Look – ‘London’ from our eyes! by Siddharth Paramhans

15, Dec 2015, Tuesday, London, 3^rd Day

Time to explore! It was our first visit to London, so instead of touching all tourist spots, we decided to visit a few but see them differently.

Buckingham palace 

London was fairly cold in December (around Christmas), occasional drizzles of rain added to the winter chill. One closely observes local people and sees how they are well dressed for the winter seasons with proper woollen clothing, jackets, long coats and gears like mufflers, caps, umbrella etc. It’s not the weather which impacts your experience, its inadequate clothing or personal gear that may impact it. So being well prepared for the weather is a good strategy.

At Canary Wharf

We left home early in the morning to catch the DLR line to Canary Wharf Estate.  Canary Wharf is one of the most prominent business hubs in London & is also the financial power house at London. You can easily spend hours shopping around the business centre, spending time near eating joints and walking around the huge glass and concrete buildings housing financial powerhouses, and gaping at their architecture and scale.

At Canary Wharf

Our next spot was BIGBEN. Bigben stands near the Westminster Bridge, on the banks of river Thames. Thames river flows though the centre of London and is a key attraction for tourists. The water does not seem very clean, however, it’s a well managed river with concrete structure banks on both side. Thames is used as a channel for public transportation and high speed motor boats or ferries are common sight. You can see one of the oldest structures of London, the Big Ben on other side of river. 

The Bigben is not open for tourists so the marvel of its structure can only be witnessed from the outside, and heard through a loud knell ringing from a bell at the beginning of every hour. Such an intricate structure, and beautifully maintained – one can’t help pondering about London’s rich cultural legacy.

BigBen

British Parliament Entrance

From BigBen we moved to UK’s Parliament, which is physically adjacent to it. We were cordially guided by the Parliament guards and felt lucky to get entry into the ‘House of Commons’. Here, we were sat in the visitor’s gallery, overseeing a debate in progress live in House of Commons where senior leaders engaged in a very lively yet respectful discussion on environment issues and initiatives to reduce Carbon footprints in England. It was a unique experience to be in London and see how the parliament functioned – the leaders of the government sat on green benches on one side facing the opposition benches on the other. Secretary of food and environment, Elizabeth Truss was presenting government side in a very cordial environment. Indeed we have a lot to learn from them. 

Sarang with Gandhiji statue

10-Downing Street

Just outside park there are large bronze statues of great leaders like Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela. From here we walked through to ‘10-Downing Street’ which is the residence of British prime minister David Cameron. His residential campus was heavily guarded but was cool few minutes away was the old entrance of Buckingham palace where there are very well dressed British Guards and their horses

 

Little distance ahead was Trafalgar Square a lovely sight we four of us spent some cool time chilling in cool weather. Locals believe that here you can wish, through a coin and your wish will be met.

Trafalgar Square

Our next destination was London Tower Bridge, since it was at distance we took a Red Colour double decker bus to London Bridge. Surprisingly, we were the only Four of us in the bus as entire bus was empty, this was a privilege we felt. Bus conductor David was so gentle, he continuously kept us briefing about the history of these busses in London and details of the places that we were passing through.

With David in Lodon's Red Heritage Bus

He mentioned that this bus is a among the 4 heritage buses left in city, now a days beautiful glass plated busses are plying which are more efficient. We moved through the old narrow markets and crowded Strand-street a busy commercial street.  Bus was very slowly moving in crowd, little while David informed arriving to our destination ‘Tower of London’. We wanted to see Kohinoor Diamond, but were disappointed as  we were late and could not go inside forte, so roamed around and decided for next time...

The Shard in Night

London Taxi's

 

View at the night of The Shard was marvellous, this is the tallest building in London with most premium restaurants on the TOP. After roaming for some time around we had our dinner at Waga mama, Japanese restaurant and then returned to our apartment by traditional London black taxi cab.

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16, Dec 2015, Wednesday, London, 4^th Day

London is just amazing! Deeper you explore more you find this. It’s one of the most disciplined, cultured and very well organized city that I come across. On road you find everything in order, traffic is very disciplined, no one violates traffic rules, cars run keeping adequate distance, and rarely traffic jams on road what a great governance. There are Camera’s put on road all around and everyone is under scanner, our taxi driver was sharing that there is very high cost if you dare to violate any rules with hefty fine, thus no one dare to violate rules on road.

