Day 10 - Monday 6 September - London

Woke up very early this morning. Like maybe 4am or something. That'll learn us to go to bed at 9pm. Lay there for ages and finally got up at 6am to use the puta.

Breakfast the same as last two days. Out the door a bit after 9am.

Checked out a local laundromat on the way to the station which should work for us later in the week.

Bicycles for hire in Earl's Court. They had these all over the place. We might have
used them except the process seemed overly complicated so thought it was all too hard.

So headed into town.

Our first stop (after passing Piccadilly, Mayfair and Vine St) was the Apple Store on Regent St. Unfortunately they don't do iPhone unlocking. So I am royally screwed :( $20000/gb because Optus and/or Apple couldn't get their act together. Bastards. Epic hate. So switched off data and will only use data in emergencies.

Toilet at Mayfair. Yes even the toilets are fancy in this part of town!

Ritz Hotel

Burlington House

Old building on Great Marlborough St

Apple Store on Regent St

Continued up Regent St and along Oxford St, past Park Lane to Hyde Park. Had a bit of a meander through the park and took lots of photos of gooses and stuff.

Clock on Selfridges

Marble Arch, Hyde Park

Speaker's Corner, Hyde Park

Hyde Park deckchairs

Hyde Park deckchairs can be hired - £1.50 an hour!

Reformer's Tree mosaic

Geese on the march!

Heron

Flowers

Monkey Puzzle Tree

Flowers

Gum tree outside a toilet block

Queen Elizabeth Gate, aka The Queen Mother Gates

Grand Entrance gates

Wellington Arch

Then hopped on a train to Temple.

Got out and wandered up to the Temple Church, but unfortunately it was closed for maintenance. Was very cool walking amongst the buildings around the church - little passageways between and through the buildings - very cool!

Entrance to Pump Court

Cloisters

Temple Church

Column dedicated to the Knights Templar

Walking up Inner Temple Lane

Came out onto Fleet St and saw the Royal Courts of Justice, which I'd never seen before. It was a pretty spectacular building too. Walked down and back past that.

My attempt to get a red double decker bus, a black taxi, a pillar box and a
phone box all in one shot. Sorta worked.

Royal Courts of Justice

Continued up Fleet St. Stopped for lunch and a pint at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which is a funky little pub rebuilt 1667 (after the great fire of London). It had a whole series of little rooms and bars, which would make it a bit of a fun place to explore. We found a room with a free table and I had bangers and mash (which had to be done being in England and all :) ). Also had a couple of Samuel Smith beers - I had an alpine lager and Stu had a brewers bitter.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

Continued on. Had a quick detour up past the Old Bailey (which has been restored nicely after being blown up in V for Vendetta ;) ) and continued on to St Paul's Cathedral. It was raining at this point which made photography somewhat tricky. Went into the entrance of the cathedral. It's £12.50 to go in but of course there is no photography permitted. Stu has been in this one before, so if we're going to shell out that much money with no photos to show for it, we might do Westminster Abbey.

The Old Bailey

St Paul's Cathedral

Queen Anne statue outside St Paul's

St Paul's Cathedral

Then we walked across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern, to see an exhibition - "Exposed - Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera". Some of it was pretty interesting. Some of it was a bit meh. My favourite thing was a serious of webcam grabs of Linz in Austria. A dude had gone down the plaza in front of the webcam at the same time each day and taken a grab of the webcam at the time. There were a series of short comments as well. For some reason I really liked this display :) By the time we'd finished looking at this it was nearly 6pm, so we walked back across the bridge, up to Mansion House station and back to the hotel (via Burger King for a snack dinner).