England

26th June, 2009, AEST 6:59am

Day two of the Tour de French Familie. After a much needed sleep from yesterdays thirty-three hour day, we set off at 9am London time for my first taste of being a tourist. There are a lot of things I vowed never to do in my life, such as never smoking, or never sitting through another episode of Two and a Half Men for as long as I live. But you know, I did it, I associated myself with my stereotypical touristy family. We wreak tourist where ever we go. Our mega tourism started by getting on the aptly named ‘Big Bus’ services which took us around to all the sites in London. I wont lie, I’m a nerd when it comes to history, and it was fascinating listening to the audio regarding what places were at one stage before big businesses came and raped the buildings, turning them into these half old half new hybrid buildings. I like to call them mules personally. Not quite here nor there and kind of lame. Any who, so we powered up our tourist jems getting off the tourist bus at Westminster Bridge and jumped straight onto another touristardy quest , that being the ‘City Cruise’ ferry of course. Destination – Greenwich. The ferry was great, the guide was amusing to listen to, if you could speak English that is. I’ll eject here and quickly talk about an observation I made when I was in various tourist prone areas. People would always tell me that Americans were the worst people to be in a tour group with, they were apparently loud, and complain a lot. I always saw this as a negative stereotype, but wow, I have to say, from the people I encountered, I’d say the general statement to be true. Perhaps I just was in the wrong place at the wrong times to observe this. I don’t know, just an observation. Anyway, back to Greenwich. Absolutely beautiful place. I don’t know how many times the person who originally acquired that land had to ‘service’ a money tree nymph, but I salute them. Nice job. The view from pretty much everywhere is fantastic, but from the observatory, it’s breath taking. Speaking of the observatory, we did the wanky thing while we were there by taking pictures of ourselves standing on either side of the meridian. Yes we have lives, shut up. Missed our ferry back as a consequence my younger sister winging about needing to be fed (children under 13 don’t need food as far as I’m concerned), my parents giving into her demands, pulling a tourist and going the wrong way, my other sister not wanting to walk at her ‘rape pace’ (as far as she’s concerned, that’s anything over half a kilometer. I suppose that’s in her defense going to save her one day). Caught the next ferry and off to the Tower of London we ventured, so alls well that ends well. The Tower was great. I’m actually not sure what I liked more about it though; events that happened inside the walls, or the walls of the fortress itself. Just amazing architecture, it really makes you wish that Australia could actually have some interesting features such as that. Oh well, we make it up by other historical things. But I persist. I was disgusted at the Tower when it came to the crowns and jewels of past kings and queens. Over compensation much? Regardless of the monarchs self esteem issues, it was still awe inspiring the amount of detail put into each work, some people here jus too much time on their hands. At 5:33pm however, we were shooed out of the Tower by a worker who thought we were American. Fail. Another ferry ride later and we were back in Westminster, where mum nearly shat herself on the London Eye. Nice view from up that high. On our way back later, we observed an amusing protest by push bike riders who stopped traffic, making a stance against the evil overloards, the Transport Council and their horrendous practices of charging people for train travel. Screw what I said last entry, that has the making of an epic. That’s all folks.