Miles End Bus Stop

We took bus no. 205 from Miles End to reach Madame Tussads wax museum, in order to explore city, we decided to take the front seat on the upper deck of the bus to have good visibility since it was one-hour drive and opportunity to see London in detail. Saw how London is well organized and how the city care for it’s people. Like any other urban city there were construction on road was happening – they will first encircle effectively every part, would put diversion signals and repair the patch meticulously as one does at their own house. They were looking that there is no inconvenience of public. if London is so organised, it’s because they have evolved very good processes, systems and control which they never violate them.

You will find cycle stand after every two km for convenience of general public, cycle tracks are created on road to encourage cycle uses. We could see many streets, commercial buildings, Indian restaurants of different countries including India.

London Civic Amenities

After an eventful journey and photo-op we reached to Madame Tussad wax museum, this was created by Madame Tussads who was a great socialite, artist and sculpturist. It was interesting to see that at the entrance only we have wax statues of Amitabh Bacchan, Shahrukh, Salman, Madhuri, Ashwarya and Katrina. I observed that though they (was statues) represent the Bollywood yet they are not as good as other English & Hollywood actors like Tom Cruise, Benadich, Bradpitt, Julia Roberts. The museum is well organised where you find artists, scientists like Grahemwell, IsacNewton, Stephen Hawkins, Einstein etc. There were famous sports personalities like Sachin, Lara, Beckham etc. Politicians like Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Nelson Mandela, Cameron, Obama and others.

Madame Tussads Museum 

Most beautiful statue that I saw was of Lady Diana and all other members of Royal family along with queen Elizabeth. It was a wonderful experience and opportunity to have photographs with them together with our family, we will cherish these memories in life, we were also invited for a 4D show, a star war, something very different, which had good 3D images, really thrilling but also throwing some water and splash, that was something I saw first time.

With Royals at Madame Tussads

After having great experience at Madame Tussads it was the time for Lunch, and could find a restaurant with Indian name, however it was owned by a Bangladeshi gentleman who took good care while organizing our food and personally serviced us.

We then moved to Buckingham palace where Queen of England stays. It was a walk of 15 minutes to reach Buckingham Palace. Through the sidelines of palace wall, very well organized roads again, pavement all around, when we reached the palace, the flag there was symbolizing that the queen was inside. British Nationals have very high respect for royal family, they have special place in Britain, palace was very beautiful with large gates, the guards as usual were on their duty, people are not allowed to enter once the queen is inside the Palace, so we also saw it from outside and had few photographs around it.

Buckingham palace

It was evening around 6 PM and we were to go another major land mark London Eye, we booked tickets for a ride over there. It was at short distance from Buckingham palace however we were tired walking long distances on foot so decided take Uber to reach London Eye. Very soon we reached in one of their capsule to take ride on on of the marvelous and largest wheel of the world. It was just magnificent; one should not miss this opportunity in London. When you go on top and see 360degree London at night around the city, London glitters with so many colorful lights, high rise buildings, bridges, river, ships and boats, all look very amazing. It was really a Wow feeling! One of the highest building SHARD in London is so beautifully done with upper 10-15 floors only of glass and that keeps changing colours like green, blue, red, purple. One can see these lights changing one after another and giving you very pleasant feeling that you would like to see SHARD continuously for longer time with different colours.

London Eye

So finally we were done for the day and time to go back. Uber was our key source of travel in London. Almost every day we some big cars including Mercedes BMW etc.

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17, Dec 2015, Thursday, London, 5^th Day

Having finished our four days of our London journey, which was very packed, it was time to leave London for Paris. We booked on Eurostar to travel from London to Paris. It was a relaxing day, kept it light, and read more about London. We boarded the Eurorail from King Cross railway station for onward journey. Two things that one can observe that their systems were too well managed in screening such a large crowd that they can handle efficiently and high security without much inconvenience to passenger. We passed through security, immigration and finally to Eurorail, settled fast in train, this was two hours journey, passed through the country side from Britain first than France. We also passed through long tunnel under sea, was also great experience. Across UK country side was less populated, roads along with railway line were clean, well lighted tunnels, farms were of very large size, all around green, it was an amazing sight seeing opportunity, we reached Paris at 6 PM  at railway station Gare du Nord.

......To be continued..