Now we’re out a bit later each night we had a slower start to the day, heading out around 9am for a quick breakfast at Pret followed by a particularly nerdy expedition, out to Upton Hill (in Zone 3, shocking!) just to visit a big Dr Who shop out that way. Why not. It’s nearly an hour on the train, but at least it’s direct from our local station on the District line, no need to change trains. It’s fun watching the train when you’re near the last carriage as they have no doors between carriages.

Once we got there, after a bit of a walk, we found nerdy Dr who heaven. It was cool, but they were very thingy about photos, so no pictures. I only bought a few small things, being ever mindful of having to lug at around. Anyway, I was really glad we took the hour trip each way to see it.

We caught the train back, dumped the purchases at the hotel, then back to tube to Leicester Square for our next thing. Found a lovely little Italian lunch spot nearby for a very filling and good value (for London) meal, then on the the theatre.

Perry found that Brokeback Mountain had been turned into a play, he was able to get tickets, so it was time to watch our third tragic love story in a row unfold.

It’s the tale of forbidden love between cowboys Ennis and Jack, who, despite the expectations, pressures, and dangers from society, can’t ignore what their hearts are really feeling for each other. Which of course causes a good deal of drama and another unhappy ending. The play was 90 minutes long, with no intermission, presented ‘in the round’ in a relatively small theatre. One constant throughout those 90 minutes was what could best be described as ‘the ghost of Ennis future’, watching his past unfold. I’m still not sure about the effectiveness of this, but hey I don’t write plays, I’m just a customer. He just didn’t seem to add much in terms of exposition or emotional weight as such. It wasn’t a musical, but rather, “a play with songs”, expertly performed to the side of the stage by a band and singer Eddi Reader, her of the “It’s got to be-e-e-e Perfect” song of times gone by. Her now-more-gravelly voice was a perfect match for the southern-inspired songs dotted throughout the performance. Overall it was pretty well done. I guess the whole point of theatre is often not just to entertain but also to make you think – and you really do have to wonder how many people had been, and indeed still are, deeply unhappy because circumstances wouldn’t let them live their lives as their genuine selves. It’s still happening, and that in itself is a bit sad.

We popped back to the hotel then straight back out again – we’re doing our bit to contribute to Transport for London’s profits today for sure. Tonight’s adventure is not a tragic love story, and definitely not something to make you think. It’s ABBA!

Yep we are fortunate enough to be seeing ABBA Voyage, the concert with the “ABBA-tars” dancing around in stage to a live band. It’s all a bunch of super clever computer graphics, but all the moves etc were capture from the stars of ABBA themselves, turned into realistic digital figures, and played back night after night for our enjoyment.

It takes place in a purpose built facility – they had food so we grabbed a bite to eat, a slightly dried out hot dog but what can you expect from your regular music venue.

As for the show itself – it was incredible, though not quite what I expected. I thought it was going to be more of a virtual abba concert, with the “ABBA-tars” playing through their hits like you’d expect from any musical act. When they were doing this, the show was at its strongest. The effect of four people on stage is so convincing, it really does look real 99% of the time. Their live backing band is big, loud, and plays very well. It’s also backed up with an incredible collections of lights, lasers, movable screens, with effects that travel though the whole theatre front to back, to great effect.

When they’d zoom in on any of the bands reconstructed faces though, you could tell they’re not quite real, just some kind of can’t-put-my-finger-on-it thing that makes you think no, it’s not quite a real human being.

Maybe half the songs were played as Abba-on-stage. Others were turned into virtual video clips, two songs went completely off-piste and became an animated story, which felt a bit out of place. For one song the abba-tars stopped completely and handed it over to the backing band to complete the song.

It just have the hardest job picking what songs to put in the concert, but it wasn’t all “just the hits”, there were a few unexpected songs too. I was glad to see “summer night city” finally getting an outing., and I didn’t expect the show to open with “The visitors”. Pretty sure they managed to squeeze in something from every album, including the new one.

And I’m not sure if I should admit it but I kinda new I’d have a little cry, I guess it’s unavoidable when you see a big chunk of your childhood coming at you live (ish) and loud. Happy tears though 🙂 The funniest part of show probably had to be watching thousands of old 50-somethings dancing terribly to songs from the 70s. It was kinda like every wedding you’ve probably ever been to, just on a much larger scale 🙂

Then 90 minutes later it was all done, they finished with The Winner Takes it All, and I guess we all won on the night. A trip back in time, an amazing light and laser show, and a chance to say we’ve kinda seen a favourite band from our earlier years. Lovely. I’d go again.

Getting home wasn’t a drama, the crowd dispersed across the nearby Docklands Light Rail and on to the tube, so it was a pleasant journey back, and gave me time to write up these notes while they were still fresh in my mind.

We’re slowly but surely running out days (you could take that as a deeply philosophical statement, or, just that the holiday is slowly but surely drawing to a close) but oh, we’re not done yet. Onward!

This fine day started without any blaring fire alarms at 6:30, so that was already a big win 🙂

We opted for breakfast in the hotel to make life easy, and there a substantial buffet of hot and cold things, quite nice! Popular too, we had to wait a few minutes for a table to become available.

There were some train strikes planned for today so we really didn’t know what was going to be affected, it was hard to get a straight answer from any of the websites I visited, so we left plenty of time to get to our first appointment of the day, at Euston, at 10AM.

Despite the warnings of some big delays and cancelled trains (only on the Circle line, the line we needed, of course), we walked down to the station, jumped on a train in a few minutes, and had a seamless trip to Edgware Road, and then a change to go to Euston square. Yes, we had so many delays and train problems that we arrived 40 minutes early and had to sit around enjoying a coffee while waiting for this morning’s tour to start. Still, much better than being late.

