Horse Shit

After arriving 2 months ago…we finally made the time to visit one of the more recognisable structures in London – The Buckingham Palace. We missed witnessing the changing of the guards but they did have some kind of rehearsal going on or parade…

I saw a Pinoy couple together with their son trying to take photos of the palace. I offered to help take the three of them forgetting that there is an old superstition with having three people in photos. Obviously they declined to have the three of them taken together but I did take the son’s photo. I think they got scared why a weirdo like me would offer to help as they ran off immediately after.

Anyway, I don’t really know what is going on at the palace today to be honest but are some pictures. The flag’s up which means there is a Royal in the house.

The only question is, once all the marching is done who will clean up all the poos.

Night Scenes

Went for an impromptu stroll last night…forgot the camera but I did have my phone camera. Images are obviously not perfect but they look nice all the same…

This one is the White Tower outside the Tower of London


The Tower Bridge all lit up...


The London Bridge

Towels for the rich (and stupid?)

Spotted the other day at Harrods – towels with jewels (fake ones) stuck on them. I picked it up straight away and felt it. The towel is soft but the jewels – accident waiting to happen.

Picture this, you’re in the bathroom and sprayed something into your eye or face and you quickly reach out for the towel and *slash*. Ahh um…sorry Nicky, I can’t come to the photo shoot tomorrow.

Château de Versailles

Went on a day tour today to the Versailles Palace and grounds and what’s different with this tour is we didn’t do it on foot but did it on bikes.

It was a bit uncomfortable at first since I have not been on a push bike for maybe a decade. But as the saying goes, you never forget these things. So after a bit of adventurous riding through the streets and traffic of Paris, we got on a train to Versailles and once there, we’re off! It is a place for bike tours not only because of the scenery but also because the place is HUGE, you will never finish it in a day if you are not on a bike or some fast moving vehicle. In fact you can hire Segways and golf carts to go around as well. But the tour we paid for is guided and we were led by an American guy nicknamed “Curly Top” (only because I couldn’t remember his name) who is quite passionate about the history of France and Versailles. He is also very pro-Marie Antoinette.

It was just outside Marie Antoinette’s living area (above) where “Curly “ told us a little about Versailles’ history and he summed it up in a single sentence which I think will stick with me for a while. He said “Louis XIV built it all, Louis XV enjoyed it all, and Louis XIV paid for it all (with his life)”. He also defended Marie Antoinette as she is often seen by historians as an unkind and selfish person (watch the movie Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst).

After a short picnic lunch, we rode to the front of the grounds to the palace. Man my legs were burning after two uphill stretches. The hills weren’t very steep but my legs weren’t used to it. Our group was lucky because the palace wasn’t very crowded.

If you think the outside of the palace looks amazing, the inside is even better. Louis XIV sure knows how to build them. There are paintings and sculptures everywhere - on the ceiling and big ones on the walls.

The best room in the whole palace is the Hall of Mirrors built for big parties. In fact apart from the bed rooms, all the other rooms were built for parties of different sizes.

Below is the bedroom of Marie Antoinette. The bed is a bit high I thought but that’s the way they like it. Every detail of the paintings, design and sculpture around the bed has some sort of meaning. Too much to absorb I’m afraid…I’ll just wiki it later…

Outside the palace you have the gardens and the view of the canal (where we had our picnic earlier). The only thing we missed is seeing the fountains working.

Roller Bladers @ Hyde Park

My debut at the Bal du Moulin Rouge

Just got back from dinner at Bal du Moulin Rouge. Great night. Expensive, but a must-do when you visit Paris. The current show is called Féerie. Have a look at the link above and you'll see some screenshots. It is a topless dance show (yes both men and women but mostly women).

The outside of the theatre only becomes impressive at night. The neighbourhood is not exactly great...well at least the immediate surroundings.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I got there then the server lead us to our table which is literally beside the stage. So close that costumes of the performers dancing close to the edge of the stage are constantly brushing against my hair. From this location, you can clearly see everything.
Of course it wouldn't be a Moulin Rouge in Paris without the French CanCan.

