Tuesday

I bought tickets to Wicked for tonight, the Big Bus  Tour hop on-hop off and the Tower of London from the Porter at the hotel. He turns out to have come from Wanneroo in Perth.

I took the "green link" feeder bus that passes down the street past the hotel and meets up with the main tours at the start of fleet street. After a short wait I caught the bus that took us down fleet street, past St Paul's Cathedral, the Bank of England and over London Bridge.

It then returned over Tower Bridge to the Tower of London where I disembarked. I enter the Tower complex just as a tour was starting so we got the spiel as we walked around. It took about 55 minutes and we finished in the Royal Chapel. From there I saw the crown jewels and then went through the White tower, which had displays of armour and so forth.

I'd had enough by then and took the included river cruise from the nearby dock down to Westminster. Passing under a number of bridges and seeing the riverside buildings, including Shell-Mex house where I worked in the 80's, the globe Theatre and the London Eye as well as various others.

I rejoined the bus which took me to Buckingham Palace. There was quite a wait for the next bus after I returned to the stop and this took us to Marble Arch. I changed to the other tour (from blue to red) as the blue one went around Hyde Park to Harrod's and the Victoria and Albert. I had originally thought I might just ride the bus back to Victoria for the show but I was getting too cold and needed to get back to the hotel.

This bus took us down through Mayfair and down Regent street to Trafalgar Square, then across the Westminster bridge and back across Waterloo. It seemed I'd missed the green bus connection but just as we were about to pass the Kingsway, one pulled up behind us. I jumped out of my bus onto it and it was the last of the day.

I took over 200 pics today so these are a very brief sample.

I made it to Wicked with 10 minutes leeway. It involved one change on the tube and you felt like you were almost walking to the next station. The show itself was somewhat disappointing after the rave reviews I'd seen over the years. The performances were fine but there were no catchy songs that I knew.

I hadn't had time to eat before hand so I had anotehr Tesco sandwich for a late supper.