Genius1

That cottage looks beautiful - and I have to agree with previous posters, an excellent idea for a 'retreat'. I liked the little touches like breakfast provisions etc. It must be a nice little money earner for the owner!

Looking forward to the remainder of the report (ie. hurry up ).

darthlemsip

Nice to the Isle of Wight looking so nice - I was there in June for the festival and it was a completely different story. Torrential rain menat the usual 20 min journey to the campsite took 11 hours. That was not fun

johnnie69

Top marks once again MattHandy. Enjoying this TR very much
Time for me to burn some miles methinks

matthandy

Thanks to everyon for your recent kind comments. I promise that an update is coming soon, work has got in the way, as it normally does.


She'll be coming up soon, don't worry!

Thank you. The light was so amazing, I think that I ended up taking about 100 photos in an hour or so. The sea was rather vicious but fascinating to watch at the same time.

Yes, it was really great. It wasn't cheap but split between four of us it was good value. The owner really cares about her guests having a great time and even phoned us on the last day to check that everything was ok.

Oh dear, the famous English summer! It was actually surprisingly warm whilst we were there, unusual.

PeterSte

Matt - I just wanted to thank you for the superb TRs that you have taken the trouble to compile over the last few years. They have made excellent reading and I find them very useful in regard to planning possible future trips of my own (the photographs too have been superb!). I have only just joined this site and seen them but they are exceptional in every way.
I live in Sussex and a regular BA traveller myself (and unlike so many people nowadays remain a fan of the airline). I lost my silver card last year so am having to make do with Bronze, but nevertheless I mostly travel Club World on long haul (even if it's for leisure and I have to pay for the privilege myself!). In general I have found BA to be very good, with in some cases exceptional cabin crew in Club World (yes there are exceptions, and I have had a handful of not so good experiences). My best ever experience in that regard was definitely on Concorde (JFK to LHR) just before it went out of service back in 2003 (what a joy and a privilege that was).
Whilst I am on the whole very keen on BA, now and then I do look at other options (especially since peak season can so often be expensive). For example, I did recently travel with Emirates for the first time (LGW-DXB-CPT) - spending the Christmas in Cape Town - and found the B777 service to be very good.
Incidentally I am going to be in Sydney in March 2014 and (seeing as I will be arriving in the city by sea - it's a long story!) I am going to be looking for options for flight back to UK from Sydney (I guess I will try BA in a few months time to see what the fares might be). I dont wish to impose but I'd be grateful for any thoughts you might have on this. Many thanks.
Regards
Peter

matthandy

So I’d just come back from the Isle of Wight and was due to head up to London for the final part of my time in the UK.

The following morning my friend’s and I decided to make the most of the time that I had left in Kent, before I would head into London. Kent is now becoming well known for it’s up and coming wine industry with quite a few internationally renowned sparkling wines now hailing from the region. Luckily, one of the nicest wineries was actually just a short trip down the road from my friend’s house.

So, shamelessly at only 10.30 in the morning we went off for a spot of wine tasting at Chapel Down in Tenterden.

It wasn’t very busy at all and after chatting away to the lovely lady serving us we pretty much tried all of the wines that were on offer. My friends are planning their wedding and were interested in having English wine for the guests. Myself, with customs restrictions and the like, chose only three bottles to take back with me to Sydney. I would have liked to have taken more!

Chapel Down


The spoils of our tasting session – luckily, I wasn’t driving


Bottles on display

We then went into the village itself for a spot of lunch before my friends dropped me off at the station and I made my way into London. I can tell you that lugging around my luggage on the Tube was not at all fun and I cannot imagine what it would have been like if I’d actually used up my luggage allowance of 3 x 32 kgs!

The hotel that I chose to stay at in London is the same as I did last time, the Radisson Blu Bloomsbury Street. Why? I like the hotel, it’s modern, the rooms are comfortable, it’s close to the west end and the rates are great. I actually took advantage of a winter package rate that included breakfast and afternoon tea, for every day of my stay.

I checked into the hotel in the early afternoon and after getting settled into my room, met my friend for my first afternoon tea.