The tour was “Euston: The Lost Tunnels” as organised by the London Transport Museum. They have a bunch of tours where they’ve unearthed bits and pieces of the tube or the train network, and opening them up for tours and the like. There are a few abandoned station on the network which would have been really cool to look at, but when a station is abandoned, so is its lift or its escalator, some of them having around 180 steps or more between ground level and the station. I knew that was going to be out of my league, so the Euston one sounded good.

And sure enough, it was good! Our guide gave a bunch of history about the early days of Euston (it just had two lines, one for trains to Birmingham, one for trains from Birmingham), and was (I think)the world’s first inter-city railway terminus. Judging by the historical photos we were shown they maybe didn’t think it through all that well, with one of the historical ticket halls being full of steps in every direction – very elegant I’m sure unless you’re travelling with luggage. Which, back then, for such a big trip, you probably were.

Over the years the station grew in several directions from 2 tracks to 16, and over those years different tunnels and passageways were built to make sure customers were still able to access them all as needed. This brings us to the first bit of the tour, where we were led into a now-disused tunnel that used to allow access from one train company’s tracks to the other, and even had a forward-thinking built in ticket office, so customers didn’t have to go back up to street level to buy a ticket to continue their journey with a different train company. Instead they could just grab it as they walked through the passageway. The (tiny) ticket hall was interesting, the other bit they went to great trouble to point out was when this walkway was closed in 1962, all the advertising posters were just left in place, and although very tatty, some of them remain in relatively complete condition, though the whole lost are covered by decades of dirt and grime. Dirty old posters mightn’t make for good photos, but here there anyway in their dirty and faded glory.

Next up we were lead in to a lift shaft and given a brief explanation about ventilation and how it was never initially even thought about for the electric trains, and it was only thought of an issue for steam trains. Even today it’s quite warm in those tunnels, and a lack of ventilation would have made it so much worse back in the day. Plenty of solutions were found, like building bigger lifts and using the old lift shafts as big ventilation spaces. It was a pretty cool looking ventilation shaft, as far these things go, I think it was about 18 metres tall.

We were then led through some un-embellished tunnels, just the metal tunnel walls and nothing else, to a point where we were overlooking two of the platform of the Victoria line, we could see the trains coming and going via the ventilation grilles that had been cut into the platform roof. It was interesting feeling the way trains would ‘push’ the warm air into the station when they arrived, and their leaving caused a whole bunch of cold air to sucked into the station as they left. The difference was stark while we stayed there a few minutes watching trains arrive and leave.

After a little over an hour of clambering around tunnels and ventilations shafts like someone trying to escape in some old sci-fi movie, we were eventually released back into the real world and allowed on our way. It was an interesting thing to see, that most people don’t, so even if not as interesting as a whole abandoned station it was still very much worth doing. Euston, we didn’t have a problem!

A quick look at the map showed that Euston isn’t that far from Camden, Camden lock and the Camden Market. So again, with no strike-related issues of delays, we made our way a whole one stop over to Camden, and over to the market. Last time we visited all those years ago we arrived by boat, so it was cool to see more of Camden itself when we arrived by tube. It sure is a town with a big personality.

The market has changed a fair bit since we were there, if I remember right it had a big fire a few years ago but it’s all been rebuilt and still host to a whole bunch of weird and wonderful food and other shops. One big change is now the food area is in more-permanent looking huts rather than a hodge-podge collection of carts and stalls and so on. Anyway, glad we went back for a look.

After that, knowing we had another late night ahead, time for a nap. Tonight’s show was ‘Cabaret’ – actually, diner and a show thanks to them having a whole meal offering as well. Two birds, one stone, why not!

Once again, straight on to a tube and we reached Embankment station about 45 minutes early. So far we’ve been lucky, which is great. It’s another glorious day in London, sunny, 20 degrees, it’s another way in which we have been very lucky so far. Maybe I’ve just jinxed it, but it’s already been better than I thought it could have been so all good.

After walking the Hungerford pedestrian bridge and sitting for a while, and watching just how slowly the traffic moves, it was time to enter the Playhouse Theatre / Kit Kat Club.

Theatre is, of course, an experience. But Cabaret, well, Cabaret is an Experience. From the moment you walked through the door, your phone camera is covered with a sticker, you down your welcome shot of Jaegermeister, and that’s it, you are out of London and in to the pre-war Kit Kat club in Berlin and the show is On. The three bars available pre-show weren’t just bars but also performance spaces, where performers mingle and interact with guests, dancing along to a band that you suddenly realise has also entered the room. Even at intermission there were phones ringing (all of us with tables had an old landline phone on them), where some of the performers were still interacting with the crowd, albeit one-to-one.

Years and years ago we were at this same theatre for a very harrowing version of 1984, and this time around the whole theatre space has been totally transformed so this show can be presented in the round. The stage is quite small, surrounded by little cabaret tables, one of which we’re sitting at right in front (or is it being) the stage. We opted for ‘dinner and a show’, which despite looking small was quite substantial. A big warm pretzel and humours to start, then I had some vege falafels while Perry had a selection of cold meats, and we both had cheese and crackers for the last course. And again a bottle of champagne, this time Moët & Chandon. It’s not Veuve but it will do! 😂

With no scenery and minimal props, Cabaret was kinda the opposite of Moulin Rouge maximalist more-is-more approach. But where Moulin Rouge blasts you with spectacle, Cabaret instead feeds you nuance and clever inference in every part of that relatively tiny stage, giving you just enough to fill in the blanks.

I knew nothing about the show before seeing it – I haven’t seen the movie with Liza Minnelli, I haven’t read up on the plot, but for something set in pre-war Berlin, you know when you see a Nazi armband in Act 1, that things will take a darker turn in (the much shorter) Act 2. The portrayal of these monsters was clever, dressing them as the clowniest of clowns, highlighting the ridiculousness of the things they were saying and doing, and as the show went on you see the colour and energy being washed out of Berlin – flamboyant dancers costumes replaced with beige, high kicks almost turning in to goose steps and music takes on a more military tone. It was cleverly, and quite chillingly, done. I guess it’s not surprise that this story doesn’t have a happy ending, but it was powerfully delivered, a wonderfully executed show that deserves all the praise being heaped upon it. I’m just grateful they didn’t pull some of the strongly emotional handles that they so easily could have done, I guess they didn’t have to, we knew what would come next.

