Not-so-sunny London - days 5-7

It took so long for me to write Day 5's post that it has become a 3-day epic! Since then, London has become less sunny, although it is meant to fine up over the weekend - and I'm looking forward to a 13-degree day tomorrow.

This entry is so long, hence I have compiled a dot-pointed summary of sights:

Day 5 - Tower of London, Golden Palace, Spamalot

Day 6 - Southwark Cathedral, Globe Theatre, Tate Modern, Millenium Bridge, Selfridges

Day 7 - Trafalgar Square, Horse Guard Parade, 10 Downing St (attempt), Westminster Abbey, Big Ben & Parliament House, shopping on Oxford, Regent & Bond Streets.

Thanks to Jelena, Donald & Kristian for their comments re my last post! FYI, also from last post, a cathedral is so-named because it houses the bishop's throne, or cathedra.

Day 5: Tuesday 05/02/2008. I left home in search of the Tower of London at 9:20am.

Hannah's London Tip #8: Buy your all-day Travelcard (covers all trains, overland and underground) after 9:30am and save money. Applies to weekday travel only. £5.90 instead of £9 means a £21 saving over the course of my stay, which I can waste frivolously on other things.

I lunched very cheaply (£2.94) upstairs at EAT (next to the Tower), an awesome organic & wholefoods place that is actually a 'fast food' chain in London. As I ate, I enjoyed an amazing view - as I do wherever I happen to be in London. The monuments, old buildings, terraced housing. You just fall on top of them without a plan and many do not appear in guidebooks. It's all so fabulous.

The Tower of London is huge. It took me over 3.5hrs to explore. I bought a Tower guidebook (£4.95; useful, but not essential). There are constant interactive displays, short films and plaques about the Tower's history - let alone the architecture, views, engravings from ex-prisoners, atmosphere. I was glad to be here on a bleak day. It felt more authentic.

Hannah's London Tip #9: Don't wear high-heels to the Tower. Aside from doing lots of walking, they get caught between the cobbled path.

I loved so much about the Tower, but the Crown Jewels exhibition was my favourite part. I travelator-ed around the main exhibit twice - behind the same American lady who, whilst also beginning her second round, gestured to me and proclaimed loudly to her husband, "See! She understands what I am talking about!"

I made myself a very kitsch Tower souvenir in the form of a pressed penny.

Hannah's London Tip #10: If you want a pressed penny, ensure you have £1 for entry to the Tower's Regimental Museum, a 1p coin (to be pressed) and a 50p coin (to pay for the pressing).

I now find myself doing/seeing things that friends have shared from their travels, except that I have completely forgotten the related conversation until I am in the thick of the action. Take the pressed penny - I now recall Hannah V telling me about her Tower experience. It's kind of exciting, like I'm trapped in a real-life King's Quest, only I don't know what the ultimate goal is. A bit like the search for the grail.

Speaking of grail, here's my Spamalot review: the Palace Theatre was the perfect location for a musical set in 932AD and, despite Shane being the only one of us to have seen the Monty Python films, Hayley and I had high hopes. I shouldn't have. Whilst I found it mildly amusing in parts, Spamalot let me down. In its defence, I was feeling very cultured and supertired at the time - and this is not a classy show. So what was it about? Certainly not The Holy Grail remake it promised (I am told the film is actually very funny). It's more of a Benny Hill meets Priscilla (as in 'Queen of the Desert') arrangement. Yes, exactly as you picture it now. No, not really my cup of tea. 2 stars [Sorry, Jelena], and only because of the rousing musical numbers, the brilliantly hammy performance from the Lady of the Lake, and the free ticket upgrade we were given as we walked through the door.

Before Spamalot, we dined at the Golden Pagoda in Chinatown, near Leicester Square. We wondered what all the crowds were about, then realised it was the eve of the Chinese New Year. How fortuitous! The restaurant had a 10-page menu, and service was so prompt that I think it took us longer to eat than order. Dinner was yummy but nothing special and, @ £15 per person, we over-ate (very fitting, seeing as it was the last night of the Year of the Pig...).

Still, our stomachs' icecream compartments were not filled and we hankered for dessert. We headed to Macca's, where I experienced my first McFlurry. I did feel odd about that, given we could have gone somewhere more distinctly European, but it was so good and only 99p.

Day 6: Wednesday 06/02/2008. Happy Chinese New Year! The Year of the Rat is upon us.

My first stop on Day 6 was Southwark Cathedral. As the first Gothic church in London, it's got very, very old roots. It even has links to Shakespeare, with its Sam Wanamaker memorial.

Sam Wanamaker was the American actor who, after finding a brass plaque to be the only memorial dedicated to Shakepeare in London, started the massive task of rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe Theatre - as its 3rd incarnation since 1599. He died before he could see his ~50 year project come to fruition in 1997. How do I know all of this? I did the tour and viewed the Theatre exhibition (£9 cost). The Theatre's season runs from April to November, so that makes me either 2 months too early, or 2 months too late.

Just down the road from the Globe is Vinopolis, which I didn't venture into, for fear of being sucked into one of my favoured pastimes.

Entry to the Tate Modern, which is only slightly further along the Thames walk, is strictly free - but they have little, arty, flasky-type things prompting you to donate £3 at every turn. So I donated my unofficial entry fee. I wish they had some sort of "I've given my £3 to keep Tate Modern" sticker - I felt like these donation sculptures were trying to suck more generosity from me at every turn and it was stifling.

