Friday 27 April - London

Finally got out at 1pm and saw London. We elected to buy an Oyster Card (like Melbourne's Metcard) and to use the bus system, as opposed to the Tube (subway), given you can't see much of the city when you're below ground. The buses take a little longer than the Tube, but the bus system (for which all buses used are double deckers) is really good and takes you to pretty much anywhere you want to go.

Jumped off the 91 bus at Trafalgar Square and headed to the Thames, to walk between the Jubilee Bridge and the Tower Bridge along the Queens Walk, which runs along the river. The heritage of the city is very well preserved. One of the first things that immediately jumps out at you is that there's very few skyscrapers in London. The result is that the city area itself is spread over a wide expanse and scattered in a number of different areas.

Something else that's also evident is that the local men are a lot more fashionable and take more care in their appearance than those in the US. It's like Australia in that there is almost a competition amongst the males.

Finished up after dusk at the Shepherd's Market, which is a small area just north of Green Park & the Buckingham Palace where a number of pubs are close by. People, predominantly the after-work crowd, stand outside on the street and drink the night away, although there's a different drinking culture here - it's about drinking more often but probably not in as big a quantity. The Australian way is more about binge drinking i.e. the massive Saturday night. The Pommy way here is a few beers after work during the week on manybe two or three occasions. This might be the reason why the pubs close at 11. Brendan, Jen, myself and Libe were joined by their friends Sarah & Tim and a couple of familar faces from oz - Messres McWilliam & Thompson (not Bomber), with whom we traded travel stories with for quite a few pints.

It's tough when at the bar here. There doesn't seem to be any etiquette where if the man next to you at the bar has arrived there before you, you handball the bar staff's attention to them. It's more about whoever gets the staff's attention gets a beer. A couple of times during the day I wanted to give a couple of middle aged women (who appeared to be the Toff type) a spray for clearly jumping in front of quite a few people, but then got the notion that it's the practice here.

Fosters is surprisingly popular here. I've seen more Fosters ordered and drunk than any other beer. Costs about £2.80 to £2.90 per pint, and certainly tastes better here than back in the Outback Steakhouse in the states.