Saturday, June 07, 2008

A lovely Sunday in London

We started the day by joining Y&A for Sunday service at St Helen's Bishopsgate, where we listened to an excellent sermon on a passage from Acts. The church is situated in the City of London, close to the famous Lloyd's building and the ultra-modern 'Gherkin' (which interestingly has only one piece of curved glass, although the building in itself looks curved overall).

After the service ended, we caught the Tube to Embankment and then headed for Trafalgar Square. It was a lovely day to be outside, and people were just hanging out and enjoying the (rare) sunshine...

Somehow, I felt that something was different about Trafalgar Square. It seemed brighter and cleaner; and then I saw this! So THAT'S why... hmm.

No more pigeons...

Leaving the lovely Trafalgar Square behind, we moved on to Leicester Square and Chinatown, where I just had to visit a 'favourite' haunt of mine- Wong Kei :)

The waiters seemed a lot less rude (but maybe that's because we were there past the peak lunch hour); and I realised they were no longer wearing those white shirts; it's black T-shirts now! Haha. I went back for my 'usual'- Noodles with Roast Duck and Char Siu, but truth be told, it was TERRIBLE. I remember it tasting quite nice, so either I was unlucky that day, or 'quite nice' defined when one is a student means an entirely different thing. Sigh :p

On the other hand, hubby's 'Wat Dan Char Lap Fun' (Scrambled Eggs with Diced Char Siu) didn't taste too bad, although it looks gross. I warned him earlier not to be taken aback by its appearance; and assured him that it does- despite looking like vomit on rice, taste better than it looks. Heh.


Scenes from Chinatown

After lunch, we moved on to Piccadilly Circus, popping by into Trocadero for a bit, and then walked down Regent Street all the way until we reached Oxford Circus. More walking was in store as we trooped on to Marble Arch and then to Speakers' Corner (in Hyde Park) where we checked out a couple of lively debates.

It was nice to see people taking advantage of the pleasant weather- families were out picnicking, guys were playing football, and some people were roller-blading. Strolling by the Serpentine, we went in search for the Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, which turned out to be quite a walk away. Now this is really an unconventional fountain- water flows from the highest point in two directions as it cascades, swirls and bubbles before meeting in a calm pool at the bottom. At first I didn't think much of it, but after walking around it for a bit, I thought it was quite pretty indeed.



By this time, we were really knackered from all that walking! So we caught the Tube back to Y&A's, and experienced the first of our few hiccups on the Tube (about a 20-minute delay on the Jubilee line :p) A long, but lovely Sunday indeed!

Leaving for London..

It's been almost a week since we came back from our trip to UK. We had a nice time, although we have been struggling with jet lag ever since we got home! :p

Anyway, this is the first of our series of posts on the trip. It all began with a rather frustrating wait to check-in for our MAS direct flight to London.. I think it's odd how they have a common check-in queue for ALL international flights. Plus, there were only 3 or 4 counters open, which meant the queue rapidly extended all the way to the entrance of the terminal building! And this was at 7:30 a.m.! It was quite ridiculous really. Almost everyone was complaining; at least we allowed more than 2 hours prior to our time of departure.... imagine how nervous those with earlier flights must have felt! Gosh.

Other than that, everything went quite alright. The captain on our flight was quite the clown; he said the funniest things to get us to pay attention to his announcements :)

After a loooooooong flight, we finally got to Heathrow and were then faced with another long queue to clear immigration. Poor Y&A; they must have waited at least an hour for us! We then took a lovely drive back to central London; it was really nice to drive through the city and catch a glimpse of those familiar sights!