After the somewhat subdued finish, the performers returned to well deserved rapturous applause, and we were cast out in to the London cold, so much richer for the experience. Again our luck with trains held firm, and we walked straight onto a train back to the hotel, to finish the blog write-up and finally crash into bed to sleep (in just a few short minutes from right now). More tomorrow.

It’s fair to say we had an alarming start to the day. A very loud fire alarm at the hotel certainly did its job, alarming us from 0-100 in half a second. At least this was at 6:30 and not something like 2 in the morning. We got ready just in case, the alarm went off, there was no smoke or fire brigade and then it eventually went quiet. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I guess that’s the start of the day! I could have done without the accompanying headache though.

After all that drama we had a simple breakfast at Pret nearby, before getting back on the hop-on bus to slowly cruise around town on the way to our first destination.

There was some amusingly cheeky commentary about some BASE jumpers – “they somehow gained access to the hotel roof and then, much to the surprise of onlookers, proceeded to toss themselves off”

Today I was wearing a shirt that looked something like this.

So I must admit I was beyond delighted when a few people in the know commented on it and said they loved it. I figured if there’s anywhere I could wear it, it’s London. If you’re not in the know, no dramas, it was a character from BBC soap opera Eastenders, whose name was Dot Cotton, played by the amazing (and sadly now quite dead) June Brown. Anyway, I was just glad to not be the only one amused by the shirt.

After some quality bussing time and a short walk, we arrived at our planned destination – Borough Market. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but whatever my expectations were, this place was like 5 times bigger than that. It’s a huge maze of stands nestled under a train line bridge, with an incredible range of produce, baked food, meals, spices, you name it, if it was food related, it was probably there. Quite amazing.

I ended up settling on a lamb and mint sausage roll for lunch – it was a roast dinner encased in pastry, simply delicious. Followed that up afterwards with a deliciously flavoursome and surprisingly dense pistachio pain au chocolat which was just super. It was only after that we spotted the “Humble Crumble” cart, so we had to have a go at that. Perry opted for a traditional apple crumble with crumbled shortbread and hot custard. I tried one with a frozen custard top (basically soft serve only not so soft). Delicious, and then some. By this time the whole place was absolutely rammed with people, I think everyone has chosen to pop in for lunch and things were just going bonkers.

We fought our way out of crowd, and back on the bus, for a slow and chilled journey back toward the hotel, since had plenty of time. I do not envy the bus drivers, or any drivers at all in London for that matter. The traffic is horrendous, it must be awfully frustrating. Not for us – all we had to contend with were some slightly rude bus passengers who considered it perfectly normal to expect other passengers to fix their headphones for the bus commentary and so forth. Rude. But you can get that anywhere, no need to travel specifically to London.

Just before returning to hotel Perry spotted a hairdresser, and it really was time to look less dishevelled, so we enjoyed two … ok… haircuts and beard trims at this Chelsea-adjacent hairdressers, at an eye watering “Chelsea-adjacent” price. Ouch. Would’ve been cheaper to buy some high quality hair clippers and DIY! 🙂

We returned to the hotel, ostensibly to use the time to write up the blog so far, but in reality, to fall asleep snoring at the desk. The rude and somewhat early awakening had very much caught up with me by mid-afternoon.

This evening, our first London show! Let the marathon commence! Tonight, it’s Moulin Rouge, at the Piccadilly Theatre, so off to the tube we go.

It was interesting (for me, and probably only me lol) that when we got to the train station and had to go to the Piccadilly line, suddenly all the decor completely changed and it super obvious how these used to be very different train companies compared to the Northern line we’d taken earlier from the same station. )

The other bonus was this little notification on my watch, meaning I just have to hold it on the entry barrier to the station without pressing any buttons, and it acts as my ticket / Opal Card.

So. Gloucester Road, Piccadilly Line. Eighty seven steps down a spiral staircase later, we weren’t at the platform. Still another corridor and a few more steps. And then there we were.

I never claim to be overly sophisticated, so yes I still stifle a giggle every time I see a train going to Cockfosters. Soon we were in the train. As we’re a whole bunch of other people. Within two stops there were a whole bunch more. It was sydney-peak-hour crowded, but it wasn’t too far off. Fortunately there was plenty of air whizzing about so it wasn’t too oppressive, and it was only 5 stops.

As if there weren’t enough people already, where did we exit? The good old crazy-town of Piccadilly Circus. People everywhere, and then some, of course. The place was heaving with its usual crazy tourist energy, we had time for a small wander around before the show. Chinatown was a delight when its hundreds of lanterns.

With our show we ordered the curiously-named Blue Elephant package, which meant a very bubbly and enthusiastic young man escorting us to a corridor, no, to the Admirals Lounge, a very tastefully decorated corridor with some super comfy seats, closely follow by a lovely cheese board and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, as you do. A lovely way to relax and wait for the show to start, feeling rather fancy.

We saw Moulin Rouge three times when it was in Sydney, so we’re really interested to see what the differences were now it is (and we are) in London. The ‘club’ seating at the very front with little tables was a bit different from Sydney, but we were in the ‘normal’ seating so didn’t affect us at all. The show itself was fantastic – it ran pretty much identically to the Sydney one as far as I can tell, but, I’m sorry to say, I do think it was ultimately better than the Sydney production. The cast were all incredible singers, great actors, you could really see the chemistry between them on stage, which really helped ‘sell’ the story even more so.