Peter, you will be pleased to note that I took pictures of the earthquake in the Turbine Hall, and it was just as you described it. I couldn't, however, bring myself to get someone to take a photo of me with my foot in the crevice; it seemed too macabre.

There was so much art from well-recognised names that I hardly knew where to focus. Picasso, Pollock, Tanguy, Matisse, Monet... It was a feast for the eyes. And not all of it tasted good. I mean, dead birds stuck to a wall? At least they were stuffed, I guess. Jean Dubuffet offered up a 1950s piece of framed granite-look laminex, or so it seemed. And I never did understand those canvasses of block colour - until I read the explanation hanging next to a piece of slashed blank canvas. What is art, really? So profound. Thank you, Lucio.

I should really have kept up my tech drawing. The number of geometric designs and simple patterns posing as art was incredible. How did these artists manage to sell it as art for thousands of dollars?

The piece I really didn't get was 'Lightning with Stag in its Glare' (Beuys). The whole sculpture was brown, and it looked to me like a giant termite mound surrounded by big animal poohs. Possibly a reflection of how scared the stag was to have the lightning after it? [Now I show the true cultural deficit at my core.]

The most penetrating artists for me were Christian Schad, Mark Rothko (always a favourite) and Juan Munoz. The Munoz retrospective set me back £9 that were well worth it. I was disconcerted by 'The Wasteland' (a little boy, smiling with legs dangling from a bench that is too high for him), 'Shadow and Mouth' (a lifelike statue whose moving mouth was exaggerated by shadow) and 'Backs on Bronze' (literally spines protruding from irregular bronze boulders).

When I stepped into 'Many Times', I became part of the art. Surrounded by a roomful of identical oriental men who smiled laughingly despite their sunken feet, I felt crowded and alone. It was a caricature of the famed terracotta warriors - only these versions wore modern Asian attire, carried no weapons, held no order within their groups.

Before I made good my escape (4hrs later...), I enjoyed the awesome view of St Paul's Cathedral from the Level 7 cafe. Btw, the Level 2 cafe is not priced too badly and has excellent food and service. I found it a little rude that they automatically added a 12.5% service charge. Many places in London do, apparently. Total cost: £10.40, incl service - for pumpkin soup with bread, a side of winter greens and a bottle of water)

Anyways, I was meeting Hayley at the front of Selfridges, so I braved my way across the Millenium Bridge, which wasn't that scary after all and gave some brilliant city views. Selfridges was too huge to cover in one evening, but we gave it a red hot go. Hayley had a successful shopping expedition; I managed to find an Aveda salon and make an appointment for Friday.

Finally at home, Hayley, Shane and I succumbed to the smell of Indian cooking (there is the constant aroma of Indian spices streaming from a next-door apartment, day and night) and we bought some less-than-spectacular Indian food from nearby restaurant. At £10ea, I couldn't really complain. [And I forgot to mention that I did find my Krispy Kreme - in Waterloo Station. Yum yum!]

Day 7: Thursday 07/02/2008. I was going to take it easy today, but I figured I still had next week to be lazy. So I hit:

Trafalgar Square - including Lord Nelson & his lions; for a photo shoot only. The National Gallery awaits!;

the 11am Horse Guard Parade on Whitehall - good to say I've done it, but it wasn't much and the nearby Cavalry Museum didn't interest me for £6 entry fee;

St James's Park - where I discovered just how close Buckingham Palace was. Palaces and castles are on next week's agenda; and

10 Downing Street - from the other side of iron bars and mean-looking guards with big guns.

Westminster Abbey was just down the road, so I meandered down. The building was amazing and unmissable. The entry fee of £10 matched that of St Paul's Cathedral but, at £5, the tour was pricier. Recalling the 2-hour epic tour of three days prior, I opted for £2 guidebook. Unlike St Paul's, stained glass is everywhere that light could possibly get in. I think this makes it feel darker, more Gothic.

The Abbey is beautiful but cluttered. Carvings, tombs and marble slabs commemorating royalty, nobility, the rich and the influential over gravesites litter the hallways and chapels and, rather than feeling awe-inspired, I was simply overwhelmed by the spectacle. It also saddened me to think that I was wearing away the history underfoot with my every step; some of the marble slabs were already worn smooth.

The Cloisters gave me the chance for fresh air and I was super-excited to stumble upon Muzio Clementi's marble slab tucked down a quiet passage. A definite highlight for me. The converted crypt that is the Abbey Museum, beyond the Cloisters, is a veritable celebration of coronations (as it claims multiple times - just read the wall hangings).

Big Ben & Parliament House also got a look in before I called it a day. I was fairly sight-seeinged out at this point, which you can probably guess from my reduced entry size for the day, hence shopping in central London seemed an excellent option.

I headed directly to Oxford, Regent & Bond Streets and found some fabulous little boutiques. While all the big names were there, I also discovered some quiet gems, such as Lush (handmade bath and beauty products; the shop is set out like a cheese room) and Office (great shoes).

I was exhausted when I returned home and am just so glad that I have a relaxing morning of pampering planned before we fly to Paris for the weekend.

It's after midnight here, so I am finally calling it a night. Thanks for reading!