London, Day 16 - 29th February 2016

Before we left Australia, I had marked out a few things I wanted to do in every city we stopped at, mostly because I was so excited that I wanted to feel like I was travelling before I was travelling, but also so that we didn't waste any time hanging around the same areas day after day. Even if we didn't see anything on my list the time spent looking at different areas meant that I had a pretty good ideas of different routes and interesting places to go.

Along the way I had come across 'St Dunstan in the East', a shell of an old church that had been turned into a park. St Dunstan was quite literally right behind our hotel. If we used the back entrance, it opened straight onto St Dunstan. It was a unique use of the old building remains.

St Dunstan in the East

I had marked off some of the more natural looking areas in London, including the Parkland walk from Highgate. We both felt like a bit of nature and less people today, so we hopped the tube from Bank (which joins onto Monument) to Highgate. The walk starts just below the tube line, and when we got off the tube there was a group of older people with walking poles preparing to do the same walk. Not to worry though, the walk is not strenuous - I guess being old they just didn't want to fall over. 

Parkland walk is a breath of fresh air in London. It's an easy place to forget about the traffic, noise and busy streets of such a big city. The Parkland walk follows an old railway line and starts off with oak trees and woodland, covered in Butterfly bush and brambles. We passed under bridges and over an old platform. A fairy peered from a crumbling wall.

Fairy in the Parkland Walk

Wooded playground along the walk

For a while we followed a man and his 7 dogs. I almost laughed with how quintessentially English the image of an old farmer type in gumboots walking a troupe of dogs was.

3 consecutive bridges on the Parkland Walk

The walk took us about an hour and a half (I made us stop to play in a park, and Hugh made us stop to take photos) to Finsbury Park.

The cold air and walk had set our tummies grumbling. I knew we weren't too far from Camden, so we hopped on the #29 bus to Camden.

Camden is not a place I can easily describe. There was so much going on that I feel like I was both overloaded and missing everything at the same time. Markets seemed to spill from every spare space of the main road. They sold tourist wares, alternative clothing, hand made arts and crafts and hot street food. People scurried every which way like ants over an open picnic basket, confused and frenzied.

The road followed along to a canal, where narrow boats were moored behind locks. It was behind the canals that we found Shaka Zulu, an African themed restaurant. 

Camden Lock Canal

Canals at Camden

It was easily one of the coolest restaurants I have ever been in. The atmosphere took me to a tribal jungle setting with low lighting in green and purple, carved spaces everywhere I looked, and a sense of space that replicated a treetop canopy.

Shaka Zulu

Shaka Zulu

 

This elephant at Shaka Zulu was carved from one piece of wood

The food was just as good, with an African-inspired lunch menu that cost just £10. Hugh was even game enough to try the Ostrich burger!

After lunch we wandered through the markets in Camden some more, and stopped along the canal for a while to just relax. We had arranged to meet Sarah again for dinner at a restaurant at London Bridge before heading to bed early for a big trip out to the Warner Brothers Studios the next day.

The view from London Bridge at night

London, Day 15 - 28th February 2016

Hugh and I had quite a big day today exploring inner London. We  used our Oysters and caught the bus #15 - and yes, it was a double-Decker red bus - into Trafalgar Square for Breakfast. On a Sunday, nothing besides the ever-present Pret-A-Manger was open in Monument.

So this is their court house....Australia you need to step it up a little. At the very least crims deserve pretty architecture

We walked into Caffe Concerto, which I think is a chain of cafes much like our Coffee Club, and I had some sort of high tea style continental breakfast that came with lots of carby options for me to start my long day off with.

High Breakfast

Across the road from the Cafe was the National Gallery, so we immediately headed here after breakfast. The Gallery was free entry, which was definitely to our liking! It was quite big, and in the hour and a half we spent there, we probably only got through a quarter of it. I think I much preferred the National Gallery to Uffizi. The artworks were more varied and interesting and held my attention for longer.