The audience were funny as well, at least, one woman a row or two behind us, I don’t think she goes to shows very often, and she was as excited as a kid on Christmas Day, it was just wonderful to hear. “Ooh, are these our seats? They’re wonderful! Are you sure they’re really for us? Oh wow, really?” Followed by “Oh look at the windmill isn’t it beautiful! Oh they’ve even got an elephant! Oh my goodness that girl’s bum’s hanging out!” – I really hope she enjoyed the show, I think it’s pretty much guaranteed. It was all brilliantly done, and that’s not just the bottle of champagne talking 🙂

After that it was time to be thrown back out on to the street, and despite the severe delays report on the Piccadilly line, we got on to a not-very-crowded Piccadilly line train straight away, and back to the hotel in maybe 25 minutes all up, making for a very smooth end to the day.

Just to be nerdy for a few moments I love how on the Piccadilly line they have the station names written into the wall tiles themselves, it’s quite elegant, I guess it helps that it was all built back in 1906 and barely changed since. The other thing I like are all the tile patterns – ever station has a different tile pattern/colour combos and I believe this is because way back in the early 1900s standard of literacy were lower, so there were people catching the tube that couldn’t really read which station was theirs, but they’d recognise the pattern so they still could tell where they were going. A surprisingly thoughtful touch for back then, so yeah maybe it’s not true after all. Anyway, it looks nice!

Tomorrow – possible rail strikes, definite need to go to Euston in the morning. Let’s see how these two things balance themselves out in the next exciting (*not at all guaranteed) episode!

We found our Caledonian Sleeper train – it had been sitting there a short time before we even realised – being forthcoming with info doesn’t seem to be the strongest trait around here. However, once we did walk up we were warmly welcomed. And then kinda left to fend for ourselves, to find our carriage and our room. No biggie, we found it. Now I’m now saying the train corridor was small, but our suitcases were too large to roll along, I guess it was a sign of what was to come.

Just to try to be clear, I am not complaining about the size of the room, we knew it would be small. I just didn’t realise that the only way we could both get in to the room is if I went in, ducked into the toilet, so Perry could then get through the door, so we could close the door behind us. It was a bit of a routine but we figured it out, and with a bit of Tetris and few dance moved we were able to kind of squish the suitcases up one end, sit down, and fill in the little form about what to have for breakfast.

As you may well know, I am not the smallest, fittest, or most flexible person on the planet. I think all three of those attributes are pre-requisites for being able to get up to the top bunk of the sleeper car – man, it was a genuine struggle. I made sure I was very ready for bed because once I managed to get myself up there, I know that’s where I was staying, end of story. Of course I then really had to wonder how the hell was I going to get down again… but had to put that out of my mind for the time being. The train rolled out at 11:25pm, and it was time to try getting some sleep.

It was relatively quiet, as it shoogled us around, jostling and jiggling and bumping, and so much sloshing (I’m guessing the water tank for the built in shower). It took a while to get to sleep, and I woke up a number of times through the night, but overall it was pretty comfortable – despite the bed being super-narrow it was just enough.

Breakfast was at 6:45 in the ‘Club Car’ which is fine, only … where is the Club Car? It’s the one thing I really wish they’d bothered to tell us about, as we just had to flip a coin and head in one direction and hope for the best. So with our slightly sleep-deprived brains, off we toddled and luckily we chose the right direction, because after two cars of super-narrow corridors, bingo we found it. Our breakfast was ready, coffee (yay), apple juice and a beautiful porridge for me, and a ‘traditional Scottish breakfast’ for Perry, which I think was a bit of a mostly-full-English plus black pudding. In my semi-zombie state I didn’t think to take photos. Couldn’t fault the food, very nice indeed. As space is at a premium, we were seated with a pleasant gentleman who was on his way down to London for work, so had a bit of a chat while the coffee slowly turned me into something resembling a human. With space at a premium, so was time, they really need to pump the customers through the Club Car, so the moment we finished eating we were given a kind of gentle reminder to bugger off, so we went back to the room to prepare for landing, er, arrival. A member of staff knocked on the door to remind us we had 30 minutes or so and please be ready.

The train arrived at Euston, no drama, and after doing the Tetris/dance to get ourselves back out of the room, we manhandled the suitcases down the itty bitty corridor and off the train, left to fend for ourselves at Euston station. Hello London! Our last (awww) destination on this amazing holiday.

It had me thinking back to the Rocky Mountaineer trip we did in Canada years ago. They were perhaps a bit overboard in the customer service department, with a lot of theatre and silliness around first setting off and the like, but I think even a small amount of that kind of thing would have been much more welcome and made it feel like a nicer journey, even someone at the end saying thanks / welcome to London or something would have been a nice touch, rather than our final interaction with staff being a quick reminder to make sure we get out of the room on time.

Would I recommend the Caledonian Sleeper though? Absolutely. Would I do it again? Not in a bunk bed. Getting back down first thing in the morning was a mix of ow, ooh, ouch, ah crap I’m about to fall, hang on, ouch again, but I did eventually make it back down, reminding myself yet again that I really need to take up yoga or something, plus lose a shitload of weight, plus be less old. Who knew four steps on a ladder would be so much freakin’ drama.

Neither of us tried the in-room shower, that just felt like asking for trouble on a rocking train. It was very convenient having a loo there though.

To get from Euston to our hotel, I checked all the accessibility guides for the tube, but couldn’t quite get a clear picture if there was step-free access the whole way. We thought we’d try our luck, and helpfully as soon as we descended a life from Euston upstairs to Euston below, there was a sign stating that no, there was no step-free access down to the tube platforms. Did that make the journey more difficult? No, it made it much easier, as decided to spring for an Uber instead to take us straight to the hotel.

