Hyde Park

All of us and Ross went into London by Tube on Sunday, 2nd September. First of all we caught a red double-decker bus to the station at Bounds Green. The girls immediately pushed to the top deck and enjoyed being able to watch and see everything from up top. At the Tube station, Alastair developed a problem with the smart card technology (they don’t call it smart for no reason!). The card – called an Oyster – can be topped up with credit so you don’t have to buy a ticket every time you travel. You place it on a special sensor to open the gates. For some reason, A had a problem with this and it wouldn’t read the card – so he’d be stuck at the gate with a growing line of disgruntled locals behind him. Ross reckons it was lucky it was the weekend – otherwise they’d have just walked over the top of him.
First stop was Piccadilly Circus. This famous intersection is such a typical London streetscape – the narrow streets, the terraced buildings, the heavy traffic and the big red buses everywhere.
From there we walked down to St James Park, next to Buckingham Palace. The security in this area was intense. There were many cameras so that you couldn’t have sneezed without someone noticing you.
Buckingham Palace was great. Loads of foreign visitors like us everywhere. We then walked basically around its perimeter – again the security was really noticeable through the streets that were very much like a movie set.
We walked into Hyde Park. We have a lovely walk through part of this gorgeous park. The girls spotted a squirrel and were delighted by its cute eating manner and the way it hopped away. We walked along one side of the Serpentine – the lake in the middle of the Park, where there were hundreds of people out enjoying the last days of summer. Parts of the park are kept more like a wild wood (with longer grass and clumps of trees). The trees are already starting to turn – hopefully we’ll get a chance to come back just before we leave and see it in its autumnal glory.
Our path through the park took us to the Albert Memorial – that huge symbol of Victorian wealth and excess. As rich as places like Ballarat and Bendigo were during the gold rush, the ‘mother’ country was even richer with the wealth from the colonies helping to fund monuments like this giant gold statue of Queen Victoria’s husband.
Carlene