Water Lilies - Monet

'The Mall'

When we got weary of looking at artworks we headed back across the road and walked down the daffodil lined 'Mall' to Buckingham Palace. The sky was lovely and blue so it was a nice day to walk down to the Palace. There wasn't much going on at the Buckingham; just some bored looking guards in the gigantic fluffy black helmets. I don't know how much that job pays, but I think I'm glad its not my job. The lack of doing anything constructive at all would drive me nuts.

Our morning was turning into a bit of an extended walking tour. When we left from Buckingham we walked down to see Big Ben (and some red telephone boxes!). From near Big Ben we were able to board bus #24 to the British Museum, which was again, free.

View from St James' Park

Phonebooth & Big Ben

Big Ben!

The museum was pretty fun. I learnt alot of things about history (that I have since forgotten) and I was super excited to see the Egyptian collection. Another item off my bucket list. Hugh was quite happy about seeing the Rosetta stone. It wasn't hard to miss, all we had to do was find the most crowded area of the museum. It probably took a good 5 minutes to make our way to the front of the crowd for a close-up look, but it was worth it. It was so interesting that they were able to translate so much hieroglyphs when there was only a small section of hieroglyphs compared to the Demotic and Ancient Greek scripts. To think it was used as building material is remarkable.

Mummified remains in the British museum

From the Egypt collection

By the time we made it out of the museum (again, without seeing it all. This place definitely needs a dedicated day just to itself) it was getting late in the afternoon. We knew we would have to think about finding dinner soon, and decided on dinner back near Trafalgar area. We walked from the museum to Leicester Square and then onto Covent Garden. On our wander through we came across the Apple Market. It seemed like a good place to get some British souvenirs, including a cute little bib with the English flag with a bulldog on it for my nephew-to-be. Hugh of course found the British lolly shop, so we stopped in here and I bought a bag full to take home with me to share. I was happy to find an old-fashioned toy shop, 'Benjamin Pollocks Toy Shop' and bought a book of paper dolls to take home with me.

With purchases in hand, Hugh and I headed towards a craft beer pub he had read about (it was still craft beer week) for dinner. I saw a special advertised for pork pies so we both decided to order these, with some sweet potato fries to share.

Cold Pork Pies

I don't think I will ever understand why, but apparently in England they eat pork pies cold. I feel like the menu should have an explanation for tourists because a cold pie was not what I was thinking of when I ordered. They do realise that the weather is ridiculously cold, right? I forced myself to eat about a quarter of the half-pie I was served before I gave up on trying to stop myself from gagging and just ate the fries instead. Hugh did a little better and got through half of his plate.






To make up for our dismal dinner, we stopped into somewhere called the 'Chocolate Hotel' on our way to the tube and got some yummy hot chocolates and pieces of hand-made chocolate to eat as we walked.

Inside Sky Garden

I had previously booked (tickets need to be booked about a month in advance) us some free (again) tickets to Sky Garden for 8pm. Sky Garden was only one street away from our hotel at 20 Fenchurch st, so we went straight to there from the tube. To gain access to the Sky Garden, you have to arrive before your booking slot to go through security procedures, and up the lifts to level 35.






Sky Garden was kept mostly dark, with low-toned mood lighting scattered around the sitting area and amongst the trees. The views to London were beautiful at that time of night. We ventured out onto the deck to look across the river Thames. It was very high up for someone who doesn't like heights. So long as I looked across and not down, I was ok, but I felt much better when we left the deck to stroll through the garden inside. It was a really romantic space. Hugh and I found a bench among the trees to steal an uninterrupted kiss and to sit and enjoy the ambiance.

The view of The Shard from Sky Garden

All too soon our hour was up and we walked the short distance back to our hotel.

London, Day 14 - 27th February 2016

Monument is a good area to stay. Monument itself is a business district, so it means that outside of business hours, we sort of have a part of London to ourselves. On a weekend day like today, it's quiet and peaceful. 

That also means there are no food stores open, but the tube is only a 3 minute walk from our hotel.

Before breakfast we did a short walk in the brisk wind to St. Paul's Cathedral, before crossing the Millennium Bridge (Yes! The Harry Potter bridge!) to South bank.