Arriving at 9am or so we had no high hopes that a room would be ready, and sure enough it wasn’t, which is fine. So what are two very tired tourists to do? You guessed it, a hop-on-hop-off bus of course! There was one near Waterloo, so we popped on to the tube at Gloucester Road, changed to the Northern Line at Embankment, and off to Waterloo, tubing like a boss. Well, catching the tube like someone who has maps open much of the time :). One thing I love about Gloucester Road station, it’s right next door to, well, Gloucester Road station. Back in the olden days where there were multiple underground companies desperate for companies, they’d practically build stations on top of each other to try and steal each others customers. Crazy. Of course for a long time now they’ve all been absorbed into the one united London Underground we know and (possibly) love.

For added interest (or just plain weirdness) there was a whole bunch of art populating one of the now-disused platforms on Gloucester Road.

We found the hop-on-hop-off at Waterloo. The bus has a few different routes, and the one we took covered a good chunk of London, and went for two and half hours. It was a perfect time-killer, we saw a lot (including driving over Tower Bridge, what is it with me and bridges? I should get over it. Hehehe. Get over a bridge. OK that’s enough…). I can’t promise I stayed awake for the whole two and a half hours, but, I think I lasted through most of it. Here are some suitably touristy pictures.

Once we’d done this very big of London, we left the bus at Waterloo, which wasn’t that far from Southbank, where there’s always something going on, especially today when it’s a public holiday (or to use the correct term, a Bank Holiday). There were people everywhere, buskers, heaps of food trucks, and a loo that cost a pound to spend a penny. Rude! For lunch I had a tasty hot-dog, Perry had fish and chips, and we followed that up with Frozen Yoghourt – Maybe this is where the 100s of FroYo shops went after they disappeared from Newtown, they’re all over in London. This one, Snog, was suitably funny/cheeky.

We Fro’d, we Yo’d, we killed enough time, so back on the tube from Waterloo to Gloucester Rd via Embankment again, and back to the hotel. We had to wait a little longer for our room as we returned before 2pm, but once it was ready, we were grateful to get the keys and check it out. It’s a good size, a nice home for the next 10 days or so. This is a bad sad but the most important feature it had for me, was a laundrette just down the road, I was down to my last few bits of clothing so today was the day. Even better, they do service washes, so a few hours and a considerable number of pounds later, we have three big bags full of lovely clean washing. Happy days.

Mid-afternoon was when I really hit the wall, trying to do the blog but just staring at the screen and falling asleep. The 6 or so hours of interrupted sleep finally caught up with me, so instead of trying to write gibberish I had a small nap at the desk. Like the Tesco ad here says, every little helps!

One interesting thing I’ve noticed about our little neighbourhood – despite all the roads being fairly busy, hardly any of them have pedestrian crossings. Most of the time you just have to watch the cars, watch the lights and hope for the best. But drivers and generally more patient, unlike Sydney where you’d become a target when crossing the road, here most people will just wait if you manage to mis-time your journey across the road. Being ‘Chelsea-adjacent’ there sure are a bunch of Chelsea Tractos around (brand new Range Rovers), plus a fair share of (let’s make assumptions) dickheads in expensive cars. Soooo impressive, when there are public transport options, like absolutely everywhere.

For dinner we didn’t go far, there was a Pizza Express nearby, I think Perry had the winning meal with a delicious tomato cheese pesto and buffalo mozzarella salad. This wasn’t going to be a high-energy evening by any means so we popped into Tesco for an ice-cream and then back to to hotel for an early night after a long day. And that’s it, after too many hours of not sleeping, it’s really, really time to address that imbalance. Goodnight 🙂

To keep things simple this morning we opted for breakfast at the hotel. To help show once again that Edinburgh is not a bright and early up and at ‘em kind of town, breakfast service started at 9:30am. On the plus side it also meant checkout wasn’t ‘til 11 so no need to rush.

It was a bit of an Olympic sport repacking the bags, despite buying nothing – but now we’re very much in need of a laundrette in the next day or so, my suitcase is full of all my dirty clothes and half of Perry’s as well.

Getting the suitcases down all the stairs in the hotel was of course much easier than dragging them up there 5 days ago, but carrying them to the train station was by no means a fast process. I know I was unfit to begin with but I swear covid from the other week is still making it presence known a little bit. Slow and steady wins the race.

We had a plan. Check out of the hotel, then use the luggage storage facilities at the station to look after our bags all day. That’s because although we are leaving Edinburgh today, we’re not leaving until after 11pm, on a sleeper train that will slowly but surely trundle us down to London by 8am the following the morning.

The luggage storage place very nearly scuppered those plans twice over – first, they said they didn’t enough room for our ginormous luggage. Secondly, after they agreed to do a bit of Tetris work to make things fit, our bags wouldn’t fit under the security scanner, but with enough poking and prodding and flattening and general encouragement, they were x-rayed and stored away for us to pick up much later in the day.

With that out of the way, to start the day proper we caught the train to North Queensferry, just as an excuse to go over the Forth Rail Bridge, because why not. This time we remembered we could use our “two together” railcard so the fare was significantly cheaper than yesterday. Winning! The trip was, well, just a train trip over a bridge, kinda wobbly though!

North Queensferry station is quite pretty, the tunnel just past the station looks just like the kind of thing you could’ve bought for your Hornby train set years and years ago. We had about a 15 minute wait before a train whisked us back to Edinburgh Waverley. One thing about that bridge, at some points there’s only a small gap between the train and the edge – you can’t fall out, but there’s still very little between you and plummeting to the icy depths below.

One thing I’ve noticed about Edinburgh – but I’m sure not unique to it by any means – is an attitude to driving mostly summed up by “yeah sure I’ll chance it!” Red light? I’ll chance it. A bus about to turn into the side street I also want to be on? Sure, chance it! Same goes for pedestrians too. The walk signal just went red and there’s a bus coming down the road? Yep, let’s chance it. I’m pretty sure in Sydney this would result in countless fender benders, squished pedestrians, and generally a whole bunch of angry people. But here in Edinburgh it somehow seems to work, there’s a lot of leeway given to people doing things that maybe they shouldn’t.

