One of the main reasons I wanted to return to London was to see the royal palaces of Henry VIII. Kensington Palace wasn't lived in by Henry VIII, but it was an easy one to get to, so we went there yesterday and were quite delighted by the place.
Of course Kensington Palace was the home of Princess Diana, and when she died 10 years ago, it was the focus of many people's grief, with unprecedented numbers of flowers being left at the gates by the mourning public. The tour included an exhibition of the Mario Testino's photos of the Princess, taken barely months before her death. Diana was undoubtedly an extraordinary feast for the eyes. And Testino's photos seemed to open a window directly onto her soul. I understand she suffered borderline personality disorder, which is a very serious mental disorder (and which in the Princess's case is virtually never discussed), but there is no trace of her inner turmoil in the photos. She looked peaceful and serene in the photos - the very essence of a Princess.
Also included on the tour was Princess Margaret's apartment, which was surprisingly small, considering how ROYAL she was. I remember her children recently sold many of Princess Margaret's personal effects - how sad that must have been for them. Some of her clothes were on display in her rooms - she was equally a fashion icon in the sixties as Diana was in her day - much of which was captured in pictures by her husband, Lord Snowden, a famous photographer in his own right.
The highlight of the tour, in my opinion, was the King's Apartments. Which King, I hear you say? It was in fact King William III and Queen Mary, although Mary was the one who ascended the throne. William was her husband, a Dutch Royal by birth. Mary was daughter to King James I. He actually had two sons - the heir who died as a youth and a second son who was physically handicapped (and who must have died but I don't know how). So Mary found herself on the throne and only agreed to be Queen if her husband was named King in his own right. She brokered a deal that ensured that in the event of her death, William retained the throne. As it turned out William died first. And since they had no children, when Mary died the throne passed to Anne, her sister, the last child of King James the first.
Poor Anne's husband died at a young age - only after he'd managed to impregnate the Queen 18 times! Unfortunately none of the children survived beyond the age of 11, which made the Queen so depressed she became morbidly obese. When she died, there was no direct heir and the throne passed to the Hanovarian line, which eventually led to our Queen, Elizabeth II ascending the throne.
Back to the actual palace - we saw the presence chamber, the Privy Chamber, the Queen's Privy chamber, the Queen's dinning room - a very small room with a small oval table big enough for two to sit at, and we also saw the Queen's bedroom. There were two galleries of 30 metres in length, one for the Queen and one for the King. Both were decorated with numerous priceless artworks (none of which were particularly interesting to me). We were told the King in particular liked to walk laps of his gallery on days when it rained.
Also of note - Queen Victoria was born in Kensington Palace, and she lived there with her mother, the Dutchess of Kent, until she ascended the throne at the age of 18. We saw her bedchamber, and while the bed in that room was hers, it had actually been brought there from Buckingham Palace.
In all I thought the tour of Kensington Palace was great value. It's smack dab in the middle of Hyde Park, which is explains why Diana was spotted jogging or rollerblading in the park as often as she was. Kensington itself is quite a cool place - I can see why Diana enjoyed the neighbourhood.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Money
Well, I thought we'd saved a mountain of money for this trip, but after only one day in London, we've demolished a goodly portion of our cash. Not through frivolousness, either. We went to the movies today, which is a fair thing to do when your feet are killing you. The price of the ticket was £12.50 each. The exchange rate here is 2.6 Aussie dollars for one pound. So, you do the maths and what you come up to is a movie ticket that basically cost AUD$33. EACH.
EACH!!!
It cost us AUD$66 to get in the freaking door! Never mind the snackies! We didn't have any because we don't have a bloody overdraft!
The startling reality is we got better value for our £12 entry fee into Kensington Palace than we did out of our movie tickets. It just goes to show that the pursuit of history is a happy one afterall.
EACH!!!
It cost us AUD$66 to get in the freaking door! Never mind the snackies! We didn't have any because we don't have a bloody overdraft!
The startling reality is we got better value for our £12 entry fee into Kensington Palace than we did out of our movie tickets. It just goes to show that the pursuit of history is a happy one afterall.
