… to move on from London now. Don’t have a great deal of inclination today to hop on the train and fight the people traffic to do some more sightseeing. Actually there isn’t a whole lot more here that I’m keen to see.
I’ve done a few things over the last couple of days that have been important to me. Notably a tour of Royal Albert Hall. That place has been a vision in my mind for a number of years now – since reading about the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones playing there in the very early 70s. It’s a truly amazing hall and I can’t wait to get home and watch my Led Zep DVD of them playing there again ;-) We even got to skulk around Her Majesty’s private waiting room.
Spending a few hours watching the ducks in Hyde Park was also time well spent. My mental image of that place owed itself to Douglas Adams’ descriptions of it in So Long and Thanks For All the Fish. For me much of the attraction of London is to finally walk through the places I’ve been aware of for so many years. Could anyone honestly say that when getting the tube through Picadilly or walking up Oxford/Bond St’s or Park Lane that they don’t think of the Monopoly board?
I got stung by nettles yesterday. They really are nasty little buggers, I’ve never met a plant that could be so offensive. Or is it a weed? Anyway: Steer clear.
So yesterday, finally, I made it to a bike race. Fittingly it was far and away the best race I’ve ever been to, so it all worked out nicely in the end. An Australian won one of the races, and so carrying our flag, a beer, and listening to the national anthem is a moment I won’t quickly forget. There were actually only a handful of other Aussie supporters there (well ones that bothered to bring flags) so attracting the attention of our riders on the warm up/down laps and getting a wave was easy enough.
The weather has been pretty amazing. 26-30 every day I’ve been here, which apparently is some kind of record in the UK. Unfortunately it doesn’t look so good once I get to Belgium, with showers forecast every day that I’m there.
Monopoly board indeed. It’s also quite odd when you think that a station that’s 3 stops away is probably about a 200m walk. =)
In other news. I installed Fedora Core 2 with KDE and it -didn’t- suck. At least, not yet.
Seeya soon. Sendin’ ya lots of good Melbourne vibes.
Ahh.. Can you fix up my PC while you’re at it? ;-) I think the video settings are still farked.