pub. Today we had the last English thing, it was a English breakfast, always good. So far we have had pies, bangers and mash, English breakfast and fish and chips. I think that is all the main ones covered.

After breakfast / lunch we went on a walk to Buckingham palace, it hadn’t changed much since I was last year. We continued into Hyde park where we walked around the man made lake thing that we both decided would not be good to swim in.

We started and were actually to early to go into TATE museum near us so we continued on past London eye and to TATE modern, it is a big building that was used in the movie “children of men” (gold movie). We went in and saw all the art and what not, nice stuff, but I am still struggling with the concept of “art”, what makes one squiggle on a page mean more than another? anyway that’s how art is.

The River Thames, London Eye and Westminster Abby

We then stopped for a beer at young’s brewery outlet, had a dark stout which tasted really smooth…….for 10 in the morning. One thing if forgot to mention is that the weather has been out of control. there is not comparison to when I was here in November. We have been getting around in a shirt and shorts the whole time, it has been great and I really hope that it keeps up this way.

Ryan and Westminster Abby……meh

After the beer we continued walking up the river and past London bridge, we continued over tower bridge to London Tower……which is more of a castle but I can understand how it would have looked like a tower back in the day. This is something that we decided we wanted to see so we got tickets and went for a tour. One thing I did not know is that the crown jewels are held at London tower, needless to say they are shiny and are worth some where in the vicinity of 250,000 pounds.

Tower Bridge

We walked the walls and got to see a lot of the city, but caught the tube back to Victoria station as the walk had made us a little sleepy and we wanted a sleep before we went out on the town.

The White Tower in the Tower of London

The Tower of London and some dodge guy

When we got back there was a whole new group of people in our room. We are staying in a hostel with 6 beds in the room and people only seem to stay a night or so, nothing more. This group were from Texas and were traveling for a few weeks before continuing studies in Paris.

We went out on the town and had a jolly time. Also Ryan’s cousin Kate joined us. Myself and Kate enjoyed Ryan’s drunken antics and where amused for many hours. nothing suss

Big Plasma stuff

First thing in the morning we went for a walk to what we thought was Hyde Park and went for a run (I know good hu!), as it turned out what we ran around was Green Park, a much smaller park than Hyde Park. We then went back to the Hostel, had breakfast and got ready for the day.

We walked quite far past the Palace then to where Ryan needed to get his exam papers, they gave them to him even though the thought he looked like a shady character who was not to be trusted. We then walked to Piccadilly Square and marveled at the big screen technology, there were many and it is a really busy intersection.

This is where Cycle Europe 08 almost ended.

We then walked into the West End and brought tickets to see Spamalot, a Monty Python musical that rips off a lot of “The Holy Grail”. Here is a tip for young players, buy your theater tickets the morning of the show as people cancel or they are desperate to get rid of them. We got second row seats for the price of the seats at the back of the theater.

I know! how blue is the sky!

We then continued walking to Trafalgar Square where we went into The National Museum and looked at some old art. at this stage we were getting hungry and saw a “cheep” Indian place which had a 4 course lunch menu for 4.95 pounds, that’s a good deal, but then after the dodge Indian running the place tacked on 6 pound for nan bread and a 3 pound service charge to round the whole meal to a clean 20 pound we decided not to eat in Indian restaurants again (dam you Shagun).

London Eye, we opted not to go up, next time.

After the rogering that was lunch we walked down to see Big Ben and the London Eye, the weather was really nice so there were a lot of people all over the place. By the time we had walked all this distance we decided it was time to go back to hostel and get ready to see the show. The walk back was quite long but we made it, got ready and went to see the show which was funny as expected.

That night we lasted a bit longer, but were still in bed by 12:30am, we put this down to jetlag as well and decided the next night was the night to party.

]]> http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/a-walk-around-london-to-see-stuff/feed/ 0 http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/first-day-in-london-we-made-it/ http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/cycle-europe-08/first-day-in-london-we-made-it/#comments Tue, 20 May 2008 12:05:41 +0000 Brodie McCulloch http://www.brodiemcculloch.com/?p=154 We are laying in our beds at 7:15 pm London time. we have had dinner and are buggered…..seriously that flight was massive.

Once we touched down at Heathrow, London at 8:00am we went through customs, who had a lot of questions actually about what we were doing in London and when we were leaving. Once through out bags arrived, which was amazing because we had been on two different airlines which were not partners and three different planes.

We made our way to the tube and paid our 4 pounds to get to the center of London. The tube is an interesting place, people on it tend to look down, or look away, no one wants to talk….at all. Even me talking to Ryan looked out of place in this hollow tube of unemotional.

We arrived at our station Piccadilly, we then made our way up the stairs to the surface, our first look at London. I had been here before but not for a long time (more than 2 days), I turned on my pda and gps, but after 34 hours of travel the batteries failed me…..thank you technology.

On the technology front Ryan was convinced that everything so far was touch screen, he had tried pushing every flat surface instead of the button located and raised below it. We got some laughs when he tried to push the green man on the cross walk light, instead of the button. The one thing that is touch screen is my PDA and he had trouble with that one.

