London Trip

Two months in the same place with weekends at home cleaning, lying and lazing around, I badly needed a break. Christmas break just got what I wanted.

We started from Ipswich to London at 7am. Due to Christmas season, there were no trains directly from Ipswich to London. So the rail company had arranged for buses to Colchester and from there, we were to take the train. Whatever the hassles, we landed in London Liverpool street station by 9am.


Our first destination was East Ham, the mini Asia in London. Two months since I had eaten idli and dosa. :).. And this was the destination to seek for to bring back to life, those idli-dosa sensitive taste buds. Tube took us to East Ham.


But before jumping on to the food, we wanted to visit the Mahalaxmi temple there. We paid a short visit to the temple. I was glad to see the shrine in front of the temple, similar to the ones you see in India. It was well air conditioned and sound proof so the mantras could not make it outside the walls.


After the temple, we just strolled on the streets of East Ham. It was a nice mix of shops ranging from India, Srilanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. It was the morning and the front of some of the shops were cleaned with water and the smell of agarbathhis from the shops, for a moment, took me back to Bangalore's Gandhi Bajaar and Mangalore's car street.. :)..


After some asking around, we found the world famous Saravana Bhavan. Rest is history. Here is the proof.. ;D



After this, our destination was Canary Wharf. This is a business district cum shopping complex. Some of the beautiful architectural works of our modern times, including stones and glass was here for our cameras to devour. We just did some window shopping and then left for London Eye.


London Eye is nothing but a giant wheel, whose spokes end with a small glass compartment. When it rotates, one gets a beautiful glimpse of most of the city. It was a majestic view of the city with Thames dividing it. Here's how the London Eye looks like..

Here's how the eye looks like..


Here's how London looks from the eye..


Just before we got into the London Eye, we saw Big Ben, a clock tower and a nice looking historic building. More of it here.


Trafalgar square was next. This is a memorial of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Another architectural beauty with some typical European structures like the fountain and the statues with water jets oozing out of their mouth. Please excuse those connoisseurs of architecture for I write as I see it. The only bad thing that had happened in the entire day was to happen here, with me. The battery of my camera died. But as I had written earlier, this gave some rest to my otherwise restless mind.


Our next destination was Tower Bridge, the same bridge which makes an appearence in most of Hindi movies these days.. be it Salaam-e-ishq, bhaagam bhaag or K3G. It was 4pm when we went there and it was all dark. So we got a nice well lit view of this monument. This is the first time I found a exhibition hall on the spans of a bridge. Though I did not get into the hall, the very idea left me bewildered. As all the other places, we satisfied our cameras here.

After this, we headed back home, with tired bodies and refreshed minds. We thanked God for making it a lovely day. The previous two days were especially foggy and it had even snowed. We couldn't get a better day than this.