BBBG Goes To Europe Part 4: Messing About in London

Returning from the splendour of Budapest to the grey of London was a bit of a letdown but we soon got past that as we had tickets to the longest running play in the world, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap at St. Martin's Theatre, which we were obviously excited about.

Pictures are just banned everywhere these days but we did manage this

Prior to that I collected some bookporn for fans of old books:

One of the most historically fascinating yet visually unimpressive sights on our trip around Europe has to be The London Stone. Leah discovered it when reading the Peter Ackroyd biography of London and the history surrounding it was enough to make us take a trip to the wall of a WHSmith newsagents. Here's your history lesson: Thought to have originally been much larger it is thought to be of Druidic or Roman origin it is located very close to the centre of the east-west diameter of the City of London, as defined by the Roman walls. Legends and myths surround it, most fun of which might be that it is linked to the safety of London (and therefore the never say die spirit of its inhabitants?) "So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish". This relates to the myth that the stone was part of an altar built by Brutus of Troy.

And here's part of the traditional London Wall built by the Romans around Londinium and maintained in to the 18th Century:

Relatively nearby we paid a visit to Whitehaven Mansions, the home of the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. The wonderful Art Deco building used in the David Suchet TV series is somehow less impressive in reality, possibly something to do with the swathe of flashy cars parked in the pay and display car park outside. Located at Florin Court, Charterhouse Square it still overshadows every other building on the square.

BBBG Goes To Europe: Part 2 Arriving

A quick post just to check in I think.

Some uninteresting facts about our flight:

• Qatar Airways (voted Airline of the year for the past two years) give the impression of being a social climbing third rate provider. Having previously taken this trip with Qantas, British Airways, Virgin and Emirates I can safely say that the gulf in quality of service is astronomical. For a start they didn't provide the special dietary meals we requested and I got the distinct impression that all of the hostesses hated their job and were quite willing to take it out on the passengers. After this trip I will never use them again to fly anywhere.
• Doha airport requires a 20 minute bus ride from the tarmac to the terminal. Bizarre planning for a busy international hub. They also go to great lengths to tell economy class passengers that those lucky business and premium users were provided with luxury limousines.
• I watched Safety Not Guaranteed - Cute and charming, quirky indie comic drama featuring Julie from Scott pilgrim. Just lacked a certain edge to make me want to watch it again - and the always wonderful to watch Wall.E during the flights, everything else was so uninspiring. Whilst Leah embraced the trashy action of Battleship.
• I read Money Shot by Christa Faust and The Peddler by Richard S. Prather.

  Some uninteresting facts about our first two days in London:

• Our apartment is very nice, by English standards its positively luxurious and tasteful. We haven't taken any photos for the family I'm afraid. Sorry Robin & Steve.
• We've had an absolute nightmare trying to use our British bank account and at the time of writing there is no guarantee that it's going to get any better. So far Santander have changed my ATM PIN without telling me, a replacement will take 7 to 10 woking days. As I have changed my English mobile telephone number they have refused to allow me to withdraw more than 300 pounds over the counter until I receive my PIN. 7 to 10 working days. Using internet banking I transferred money to a friend and Santander blocked it and my internet banking access without informing me because it was an unusual transaction on my account. That's the major bullet points in 48 hours of Santander related nonsense. Thank you Santander for helping my holiday get off to a fun filled start!

Some highlights so far:

• Clothes shopping is incredibly cheap. Food shopping is incredibly cheap. There's so much choice, Perth shall be ruined for us forever.
• New book shops are all incredible compared to Australian book shops, we were a little overwhelmed by seeing so many books that we wanted just sitting on the shelves and wandering through crime fiction alone I could have spent hundreds of pounds. It stopped being fun quite quickly and rapidly turned in to torture.
• Finding the BFI digitally remastered Blu-Ray of Tokyo Story in HMV for only 10 pounds, was one of those few moments when I knew I had to buy a DVD without hesitation.
• Crystal Palace is a really nice area, from what we've seen and experienced of it so far it's definitely the kind of place we would be happy to live if some disaster fell upon us and we could no longer live in beautiful, sunny Perth.

With all the doom and gloom surrounding our finances we've not exactly had a huge amount of fun or enthusiasm for taking pictures so far, hopefully we can bring you something much more interesting over the weekend but for now let me leave you with a picture taken in the Perth Airport newsagent.

The science of using the little grey cells mon ami

And one more of the greatest road name in the history of the world: