Adventures in Spanish 2013: Now I'm a real tourist!

Well, being in London is a very different kettle of fish to being in Spain. For all my sight seeing in Spain, I kept convincing myself that I wasn't a real tourist, I was undertaking cultural tourism as part of my studies as I was in Spain as a student. Everything I was doing was just homework (including the visits to bars etc). I don't have that excuse here. Here I'm your ordinary garden variety tourist, from the Colonies no less. The typical Australian seeing "the mother land". I wonder if I will see any Corgis?

Good news! Went for a walk and saw a Corgi - very cute.

I've spent the last 4 days being very busy being a tourist. After arriving on Saturday, I went for a short walk, but due to the weather being wet and cool, I didn't venture very far. Just far enough to get my bearing.

Sunday dawned foggy but dry. I decided to spent some hours on the hop on hop off bus seeing as much as possible of the highlights of London before heading off to one of two museums. However, the day became very lovely (even sunshine) so I ended up doing two rounds on the hop on hop off bus. I got to see the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Bridge, Westminster Abbey, St Pauls Cathedral, Trafalgar Square, Harrods, Marble Arch, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, and lots more. I decided to test myself so did the first trip on the bus with the English commentary and the second trip with Spanish Commentary. Good fun. Afterwards, I went for a walk through Hyde Park which is very close to my hotel.

Monday saw me catching a train to Bath. I had a fabulous day walking around Bath. I managed to see most of the sights and having still a couple of hours free at the end, I then did a bus tour around the town as well. I have some decent photos which I will try to post as soon as I can.

Tuesday dawned foggy but expected to be fine. It ended up being quite a warm day. I was meeting some friends in the afternoon so decided to go for a walk and then go to a museum until time to get to Liverpool street station. However, the day was so nice, I ended up just walking and walking. My hotel was 10 mins walk from Hyde Park. Hyde Park joins onto Green Park and then St James Park. So I walked from my hotel, through the 3 parks to the Houses of Parliament, across Westminster Bridge, along the other side of the river Thames to Tower Bridge, back across Tower Bridge and then up to Liverpool Street Station to meet my friend Emma (from Valencia). All in all, it took 3 hours to walk the whole way and was wonderful. I saw many of the same place as on the bus, but from a very different perspective.

Then, Emma, Stephanie (also from Valencia) and I went to a play at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Absolutely brilliant and a fantastic venue. Afterwards, we walked along the river a bit then found somewhere to have an early dinner. Steph had a Spanish class to get to and Emma had to catch a train back to Norwich. so, parting with promises to stay in touch, we all took different trains to our various destinations.

Today, I'm hanging out at Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport waiting for my flight to Stuttgart and the long awaited start of my walk. Tomorrow I catch a train from Stuttgart, Germany to St Jean Pied de Port, southern France. Then the walk begins in earnest.

For those of you who have been following my blog, I will continue to blog as often as possible during the walk, but this will depend on reliable internet access as I go. Uploading photos will probably be difficult but I'll see what I can do.

Stay tuned for more adventures!