I really enjoyed the show. The show is a mixture of cabaret style shows and entertainment shows like juggling, comedy/magic, and ventriloquism. The dancing is high-energy and entertaining with great costumes. In one of the acts, I stupidly "participated" when ask where members of the audience were from. Being the first one to answer "New Zealand", the ventriloquist quickly came to me and ask me to go on stage. Me and about 3 other people went on stage and ended up being live puppets. Upon squeezing our arms, we must open our mouths and pretend to talk. This we all followed but I decided to add a bit of attitude to it and it looks like the crowd loved it.

After the show, I had many smiles and compliments from the leaving diners on the way out. Met a fellow Kiwi who is also from Auckland on their Contiki tour. I even had an American (could be Canadian) compliment me by saying he thought I was part of the act... :)

Not boasting....just expressing the fun I had (under the influence)...

Anyway, if you are in Paris, you must see the Moulin Rouge show. The food is actually average...so you can bypass the food and go for the show only...audience participation is optional.

Tour Eiffel

After checking in, first order of business was to go straight to the Eiffell Tower.

Bought a 3-day pass for the Metro/Bus so we can go anywhere if we get the time.

First glimpse of the tower was amazing...although it wasn't as high as I imagined, it is still very impressive. It was even more impressive as we walked closer and stand under the tower.

Had to queue to buy tickets to go up the tower. There are two main ways up...walking or lifts... After walking up St Paul's Cathedral, guess which one I chose. :) The queue was long but this died down as it got closer to lunch time.

Once up there, the view of the city is magnificent. the city looks flatish from that high up (third and top floor) and the difference between Paris buildings and London buildings is that Paris buildings are mostly light in colour. i.e. not as many bricks used like they do in London.

This is the Seine - the river that crosses the city of Paris.

To the Northwest is the Palais de Chaillot. We didn't actually go there as we were running of time.
To the Southeast is the Champ de Mars and I think it is a park in front of a military school.

Lots of people there walking around and sun-bathing in their bikini tops. Sadly the park is not clean...lots of broken glass, cigarette butts, and all sorts of rubbish (below).

But in general, the Eiffel Tower is a must-do and -see. The experience was great.

On the Eurostar

Woke up early this morning to go to Paris; this is the first time I used rail for long distance travel. First impressions were: convenient, less stressful, and quick. Our current home is only two tube stops away from St Pancras International which is where the international trains depart from. Kings Cross train station (beside St Pancras) is where the local trains depart from. We bought e-tickets so when we got there; we simply went on vending machines to get our boarding tickets. Once we have our boarding tickets, we queued up to check in through immigration. All this took less than 30 minutes. We waited a while for platform 9 (NOT 9 ¾) to open then boarded the train.

The trip to Paris took just under 3 hours including a quick stopover at Ashton to pick up more passengers.

As the train moved really fast and half the time we were in tunnels, there wasn’t much to see. The French countryside we did see weren’t much different from the English countryside.

The Eurostar is more comfortable than a plane. The seats are wider, there’s more leg room and it is quieter than a plane. There was this slightly irritating pressure build up every time you go through a tunnel that affects you ears. But a simple equalising of the ears fixes the problem.

Considering the convenience, absence of airport check-in hassles, and potentially cheaper fares, I’m looking forward to more train travelling to, from and around Europe in the near future.

Anyway just to give you an idea how fast the Eurostar goes (Wikipedia says around 300km/h)...the photos below shows the front of the train. Those dots are bug splatters and you imagine how hard it will be to clean them out. The next train shows a red patch. That WAS a bird. You can see the feathers stuck to the paint just under the grill.

Where’s the ball?

You see these swindlers all the time in movies. I’ve never seen them in person and you’d think you’d find them close to dark alleys late at night. I found three the other day in Chinatown in broad daylight.