The room itself was a pretty standard size for a London hotel, but very well fitted out. The bed was large and extremely comfortable. The bathroom was rather large with both a walk in shower and bath tub.

The bed


Large bathroom


The shower

I met my friend in reception and then we made our way to the bar area for our afternoon. The hotel normally charges £20 per person for this so I was getting £40 of value every day which I think was a rather good deal!

The afternoon consisted of a good choice of teas or Champagne (for an additional fee) followed by a tower of sandwiches, cakes and scones. The sandwiches were pretty good, the cakes great but the scones really topped it off. I just love clotted cream and strawberry jam.

After finishing everything off and working everything out with the bar staff with regards to the bill we headed out for some drinks and a spot of dinner.

Afternoon tea menu


The tower


Alcohol fuelled burger eating at Byron

So a lazy morning for me as I worked out what I wanted to do for the day. I’d agreed to meet up with a fellow FTer angeloedades in the evening for some night photography which meant that I had the whole day to myself.

I decided to take a wander around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square, snapping some photos as I went before returning to the hotel to relax before meeting up with Angelo. I’d suggested that we meet in Covent Garden so when the time came I went down to the Tube station and we headed off towards the river.

It’s always a good idea to have someone with you when out and about taking photos at night and it was nice to meet up with Angelo again, having met him a few times when he was in Sydney.

Tube


Still Christmas – I was freaking out after taking this photo as I noticed some grey
marks in the corners so I suspected that something was wrong with my camera. It took me a good
5 minutes to work out that I simply hadn’t screwed the lens hood on properly, phew!


Lots of tourists


Christmas decorations


Christmas decorations


More Christmas decorations


Nice car


Tour guides

matthandy

Tourists look on


The fountains


Nelson’s column


The Canadian Embassy


Bleak


Office buildings

For the night photography we started around Charing Cross before working our way towards and across Waterloo Bridge before finally finishing up next to Westminster Bridge. This is a route that I had done before and I was wary of the sometimes overzealous security guards that lurk around the London Eye. This time however they were no-where to be seen and so Angelo and I were free to take photos as we saw fit.

I have to say that I’m not 100% happy with these photos, they didn’t really come out how I wanted, but anyway, it was still a fun evening, and that’s the most important thing.

Charing Cross Station


Boats near Embankment


Boats near Embankment


Classic London – the view from Waterloo Bridge


Looking West


Looking East


The Shard


Waterloo Bridge


The London Eye


The London Eye


The London Eye and ‘Big Ben’


Capsules


The Houses of Parliament


Westminster Bridge


Up Next

Some more photos around London including the Natural History Museum and the Royal Albert Hall, followed by a fantastic day trip to Edinburgh.

jakesterUK

Really beautiful photos matthandy, your skills with the camera make me very jealous. Must invest in a new camera!

Digital01

Excellent photos and excellent report. Makes me want to get back to London in the near future.

Flyersj18

Matt, some fantastic photos of London by night (and the others aren't bad either ).

I was in London last week taking photos of exactly the same area around Embankment and my biggest regret was that I wasn't able to be there after dark for some night shots due to my flight time.

angeloedades

I LOVE this picture!



And thank you for all the tips on photography.

PS. the capsules were moving!

/AE

stu1985

Amazing photos Matt! I love that Waterloo Bridge one!

Only thing that bugs me - it's doesn't always have to have the apostrophe....but I'm being a grammar pedant

matthandy

Hi Peter, thanks for your great comments! I'm glad that you have enjoyed my reports over the years. As for the flights, well there will be lots of options available. Do you have any Avios saved up? You could look at booking a reward flight to Hong Kong with Cathay and then onwards with BA or do direct as BA will be flying the 777-300ER by that point which is rather nice in all classes. However, I'd be keen to get on an A380 so take a look at QF. Be prepared for a price shock though, especially as a one way fare. Prices ex. Australia are significantly higher than ex. UK and oneway fares are even more expensive. To avoid this you could take a low cost carrier like Scoot, Jetstar or Air Asia X to an Asian gateway then pick up another flight from there.

Thank you! I can certainly recommend the Nikon D800 .

