After mastering the tube to get ourselves to the Tune hotel in Spitafields we paid 10 pounds to check into our hotel three hours early as storing our bags would have cost the same. As we walked from the tube station to the hotel, which was on Norton Folgate Street, we passed the local café, called The Liberty of Norton Folgate, just like the concept album Madness released a few years ago. It was like an omen – one of the things I have been looking forward to on this trip is seeing Madness on New Year’s Eve in Dublin. Tune hotels is one of the new breed of cheaper hotels in the UK- it’s a bit like formula 1 hotels with a bathroom pod in the room. The beds and bedding are better quality but the room is smaller and you pay for all the incidentals like TV, wireless and even towels. But as we booked through Expedia, all these things were part of the normal charge for our room. I was very grateful the towels (which by the way were the big, fluffy variety) were part of the deal. The most interesting thing in the room was the fold out table, about big enough for a 10 inch ipad and a mobile phone, which was designed to be a charging station. The reason it folderd out? Because you couldn’t walk past the end of the bed if it didn’t.

After relieving ourselves of our backpacks, we decided to head out to see some of London. I was keen to see some of the things I hadn’t quite gotten to last time and suggested the Tower Bridge as our first stop. I had ventured to Spitafields on my last visit – essentially to visit the markets and vintage stores – but hadn’t realised how close it actually was to the business district. We strolled through the markets as we headed towards the Thames. There was still quite a range of designers selling their wares but there were quite a few stalls selling more common market wares. As we turned the corner about half a kilometre from the markets, right there in front of us was the Gherkin – probably London’s most iconic new building. In a world where skyscrapers are mostly a variation on the rectangular prism theme, the gherkin, which if one were to attach a moniker to it, would have been more appropriately called the cigar, stands out. And it stand out even more when you see it up close after emerging from an area rife with 19 century row houses, warehouses and cobblestoned lanes. The sun was quite bright – yes I know it is London – but there were bright blue skies and we hadn’t really seen the sun since Stuttgart and it was the first time in weeks that the sun had set after 3pm (Cathartik – The Tea Party one of the lesser known tracks from their first electronic fusion album, Transmission. The Tea Party came on my radar in 1997. Heavy and dark but with an incredibly astute musical quality, they remind me that being fully consumed by music in the middle of a live show is one of the best feelings in the world.)

For those like me who pay little attention to these things, you might be surprised to know that the tower of London isn’t really a tower the way one would envisage a tower. In my mind it was always a very tall structure where those held captive in the tower (say like Rapunzel in the fairytales) were held on the top floor with no way out. Of course in the case of the tower of London the tower would be more like a dungeon with racks and whips and other sorts of torture devices. The Tower of London is in fact more of a fort or a castle with lots of building including some wooden buildings, surrounded by castle walls. The original Roman city wall ran close by here – you can walk along its path although most of the city wall has either disappeared or been subsumed into other buildings over the centuries. There is one part that is preserved on a level of an underground car park. Unlike the wall, the tower still stands and is a tourist hotspot. Like many of the places we had already been, the lines to get in were extraordinary and the cost to enter quite high so we decided to take a look from the outside and keep on walking, across the Tower bridge.

The Tower Bridge, like Big Ben and red double decker buses, is part of the quintessential British iconography and if I’m honest, the imagery that springs to mind when I think of the tower. The bridge itself is quite brightly painted blue and white, which is something I hadn’t realised. Apparently it was painted red, white and blue for the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977. The shoreline from the bridge is quite interesting. The gherkin and a number of other modern buildings in London’s financial district provide a thoroughly modern backdrop for the Tower on one side and on the other stands a row of very new and striking buildings, fronted by a naval ship. After we crossed the bridge, we walked along the foreshore. Unsurprisingly Dan was interested in looking at and taking photos of the ship. Grey and white clouds had now started to come over – there was no rain but it made a perfect backdrop for the Tower Bridge.

A little further along the foreshore we arrived at the borough Market – central London’s fresh food market. Given what we had seen in the rest of Europe, the Borough markets were far less exotic, offering much of the fare we would find in the local farmers market here (without such a heavy Asian influence. That is until you ventured out of the main covered market area and discovered the cheese shop – Neal’s Yard Dairy. It was a sight to behold. Hundreds of different kinds of cheeses filled the window – beautifully colourful Cheshire and Glouctershire cheeses, delectable washed rind cheeses and the most beautiful collection of stilton’s I had ever seen. The shop itself was also impressive, decked out almost entirely in luxurious warm woods. No prepackaged cheese board selections here – just like the Christmas markets, the cheese was cut fresh to your specification and wrapped in paper for the journey home. A sliver of some of these cheeses would cause me to take out a second mortgage but that wasn’t a deterrent, the shop was one of the busiest in a market teaming with people. We took one last look, breathed in the heady smell of the cheese smorgasbord and moved on. (London Song – The Breeders – everyone else will tell you that Frank Black is the best thing that came out of The Pixies. For me that answer is definitely The Breeders.)

