London

Today we were the consummate tourists and did a Hop-on Hop-off bus tour of London. There are umpteen companies running these so it is a bit of a pig in a poke which one to choose although they all do pretty much the same stuff. Eventually we chose Golden Tours because they had a stop nearest our hotel and had a “grand tour” which took in most of the popular sites. This company had four different day tours and an evening tour and your ticket is valid all day on any and all the tours and you can hop-on/hop-off at 79 different stops. We were on one of the early buses and were in the fact the first ones on, so sat upstairs in the front seats.

London traffic is of course crazy and the way these huge double decker buses get around is awesome. We reckon private cars make up only about 10% of central London traffic, all the rest are taxis, buses, bicycles, motor bikes/scooters, vans, trucks, ambulances, fire engines and police cars. Many of the cyclists seem to have a death wish, ducking and diving, taking short cuts and taking on the buses without flinching. The tour took three hours and we probably spent a quarter of that time stopped in traffic. This was okay as it gave you plenty of time to look at what was going on, buildings, parks etc.

The weather was fine and sunny generally but we had periods of heavy rain which sent everyone on the open part of the upper deck diving for shelter. We each had ear phones for a sporadic commentary and ponchos were available for when it rained. The audio was 90% classical music with just short descriptions of places and buildings, statues, parks etc. The commentary at times did seem to get out of sync with where we actually were. We didn’t hop-on or hop-off at all stayed, on the bus the whole route and got off where we got on near the hotel.

We went back to our room, had some lunch and decided to do it all again. This time at the back of the upper deck and on the opposite side of the bus. Even though this was supposed to be the same tour, in a few places we went different routes. For example in the morning we didn’t pass Westminster Abbey but did in the afternoon. Also some of the commentary we got in the morning we didn’t get in the afternoon but there was a lot of new stuff. I wonder if the descriptive bits are activated by the driver and sometimes he forgets or is just distracted, concentrating on traffic. The afternoon tour also had some heavy showers.

So we spent six hours on buses today and know some of the streets and sites of London reasonably well. At least we can see the big picture of where things are.

The photos are a bit of a random selection, a mixture from the morning and afternoon, and I haven’t bothered to caption most of them.

The best thing about today was that there was no walking. The worst thing about today was there was no walking. Our minds and our bodies are in two different spaces.