Back at Edinburgh Waverley, it was as hectic as usual, and since we had a whole day to spend and no hotel to fall back on, the Zoo seemed like a sensible choice. Easy to get to, just hop on the bus, tap the credit card, and watch the Maps app so you know when to exit. DIdn’t even need to watch app, my watch went ding and told when it was time to leave the bus. Nice. Also, no need to tap off, seems to be a flat £2 fare. Easy!

It was nice to get a little bit out of central Edinburgh – the streetscape didn’t change all that much, it just became a little more opened out, a few more trees around the place, etc. After a pleasant 20 minute ride or so we were at the zoo.

Like most if not all zoos they’ve pivoted their message to one of conservation and restoration over “come look at our imprisoned animals”, but of course everyone comes to a zoo to see the animals. First ones we saw were the meerkats so our visit was off to a cracking start.

Like pretty much all zoos everywhere, Edinburgh zoo was a hot mess when it came to food offerings. One restaurant with a sign saying it was closed, was open, the “please wait to be seated” sign was up, but there was nobody to seat you, and the restaurant itself seemed to only have one thing on the menu – hit chips. So we found another cafe inside, grabbed its last two pre-made sandwiches, and then continued on our way around the zoo.

If this zoo had a downside it would be its hills. Like Edinburgh they are plentiful and occasionally punishing. Getting to the top was really starting to be a struggle but at least it’s all downhill from there, which I sure welcomed.

We saw lots of animals, and the giraffe seemed very friendly with each other and some of them even seemed to be playing piggy backs, so, like all the parents with young children, we also need a hasty retreat and left them to their, uh, games.

There was some angry zebras, which I’m sure wasn’t as funny for them as it was for us. one would just bite and latch on to the mane of the other, and not let go, following around for ages.

The penguins had to be a highlight though, all squabbling over nests, and the ones with little hatchlings fiercely protecting them all penguins passing by, it was kinda a microcosm of society, only funnier, and probably also smellier.

We were also in the right place at the right time for a brief but interesting chat about their resident rhino. Apparently the rhino decides what form its horn will take, whether it’s long and pointy, or more stumpy. They said for zoo rhinos it’s more common to have a stumpy horn, as they don’t need to go attacking anyone and it doesn’t get caught in fences and the like.

We had plans to meet up with our near-Birmingham friends for dinner, but they sent a message through at exactly the right time saying hey if you’ve got time let’s meet up for drinks first – just as we were walking toward to zoo exit. Perfect! So our immediate plans were clear, off to Haymarket to a fun little gin palace for a delicious cocktail and good company. This was quickly followed by an amazing Japanese dinner two doors down, a place our friends knew well and wow they made a good choice! It’s only a small place, but the sashimi was super fresh, the sushi delicious, the tempura deliciously crisp, everything was done extremely well and we all had a fantastic meal. It was a bonus our friends happened to be in Edinburgh today as we thought after we stayed with them, that it would be a very long time before we saw them again.

By this time we still had about four hours to pass before our train to London would arrive, so we did some very sensible things, like get a (small!) tub of ice cream each for dessert. Interestingly, all the lovely parks are locked up for the evening but we found a concrete garden bed wall to sit in, it did the trick! (Also, a shoutout to Sainsbury’s for providing free wooden cutlery!) It was also an opportunity to get some final photos of the amazing Sir Walter Scott monument.

Then came the long wait. Ordinarily, there’s be a nice lounge available at the station but that’s undergoing refurbishment and the alternative lounge was a few streets away, so we just hung around at the station. At least it gives me plenty of time to write up most of the blog entry – but now it’s hit 10pm, the temperature has dropped to 11 degrees so we’re starting to feel the chill. Fortunately we checked with the staff and the train was available and ready to board. The station layout is so weird, like, Platform 11 is also Platform 7 if you walk up far enough. It makes that whole Platform 9 3/4 situation sound quite feasible.

So here we are – The Caledonian Sleeper. Will we be Australian sleepers? Or Australians who suddenly feel the need to question their choice of transport and accomodation? Find out in the next episode!

We’ve just done the sleeper train to London (and survived!) – will finish the blog once I have some room to actually get to my iPad 🙂

(Finally figured out why I couldn’t upload this earlier – had to buy some more space on the blogging site! Job done, and here we go!)

We didn’t have to be anywhere til a bit after 9, so definitely not a hectic start to the day. All we had to do was figure out how to buy a train ticket, I thought there was an all-day ticket covering all public transport, but seems I was looking for something that doesn’t exist, so, normal train ticket it was.

Our destination? Dalmeny. The reason? To go on a “three bridges cruise”, so I could get more Forth Railway Bridge photos, and a stop off at Inchcolm island. The company emailed me a few weeks ago to say sorry to island isn’t available, but, seems they’d changed their mind again and it was back on the table. Cool! The trip from train to dock was down, down, down and more down. I should’ve realised, with the train being at forth-bridge height and the pier being, of course, at sea level that it was inevitable we had to get from one to the other. There were a LOT of stairs down, and downhill streets and paths… all I which I knew were going to turn into uphill on the way back. Not cool!

So we boarded the boat, I got a bunch of bridge photos.

We also saw some seals. Cool!

Then we arrived at the island at 11:40, only then were we told we would be there for two hours. Not cool!

The island was nice, seeing the former Abbey of Inchcombe, more lovely ruins, and kinda interesting how dark is just have been inside, even on a sunny day like today. It was also nesting season so lots of angry gulls around if you were silly enough to get too close. Two hours is more than enough, even the 90 minutes it was meant to be, borders on excessive. But it’s not like we had to do anything other than wait. And a shout out to the rangers on site for being super enthusiastic and good for a chat! Plus there was ice-cream.

