Today is the day that London starts to shine on the worldwide stage - the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games commences in a little over 12 hours time. It was great walking around on the streets yesterday with so many different accents everywhere we went. The weather yesterday was very warm but today will be much cooler so hopefully the rain will stay away for the big night.
I bet you are wondering how we got on yesterday driving into London, well I am pleased to report that our sat nav told us it would take 25 mins and it took 25 minutes! We could not believe our luck and all those prayers paid off so thankyou very much. There was hardly any traffic on the road so the advertising campaign must have scared the pants off most Londoners to stay out of the city centre . Most locals were on pushbikes which certainly proved a challenge all of its own to make sure we didn't hit them as they weaved in and around the cars and buses.
After dropping off the hire car to Hertz we hailed a taxi to take us to our fabulous hotel, St Ermins which is very near Buckingham Palace so our base in London is very central. St. Ermins is a 4 star hotel so we are most pleased with our surroundings for the next four days. Car delivered and checked into our hotel by 10am- fantastic as we were expecting this to take most of the day! Our girlfriend Jan from Melbourne arrived so after getting her settled we went to tackle the underground to go to Paddington to collect our Olympics tickets for the tennis and womens hockey. This took longer than expected as we had to queue for an hour and half and let me tell you, people we not happy! After getting our tickets we hailed a black London Cab to take us to Covert Gardens for lunch.
After lunch we caught the tube again to Westminster coming up from the subway right under the iconic Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
Next thing on our list to visit was the Churchill War Rooms Musuem which was fantastic. These rooms were hidden deep under parliament square and were where Churchill and his ministers ran the war during the London blitz. It was fascinating and I loved it!
When we came up from visiting Churchill's bunker incredibly the Olympic torch relay was on its way to Buckingham Palace so we were very excited to see it right in front of us.
We came back to hotel at 7pm where we had dinner and drinks then it was off to bed after our very full day of activities.
Today's agenda is to visit Harrod's first thing, then to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the Guard, shopping in Oxford Streeet and Carnaby Road! We also need to scout out a great spot to watch the opening ceremony on a big screen.
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