Thanks Digital01.

That's a shame, you'd have to drag a tripod around either which can be rather annoying.

Thanks Angelo. They were moving and weren't moving, they just moved them sometimes, as you can see in the photos.

It's a problem of mine I always thought that if you are describing something that belongs to another then 'it's' is correct: 'That bird just flapped it's wings'. Is that incorrect?

matthandy

A lazy morning for me, after all, I’m on holiday and it’s grey outside, still I managed to get out before 11 and decided to head over to the Natural History museum, via the Royal Albert Hall (which I only saw at night before Christmas).

I hopped on the Tube over to South Kensington and then followed the signs to the NHM which was the end of a very long pedestrian tunnel. I wanted to take some photos from inside the tunnel but it was very busy and I felt as though I’d get people shouting at me for taking photos of them.

I made my way towards the Royal Albert Hall and then spent a good half an hour or so wandering around taking photos including visiting the Albert Memorial which was over the road. Unfortunately, a great big tourist bus decided to park right in front of the RAH spoiling the photos for everyone. Thanks for that.

On the way to the Tube


Steps leading up to the Royal Albert Hall


Fantastic architecture around the Hall


Albert memorial


Golden


The Royal Albert Hall with a stupid big bus parked in front of it


Looking towards the Hall


Curvey

After crossing the road from Hyde Park I made my way down towards the Natural History Musuem. Wow, the building is huge! I was quite looking forward to going inside, having never been. One thing which I really do love about London is that all of the public museums are completely free to visit. You are asked for a donation though, which isn’t usually much.

After having my bag searched at the entrance (pretty standard practice in London) I made my way into the main hall to be confronted by a rather large dinosaur skeleton. This is what I’d seen on TV. The main hall was very impressive, the building dates back to 1881.

The Natural History Museum


Inside the main hall


At the top of the stairs


Stunning arches


A view from the back stairs

After taking a few photos around the main hall I started to explore. There were quite a few exhibits and they were all pretty busy, filled with school parties and the like. I don’t really end up stopping and reading everything so I worked my way through rather quickly, looking for photo opportunities rather than actually taking in everything that was being exhibited.

What struck me about the museum is that whilst some exhibitions are very modern, others are extremely old and dated, such as the exhibition on the human body, it looked like it was installed in the 1980’s.

As I said before, when I’m on my own, I get bored wandering around museums so I decided that it was time for something to eat. I made my way to the café to find a rather large eating area which was styled more as a restaurant than a café.

There is a rather confusing setup here. You’d be forgiven if you went to find a table and then order, as that’s the normal approach. Here though, you queue up to order and are then shown to a table, and your order is brought to you. I decided to order the burger and then was shown to a vacant table. The décor was modern but there was a row of mirrors behind me which were perfectly angled to show people opposite me exactly what I was watching on my phone. I chose not to watch an episode of ‘The Wire’ which I’d been working my way through on this trip.

The view from my table


Yummy burger

The burger arrived and it was really good, simple, but done well. The chips were good too.

After lunch I pretty much went straight back to the hotel and lounged about a bit before meeting up with a friend to partake in afternoon tea. He is India, and the concept of such an event is a little alien to him, but after a bit of instruction he certainly enjoyed it! We then went out for a few drinks, visiting a few haunts that we used to frequent when we both worked in London together before meeting up with a university friend of mine for a nice Indian meal at Mint Leaf. My friend is fan of the dahl, as am I, but we were disappointed not to see it on the menu so we asked the waiter nicely and it arrived shortly afterwards, perfect! The meal was great, as was the service, but the place was pretty quiet which was a shame.

After saying good night it was time for me to head back to the hotel and try to get some rest for the 4.30am start the next day!

Up Next

Meeting up with Moomba at T5, a surprise visit to the Concorde Room for breakfast, a 767 flight to Edinburgh and then a fun day with PETER01, Flyersj18 and Jenbel.

stu1985

It's is a shortening of it is. The bird flapped its wings (not it is wings). Belonging only matters really with apostrophes and s's.

Lesson over!

P.S. lovely pics on the update. Great shot looking over to the RAH from the gate!