The trouble with toilets
There is one thing every Australian should be thankful for, and that is the reliability of toilets.
When is the last time your toilet got blocked? When, for that matter, is the last time you encountered a blocked toilet? It doesn't happen too often, does it? That's because Australian plumbing seems to be the best in the world.
Not so in England. Today I have encountered two blocked toilets. One in McDonald's Leicester Square, and another in the Odeon Cinema, also in Leicester Square. I wouldn't think too much of this, except the toilet in our room at Aquamarine in Phuket also got blocked - not once, but twice.
I note that in all three cases the toilets were "American Standard". Well American standard is obviously crap. Australian plumbers should consult to the world. They'd make a packet!
When is the last time your toilet got blocked? When, for that matter, is the last time you encountered a blocked toilet? It doesn't happen too often, does it? That's because Australian plumbing seems to be the best in the world.
Not so in England. Today I have encountered two blocked toilets. One in McDonald's Leicester Square, and another in the Odeon Cinema, also in Leicester Square. I wouldn't think too much of this, except the toilet in our room at Aquamarine in Phuket also got blocked - not once, but twice.
I note that in all three cases the toilets were "American Standard". Well American standard is obviously crap. Australian plumbers should consult to the world. They'd make a packet!
Jet-lagged
First off, before I get into my daily update, what the hell is going on in Sydney and the central coast with the rain??? If anyone can give us some updates on what's happening back there it'd be appreciated. I keep seeing things on msn news about it and it looks pretty bad.
Anyway, enough about some of you, let's get back to me. And Pet.
We finally got to check into the b&b yesterday at 2:00pm and promptly went straight to bed and slept through til a little after 1:00am. Wide awake and still on Thai time, we got up, showered, got dressed and went for a walk around the neighbourhood. It was weird walking around at 2:00am on a Friday night and all the pubs were closed! We went to a convenience store and bought some snacks, including a Malteasers ice cream - hands down the best ice cream ever. We then wandered past a private club where a bunch of paparazzi were hanging out, waiting to see who'd come in or out of there. Had a brief chat with them and saw in the paper today that Kate Middleton had been in there. They showed a picture of her leaving the club, along with a close up of her sandalled feet and a blurb about her grubby toes! She'd been out dancing in a nightclub for the love of Pete! Of course her toes are gonna get a little grimy!
We ended up back in bed around 3:00am or so until 7:00 this morning. Spent the day in Harrod's, which is excellent, then wandered over to Kensington Palace and had a look through there. Very staid place, not particularly grand for the most part, although some of the artwork on the walls and ceilings was really quite amazing.
We thought we'd go see a movie so we bought tickets for Pirates of the Caribbean 3. At £13.50 each our two tickets ended up costing us approximately $70!!! Suffice it to say, we didn't dare get any popcorn or drinks.
So now it's 8:10pm and still broad daylight for another two hours and we're seriously tired. We're neither on Thai time nor London time - we're in some wacky twilight zone time, so our plans are to go back to the hotel and pass out like party machines and hopefully in the morning we'll wake up and be able to co-exist with all the Londoners.
Goodnight. And good luck.
Anyway, enough about some of you, let's get back to me. And Pet.
We finally got to check into the b&b yesterday at 2:00pm and promptly went straight to bed and slept through til a little after 1:00am. Wide awake and still on Thai time, we got up, showered, got dressed and went for a walk around the neighbourhood. It was weird walking around at 2:00am on a Friday night and all the pubs were closed! We went to a convenience store and bought some snacks, including a Malteasers ice cream - hands down the best ice cream ever. We then wandered past a private club where a bunch of paparazzi were hanging out, waiting to see who'd come in or out of there. Had a brief chat with them and saw in the paper today that Kate Middleton had been in there. They showed a picture of her leaving the club, along with a close up of her sandalled feet and a blurb about her grubby toes! She'd been out dancing in a nightclub for the love of Pete! Of course her toes are gonna get a little grimy!
We ended up back in bed around 3:00am or so until 7:00 this morning. Spent the day in Harrod's, which is excellent, then wandered over to Kensington Palace and had a look through there. Very staid place, not particularly grand for the most part, although some of the artwork on the walls and ceilings was really quite amazing.