We continued on, scanning for an appropriate (not too expensive) mid afternoon lunch venue – a bit of a tall ask in this part of London. We wandered along the foreshore until we reached the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre – another recreation of something from the past but unlike the stupid castle, this one was reconstructed for a reason – so Shakespeare’s p[lays could be experienced in the kind of venue intended when they were written over three centuries ago. From here it was to the Tate Modern but not for a visit this time, despite the fact that it is definitely worth your time – the Roy Lichtensteins are worth a wander alone. For today’s adventure though, the gallery just happened to be located at the point the Millennium Bridge crosses back over the Thames. When I spoke to the German lady in Rothenberg who had visited Canberra, she commented that there were only two bridges over Canberra’s waterway, Lake Burley Griffin. There are in fact a couple of others at the dam wall and at the other end of the lake where the Monaro River starts to broaden out but I get her point. Wandering around the waterways of the great cities of Europe, there are bridges as far as the eye can see. And in some places you could launch a paper airplane between them.

We walked across the twisted steel bridge toward St Paul’s cathedral. London’s other famous church. Bridges, like skyscrapers are best viewed from the ground or other bridges or skyscrapers, where their true beauty and magnificence can be seen. The Millennium Bridge is a bit of an exception – while it is impressive from a distance, you get a real feel for what the designer intended as you cross under the twisted, yet smooth and shiny steel structure. It is also perfectly placed to capture a good view of St Paul’s framed by the other buildings on the foreshore. As we wandered through the grounds, it felt quite serene in the twilight. It was late afternoon and the sun had set. We dropped into a Starbucks to warm up with a hot chocolate and take advantage of the free wi-fi. Like a visit to McDonald’s but with something you actually want to consume. After a sugar overload and some facebook time, we found the nearest tube station and headed back to the hotel. We decided to chill out for a while in the room and got sucked into television. It was only the second time we had turned one on during the whole trip – a feat for a TV addict such as me. Eventually we came out of our Dr Who induced time wasting and headed down the road to London’s infamous (and tourist ridden) mecca of Indian restaurants – Brick Lane.

The first thing you notice when you enter Brick Lane is the touts – every restaurant, and the cobblestone laneway is lined with them for kilometres – has a guy out the front extolling the virtues of their establishment’s menu. We surely looked like tourists because it doesn’t matter how many places I go with touts or pushy sales people, I still always feel like a deer in the headlights wishing it could run without getting caught. And that’s the exact same reaction I have in a shop at home when someone comes up to ask whether they can help me. On this point Dan and I agree. If we want help or want to know what is on your menu that is so great, we’ll ask. Consequently we chose the one restaurant on the street that didn’t have a tout as a doorway ornament.

It was a good choice too. As soon as we sat down, they brought us pappadams. In most Australian restaurants, they arrive with a bowl of raita. Here though the accompaniments were much more lavish – raita of course and a number of other delectable dips – including a sweet mango chutney and a spicy vegetable pickle. Our tastebuds excited, we went a bit overboard with the menu, ordering an entrée platter of samosas, onion bhaji, seekh kebab and tandoori chicken, butter chicken, a spinach and cottage cheese curry, butter chicken, steamed rice and naan. It was fabulous although both the spinach curry and butter chicken were a lot sweeter than we are used to. While butter chicken has a slightly sweet flavour in Australia it is much richer with a fuller tomato flavour. We washed it down with some beers (and a mango lassi) and of course couldn’t finish it. (Sooner or later – The Slackers – old skool ska at its finest – they capture an era and sense of place that belies the fact they formed in 1991 in NYC.)

Our bellies full, we took a stroll along the cobblestoned laneway, contented that we could truthfully tell the touts we had already eaten. Dan came across a Bangladeshi restaurant and scanned their menu for the Bangladeshi chicken he had enjoyed at our local Multicultural Festival almost a year ago. But of course the restaurant menu had 15 different chicken dishes and none of them were actually called Bangladeshi chicken. Dan also mused about purchasing some Indian sweets from one of the multitude of Indian bakeries sandwiched between the restaurants, touts and the mini cab phones on every corner. One of the reasons for Brick Lane’s infamy is the quintessential English experience of an after pub/ nightclub curry – a bit like kebabs but they certainly have them too. We thought better of that plan after realizing just how full we were and decided to head back to the hotel and crash out.

Christmas themed activities – 24 War museums and model shops – 3 Design experiences – 2