These ones are European, probably eastern euros. They have that look in there faces of “I’m not to be trusted”. But they gathered big crowds as they play these tricks that will make you wanna play. They make it look easy for you to win. Two of them used 3 thin, round rubbery foams and under one foam will be a white sticker or paper. The man would shuffle the pieces around and will make you guess where the paper is. Anyone can play for 20 quid. If you get it right, you get 1:1. The guy above (in the photo) uses three coke caps with a small piece of foam shaped like a ball. Same game rules…I stood there for at least 30 mins watching all three of them swindle people. Sometimes when you are sure which one it is, one turn away to get your money then WHAM, the man rotates the whole board 180 degrees and you lose. Or sometimes you if you think you are very sure, the man will say 40 quid to play and you are most likely to lose then mainly because the mark is not in any of the three. This latter trick is easier to do with the cap and ball because the ball can easily be squeezed and hidden away in between your fingers. If you want to win, you have to be aggressive and hold the cap down while you get your money out to bet. In fact, why not hold the money in your hand to begin with and that way you do not have to turn around and be a victim of the old switcharoo…

Eventually, I noticed that there seem to be only three people who are very active in winning (and losing) and I had the suspicion then if I was to run a scam like this, I would have dummy players to encourage activity then swindle someone in the crowd. So later that day just before I left, the pictured man above moved to another spot and bingo, the three active players I saw before are with the man in the above photo! Don’t they look normal? You have lady who you probably would suspect as being in on it. Then you have the tall guy who seem to be just walking past (he kept walking off and back), then you have the senior citizen (with the hat) who seem to be just another part of the crowd and so fixated on the game.

Unless they hook someone dumb into betting a lot of money, I watched them for a while and I don’t think you can make a lot of money this way.

It’s getting warm

It is amazing that only a month ago it was snowing here in London. We were experiencing temperatures around the freezing point and when walking around shopping places, we’d enjoy going into shops because they are all heated.

It’s suddenly quite warm in the last couple of days and based on the weather forecast, it looks like we will experience Auckland-like temperatures.

So decided to go to a park today called Hyde Park – quite a nice place to relax and unwind. There weren’t many people to the point of overcrowding. There is a lake or river in the middle of the park called the “Serpertine” or maybe that is the name of the body of water…anyway we went on a pedal boat for half an hour and chased families of ducks and goose.

There are plenty of tulips in bloom and the park’s wildlife are out and about.


Squirrels are fun to look at because they hop along on top of the grass like waves of water. These ones are not that afraid of people either. Actually I’m not sure if we are suppose to approach them as I haven’t seen any signs but if you carry peanuts in your pockets, these squirrels are your best friends. They’ll come to you and you can hand feed them. Sometimes they’ll bury the nuts into the ground straight away and come back for some more.

The pigeon above has a pattern I’ve never seen before but I think there is nothing like the Kereru when it comes to impressive colour pattern on pigeons.

Hyde Park is also the park where the Princess Diana Memorial fountain was erected. All around the park you will see these “The Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Walk” medallions on the path but sadly we weren’t able to find the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain.


Just before we left I thought we spotted it from a distance however the area is fenced off on one side. Another odd thing is that none of the park maps labelled both the memorial walk and the memorial fountain. We all know the mysteries and conspiracy surrounding the Princess’ death…could this be part of it?

Bad England in England

I think it was the second day that I found this but when I was in Tottenham Court the other day, I decided to take a photo. Before crossing the road at every intersection, you’ll see instructions on where to look for oncoming traffic.


It looked like they couldn’t be bothered correcting it; perhaps for several reasons including costs.
One time I witness road works in progress. I’ve witness road works many times but you’ll notice in that London (and perhaps even the whole of the UK), they’re quite big on building structures using long lasting materials. For example, almost every house or apartment I’ve seen is made of bricks/concrete while in NZ, we use things like weatherboards. I’m not saying weatherboards will not last long but just look at the buildings here in London and a lot of them are very very old and they are still standing.

So going back to the road works, I saw the guys painting the road after laying down some asphalt. The paint used here for road signs are not spray painted like they are in NZ. They use some kind of hard plastic like material cut into strips and which are then exposed to flame torches. The melted product sticks to the road and I don’t think they ever come off. Which would explain why the incorrectly spelt road label above was never corrected. Motorcyclists in NZ often talk about the dangers of riding on the painted strips (i.e. they are slippery and dangerous), I can only imagine how slippery these ones are. There are some roads where the labels are made of several layers. Maybe they don’t resurface roads here in London town.

Station to Hogwarts

One of the first few places I found.