We made it on to the boat back, by this time the cloud had come over a bit and the wind had picked up, wow this 16 degrees is very very different from yesterday! Freezing! Of course sitting outside at the front of the boat didn’t help. We did to see more seals though.

But we sailed around the bridges again so of course time for a few more photos.

It was then that I started contemplating my nemesis – the trip back up to the train platform. Took forever with all the stairs stairs and stairs, but eventually made it, on to a dinky 2 car train and back to Edinburgh Waverley station in tons of time for our next booking:

Fifty quality minutes at the Edinburgh Chihuahua cafe. Yep, who needs a cat cafe when there’s a Chihuahua cafe? It was quite different to your average cat cafe. (For starters there weren’t any cats, lol). The way it worked was the 10 or so customers were welcomed in, assigned a lounge, told to sit down and given a bank to cover the knees. Then, you had to stay there, you weren’t allowed to get up without permission lest you scare the little doggies. The staff know all the dogs and their personalities so well, and were happily swapping dogs around between customers, in addition to letting the dogs decide who they wanted to lie on in any given moment. It was a surprisingly chill time, but you could tell the dogs know it was the last session of the day, some were a bit over it and heading to the exit door as son as they heard any of the staff in the general vicinity. It was very funny at the end, as a member of staff announced “Well folks…” as with those two words all the dogs leapt up and gathered in front of the door to their pen, knowing that their work day was over and they were all about be transported back to the owners home where they could roam free and not be annoyed by strangers. It was a fun way to spend a small part of the afternoon. It was also at this time we realised we spent way too much time in the sun, with our red faces reminding us to slip slop slap next time!

While walking through Edinburgh there was no mistaking that there was a Harry Styles concert on again tonight. It felt like every second person was wearing some extra sparkly or the uniform of cowboy hat, feather boa and heart-shaped glasses. There were little bits of feather all over the street, lots of people out for a fun evening tonight I’m sure.

Dinner was at the somewhat confusingly named “German Doner Kebab” – which was… a kebab shop, but they also did kebab meat in burgers, but we stuck with the regular kebab which was, well, a kebab, can’t go too wrong! The only bit where I went wrong is not taking a photo, but, we all know what a kebab looks like, right?

This pretty much concluded our last full day in Edinburgh. Tomorrow, we’re off to places new, but still spending almost the whole day in Edinburgh. And as luck would have it, our friends who live near Birmingham are going to be in the vicinity so we’ll having dinner with them tomorrow. Tops! Until then, time to hit publish, put on some more after sun stuff, and go to bed. Goodnight!

It won’t upload todays entry, I’ll keep trying though!

Today the cafe folk were a bit more awake – as were we, after a coffee.

It was another big bus day, not quite as big as yesterday, with both the bus and the length of the trip being shorter this time.

Today was a “Alnwick castle and English borders” tour – let’s get this straight right from the start, Alnwick rhymes with Panic. Not that we had to as we were there at the bus in plenty of time, unlike the last two folks that turned up literally as the driver was closing the doors to head off.

Only a few stops on this one, accompanied again by a lot of interesting history from our tour guide Tim. And due to some very high quality napping time I probably missed a whole bunch (yes, did the same yesterday too!)

Our first stop, which I didn’t even know about til we got there, was the lovely little town of Bamburgh, and Bamburgh Castle. A real surprise, it was quite pretty, and worth almost going a-over-t walking up a grassy hill to get some nice photos.

A quick stop there then it back on the bus to get to Alnwick and Alnwick Castle. First impressions weren’t awesome (don’t worry it gets better) – we started at the more “made the the kids” end with a fake tournament area, and a silly “dragon quest”, again probably great for the kids but nothing at all to do with the history of the castle.

Things then took a turn for the so-much-better once we started to wander the grounds. Found the bit where they filmed the “Harry learns how to fly a broom” scene from the first Harry Potter film. There were also lots of sheep which were fun to watch for a while.

The real impressive part was “The Staterooms” – as this is still an occupied castle, this is basically a large chunk of the living quarters that the Duke lives in, when in residence that is. I mean, you don’t own a massive castle as your only place of residence, right?! No photos were allowed inside, but it will come as no surprise that was all quite ornate, with a breathtaking library room, a mirror so large (for it’s time) that nobody knows how it was even made, let alone transported, and some one of a kind chandeliers (I guess that makes it 4 of a kind, but that’s it. Three are in use and the other one is the only source of spare parts). The Duke has written a book about the long long history of his family which I’m pretty sure I’ll never get around to reading, interesting though it would probably be.

We still had an hour to kill so wandered around the very pretty town of Alnwick. We had a sausage roll from the local Greggs, thanks to the rude lady for bothering to serve us at all. We wandered to more important places, i.e. one of the many ice cream shops in town. A good way to pass the time before it was time to get back on the bus.

Again, our driver drove and regaled us with history – and despite sleeping through much of it again, I released that all the tour guides must get given the same book of historical events to talk through, because we heard pretty much the exact same stories on our bus tour yesterday.

Our last stop was at a lovely little estate called The Hirsel, in the town of Coldstream (unguarded, might I add). This was the birth of the Labrador – so if you need a claim to fame, there you are. There were plenty of swans and ducks by the river, and yes I was secretly wishing someone would get a bit too close to get chased away by a swan, but no, everyone stayed calm.

The trip back to Edinburgh was a bit of a slog for the driver – everyone is piling into town because Harry Styles is playing in Edinburgh tonight, and despite being a different bus than yesterday, it was having the exact same aircon issue which was making things super warm. But at around half past 5 we pulled back into the bus station, after a nice day seeing the border lands – again there was tons of beautiful scenery, field and hedgerows all over the place, but again I didn’t take photos because it would all just be full of reflections from the bus windows. But I’ll hang on the memories as long as I can.

