London Day 3

This morning Stewart drove Jeanette and myself into central London where Jeanette had to go to work at St Thomas’ Hospital, which is on the side of the Thames directly opposite the Houses of Parliament. Afterwards Stewart drove me around the centre of London and along both sides of the Thames.

We travelled all around central London crossing the Thames a number of times. Stewart gave me the full tour. He has had plenty of practice as tour guide as it is one of the options his Chauffeur Services company provides to its clients. It certainly was a lot better tour than going on one of the large open top buses that were also driving around the area.

There were tourists everywhere, in certain places there would have been hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder just walking along the footpath. At one time we saw people crossing at a set of traffic lights and they needed to stop on the traffic island in the middle of the road as cars were turning around a corner in front of them and there would off been 150 people trying to stand on this small triangle of traffic island whilst cars were driving past them. It was chaos.

Driving around and stopping to take photos for quite a while we came across some interesting building designs including one for the company Swiss-Re which is nicknamed the Gherkin.

The top of the building has a revolving restaurant with top rated chiefs and is for staff use only. Instead of the staff taking clients out to lunch or dinner in London they are encouraged to bring them to restaurant in their own building. Stewart says this is also a great way for the company to reduce its staff expenses and tax liabilities.

Also nearby in the Lloyd's of London Insurance building,

this building has been designed inside out. All the external fixtures are used to carry the services for the building. It looks like an oil refinery or an oil rig in structure. Close up you can see all the individual stainless steel pipes and ducting.

Stewart and I went to Paddington Train Station to pick up a close family friend of Stewart’s who is over visiting from Wodonga in Victoria. Meryl has been visiting one of her children and his family who live in England. She had even just travelled with them to Orlando, Florida for their holiday. Tomorrow she is heading home to Australia.

The weather that had started out alright this morning had by then closed in and it was raining quite heavily. We went back to the house to have some lunch and sat watching an AFL game, Sydney Swans v Western Bulldogs that Stewart had recorded.

The four of us went out for dinner at an Italian Restaurant. Meryl gave me some information about Orlando from her recent visit. She had some stories about the shuttle buses and the Disney theme parks which will be helpful for my visit there in a few weeks.

Back home I prepared for my train trip tomorrow to Ramsgate.