Farewell London, hello Oxfordshire

Unlike when I arrived in London, I had my exit strategy all worked out. Well, mostly. But I knew the most important part, which is that I needed to walk to Charing Cross station and catch the tube to London Paddington, where I would purchase a train ticket to Oxford.

That's where it got a little complicated; there are a number of routes that stop at Oxford, and I wasn't sure which one I wanted. So, I started towards the ticket & information booth, only to see a very long queue. Well, I wasn't having any of that; I went to the self-serve ticket machine and pressed the button to start the process; lo and behold that Oxford, being a common destination, appeared on the left-hand side in the column 'common destinations'. So, I pressed that, selected a single adult one-way ticket for the train departing at 10.22 (it was about 10.15 at this point) on the Hereford line and it kindly (after charging nearly £30 for the privilege; I was a bit shocked by that) spat it out the chute at the bottom.

Lord's, National Gallery part 2 and Great Britain (the play)

As a cricket fan I was alway hoping to get to Lord's while I was in London; it's not all that far away from where I was staying, but because they were playing a test there (against India) this limited my options for going to one single day - my last full day in London. So, I pencilled that into the diary as soon as I found that out (which was a bit before I left) and worked all my other plans around it.

So, I then caught a couple of tubes to get there - Charing Cross to Baker Street and then Baker Street to St John's Wood, and then walked the rest of the way to the grounds. Because there was a game on I didn't get to go to the Long Room (where there are interesting portraits and so forth) but I wasn't that concerned about that.

Bond in Motion, National Portrait Gallery and Skylight

Not a lot to write about regarding this day as such; I did, however, take quite a few photos - so, I'll let those do the talking.

First up was the Bond in Motion exhibit at the London Film Museum. This wasn't something I'd planned to see; in fact, I didn't even know it was on until I saw an advertisement for it on the tube I was on coming back from Albertopolis (see the previous post for that). But at that point I didn't have anything particular planned for the next day, and was going to use the time to go to the National Portrait Gallery and, depending on how that went, go see what I hadn't already seen at either/both the National Gallery and/or the British Museum.

Natural History Museum, V&A and a quiet night in

Today I caught the tube from Embankment to South Kensington, since I wanted to spend the day at what's sometimes referred to as 'Albertopolis' - called that because so much of what's there has something to do with Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert (and yet I saw nothing about male genital piercings at any point throughout - though I can't say I'm complaining). The things I was specifically there to see included the Natural History Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, but I found a few more things worth seeing, as I'll get to later.

Parliament, the National Gallery and that musical about Mormons

One of the things I wasn't sure I'd get a chance to see was the Palace of Westminster – what's also called the Houses of Parliament. At the moment it's only open on weekends, presumably because it's still in session; they can't really have people wandering around gawping at things while they're trying to debate the matters of the nation.

But I realised I could go if I changed my intended schedule around - I hadn't booked anything during the day, just penciled in things. So, I got online and booked myself a ticket for the tour. That also meant a bit of a dash to get there - made a bit more uncomfortable by the fact that we had to take a different route to get there than the standard one, for reasons I will explain later - but I arrived with enough time to line up and get inside (after going past a lot of security and the first armed policeman I'd seen - I was asked if I had a bomb; I sensibly answered "No.") to get my audio device and start wandering around.