As it was so nearby we went straight to St. James Quarter for dinner again, this time to the kind-of-food-court-but-not-quite area – it finally made sense , you get your food from whichever stall, but when you sit down you can order drinks directly through a website and they bring them straight to the table. We had the most delicious ‘pulled pork hopper’ – a Sri Lankan dish of pulled pork (of course), delicious caramelised onion and other delicious bits served in a sort of crepe. Man it was tasty, a good choice! There were a suspiciously large number of people wearing extra sparkly clothes and wearing feather boas – I guess a lot of people were have a pre-Harry-Styles dinner here tonight.

After that, back to the hotel for an earlier night – despite doing nothing much other than sitting in a bus, it’s still hard work! At least I’ll finish this below before 11PM (if the internet problems resolve themselves – I think Harry Styles has broken the internet!)

Tomorrow – another lovely Edinburgh day, and more time to try and forget that this is our second-last destination for this holiday.

Apologies, this might be a bit of a low-effort-blog-post-day. After going through all the photos, it’s already 10pm and I’m only starting writing about the day now.

We started the day by getting the impression once again that Edinburgh doesn’t do early morning. Although we did find a place open at 7am, I get the feeling the staff has had at least one coffee but could have had a few more, coz if they hadn’t I think they’d be shuffling around, hands outstretched, moaning “Braaaaiiiinzzz….” at people. Anyway, breakfast was served, albeit with the bare minimum amount of effort or enthusiasm.

I guess the enthusiasm had to be up to us, because this was a big day – well, a big day of getting on and off a bus a lot over for the next 12 hours. We met our tour guide Paul and all our new bus-friends, on to the bus we all squished and off we went.

The basic plan was to visit Loch Ness and the highlands, and a few other bits and bobs along the way. There was a lot of beautiful scenery, though most of the time I didn’t photos because the reflections from the windows pretty much ruined it. Perry took some amazing videos though as the scenery passed by:

First stop for the day was the delightfully named “Kilmahog”. Happy to say we didn’t witness any hog killing, but we did get to meet three lovely “Hairy Coos”, whose names I’ve already forgotten, which will be surely be embarrassing if I bump into them down the street while doing some shopping. They were lovely and keen to meet us busloads of tourists, which made sense once I saw the sign saying you could buy little bags of cow feed in the nearby shop.

Next stop was a photo opportunity around Glen Coe – near Corrour. Very popular with hikers, it was absolutely beautiful on a day like this, incredible scenery and beautifully green. In winter though it’s unforgivably bleak and dangerous to those foolish enough to venture out, you’d really have to know what you were doing. But for us, on an uncharacteristically warm and sunny day, it was great! Just beautiful, and (apart from all the other busloads of tourists rushing by), quite peaceful.

Our tour guide/driver was a font of information, I should have been writing things down as I went as I’ve forgotten many of the interesting tales he had to tell us about Scotland and its (sometimes quite brutal) history. I did remember there about 31,000 Lochs across Scotland, and only one Lake. It’s still a Lake because it’s name after someone who ultimately betrayed Scotland, so he’s not worthy of being able to have a Loch named after him. (Why just just rename the loch after someone else, I don’t know).

The main focus of today’s trip was to reach Fort Augustus, the town at the edge of Loch Ness. It’s a little town, not that we got to see much of it as we had to head straight over to the boat for the Loch Ness cruise. Will we. Be the ones who finally get to see Nessie? Well, of course not. But this would have to be one of the strongest, longest running, and most well known marketing campaigns ever, so of course we had to come and sail the waters to see what we could see. The water itself is very dark, stained by the tannins of all the surrounding peat, so it really is difficult to see what is in there. Although years ago they found a British bomber sunk below the depths, which I’d never heard about before. Even more strange, after finally getting it to the surface, on a whim they gave it some power and electrics were still more or less working. Go figure! The tour guide reasoned that this is why you rarely see Nessie, she’s too busy at the bottom of the loch, repairing old planes. Hey, when it comes to Nessie I guess anything’s possible! We did get to see some mountain goats though, in an area which apparently has been left untouched for thousands of years (parts of the hills around the loch are so steep I’m not surprised it has been left untouched). Did we see Nessie though? I’ll let the photos tell the story. I’m sure they’re all 100% no photoshopped, at all.

On the way back, at the end of cruise, we also saw a very smart cow who decided to deal with the warm sunny day by taking a dip in the loch.

We then had a quick stop at the Commando monument – no, nothing about ditching your undies, this is dedicated to the commandos, the SAS, the Green Berets, the best of the best. Apparently some of their very rigorous training takes place out here in the wilds of the highlands. This was one of the rare days where Scotland’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis, was actually visible – only happens about 50 days per year.

Due to the nice weather the driver made a few other little stops, one here at Lagan Dam (I think!).

There was also a more lengthy stop in the pretty town of Pitlochry, where we enjoyed some local Whisky flavoured ice cream, which was dare I say probably more delicious than most whiskys I’ve had.

The last stop though was one i really enjoyed – we had time and the weather was on our side so our guide stopped at a viewing platform for the three bridges – one of these of course being the beautiful and enormous Forth Rail Bridge. As lunch would have a train was going over it while where were there, so you can get a sense of scale of just how big it is. Seems an awful lot of bother just for two train tracks, in this day and age. But it’s so pretty, the world’s first cantilever bridge, and still working as well now as I did back when it opened in 1879. So it was great to see that – I dunno why but some time when I was a kid this bridge really caught my attention (might have been on Simon Townsend’s Wonder World, who knows) – so it was really nice to finally see it in the flesh. Well, metal.

Dinner was at a fast-food-Japanese (yes, that’s a thing now) near the bus station, after which is was a quick walk back to the hotel, do blog stuff, and then off to bed for another adventure tomorrow. As always, stay tuned! Sorry if this entry is a bit rough and full of errors, I’ve done even less proofreading than usual (and the usual isn’t much!)