Claire and I spent the weekend in London. I was there for a conference on Friday and Claire was able to come down and we spent Saturday and Sunday morning being tourists.
Saturday was spent on the London Eye - fantastic views and the queues weren't actually that bad. We then toured around London and saw the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street and Harrods. On Sunday we went up Tower Bridge and admired the way we used to be able to build significant projects without falling into a pit of massive budget and time over-runs and associated scandal.
A couple of notes:
- I would like to live in Butlers' Wharf, but not at £500k for a one bedroom LEASEHOLD property
- Who let them build that monstrosity of a hotel next to Tower bridge
- London City is a great airport
- The Thames is big
- To the security services: Explain to security at London City that 33 CL (centi-litres) is more than 100 ml, the maximum amount of liquid allowed in hand luggage.
- Red wine really does give you the worst hangover
- Londoners really are a grumpy lot in the street.
- No-smoking inside (as practised in Scotland and Ireland) is brilliant and going back into smoky pubs is rubbish
- The tube is great and with something like that, the congestion charge makes sense. In Edinburgh, it doesn't.