We thought we'd go see a movie so we bought tickets for Pirates of the Caribbean 3. At £13.50 each our two tickets ended up costing us approximately $70!!! Suffice it to say, we didn't dare get any popcorn or drinks.
So now it's 8:10pm and still broad daylight for another two hours and we're seriously tired. We're neither on Thai time nor London time - we're in some wacky twilight zone time, so our plans are to go back to the hotel and pass out like party machines and hopefully in the morning we'll wake up and be able to co-exist with all the Londoners.
Goodnight. And good luck.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Photos
Sadly, I note the PCs in the Internet cafe in London do not even have USB ports, let alone card readers. So we might not be able to show you any pictures until we get to France - I'm hoping Sophie will let us do a little uploading at her place.
Unless we find a more sophisticated Internet cafe before then... that's the best we can do...
Seriously though, we are very fricking tired, thanks to a very long trip from Phuket and a stupid check-in time of 2.00pm at the B&B which was NEVER stated during the booking process. The dodgey Indian bugger that mans the front desk suggested we leave our suitcases in the breakfast room and go for a wander for four hours, but I refused. They would have been sitting out in the open for any man's brother and his dog to walk off with. And since Mark's drink spill on the plane last night wiped out his underpants, that would have been very bad news for him - it ain't easy going stag, you know!
I'm nearly asleep in my chair waiting for the clock to tick around. We're going to install ourselves in a pub shortly, although what good we think this will do is a wonder to me, since one whiff of booze is liable to put me into a coma.
ZZZZzzzzzzz.... what? Where am I? Sawadee... g'day... bonjour... ola... how do you do old chap?
Unless we find a more sophisticated Internet cafe before then... that's the best we can do...
Seriously though, we are very fricking tired, thanks to a very long trip from Phuket and a stupid check-in time of 2.00pm at the B&B which was NEVER stated during the booking process. The dodgey Indian bugger that mans the front desk suggested we leave our suitcases in the breakfast room and go for a wander for four hours, but I refused. They would have been sitting out in the open for any man's brother and his dog to walk off with. And since Mark's drink spill on the plane last night wiped out his underpants, that would have been very bad news for him - it ain't easy going stag, you know!
I'm nearly asleep in my chair waiting for the clock to tick around. We're going to install ourselves in a pub shortly, although what good we think this will do is a wonder to me, since one whiff of booze is liable to put me into a coma.
ZZZZzzzzzzz.... what? Where am I? Sawadee... g'day... bonjour... ola... how do you do old chap?
London
Well, here we are in London (Earls Court, to be precise), blogging away in an internet cafe as we can't check into our room until 2.00pm (it's now only 10:48am).
What a trip! Phuket airport was overflowing with Aussie bogans and seriously, I was ashamed to be Australian. So you can now call me Fritz Hammenheimer, German Eurotrash guy.
We had about a three hour stopover at Bangkok while we waited around for our 1:10 am flight to London. The flight from Bangkok took 11 hours and 35 minutes and then it took us approximately an hour to get through immigration, so by the time we got the Tube from Heathrow to Earls Court and dragged our suitcases, or ports, if you will, to the B&B we were ready for a shower, some breakfast and a sleep. But, due to not being able to check in until 2.00pm, our revised plan is for some breakfast (done), some blogging (doing), a wash and blowdry for Pet to get her hair all glamourous again and some time spent in a pub, reading magazines, drinking beer and having some lunch.
London! It's Pet's third time here and my first and it really is quite a fascinating place so far. It's so similar to Australia yet so completely different - it feels both familiar yet new at the same time. They've turned out some good old fashioned grey British sky for us, which was nice of them. I think the thing that's taking me the most to get used to is being surrounded by people who speak English as opposed to Thai! I haven't seen Tony Blair yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
Until next time, your pal, Fritz.
What a trip! Phuket airport was overflowing with Aussie bogans and seriously, I was ashamed to be Australian. So you can now call me Fritz Hammenheimer, German Eurotrash guy.
