Melbourne-Dubai-London

Friday 28 August 2009

Heading off
The flight was good - our own personal movie marathon. Dick had hot food spilt on his hand by one of the stewards – we are still waiting for Emirates to call us about the upgrade to first class for our trip home.

Saturday 29 August
Dubai - London
As we were approaching Dubai we flew over desert – not much to see at night, but when we were flying over cities it looked beautiful, with roads and towns lit up in the darkness. We flew into Dubai as the sun was rising – there was a gorgeous red and orange glow on the horizon. Up until then there was nothing to be seen out the window as it was all dark. We walked around Dubai airport for an hour or so before we headed off to London.
As we were flying in daylight there was so much to see as we flew over the desert, the Arabian Gulf, Turkey, the Black Sea, Eastern Europe, Germany, along the coast of France, across the Channel and southern England, then London. Fantastic. Much better than the movies.
We used our Oyster cards (topped them up, too) and got the train from Heathrow to Tower Hill, where our hotel is. The train trip was good – the train was clean and bright with big windows so we could see rows of terraces houses, back yards, high streets and stations with interesting names – we think we might take the train to the end of the line to go to Cockfosters, or Barking.
Stepping out of the station the first thing we saw was a double decker London bus and when it went past there was the Tower of London. We are really in London!
After we checked in walked around the outside of Tower of London, across Tower Bridge and along The Thames on Queen’s walk – lots of people everywhere, but we must look local (?!) as three different groups of people asked us for directions. We went to Shakespeare’s Globe and have booked tickets to see Troilus and Cressida on Tuesday night. Then across the Millennium footbridge and up to St Paul’s, which is just beautiful. We looked around outside – the massive doors were shut, pretended to be Princess Di and Charles on their wedding day and hummed a few bars of “Feed the Birds” (Mary Poppins) and headed off for some dinner and an English beer. By then we had been awake for about 40 hours, hopped on a double decker bus, went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Getting ready

one week to go!