I took the train in to Tower Bridge instead today, to see some sights from the other end of the city - not too much different from what I remember from four years ago, maybe the previous hundred too. I walked alongside the Tower Of London before crossing the Tower Bridge with it's delightful powder blue paint job, didn't have time to stop at either for the moment, maybe later.
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| The bridge. |
Along the river they are gradually adding more interesting buildings to the skyline, the Gherkin and Shard, and a few others which had similar names. The tour ended at the next bridge, London Bridge, which is a bit sad compared to the Tower Bridge that runs alongside it. Went across to the other side to see the London Monument (to the great fires), but it is sadly a bit hidden behind the surrounding buildings, and of course undergoing repair work.
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| Assorted collection of buildings. |
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| The river. |
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| St Paul's Cathedral. |
It seemed to take forever walking along the river, but finally arrived at Tate Modern, which is like Tate Britain but more modern. The lower level started with abstract art, which had about one good piece for every ten items of junk that anyone could have made. On the next level the quality was a bit better, a couple of cool Salvadore Dali paintings, a whole room of Russian revolution posters, and a couple of Kandinsky and Warhol too.
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| Some Dali painting. |
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| Assorted collection of trash. |
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| Some Roy Lichtenstein painting. |
Just before the end there was a weird robots room then several rooms of pointless art pieces, the highlight was either the box fort or the ventilation duct.
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| Box fort. |
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| This thing. |
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| These things. |
After a quick lunch we took the train down to Croydon in South London for the second football match of the weekend, Crystal Palace vs. Arsenal. The ground at Selhurst Park was smaller and older than Tottenham, they also have a problem with poles but we were in the second row so that wasn't a problem. Since Jason signed up for a Crystal Palace international membership we were able to get early access to tickets for this game, but somehow we were next to a jerk family of Americans who were Arsenal fans - the theory is they signed up for a membership to be able to get tickets easier. Before the game they had the eagle flying across the field as usual, and they are possibly the only team that brings cheerleaders out on to the field.
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| Selhurst Park. |
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| Souare. |
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| The home team end. |
The game didn't start well with Arsenal having most of the possession, the Crystal Palace defense was scrambling but somehow avoided going down a goal several times - usually helped by Olivier Giroud's poor finishing - before he finally managed to score one. Finally Palace started to come back and grabbed a goal shortly before half time to finish 1-1. In the second half Palace started well again, they hit the post with a shot but Arsenal then took over for the rest of the game and got back ahead thanks to a lucky own goal. Palace tried hard in the end and created a few chances, but ended up losing 2-1. Even in a losing game the crowd support was five times better than the previous match, everyone knew and participated in the chants and they kept going for the whole game, not just for a few minutes here and there.
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| View from second row. |
I did a bit of exploring after getting back to London Bridge, stopping in at a few supermarkets along the way but still no yum yums so far. To find some dinner I took the train again to Canary Wharf, which appears to be a new business district, but there was actually a decent amount of people around, as well as some jazz festival in the park. The shopping centre was still open, and the best quick restaurant option was Nando's where I got a beanie burger which was slightly different to the veggie burger they sell here, probably better I think.
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| Nando's |
After packing for a Monday morning departure, the first of many, we went off for a run around the nearby docklands area known as Royal Docks. The area was pretty average as we ended up going past the airport, with planes flying directly overhead, and then down to some port area which didn't smell so great.
- London Part 1
- Tourist Rating - 8 out of 10
- Good
- Cheap unlimited mobile data with 4G
- Football matches are on during the day
- Supermarkets are better, and there's more than two of them
- Train lines intersect for better coverage
- Bad
- Pedestrian crossings are slow
- The city streets are not a grid
- he city was a bit dead on the weekend
- Very expensive food
- Missed Out
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