We had about a three hour stopover at Bangkok while we waited around for our 1:10 am flight to London. The flight from Bangkok took 11 hours and 35 minutes and then it took us approximately an hour to get through immigration, so by the time we got the Tube from Heathrow to Earls Court and dragged our suitcases, or ports, if you will, to the B&B we were ready for a shower, some breakfast and a sleep. But, due to not being able to check in until 2.00pm, our revised plan is for some breakfast (done), some blogging (doing), a wash and blowdry for Pet to get her hair all glamourous again and some time spent in a pub, reading magazines, drinking beer and having some lunch.
London! It's Pet's third time here and my first and it really is quite a fascinating place so far. It's so similar to Australia yet so completely different - it feels both familiar yet new at the same time. They've turned out some good old fashioned grey British sky for us, which was nice of them. I think the thing that's taking me the most to get used to is being surrounded by people who speak English as opposed to Thai! I haven't seen Tony Blair yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
Until next time, your pal, Fritz.
Terrible blast from the past
I think I told many people we had specially chosen the two seats in the second last row of the plane for our trip to London, and were delighted when we settled in 69J & K last night - the roominess, the seeming privacy, we thought our flight to London would be bliss.
Sadly, as the last passengers began to fill the plane, a bloke came strutting down the aisle to sit in row 70, one back and across from us. There is only one word to describe that bloke - putrid. He was wearing black pants, a black shirt, a black t-shirt, black baseball hat and smelled like he'd been in a nightclub for the past week and had failed to go home and wash. His personal odour was incredibly pungent - so much so it permeated throughout the cabin to at least three rows in either direction. In Mark's opinion, he had the appearance of a junky.
Maybe I could have handled the stench. The problem was, the stench was AN EXACT REPLICA of the stench sported by a guy I lived with in Hong Kong in the early nineties. My days with that guy were not happy ones, and a lot of difficulty I had with myself when I left HK was because of that guy. Suffice to say I suffered a lot of psychological trauma at the hands of that guy. With the stench of Passenger 70G ripping through my nostrils, all my nightmares of that period in my life seemed like they'd become real. So much so, I kept having to check to make sure it wasn't the actual guy I'd lived with - but it wasn't. It was just a carbon replica.
Mark asked how a person gets to smell like that and I explained it to him in simple terms: firstly, you become utterly careless about your personal higene, washing infrequently, but always sweating profusely. Then you fail to wash your clothes, but keep wearing them, oblivious to the developing funk. You go nightclubbing in places where people smoke freely and they use a fog machine to create false ambience. Then you drink a lot, and maybe spill a fair bit of your drink on your already oversoiled clothes. And to enhance the stench, you eat bad food consistently, to the point where your kidneys and liver are on the edge of failure. The perspiration that makes it out through your pores is entirely toxic, leaving your skin sallow and pale.
I took out the lemon grass essential oil I'd purchased duty free and began to wipe drops of it on me, Mark and our seats, hoping to come to terms with the personal affront to my olfactory senses. But then Passenger 70G took his shoes off and I was over whelmed. The wave of stench was tidal, washing over me, reaching Mark by the window, and sending the poor Japanese couple in 70 D & E scrambling. I covered my nose with my hands and began to cry. Mark got out of his seat, leaned right over the guy and told him to put his shoes back on because the smell was making his wife sick. Sadly, when Mark attempted to slide back into his seat, he knocked his JD & coke all over himself and his seat. He snapped with fury.
So I went to the cabin manager and told him in no uncertain terms that we had to be moved. It took a full five minutes - maybe more - of me explaining in great detail exactly why we were not able to remain where we were. There were six empty seats opposite the galley midway up the plane which obviously the crew were retaining to help them handle the service of food - they were already covered with food service trays and empty cups. But I was told they were for "sick" passengers. I offered to vomit on one of those seats to demonstrate that I was sick enough to be seated there. Can I vomit on cue? I honestly believe the stench of Passenger 70G could have driven me to it.
