h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

On Monday, 9th March I left Bristol with the National Express (my new favourite way to travel) and headed for the Victoria coach station in London.

I was going to spend a couple of days in Gipsy Hill, London, with a friend I first met 15 years ago on the internet. It's very easy to get to her house as trains leave from Victoria station and her house is a few hundred yards from the station at the other end.

It was sad going past the Battersea Power Station which is being spiffed up and only had 3 towers. And no pig.

On the first day we first went to a café while she did some work and I did some studying (only a little bit) then collected her son and his friend from school, fed them fish and chips (very fine fish and chips, I have to say, but being down south no mushy peas) and took them to their trampolining lesson.

While they were bouncing around we walked around the park and looked at what the Victorians thought dinosaurs looked like.

The next day we took the lad to school then headed in to London to do the tourist thing. First we went to Tower Bridge station to gawp at The Shard. It gave me vertigo just looking up at it. After that I went on a tour of HMS Belfast (she did some work in the café - it was to become a feature of her day). We then walked over Tower Bridge and I was sent off (in disgrace, having never seen them in the flesh) to the Tower to see the crown jewels.

The Jewels are very sparkly but actually I found most of the crowns very tacky and tasteless. Except for the one for Queen Victoria when she was mourning Albert. And some of the older crowns were clearly made for very small heads.

Our plan, because we're both Shakespeare fans, was to have our photograph taken by the Globe and we were running out of time. So having whizzed round the jewels, I collected my friend and we walked back over Tower Bridge, and along past Southwark cathedral and Borough market to the theatre. Where we accosted a very kind Dutch gentleman and asked him to take our photo. It turned out well, which is good. And he didn't make off with my camera which is better.

My friend had to leave then so I nipped into the Tate modern (to use the loo) then back to Borough market for some food - Ethiopian, and totally scrummy. After that I went back to the Globe for a look around the exhibition and a tour of the building, which was fabulous.

Then it was time to get some presents for my daughters, but the weather was so lovely I walked from the theatre to Westminster - stopping at the bookstall by the National Theatre for a browse - and took the tube to Picadilly circus. For I was headed to Hamley's with a target in mind: a nail varnish art set for #1 and a Ravenclaw t-shirt for #2.

A quick interjection here to say how fantastic Oyster cards are.

So, I quickly found the nail art stuff, but the Harry Potter selection does not include clothing. The kind chap suggested Primark or the shop 9 3/4 at Kings Cross. So I tried Primark on Oxford Street first. No luck.

So back on the tube - I'm an expert with the Oyster card now - and found my way to Kings Cross, bought the t-shirt, took a photo of the trolley stuck in the wall and headed back to my friend's house. Only she texted me to ask if I had the chance to pick up a plain black t-shirt for her son's assembly in the morning. No probs, I had to go via Oxford Circus and there's an H&M there on the corner.

But that was for adults only, so they sent me to the H&M on Regent street. I found the t-shirt and was the last customer to leave the store. Down in the bowels of Oxford Circus tube station I realised that my phone was gone. There was a brief moment of panic before I realised I must have left it in the shop.

Trying to extricate yourself from a tube station isn't easy, but I found the surface and hotfooted it to the shop, and banged on the glass doors until someone noticed me. The security guy came right over and gave me my phone. Phew! When I looked at it I saw lots of messages saying "did you call me" and "call home". I called home and a rather bewildered asked why the H&M in Regent street had called to say they had my phone... similar messages were also there from other friends.

Turns out - I don't have a lock or pattern on my phone - that they had called the last 5 numbers in my call log to say I could go and get my phone the next day. Top staff! If I'd been them I'd have taken a few selfies too

So, with really aching feet I made my way to my friends house, stopping only to collect chocolate and wine.

The next day I went to a year 9 class assembly, by invitation of my friend's son, which was great. And as in the day before we met up with a few other mums in a café for tea and breakfast. Mine, both times, was the best egg, bacon and mushroom roll ever.

After that I went to the London Museum of Water and Steam and had a very good poke around. What a lovely place. Unfortunately the steam engines weren't working so I'll have to go back when they are. It's only small but I can thoroughly recommend it. It's a good place to take children, very interactive and informative, especially about water, and there's a water-play area outside, but in a courtyard so they can't escape. There's also a café and a small garden with picnic tables where you can eat your sandwiches if you like.

It's not far from a couple of other museums (automata and music) and, of course Kew Gardens. For my last evening in London we stayed in and chatted and I packed my bag ready to leave.

So Thursday found me on another train headed to Tring. A place I thought didn't really exist.

The London Museum of Water and Steam:
http://waterandsteam.org.uk/

HMS Belfast:
http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/hms-belfast

The Tower of London:
http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon/

Borough Market:
http://www.boroughmarket.org.uk/

The Globe Theatre:
http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/

Thanks for the tips on museums in London. They'd make a change from Natural History and the British Museum, much as I love both of them.