St. Pauls Cathedral

For breakfast I had arranged for us to meet with my not-so-cousin-cousin (my uncle's girlfriend's daughter) who has been living in London for the last 2 1/2 years or so. She met us at the Borough market, a food market at London Bridge.

The View from London Bridge

The market sold cheeses, wines, meats, craft beers, cakes, slices, pies and all sorts of multi-cultural food. I was tempted by a sweet smelling brownie and a goats milk hot chocolate. It was a good choice on such a freezing day.

The day only seemed to be getting chillier, so we all decided to head to head to the nearby historical 'The Old Kings Head' pub for a mid-morning warm up of the alcoholic variety, for Hugh and my cousin anyway. Being a non-drinker in London, I was discovering in the short 18 or so hours I had been there, was quite limiting. Non-alcoholic alternatives were hard to come by in pubs, so I got very acquainted with the green apple-bottomed bottles of Appetizers. The other alternative that they sometimes served for non-drinkers was what they called lemonade, but was in fact an a mind-numbingly sour tool of torture.

After this brief pause, we all walked back over London Bridge and made our way into the city. Sarah assured us that the walk was only '10 minutes or so', but we had to keep re-assessing this time-frame for the better part of an hour. It was actually a great way to walk into central London though, as we got to see quite a lot, and she kept up an impressive commentary of every landmark we passed.

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The aim was to get pub food for lunch - an absolute must on my list of things to do in London. This feat was easier said than done, as every pub we passed was bursting at the seams with long waits for tables. Probably another good hour we came across a pub, The Crown, that had enough sitting room for the 3 of us, and our pub lunch was served quite quickly (fish and chips for me!).

After lunch (which was quite late in the day) Sarah left and we made our way back to Monument, where we had a quick dinner at the Fire Hydrant (it took me about 20 minutes to work out the name connection) before heading back to bed.

Sorrento to London, Day 13, 26th February 2016

We were up in the dark this morning. We had an 10 o'clock appointment in Naples with a plane to London that we didn't want to miss. Neither of us were keen to get back on the Circumvesuviana with luggage again, especially early in the morning when there wasn't likely to be many people about. People in Italy didn't really get going until well after dawn break.

5.45 in the morning found us out the front of the train station in Sorrento, loading our bags onto a shuttle bus to Naples. For €10 each we decided it was worth the money to get a direct shuttle to the airport, rather than catch the train into Naples, and have to swap over to another train to the airport. We had tried to book the Curreri Viaggi shuttle bus the night before on our tablet computer, but the website kept crashing out and of course at night, the booking line was unmanned. We turned up in the hopes we could board without a reservation and thankfully it was fine.

The bus bumped along the coast for a while, stopping in at small towns to pick other passengers up. 

Once at Naples airport it was a simple check-in procedure that was fast and quick to get through. One of the benefits of flying out of a smaller airport is the reduced time spent in security queues.

Just after we got through security I noticed that my inner thighs felt somewhat cooler than the rest of my body. To my absolute horror, when I looked at my jeans to see if I had perhaps forgotten to zip up or something, I saw that they were completey torn on my inner thighs, up to my underwear line. And of course, I had just checked all my baggage so I had no other clothes on me. There was nothing I could do but tie a jumper around my waist and keep my legs crossed the entire flight to London.

We arrived in London Gatwick airport 2 and a half hours later. Hugh had warned me that English airports were horrors to get through, but once again, we managed to breeze right through. Passport control had nobody else at waiting in the non-EU line (in comparison to the quite large EU line), so for once there was a benefit to being Australian.

Once we picked up our baggage, my first priority was changing into pants that weren't ripped, not only to save myself from embarrassment, but also because London was cold!

I had already booked us tickets on the Gatwick express (it was cheaper pre-booked online) so we walked right onto that for our ride into Victoria. 

