Shock: Northerner endorses London!

I spent this weekend down south in our fair capital city. I spent a week down there earlier this year for work purposes, and the hotel I was put up in had no hot water for most of the stay (something about a dodgy boiler I believe), so as a consolation for having to endure cold showers and boiling a kettle to have a shave, the hotel kindly issued me with a voucher for a free night’s stay whenever I wanted. I didn’t think I’d ever use it to be honest, but being stuck for something to do this past weekend, I rang them up and called in my free night. So off my better half and I went to London.

We took a National Express coach, which was fine...apart from the fact that the chemical toilet at the rear of the vehicle stank like someone had emptied a demijohn of 3 week old piss into a super soaker and then emptied that all over the walls and ceiling. Seriously, the stench of piss from that cubicle was fucking vile...and on one of those coaches that has sealed windows and, conveniently, broken air-con...well, you get the idea. We moved to the front of the coach to escape the acrid fumes of urea but my heart went out to the poor bastards who had to sit at the back in the midst of them. Also – what is the deal with those new coaches? You know, the ones with the caterpillar antennae for wing mirrors? What fucking moron decided that having sealed, double-glazed windows was a good idea?

We got to London Victoria at about 1pm, so we spent the rest of Saturday visiting the various free museums in the locale. The Victoria & Albert was pretty cool – they’ve got some quite impressive displays in there, and you’d have to spend about a day to actually see all of it. It’s not on a par with the Louvre scale-wase, but the Louvre is just fucking ridiculous and offers an unrivalled opportunity for museum/gallery burn-out. You know – when you’ve seen enough old pots and paintings and you’re just wandering aimlessly and thinking about having a beer or a sandwich. After the V&A, we popped across the road to the Science Museum. I’ve been there quite recently so wasn’t massively surprised to find that most of it was still the same, but my companion had never been so we went in. I was mainly interested in seeing the new Alan Turing exhibition as he’s a bit of a legend in the field of computing, but the exhibition was a lot smaller that I expected and also a lot busier, so scope for enjoying it was minimal. Far too many people trying to take pictures of enigma machines and the Pilot ACE through glass with a camera with THE FLASH ON. Seriously, why? Turing would be spinning in his grave if he knew these morons were looking at his magnum opus and committing such offensive miscalculations of logic. Sadly he can’t, as he was cremated – but ‘spinning in the wind’ just doesn’t sound as good.

After the Science Museum we were going to try the Natural History Museum, but the queue looked similar to the one that’ll be spewing from the gates of Hades come Judgement Day, so we passed and headed to a nearby pub for light refreshment instead. After a quick tube trip and check-in at our (free) hotel, we found another decent pub and had several more drinks whilst watching some Australians play a version of cricket that involved lots of lager, kicking bottles and basically falling about. Much more entertaining than the boring shite you see on TV. So that was Saturday.

Sunday involved more of the same, plus a visit to Westminster Abbey (and the spot where I stood outside the Abbey for about 3 hours during last year’s Royal Wedding, not as part of the crowd but as a part of the naval contingent for the route lining – but that’s another post), the Houses of Parliament, The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, Downing Street, Cleopatra’s Needle, Buckingham Palace and several parks and gardens. Finally, we got back on the coach (not the same one from Saturday’s journey, thankfully) and returned from whence we came. All in all, it was a really good weekend and really changed my opinion of London. Yes, it’s busy and congested and there are whole battalions of rude and arrogant people walking about (and swarms of foreign school kids wearing brightly coloured rucksacks and whom refuse to acknowledge you even exist as they march towards you)...but I couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer number of things to see and do and places to visit - most of which are completely free.

After visiting Paris a few years ago and being a bit shocked to find that virtually everything wasn’t free, I must eat a tiny morsel of humble pie and concede that London is actually a pretty decent place to visit. I wouldn’t really want to live there just because of how busy it is (the tube alone would drive me insane), but as a place to visit – it’s OK. Which is quite convenient really, considering the Olympics kicks off this week and the world and his wife are coming to visit. Wouldn’t want to be getting the tube at any point in the next two weeks though, and thankfully, I don’t have to.