London 'mates'

Bandmates squashed into a busy tubetrain















Housemate, Craig, at a pond near our house











Housemates having a braai. Craig (from Cape Town), Desire (from Durban), Llewelyn (from Pretoria) and Gosha (from Poland)

























SA mate, Thys, having a drink with me before going back to SA the next day.

London 'mates'

Mates from SA, Stephen and Done at Trafalgar Square.















My mate, Nelson Mandela, speaking to his people in front of Westminster Abbey
















Roommate, Robbie, with Lieze-Mari, Danie at a restaurant near our Kensal Green hostel. Robbie shared our hostel room with us for a few days










Housemate, Craig, on our cycling trip along the river.













Bandmate, Johan, on a lazy Sunday afternoon in front of St. Pauls Cathedral

More sights

Big Ben




















Tower Bridge at night











Danie, with the London Eye in the background













Danie on Hungerford bridge at Waterloo

















The view of the Thames and Waterloo Bridge

Changing of the Guard

If you don't like crowded places, you don't want to find yourself in front of Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard. The tourists of London probably holds the record for fitting the most people onto one sidewalk. Everybody wants a piece of the action when the royal soldiers and their marching band comes marching towards the Palace, all dressed up with their red jackets, black busbies and shiny weapons. From where I was standing they looked like tiny toy soldiers. I'm sure the soldiers was sent for a few dance classes, because they sure have good rhythm and they have the perfection of world class ballerinas in their footwork!

London sights

Piccadilly Circus

















Trafalgar Square and the National Arts Museum. (Oh, and Lieze-Mari posing for me)











Buckingham Palace.












Resting in an old cemetery after a long walk. It may seem like a strange place to sit down for a rest, but it is more common than you might think! You see people jogging past you in the footpaths or taking a peaceful walk among the trees. The cemetery is the home for squirrels, pigeons and crows. The squirrels are quite eager to make friends, if you have something for them to nibble on.



The Tower of London. (To see the actual towers, you have to look at it from a higher point of view.) It is magnificently big, and apparently the place to be on a Sunday afternoon if your a tourist. We had our first London fish and chips here next to the building, amongst the hustle and bustle of people, before we walked around to Tower Bridge.

public transport

On our second day in London, my brother and I took a little public transport exploration trip. It started with a simple walk to the nearest park and we ended up traveling through London with every bus and train that crossed our path, without even quite knowing where we were headed. This was the day we discovered the wonders of public transport. And what a discovery it was! After all the confusion of the previous day, worrying about taking the right tubes from Heathrow Airport to find the hostel in Kensal Green, this was quite an eye opener. Once we realised that you can travel unlimited with a travel pass, we bought ourselves one of those and got on the first train, without worrying too much about where we were going. The buses were the greatest though. When you have some time to drive through Central London, a big red double decker bus is the best way to do so. You touch in with your travel card, go up the stairs to the top, and sit up there, looking down on the hustle and bustle of London, while the driver safely maneuvers his overgrown vehicle past all the beautiful sights and buildings of this magnificent city. You do not mess with a London busdriver! The road belongs to them.After a while, though, you get a bit more used to the magnificence of it all, and also start to discover the downsides of the system. You have no control over your time and your travel plans. You have to learn a lot of patience, waiting for the bus or the train, excepting that you will be late for your next appointment once you hear about delays and signal failures and gladly taking that detour that the staff recommends, without complaining - because here in the big city no-one really cares about your personal problems caused by transport failures. I learned this on the hard way, missing my first training session at the agency, because of a fire alert on Earls Court station. The district line train traveling towards Richmond came to a dead stop in the middle of the tunnel, waiting for a platform at Earls Court. After a while there was an announcement that the train was changing direction and will now be traveling towards Wimbledon. By then I had to accept that I am already too late for the training session to make it worth the trouble looking for the right bus to go to Hammersmith. What can a girl do? You cannot put the blame on anyone, not even yourself. All I could do was take another train back home with a big detour, avoiding the delays on the district line. Almost three hours later I got off the bus back home at the Lady Dock Path stop, right where I started in the first place. I had to postponed my training to the next week's session.