Those first few moments standing in the hub of Victoria station were confusing. People offered help and we were so used to Italy that we had to remind ourselves that they (probably) weren't out to pilfer our belongings. A work colleague had lent me 2 oyster cards so we didn't have to bother about trying to find somewhere to find one. Back in a country with English as a first language we were quickly able to figure out the top-up machines and loaded some credit on the cards.

From there we followed the London equivalent of the yellow brick road (basically a painted yellow line) which lead us to the Circle Line tube stop.

8 stops from Victoria station we pulled our bags out of the tube at Monument station, and walked a blissfully short distance (2 streets) to our hotel (Premier Inn).

London was a cold shock to the system after sunny Sorrento, so once we had made it up to our room and collapsed for a short while, we delved into our bags to bring out our thermals, gloves, scarves and beanies to layer up. 

Somehow our entire day had been taken up by transport (shuttle bus, plane, train, tube). All that sitting was exhausting.

A friend of mine who had lived in London for a year had recommended Brick Lane to us for meals.  It just so happened to be that part of the London Craft Beer Festival was being held at Brick Lane this week, so we made our way back to the Tube and out to Brick Lane. There were quite a few pubs and other small alcohol-sellers that we could see where participating in the Craft Beer Festival. Hugh, being a craft beer lover, was very excited. I was excited for the street food. Whenever we travel, we love to eat the local street food. Even in Brisbane, nothing is better than getting food from a truck. 

We didn't stay out too long, before heading home. We did stop at an amazing chocolate shop, Dark Sugars. My mouth was watering just from the smell of the place! The shop was stocked with chocolate cups filled with alcohol, slabs and chunks of dark chocolate, pralines, and metallic round chocolate balls.

Definitely the best place to end our day at!

Sorrento, Day 12 - Part One: Pompeii - 25th February 2016

Today Hugh and I took a trip to Pompeii. We had an easy breakfast at a small cafe, Bar Vittoria, near our hotel. We bought some croissants, a hot chocolate and an espresso to go (and all this for only €5.50!).

It was back on the Circumvesuviana for half an hour of ignoring blaringly loud music played by gypsies who asked you to pay if you wanted to disembark without any hearing loss. Luckily Hugh had noise-cancelling headphones and I had some ear plugs stored in my bag for travel.

The sunny weather was continuing, so we had only bought light jumpers with us for the day, and removed even these when we arrived to Pompeii. The entrance to Pompeii was only a few minutes walk from the train station, and lines were non-existent. This winter travel thing is really working out for us, especially now that we'd reached the warmer southern areas of Italy where we could peel off the layers and rock a tee.

Our first look at Pompeii

For the next two and a half hours we explored Pompeii. Soon after entering we walked through a brothel with pictures of couples in various embraces emblazoned on the wall, which connected onto what seemed like a bath house. The more we wandered through Pompeii, the more we discovered that they really liked their baths.

At a bath house

Walls with depictions of couples in a brothel

A main street was shortly down the road. Large flattened rocks were placed in regular intervals along the street, connecting one side to the other. Reading about it later, we discovered that pedestrians used them to cross the streets, as the street itself was used as a drainage and sewerage system. Spaces in between the stepping stones allowed vehicles to pass.

Stepping Stones across the main street

A smaller side street of Pompeii

The main road was lined with crumbling skeletons of shop fronts and expansive houses. Many of the houses still had frescoes painted on the walls, and some were quite intact. Wandering through the layouts was fascinating, and I let my imagination run wild, taking me through each room as if I had lived there too. I made a mental note to 'Sim' the layouts later.

Temple remains

A statue in a temple

A bath in a bath house

A villa courtyard

Ancient porn

Ancient fast food outlet

The presence of Mt. Vesuvius was constantly in the background of our sight, and gave a strong sense of the panic the Vesuvians must have felt as it erupted and buried them in hot ash. The mountain looked like it should have been a strong protector, stoically standing over the city, but instead became the harbinger of death.


