Up To The Smoke.

I think that was the phrase a few decades ago when anyone went to visit London from another part of the UK.  No matter where you lived geographically, you always went 'up' to London and as for 'the smoke' well maybe that's because all cities were smoke filled places many years ago.

Anyway Daffy et moi are off down, or up, to London tomorrow to see one of her agency actors (the lovely and talented Helen) in a comedy review and although I'm always up, or down, for a rail trip to the nation's capital, I'm having trouble thinking of places to visit as an out and out tourist.

I've only been to London a few times and don't like the place very much.  I'm not really a 'city boy' at heart and prefer my sights to be scenery based.  However it is nice, now and then, to go urban and say "oh look that's......" every so often as you walk past famous buildings and so on and God knows, London has plenty of those.  The thing is, I've seen a lot of them already.

The other thing is that we really only have 24 hrs in which to do this sightseeing so museums and art galleries are out as I do not like going into one of those constantly looking at my watch. The weather is to be dry so we want to see outdoor places.  Buildings, parks, anything.

So far we have a few things lined up.  After we get into Kings Cross Station and as we'll only have backpacks, we plan on going straight to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch.  If anyone feels like joining us, feel free but your meal won't be !!  Then we may pop across the road (Piccadilly) and walk across Green Park to be REAL tourists and see Buckingham Palace. Maybe pop in for a cuppa if Queen Liz and Phil The Greek are at home. 

Then we could go back to Hyde Park and walk along The Serpentine and see the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain as it wasn't there the last time I visited the park.  By then it'll be time to go to Helen's place to dump our backpacks, freshen up and head off to meet up with her and have a meal.  After that we'll be ready to see her in action, so to speak, and as that's at 9:30pm, we'll be just about done for the day by the time we get back to her place for the night.  No late night clubbing for me unless sponsored jointly by SAGA and BUPA !!

So tomorrow, Thursday, is pretty much taken care off but Friday is another matter and I've no idea what to do.  We'll have until about 7pm to go anywhere in London which gives us plenty of time to get back to the station for the train ride home to Leeds.  If we take our backpacks with us in the morning, then we'll not need to go all the way back to Helen's house again and that will leave all the time available for sightseeing.

So if anyone has any suggestions for where we could go to and what we could see, please add a comment.  I know I've not left much time for this so I'll continue to put searches into Google and see what comes up.

In any case, I'm sure we'll have a fabby time and will post about the trip on our return. Considering both of us use our cameras as often as breathing, there may be a photograph or two.

Or fifty or sixty.