The Explorer´s Club will kick your ass, run a bamboo stick through it, and bbq it over a spit while they laugh at your audacity for daring to say you have travelled widely. At least mine. The good news is, for a pricey sum, you could go with them on their tours which are one of a kind.
Apparently, Samantha Brown has a new show: Passport to Great Weekends. Catch it every Thursday, 10:00 PM (EST) on Travel Channel. They are doing a segment on London this Thursday (Jul 24), so you can see how awesome the Tower of London actually is!
I’m writing so much about London that I feel the need to split the post up for easier reading.
Tower of London
Tower of London is another must-go. It’s actually a huge fortress with lots of towers and full of gory bloody English history (I like!). Stories of deceit, murder and execution are abundant, but it’s best to hear it from one of the Beefeaters who acts as a tour guide. The Beefeaters are actually yeomen, whatever that means, and no one really knows how they got their name. One version is that they are traditionally paid in terms of food, in this case, beef. Anyway, one of the more famous occupants of this fortress was Henry VIII, he of let’s-execute-my-wives fame. I’ve only learnt about him from watching The Tudors on Showtime. Who says television can’t educate? Anyway, one of his wives whom he executed, Anne Boleyn (yea, she of that Natalie Portman movie, The Other Boleyn Girl), was buried in the church on the grounds and there’s a rumour that she haunts the ground carrying her severed head. Scary stuff.
Henry VIII’s armour. He was apparently fat. And erm…big.
Tower Bridge
The so-called London Bridge. That’s actually Tower Bridge. London Bridge is butt ugly, and not worth a photo.
British Museum
The Elgin Marbles
The British Museum. It’s free entry so that’s good stuff. You’ll get to see really cool artifacts such as the Rosetta Stone, which unlocked the key in translating Egyptian hieroglyphs. Also, the Elgin Marbles which were from the Parthenon in Greece. There’s this whole argument about who should get the Elgin Marbles, but I think the British Museum’s argument is kinda lame.
Real mummies and corpses, preserved for all to see. I was wussed out to photograph the mummy in New Haven because there was no one around but since there were no shortage of visitors this time, I manned up to risk their undead wrath.
Open a checking account with the Bank of Hell and get your free cheque book! Good for eternity.
I had been to London when I was young, but even then, I remembered being freaked out by all the stories about Jack the Ripper. Stories about a crazy English man carving young English girls for kicks did not bode well for me. Though I was (and still am) neither English nor female, I was apprehensive of meeting an insane English man who might have a morbid fascination with Chinese boys. Suffice to say, London was not my favourite city at that time.
Not anymore. London is now my kind of city. Screw Jack the crazy, this is the city of Austin Powers and the Beatles, and I can see why. It is a city with such a rich history, and yet, its long past doesn’t hinder its progress, but adds to its appeal. The city has a vibrant soul, and there’s a little bit of something for everyone.
First thing on the itinery after I touched down at 8.30pm : Head down to Baywater for some long-awaited kickass roast duck. I’ve heard of the famous roast duck from Four Seasons for a long time, and some regard it as one of the best in the world. When we reached the restaurant (which is pretty easy to find once you exit the tube station), we were greeted by an efficient curt waitress by the name of Sandie. Apparently, she’s the door bitch of this establishment and she made us wait for an entire hour before we got a table. Not that it was her fault, the queue was just crazy long. Of course, I was a little miffed that a group of 6 jumped ahead of the queue because they knew her, but I guess you gotta hate the game, not the player. Besides Babbo, I never had to queue that long to get into a restaurant so every passing minute raise my expectations just that little bit higher. It was sheer torture to see people tucking into their duck.
Four Seasons Roast Duck
Egg Foo Yong
Our duck finally arrived (though we needed to remind them twice), and we attacked it with gusto. It was delicious, but it was a little cold. And though the duck meat was tender and the skin crispy, it was a little salty near the bones. Also, I was not sure if the duck was worth waiting one hour for. I could easily get that quality of roast duck at Johnson Duck opposite Beauty World in Singapore, assuming of course, quality hasn’t dropped since the last time I went there which was 1 year ago. Bottom line, it was good, but not one-hour-wait good. I liked the Egg Foo Yong better though, because they had these huge prawns on steroids instead of the Mini-Me prawns that I was used to. And they used real crab on the veggie dish we had so thumbs up for that. Anyway, FYI, they had stopped selling the duck takeaway. You can only get it if you dine in the restaurant. And I think the best time to go is either early (6 pm?) or really late (10 pm) to avoid the long ass queues if you didn’t make reservations.
Four Seasons Restaurant
83 Queensway, Bayswater, London W2 3RL
020-7229-4320noon to 11:15 pm (Mon-Sat), noon to 10:45 pm (Sundays)
And the final is:
Service: 0.8/2 thumbs
Food: 1.3/2 thumbs
Value: 1.4/ 2 thumbs
Overall: 1.2/2 thumbs
The next day: Westminster Abbey. I have to admit, I was a little hesitant on entering Westmister Abbey at first. All the churches in Germany I’ve been to were boring. It was the same thing over and over again: high ceilings, images/sculptures of the cross/Jesus, altar etc. Plus, I had to pay 9 pounds to get in and the currency converter in my head was ringing alarm bells. But the sight that greeted me when I entered took my breath away. The place was filled with all sorts of statues remembering famous figures in English history. It was like a walk through the pages of a history textbook. From what I gathered, famous important figures, such as the monarchs were buried here in the Abbey. According to Frommers, the most hallowed spot in the Abbey is where Edward the Confessor was buried and there is restricted access to that area. You can get in only on private visits. One thing cool about the Abbey is that they also recognized other non-royal figures in English history such as Charles Darwin, Shakespeare and the RAF during WW2. And since the Abbey was and is used for coronation purposes for a looonng time, you can really tell this is an important place. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed so that’s the only bad thing about it. It’s still a must-see though.
Big Ben
Gothic buildings around Westminster
Palace of Westminster
Lunch at Borough Market is DA BOMB! I don’t understand how Frommers can miss this place out. There are loads of interesting food stalls selling all sorts of mouth-watering dishes that I can spend hours wandering around. There’s ostrich meat, home-made pasta, and of course, fish and chips. The fish and chips were so good because they actually used real fish (with skin!) and not some cheap ass white meat that most people try to pass off as fish.
Fish&Chips
The chocolates are really good. We picked out a few flavours but our lousy palate can only recognize the chocolates with ginger in it.
Scallops from the Shellseekers. For 4.5 pounds, you get 3 scallops grilled and served with bean sprouts and bacon. Super.
Filed under: Random Ramblings
I´m blogging while waiting for my experiments to finish. I´ve been doing the same thing over and over again which includes: breathing in huge amounts of formic acid fumes and getting my hands stained black from silver nitrate, and that I´m sure, is not a good thing. One thing good about working in Germany is that work ends at 4 and that leaves a lot of free time in the evening. The downside of this arrangement is a) Ludwigshafen/Mannheim is not the most exciting of cities and b) I´m trying to save up for Eurotrip round 2.
I think I like the German labour laws. 30 days of paid vacation and 37.5 hours working week. Work starts at an ungodly hour of 7.30 am but since I end at 4, I guess it equals out.
