Our last day was spent in London Town as our flight was not leaving until 22:15 – just in time to miss the Royal Wedding !
The hotel where we were staying, Arran House, was happy to hold our bags for the day and let us come back and “freshen up” if we wanted before we headed to the airport.
Stephenson’s Rocket
We decided to start the day at the Science Museum – a bit like our Questacon in Canberra. As we later discovered, there is an old section and a new section. From the entrance our path along the exhibits led us into the “new” section and it was only coincidence that we actually found the “old” section when we got around to finding a cafe for lunch later in the day! The old section seems to stop about 1980 – based on the appearance of the “modern” items displayed there.
The museum has quite a few “originals” in it – Apollo 14 moon landing module, Stephenson’s “rocket” steam engine amongst others and plenty of interactive exhibits. We went on a “stunt plane experience” with the Red Devils UK flying squad – but Disney has no worries of competition from this lot !
After lunch we hopped on a bus and headed to St Paul’s Cathedral. We got off the bus on the other side of the river Thames at Southbank, walked past Shakespeare’s Globe theatre and walked across the Millenium Bridge up to St Paul’s. There were lots of people around and we were going to head inside but 35 pounds for “not another cathedral” as Liam would call it turned us away (- anyway, we had a look inside during our last visit to London in 2007).
So from here we headed off on another bus to the Strand and then walked down to Trafalger Square. There were people everywhere and news booths were taking up every vantage point so it was a very busy spot. We headed down the Mall a little toward the Palace, then cut across St James Park to get to Westminster Abbey – taking in the atmosphere for Adrienne as she was going to be missing the wedding whilst she sat on a plane heading home !
With lots of people around already and with peak hour looming we got on the Tube at Westminster and went back to the Russell Square stop near our hotel. However there was still last minute souvenirs to be bought and the 3 shops near the British Museum on our way back were duly visited.
Very aptly named beer –
Spitfire – the “Bottle” of Britain !
With some time to spare, we stopped at Waterstones bookstore across from our hotel – a haunt that Erin had frequented when she stayed in London on her trip last year – and had coffee and muffins in their coffee shop for afternoon tea.
Back to the hotel and Adrienne and Liam had one last shot of internet on the hotel wifi before the hotel manager organised us a car to get to Heathrow. The traffic was pretty busy and there was plenty of pre-wedding activity around town – at one point we drove past a fancy hotel and there was a truckload of police outside so there was obviously someone of note there already or due to arrive.
We arrived at Heathrow around 19:00 and after checking in our bags we headed off to find some dinner – what better way to leave the UK than with Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding ! – and browse the shops whilst we waited for our flight back to home base.