Mum and I are up early. We have a big day ahead and need to get to the train station early. There is only limited parking at the station. We leave the house at 6.10, we have a 7am train to London. Luckily there are only 4 other cars, so plenty of parks to chose from. By 7am we are on our way to London. We have a great trip down. I have the day pretty much planned as follows, lets see how we hold up time wise.
- 7.00am - Leave Norwich train station for London
- 9.05am - Arrive Liverpool station London
- 9.15am - Make way to Victoria station on Circle Line
- 9.50am - Arrive Victoria Station
- 9.55am - Walk to Buckingham Palace State Room Tour Entrance
- 10.15am - Arrive @ Buckingham Palace Tour entrance
- 10.30am - Tour starts
- 12.45pm - Finish Buckingham Palace tour on Grosvenor Place
- 12.45pm - Walk to Victoria Station/Victoria Place for lunch - perhaps Frankie & Bennies
- 2.00pm - Make way to London Eye on either bus 148 or 211
- 2.30pm - Arrive London Eye, purchase ticket and get in queue
- 3.45pm - Make way to London Eye Pier
- 3.48pm - Take Thames Clipper to North Greenwich
- 4.33pm - Arrive North Greenwich Pier
- 4.45pm - Walk to Emirates Greenwich Peninsula
- 4.55pm - Take Emirates Air Line over thames
- 5.20pm - Make way on foot to DLR Station
- 5.25pm - Take DLR to Limehouse station
- 5.36pm - Walk from Limehouse station to The Narrow
- 7.10pm - Walk from the Narrow to Lowell Street (E14) Stop LJ
- 7.21pm - Take bus to Liverpool street staton
- 7.37pm - Arrive at Liverpool Street Station
- 8.30pm - Take train to Norwich
On our arrival at Liverpool Street Station we make our way to the underground, we need the circle line to Victoria Station. We have some fun with Mum using her pensioner card on the tube, but we make it to Victoria in plenty of time. We are heading for Buckingham Palace, is the last week it is open to the public. It’s a short walk from the station to the gates to pick up our tickets, we are about 45 minutes ahead of time, so we find a seat and wait. Mum gets talking to some American ladies, who also got their times wrong, they didn’t know how long it would take to get across London so they had arrived with an hour and half to spare. But you can never tell in London.
At 10.20am we walk up to the entrance and make our way in to the Palace. They have airport like security measures in place. There is no taking of pictures or use of cellphones on the tour. Mum decides she really must find a toilet, so we are told to make our way to the Grand Staircase and ask there. We make our way quickly along, a lady makes a call to her team leader and someone comes a long to take us to the toilet. It felt all very official. There is a huge, fancy toilet area, which I guess foreign dignitaries and head of states use when in the state rooms, under the grand stair case. We along with another lady are escorted through to this area. Pretty nice, once finished we are then escorted back to where we started. The state room tour is well worth it, and I would recommend it to anyone who is in London when Buckingham Palace is open, its a must.
We are finished at the Palace around 11.45am, the walk through the ground to leave is beautiful, Mum and I stop along the way to take in the sites, who would guess you are in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world, it is so quiet and peaceful here.
A spot of lunch and then we are off to the London Eye. The queues at the London Eye are pretty good today. I have been on this before, but the sites are amazing. We are so lucky that the weather has been on our side today. Its sunny but with a bit of cloud and not to hot.
From the London Eye we take a Thames Clipper boat to North Greenwich, this is the O2 stop and the end of the line for the boat. It is a great afternoon on the Thames, Mum and I enjoy the sites, I guess most tourists don’t make it up this fare on the Thames too often.
From the Pier to the gondola is only a couple of minutes along the riverside. The queue isn’t too long to get on the gondola, we can use out oyster cards so we don’t need to buy a ticket. The gondola can take up to 10 people, however today they seem to only be putting 6-8 peopler per gondola which is nice. The trip across takes 10 minutes, and is very impressive, you end up going up a long way.
From the gondola we are a short walk to the DLR station. We head towards Limehouse station, this is were we get off for dinner, we are booked in for 6pm dinner and it is 5.15. We are pretty much on time. We take a short stroll to The Narrow, it is a great location on the Thames, on a Sunday they do the Sunday Roast thing. We arrive early and take a seat in the bar area. The building is beautiful and the decor is very relaxing. The sun is going down, and around 6pm they take us to our table. The view is amazing, and we spend the rest of our evening watching the sun go down over the Shard and the boats go by while we have our dinner. When I did the booking I noted that it was my Mum’s birthday, they made a real fuss at dessert by bringing out a lovely dessert for Mum, complements of the chef, she just loved it.
As it is getting late by the time we finish dinner and cooling down, we get the restaurant to order us a car at 7.30, by 8pm we are at Liverpool station, only a few minutes waiting and we are back on the train heading home. We arrive back at the house by 11.10pm.
We have had a great day, Mum love it, we walked 9kms today, says my little gadget, I think I will sleep well tonight!!!
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