27.11.2011 - Another stroll in the park

Just one week later, weather still going strong, we decided to explore another part of green in the city, this time the infamous Hyde Park. Unfortunately a lot of pictures are on Mitza's mobile which has no possibility to transfer them to a PC, therefore this will be just quick and dirty...

What I don't understand, Brits are so obsessed with Grade I or II listings, conservation and planning permissions, and then sometimes there are buildings that ruin the whole view. I wonder who gave the permission (or better said how expensive the permission was...) to build some concrete dice directly at the border of the park?

Crossing the park from north to south we soon arrived at the Royal Albert hall, the saucer in the background. Pictures from the monument you just see partly will be added after Mitza's return!

As we were close to the museum street we decided to go to the Science Museum, which is admission free as most museums in London. Although quite interesting and with a lot of effort to make the exhibitions interactive, I found it in some parts quite old fashioned. Showing 7 different engines from ships doesn't make it any more interesting, although the models were quite impressive.

Here the interactive parts: The first two are showing a simulator where you fly a WWII fighter and can make any kinds of maneuvers. (Watched just a few minutes, got sick from just watching and no one tried an Immelmann!)

 Here you can see DJane MFPS with her latest device, some synthesizer from the seventies.

And now to the models:

They also had a cross section of a 747, which was really huge and interesting to see why the air cargo containers have this weird shape!

On the way back to the station (Which is quite an underground walk) we decided to have a look at one of the many ice rinks and eat a waffel. The waffel was one of the most disgusting I ever had (Fried!), but the surrounding helped to get into the right mood for the advent season.

20.11.2011 - A stroll in the park

As my wife is good in bullying me around (even if she is far far away), it is again my duty to catch up with the blog and give you some news about our life. As I am not as good as Mitza in preparing these maps where we have been, it will be more of a Bravo Foto Lovestory (For all non-German readers - never mind, you have not missed anything). Additionally, no food stories, as my cousin complained we are just writing about eating - I wonder if any of my friends was surprised that the blog would take this direction...?

So we went out on Sunday to enjoy the nice weather and do some serious sightseeing, as I have been several times to London, but always without the chance to visit the famous landmarks. But as we not have learned our lesson from the restaurant opening hours (see post about the trip to Bath in August) we of course did not look up opening hours before. This meant: Westminster Abbey closed the whole day for service and House of Parliament shut down, too...

Nevertheless we took some pictures of the surrounding architecture to give you an impression of the area:

Something else you will start to see at the end of October are small red paper flowers at the coats and jackets of people, the so called "Poppy". This is a charity for the military service. In connection with the remembrance  of all soldiers that have served in the Royal Army there is also a temporary memorial for the soldiers that lost their lives so far, which gives a quite impressive picture that we can hardly show with one picture, but nevertheless we try. What you see here is a small wooden cross for each victim.

We then decided to take a walk through Green Park to Buckingham Palace. The autumn was in full effect and  the squirrels were used to tourists.

 By the way, from the two above the lower picture shows the squirrel... :D

After a short walk we reached Buckingham Palace, and the Queen was at home (according to the flag) and had some oriental visitors (according to the other flags).

Below is Green Park Station, or to be more precise the building above the station, where I arrive each day to go to work. 

Of course we could not miss to make a famous "tourist in a red telephone cell" - picture. The state of these leads me to the assumption that they are really just for tourist to take pictures and drunken guys to pee...

We then walked up to Bond Street, which is the most expensive retail street in London. Below is a picture from the window of Faberge, the Russian jeweller famous for the eggs, that opened a store in London recently. Cute little furniture, no price tag. 

 Just around the corner is the building where I work. No, I am neither selling hand bags nor do I get a discount!

A finally some nice cars that are really useful in London's jammed streets. There even was a price tag on, the Bugatti was just £1.6m - birthday present anyone?

And if I get a Bentley, why in this colour? This was almost as bad as the mint green Porsche I saw a few days later...

Montezumas Revenge(r)?

Although my cousin complained already that we just write about food, once again we moved from pub to food... First we met with a Polish couple that is friends with us in the "The Red Lion" in Soho.

Funnily enough Mitza met her in language school in Germany - all these contingencies support my feeling that Europe is more and more like one big country, and I hope the current crisis won't destroy this! But back from politics to the real thing! As Londoners love there Friday evening beer the whole pub and the street in front was crowded, but we still find a place to seat and they even had wheat beer - yummy! 

As drinking makes hungry, we just crossed Oxford Circus to enter Benito's Hat to grab some burritos. Luckily I went to the toilet after eating, otherwise I might have been scared away by their weird decoration - probably the sauce of some customer was to hot?

Being a tourist in London: Southbank + St. Paul's

The path we took: from London Bridge station to the Tate Modern

It was in one of these rare blue sky Sundays and already fresh winds that we decided to visit the Tate Modern, a famous (and huge) modern art gallery in London. The Tate Modern is located in the south side of the River Thames. To get there, we took the underground until the London Bridge station and the remaining path we went by foot, making stops along the way and of course, taking some pictures. In my humble opinion, this walk was more interesting than the gallery itself, as I'm not a big fun of modern Art myself, but Sven enjoyed it quite a lot. 

As soon as we came out of the London Bridge Station, we could already see the highest building in the city; although in the final construction phase, it's already part of the London's skyline. It's called "The Shard". 

The Shard

We then crossed the street and found ourselves in the Borough Market, one of the biggest in London, where it's possible to find a big variety of food from around the world. There are big pans everywhere and all those food looked very delicious. You can find from Paellas to Apfelstrudel there. It's quite a big difference when you come from Stratford (where we live) and there people usually eat crappy fried food on the streets and suddenly you land in a place where people are eating mostly healthy and tasty (yet simple) food. In that day, people were celebrating Apple day and many were even wearing costumes. We ate something prepared by a french guy: roasted duck with apple and salad. Very good! 