Needless to say the cabin manager finally relented and reseated us, but told us they were bad seats because of the galley. No seat could have been worse than the ones near Passenger 70G. It is a wonder the enitre rear of the plane didn't mutiny. While we were very grateful to be moved, I do feel we were treated with a definite lack of sympathy for the rest of the flight. Mark said he had a feeling we were regarded as being "difficult" passengers. Which is not appropriate. We worked really hard to get our heads back in a good place so that our trip wasn't ruined. I feel the least Thai's flight staff could have done was apologise for the inconvenience.
We never saw Passenger 70G get off the plane. But I do think he's the type that gets strip searched at Heathrow. Whatever his fate was, I pray to God that we never cross paths with him again.
Sadly, as the last passengers began to fill the plane, a bloke came strutting down the aisle to sit in row 70, one back and across from us. There is only one word to describe that bloke - putrid. He was wearing black pants, a black shirt, a black t-shirt, black baseball hat and smelled like he'd been in a nightclub for the past week and had failed to go home and wash. His personal odour was incredibly pungent - so much so it permeated throughout the cabin to at least three rows in either direction. In Mark's opinion, he had the appearance of a junky.
Maybe I could have handled the stench. The problem was, the stench was AN EXACT REPLICA of the stench sported by a guy I lived with in Hong Kong in the early nineties. My days with that guy were not happy ones, and a lot of difficulty I had with myself when I left HK was because of that guy. Suffice to say I suffered a lot of psychological trauma at the hands of that guy. With the stench of Passenger 70G ripping through my nostrils, all my nightmares of that period in my life seemed like they'd become real. So much so, I kept having to check to make sure it wasn't the actual guy I'd lived with - but it wasn't. It was just a carbon replica.
Mark asked how a person gets to smell like that and I explained it to him in simple terms: firstly, you become utterly careless about your personal higene, washing infrequently, but always sweating profusely. Then you fail to wash your clothes, but keep wearing them, oblivious to the developing funk. You go nightclubbing in places where people smoke freely and they use a fog machine to create false ambience. Then you drink a lot, and maybe spill a fair bit of your drink on your already oversoiled clothes. And to enhance the stench, you eat bad food consistently, to the point where your kidneys and liver are on the edge of failure. The perspiration that makes it out through your pores is entirely toxic, leaving your skin sallow and pale.
I took out the lemon grass essential oil I'd purchased duty free and began to wipe drops of it on me, Mark and our seats, hoping to come to terms with the personal affront to my olfactory senses. But then Passenger 70G took his shoes off and I was over whelmed. The wave of stench was tidal, washing over me, reaching Mark by the window, and sending the poor Japanese couple in 70 D & E scrambling. I covered my nose with my hands and began to cry. Mark got out of his seat, leaned right over the guy and told him to put his shoes back on because the smell was making his wife sick. Sadly, when Mark attempted to slide back into his seat, he knocked his JD & coke all over himself and his seat. He snapped with fury.
So I went to the cabin manager and told him in no uncertain terms that we had to be moved. It took a full five minutes - maybe more - of me explaining in great detail exactly why we were not able to remain where we were. There were six empty seats opposite the galley midway up the plane which obviously the crew were retaining to help them handle the service of food - they were already covered with food service trays and empty cups. But I was told they were for "sick" passengers. I offered to vomit on one of those seats to demonstrate that I was sick enough to be seated there. Can I vomit on cue? I honestly believe the stench of Passenger 70G could have driven me to it.
Needless to say the cabin manager finally relented and reseated us, but told us they were bad seats because of the galley. No seat could have been worse than the ones near Passenger 70G. It is a wonder the enitre rear of the plane didn't mutiny. While we were very grateful to be moved, I do feel we were treated with a definite lack of sympathy for the rest of the flight. Mark said he had a feeling we were regarded as being "difficult" passengers. Which is not appropriate. We worked really hard to get our heads back in a good place so that our trip wasn't ruined. I feel the least Thai's flight staff could have done was apologise for the inconvenience.
We never saw Passenger 70G get off the plane. But I do think he's the type that gets strip searched at Heathrow. Whatever his fate was, I pray to God that we never cross paths with him again.
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