There was a museum of automata in York, sadly long since closed. They let you play with some of the exhibits. Is the London museum the same?

The Shard. I'd love to see that building I spent a couple of years following its construction on a site for skyscraper nerds. The Cheesegrater too. Did you see that one?

I've never even seen the London Eye Not upright anyway. The last time I was anywhere on the Embankment or Westminster Bridge it was laying flat, out cross the river, waiting to be hauled up into position. I'm not sure I've even seen the Gherkin... no, I couldn't have. It was completed in December 2003, it says 'ere.

So much change I've never seen in the city I still think of as home But could never afford to live in now without a lottery win

I saw The Shard (which I don't like but apparently Londoners love it) - which is the Walkie Talkie? the one that burned the cars? it has some blinds now so it looks a bit weird, like a cartoon building.

CD I got the tips for the Water & Steam museum from a website, but I can't find it any more and I can't remember what it was called. It had the major museums and then a kind of flow-chart of "if you like this, you might want to try this..."

I didn't go to the music one (apparently it was closed) and didn't try the automata one because I didn't finish with the steam engines until about 3pm.

A shame we couldn't meet for a kipper tie at the Steam Museum (as it is known locally). The café is excellent, serving loose tea out of Suki teapots. Unfortunately they don't serve Lapsang Souchong, but let me use my own, at no charge.

The Automata or Musical Museum is good,with two guided tours daily. There are also evening concerts on the Mighty Wurlitzer, sometimes accompanying old films.

The flow chart is here:

http://londonist.com/2015/02/how-to-explore-londons-museums-and-galleries.php?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Londonist&utm_content=How%20To%20Explore%20London's%20Museums%20And%20Galleries

I'm happy to take any researchers who are visiting around the London museum of steam and water, as I visit quite often in the winter, and your day ticket is valid for a year, and I believe also allows entry into the Musical museum as well (only 100 metres away)

Pleased you had a good touristy visit. And not a towel in sight?



MMF

Dear Bob almighty, the Walkie Talkie is an awful building. The Sore Thumb would be a better description for it. I wouldn't mind going up to the roof garden though.

Watching the Cheesegrater rise was fascinating. Without getting too nerdy, it has no concrete core like most skyscrapers (including the Shard and the Walkie Talkie) and is little more than a huge steel framework, bolted together like a giant piece of Meccano.

And some of the bolts have been falling off, apparently

If anyone's *really* interested in the engineering (and can stomach the bobawful corporatespeak )... http://play.streamingvideoprovider.com/popplayer.php?it=182406&c1=%2523c8c8c8&c2=%2523a6a6a6&w=640&h=480&p=0&title=Leadenhall%2520Street%2520Flash&skin=2&preview=1

I'll be in that London later this month, and have booked my tickets for The Shard.

for the Water and Steam museum you can pay 11 pounds for a day ticket, or 14.50 for unlimited access for 12 months (prices for children are 5 and 8 pounds)

If you buy a day ticket, and go back again - if you bring it, you only have to pay the difference.

I didn't ask if it gives access to the other museum - it's not mentioned on the actual ticket though.

oh and no tea for me, I had Dandelion and Burdock *burp*

This is brilliant - I am in London at the end of April and can choose what we do as it's my birthday pressie from my sister. We're going to see The Commitments (yay!!) and I get to choose the rest of the activities. HMS Belfast sounds great (our father was posted on it during the war). I would love to see the underground stations which were converted into war admin offices (oh dear, The War again ) and I am trying to convince my sister that I would just like to go to Harrods simply because I've never been there and because Sol recommended having a cuppa tea there so beautifully in her November journal.

Seen the Crown Jewels, but all the others of the above sound ideal.

At the end of April, Kew and the parks will be looking nice, too. My Oyster card is charged up and raring to go. I just worry that I don't have the energy to pack in as much as you did.

London gives you it's own kind of energy

If you want to do Belfast and the War Rooms you should check the Imperial War Museum website, it's possible, I think, to get a combi ticket kind of thing because as far as I know they're all run under the umbrella of the IWM.

I don't like Harrods, full of tourists (my dad was from the East End, bombed out during the war and ended up in Finchley) so I consider myself a sort of Londoner sometimes. But only when I'm actually there.

Both my parents were Londoners and couldn't wait to get away. I was born there but left aged 4. After that my only actual experience of London was a school trip when I was about 10. It rained.

I imagine that Harrods is like the KaDeWe in Berlin is (or used to be. I went there before 1989).

Will check up about the tickets. There are loads of ways of getting reductions, I think even an oyster card entitles you to one. And now I'm over 60 there may be other benefits in the UK, too.