After lunch, we went down the street, walked a few blocks and then turned right to check out the "The Golden Hinde" a replica of the Ship belonging to Sir Francis Drake at around 1577 - 1580; it moors at the riverside. People can even go inside of it, of course you would have to pay, because nothing is free or cheap in this city, except for clothes (girls heaven)!

The Golden Hinde

Going back the same way, one can see the ruins of the Winchester Palace. In the medieval times, it used to be the residence of the Bishops of Winchester.

Winchester Palace Ruins

Back to the original route towards the Tate Modern, we found ourselves facing the river Thames one more time, close to the beautiful Southwark bridge. 

Southwark Bridge and the Thames

A few steps later, there's the famous Shakespeare's Globe, a reconstruction of what it would have been the Globe Theater in 1599, where the works of the renown poet that lived during Queen's Elizabeth I Reign were staged.

Shakespeare's Globe

The Tate Modern is right besides the Shakespeare's Globe. For people that enjoy modern art, I believe it's a paradise, as the gallery is really big. 

Tate Modern

In front of the Tate Modern there's the "Millennium Bridge", in which we crossed over and found ourselves in the north side of the Thames. Right in the back, the imposing cathedral of Saint Paul's can be seen, where Lady Di and Prince Charles got married. 

St. Paul's e Millennium Bridge

Behind the Cathedral there is a underground station, from where we took he tube to go back home, as we were a little bit tired of walking already.

If you have enjoyed this post and want to know more about the places we have visited, you can click on their names and a official website will immediately pops up! 

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you liked it! :o)

The Greenwich Meridian

The Greenwich Meridian is the meridian that passes through a part of London also called Greenwich, at the Royal Observatory. It divides the globe into Occident and Orient and it serves as a reference to calculate the distances in longitudes and to establish the time zones. The time at Greenwich is also called GMT - "Greenwich Mean Time".

At night, a green laser comes out of the Royal Observatory and shines throughout the sky in London and it marks where it supposedly passes, and one can see it from many parts of the city and from very far away, just like in the images below:

Laser coming out of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich

The Royal Observatory is located inside of a park in the Greenwich area, beside of the also famous University. It was there, that around three months ago we visited both of them and took some pictures: 

Greenwich Park

University of Greenwich

I hope you've enjoyed this post and 'till the next one! :)

A man on a mission...

...or how to get to know a city by eating!

As we haven't been posting for a while, it is time to write a small update!
Because London is quite a big city, and sometimes you are not so keen to hang out in another touristic hotspot, where do you start?

In Germany we once read about some nice ways to get to know your city, but due to the sheer size these are no real options here! (Just ride one tube line to the final destination and look around there - in London it takes 2 hours and you are either in no-mans-land or favelas; get a map, mark two streets in the overview and walk from one street to the other - again this can mean a few days walk)

As I am always hungry and kind of into burgers (Poor Elmar...), I convinced Mitza to check out some burger shacks. As a reminder for us and to give you an idea what we do on our weekends, I will list our experience here... To increase comparability I always went for a burger with cheese and bacon!

The order of appearance does not reflect our ranking, it is just the order in which we visited them:

Byron in Canary Wharf (http://www.byronhamburgers.com/)
Unfortunately we did not take any pictures, but as usually Canary Wharf on a weekend was quite empty, so no problem to find a seat. I believe this was Mitza's favourite place, for me they came in as number two. To get a few impressions find below the link to the page of the designer of this particular branch.
http://www.michaelisboyd.com/#/byron-canary-wharf/4543714561
The burgers were quite good, although the sauce could have been more. Overall I can suggest to go there, and there are quite a few locations all over London.

Hache in Camden (http://www.hacheburgers.com/)
Right in the heart of Camden, from the station just across the street we find Hache, not one of the big chains (The only have 3 restaurants in London). First I was a little bit sceptical about a restaurant with a French name serving American food in England... But, after sitting down in the cosy restaurant and ordering the standard meal, we received in my opinion the best burger. Perfect chips, tasty sauce and bacon and the patty just great! Will definitively go there again!

Ultimate Burgers in Tottenham Court Road (http://www.ultimateburger.co.uk)
We wanted to go to the one in the New Oxford Street, but were unable to find it, a check afterwards suggested that we should have walked just a little bit down the street. But whatever, then we walked 10 minutes to the Tottenham Court Road branch. As this was on a Saturday and off the main tourist routes it was also quite empty. The service seemed overall a little bit half-hearted and the location in general a little bit cold. I found my patty to thick and the bacon was not the crispy one, but this weird English one. So in general just an mediocre experience!

Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Stratford (http://www.gbk.co.uk/)
Basically I can just repeat what I wrote about Byron. Also a chain with several branches over London with a self-order system, so they just deliver your food to the table, but don't take the orders. Have been there twice now (The first time also in Canary Wharf), and I remember that didn't like the first time that much /More like Ultimate Burger - might be because of the fact that they crammed so many tables in the branch that I hardly could get onto the bench), but the second time it was good. Again no picture...

Home Kitchen in Stratford
As making burgers is quite easy we also did at home - bought a pre-made patty with cheese on it (The second try I had to squeeze it, so it was thinner and fitted better on the bread), a little bit of lettuce, massive amounts of ketchup and mustard-mayonnaise and a dark bread (Less carbs, you know!) - et voilà!

Unfortunately chips at home are never as good as in a restaurant...