Pompeii was huge, and knew we didn't really hope to get through it all, so we picked a few places of interest to see. We saw temples to Venus and Apollo, public forums, ancient take-outs joints and a Necropolis (ancient graveyard with elaborate tombs). At the other side of Pompeii we trudged down into the amphitheatre, our feet mimicking the steps of gladiators, to arrive in the middle of a rounded bowl of seats, where rows of jeering onlookers would have sat. From there we walked through some side streets back to the main street, and on to the theatre. Somehow we managed to walk past the Garden of Fugitives without realising it - and after searching so hard for it, which I was so disappointed about.

The theatre

Under the amphitheatre

It was getting quite late in the day and our feet were aching from walking across uneven stone, so we decided to call it a day on Pompeii and head back to Sorrento.

Sorrento, Day 12 - Part Two: Afternoon in Sorrento - 25th February 2016

Our afternoon in Sorrento was relaxed. Hugh and I took an easy stroll around the town, which whilst small, still had a lot to offer. 

We were enchanted by the public access lemon and orange grove off the main street. It had a quiet serenity that I don't think we had found so far on our trip. The traffic and people outside melted away almost instantly once we walked through the gate. 

A look out on the cliff edge showed pristine blue oceans, and so we took a steep set of stairs that wound under the cliffs down to the Marina area. Despite the water temperatures being freezing, I still dipped my toes into the water. I had an almost compulsive need to experience what water of such azure colour would feel like wrapping itself about my skin. Hugh and I both agreed that this was a place we would love to return to again in spring or summer. 

The marina area was a draw for the local feline life (probably from the fishy smell), with cats milling about and even sitting boldly on parked cars. It was a nice area to explore...until we realised we had to get back up the steep cliff face.

The stairs that we took back up brang us out in the centre of town, right near the Valley of the Mills. The Valley of the Mills was hidden in plain sight, buried in a valley below where the Viale Enrico Caruso met the Via Fuorimura. If you didn’t bother to look past the road, you wouldn’t even know it was there.

In the valley was the remains of an old mill, overgrown with vegetation. Nature was taking it back with force.

The explorer in me was absolutely itching to find a way down. I could see that there was definitely a way down – a narrow ramp ran down the cliff side. The ramp access ran under the road to where a car park sat – and was blocked off. There was no doubt why - the ramp looked very dangerous, and the valley was so far below that a slight trip of the feet would mean death.

We sat for a good 20 minutes to half an hour just gazing down in the Valley until the heights started to make me feel a little nauseous. I had pressed my legs hard against the fencing to trick my mind into feeling grounded. Logic said to me that if I could feel the fence against my body, I wasn’t falling.

A street behind our hotel was the cloister of St. Francis, a picturesque courtyard in the St. Frances monastery. We had the courtyard to ourselves, so we stopped for a while to admire the beauty of a hidden spot of nature that was tucked within four man-made walls.

Not too far to the east was what seemed to be the main tourist shopping drag. Here, we embarked on a taste journey, stopping in various shops to try Limoncello (a strongly acidic alcoholic drink that was a specialty of Sorrento), lemon flavoured lollies and biscuits, orange rinds dipped in chocolate, a creamy lemon spread (which I bought a pot of to take home),  coffee beans, and more. No surprise that I found my Sorrento fridge magnet here.

By the time we had bought small samples of the local produce it had gotten quite late. It was about 7pm at night, and my stomach was telling me it was food time. We chose a restaurant perched on the edge of the ‘Via Luigi De Maio’, a deep street that wound down the side of Sorrento to the Marina below. I had a lasagne and Hugh got a swordfish meal with olive and tomato.

After dinner we took a small walk before returning to our hotel. We were quite shocked when we saw a woman casually walking her pet wolf (yes, wolf!) down the road. I wish I had snapped a picture because it was such an absurd thing to see, but I was so shocked that someone was walking a wolf that all I could do was open-mouthed in disbelief. Hugh pointed out as it passed that it had a hungry look in its eyes, and I was vaguely happy that at least it was muzzled. There was also a super jealous part of me that instantly want to move to Italy, because as a child my dream pet was a wolf.

NB: Not the actual wolf, just the type of wolf. The image comes from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10572271/Italian-farmers-fight-back-against-wolves.html