London Town...Continued

We visited Harrods, earlier in the day. I've never been before and I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed not to be greeted by a butler as I entered the store. Instead, I was barked at by a gorilla posing as a security guard. He didn't like the look of my back pack. It's amazing the reaction I get when I carry a back pack. I've actually been chased by an over excited shop boy in Delhaize because he thought I was going to stuff it full of goods without paying. Personally, I think it's a bloody cheek, what makes a back pack wearer more likely to steal than someone carrying a large shopping bag? It's discrimination, pure and simple. In Harrods, a back pack is regarded as a weapon of mass destruction. I actually think that some of the drunk old rich women, tottering around the store, would be more dangerous than my back pack, but there you go...
Harrods is a strange place. It's half chique boutique and half Las Vegas casino without the slot machines. Last year, we stayed at the Luxor, in Vegas, and Harrods is like a down market Luxor! My fiancée tried to buy something in the HUGE cosmetics department and they didn't have any!
After leaving Harrods, we had a choice. Natural History Museum or Tower of London? We chose the Tower. When we bought our train tickets, the nice lady who served us, gave us a booklet with saving coupons in it and one of the savings was buy 1 ticket and get the other free for the Tower of London. That was a saving of £17! The booklet can be used until the end of September, so anyone going to London this summer should look out for it. The Tower was also closer to the Pie and Mash shop than the museum.
Anyone who finds themselves in the vicinity of the Tower can't help but notice the huge posters covering scaffold around parts of the building. The posters promote the Dress to Kill exhibition and it's well worth going to see. The exhibition shows off Henry VIII's armour and weapons and the some of the pieces on display are quite stunning. We gave the Crown Jewels a wee body swerve, the queue was of Disneyland proportions and we had both seen them before. One of the other 2 for 1 tickets we had was the Tower Bridge exhibition. The famous bridge is right next to the Tower of London so we hurried along to it before it closed.
The £7 entrance fee was a waste of money. For that you get to have your back pack go through an x- ray machine, your photo taken in a shameless money making operation and then a walk up to the top of a tower. At the top is an empty room with a screen which shows a 5 minute documentary. Once you have your breath back you can walk across to the other tower, which should have been exciting but...wasn't. In the second tower you get to watch another documentary and then walk back to the first tower and down! true, you get a nice view of London's skyline, but you get an equally nice view from ground level. We were too late to visit the room where the mechanism to raise the bridge is kept, it may have changed our minds about the place but we were very unimpressed with what we had seen. We left, glad we had only payed £7 and not £14.
One of the nicest and cheapest things to do in London is just go for a walk along the Thames path and just let the history of the place flood over you. Doesn't cost a penny!
Joggers!
I can't end this post without talking about the pedestrian equivalent of bike riders! Normally, I have no opinion about joggers but is it wise to try and jog amongst the thousands of tourists that walk the streets of London? Dodging in and out of people and occasionally bumping into me...them! No, I don't think it is. It can't be fun for them, it must really break their rhythm up and it's certainly no fun for the innocent walker having a strangers sweaty arm brush up against your own unsweaty arm?
We always have a great time in London, it's a fantastic place. A final word if you are thinking of going. When you go on the Underground be sure to take a newspaper with you as you will need one to leave either on the seat or the shelf behind the seat.

Video of the Day

London Town

When I was a kid, Whitsun week was spent at Leysdown, on the Isle of Sheppey. Apart from rain, the only other thing we could be sure of was a visit to the Pie and Mash shop.
Pie and Mash is a traditional London working class meal and once upon a time, you could find a Pie, Mash and Eel shop all over south and east London and many parts of Essex.
I think there was a time when I actually liked Pie and Mash, but after losing my heart to Curry, nothing was ever as tasty as a Beef Madras.
A few months ago, I was watching Saturday Kitchen with my Fiancée when suddenly, up popped a video about Pie and Mash. After explaining all about it, how it's a traditional working class meal, dates back to the 18th century, consists of a meat pie, mashed potato and a sauce called Liquor, which isn't alcoholic but is made of Parsley, she said she would like to try one.
Last Friday, we visited London. I had looked up a Pie and Mash shop on Google and so we paid it a visit. Visiting an authentic Pie and Mash shop is an experience. This particular one was covered in tiles which made it look like a public toilet, the seats were wooden benches, the staff had most of their teeth and the other customers looked like extras from Oliver. I ordered Pie, Mash and Eels, for both of us, and took a photo of it (see above). It tasted as good as it looks. I'm all for tradition, I really like Duvel Day, which is a tradition I made up. But Pie and Mash is one of those meals that earned British cuisine its bad reputation. I really like that scene in the Simpsons when homer is on a diet and he takes a bite of a rice cake, looks at it and shouts "Hello, taste?" Eating Pie and Mash is like that, it's bland, uninteresting food and even after remembering that you had to add a splash of vinegar and pepper to the liquor to spice it up a bit, it was still bland. It certainly fills you up, though. I had the pleasure of its company for the rest of the day...end of part 1.

Video of the Day

Son of a Beach!

People of Belgium, hear my plea! For the love of God, stay away from the coast at bank holiday weekends! What's the matter with you people? How much punishment can you take? What possible pleasure can you take from sitting in a traffic jam on the way down to the coast and then sitting in another on the way back, with the only thing to show for it is finding sand in places it has no right to be?
Unfortunately, the bank holiday exodus to the coast is as inevitable in Belgium as being 'tinged' by a bloke on a bike. I've never really understood the attraction of sitting on a beach and getting sand up your bum, much more exciting for me is walking coastlines like the one in the photo. The photo was taken on Beachy Head, in England. Just a short ferry trip across the Channel.
I was unfortunate enough to be caught up in a traffic jam going to England on Wednesday and coming home again on Sunday. Thursdays journey to Dunkirk was a nightmare, the usual 2 hour journey took us 4 and we arrived at the ticket office with 15 minutes to spare and a pompous French git of a man telling us that we should have got there earlier. He gave us our tickets but instead of the 10pm crossing we had booked, it read 12 midnight. A 2 hour wait. The ferry was still there and also still letting cars on, so once through British customs I drove as fast as I could to join the cars going onto the ferry. By the time I reached the end of the queue the guy taking the tickets had decided no more cars could board. That was the signal for people to start sounding there horns and shouting irately out of their car windows. Then, in scenes reminiscent of the storming of the Bastille, all of remaining cars started to edge forward. The flustered French man who was taking peoples tickets suddenly decided that in the spirit of Entente Cordiale he would let us through. It was a nice feeling after all the BS we had gone through to get there, a bit like your favourite football team scoring a winning goal in the 3rd minute of time added on, although as I looked at the face of the guy taking the ticket, I noticed that he had an expression on his face that said "enjoy your victory this time, Englishman, but we will have our revenge!"
So, maybe have a think about visiting England next time the sun shines or a bank holiday comes up. It's a great place to spend a weekend, we all speak English, like you guys, and the pound at the moment has slightly more value than Monopoly money. The ferry is cheap to take and you needn't travel too far for lovely beaches and stunning scenery. Oh, and the bars and resturants don't all close at 9pm like they did in Zeebrugge, last time I visited! Go early and come back late because I always go late and come back early!