After some helpful directions from an old man we made found our hostel, the Astor Victoria. It was mayhem, there were people everywhere, it was 10am and this is checkout time. We went in to check in and were told that check-in didn’t begin until 2pm. So we had four hours to kill.

We left our backpacks and went for a walk, London is a easy city to get lost and found in, we walked up to Victoria Station, changed my worthless US $ and walked around for a bit.

One of the best things about England and London is that there is a pub on every corner. You can have a meal and a pint for super cheep. So we sat down, had a pint and looked at how things had gone so far. Besides Ryan almost getting his Swiss pocket knife confiscated in Switzerland (which would have been a story for the ages) it had all gone smoothly, I’m not sure how he thought he was going to get a pocket knife on the plane in his carry on.

I am happy with our first day in London, even though I am in bed at 7:15 it is 2:55 am in Perth and this makes me feel better. If I get on the right time zone now it will make the coming weeks much easier.

Oh yeah, no photos….there are going to be a lot of photos so calm down.

Flight from Perth, Australia to London, England at EveryTrailMap created by EveryTrail:Share GPS tracks

We then boarded Swiss Air for a 12 hour flight to Zurich, once in Zurich it was a mad dash to get to our next flight which was only 2 hours to London. In the future I think I will look for a more direct flight, I think the A380’s fly direct. That would be golden.

From Bristol we caught the MEGAbus to London, we had been told that the MEGAbus was a bit dodge but it seemed fine and only took 2.5 hours to get there. Even better was that the MEGAbus only cost 3 quid (6 $) each way.

you guessed it, we were cold again

Once we arrived in Victoria station we decided that we should tackle the underground first because it is meant to take you all over the city and more importantly it had a stop near our hotel. For some reason as soon as Londoners get underground there is a sudden panic and rush, I’m not sure why this is but people start darting in and out and pushing when above ground they are quite normal.

Big Ben (blue sky! but that makes it colder )

Anyway we caught the underground to our Bayswater (i think that was its name) station on the other side of hide park where our hotel was. Our hotel was great, it had everything and was central to where we wanted to go. Because we arrived so early our room wasn’t ready so we left our bags and wend and got on one of the tour buses which takes you all over the city.

The Millenium Wheel

We saw many of the sites like Big Ben, London Bridge, the Millenium Wheel and The National Gallery but I had come to London with one thing in mind, something so important that If i did not do this thing I would not forgive my self……Vote in the Australian Federal Election. I turned into a mad man asking people where can I find the Australian Consulate, finally one of the tour guides had the answer and we could get off the bus right next to the consulate. There was security and everything, even people handing out leaflets saying vote for liberal or labour. I went in to Australia House and Voted. With the one thing I wanted to do in London complete we decided that It was time to eat.

While eating Lydia and I talked about seeing a show, we were in the part of London where all the theaters were. After leaving the restaurant we walked around checking out all the musicals and plays that were on and that was when we saw it…..Lord of the Rings the Musical. It was perfect.

Lydia explained in detail how she hated the Lord of the Rings movie because all it was only small people walking up and down hills for 4 hours, I guess I could see where she was coming from. But she said the musical looked a lot better and she wanted to see it.

Once we had got tickets (good ones as well, second row) we needed to gun it back to the hotel, get changed and get back to the theater. So we gt on the tube and headed back to the hotel, checked in, got showered and dressed, left the hotel, got back on the tube, missed our stop, go off at the next stop, walked/ran back to the theater and sat down in our seats (got removed from our seats because we were in the wrong ones and put in the seats next to them).

The show was great, even Lydia who hated the movie said it was the best show she had been to. You can see clips of the show here.

We caught the tube back to the hotel and got some indian to eat, it was a really good (but busy) day.

The next morning we got up early so we could go and see some of the places we had seen the day before in detail. First stop was a river cruise to see all of the sites from the river rather than just on a bus, it was good that we got to go over and under London Bridge.

London Bridger (the weather didn’t hold out)

After the river cruise we went to the National Gallery and looked at art for a while. There was lots of art with Jesus in it and we decided that Jesus was probably the most painted person in all time. While we were at the National Gallery I had organised to meet Kylie and in the short amount of time we had left we were going to walk from the National Gallery to Buckingham Palace.

The National Gallery

It was good to see Kylie again, I had seen here since Tracy’s engagement party which was a long time ago. We walked down the Buckingham Palace and saw the guards and police with machine guns, took some photos and then walked back to catch our MEGAbus back to Bristol, Kylie got on the underground and went out to lunch.

Me and Kylie in front of Buckingham Palice

On the way back we saw what people were talking about when the said the MEGAbus was a bit dodge, I didn’t think it was bad for $6, but there were some random people on there.

I figure I will be back in London in the near future so I will get to see a lot of stuff more up close, It was good to see what I want to come back to anyway.

All my photos from London can be found here, and all my photos from ever can be found on flickr.