This tight little tube like train can feel like the guts of a mechanical worm just about to throw you up. Damn good to see the light again after it rattles your brains for a while.

Our last of 5 days in this big awesome city. We're off to the British Museum. On the way we all mutter on about the Parthenon's Elgin marbles. A little bitterness sneaks into the Greek self righteousness I've infected my family with. Really have a mixed feeling about this. At least they're safe for the next thousand years or until the Greeks become Greeks again. (Not sure which will come first).

A funny thing happened on the way to the British Museum. Admittedly we got the right Tube Station but after that we wondered around completely lost and without a decent map. The smell of coffee stopped us in our tracks and we detoured into an excellent coffee shop - they are RARE in London. You can see the boys are good now. Now where is this big mama museum?

In my most humble opinion, finding the British Museum is worth the effort. My people were there, quietly waiting for us. In this amazing grab bag of all things that were ever wonderful, you can get lost after being lost and find a thread that connects you with another real human being type person who once lived, who once loved and dreamed and worried and fucked up just like you. Karol found the following quote from an Egyptian harpist 1400BC:

Hours later Remy and I escaped to the lake at Hyde Park to cool our feet and watch other people feed the ducks. The heat drained us, lucky they had deck chairs..

This photo of Dion has nothing at all to do with my title, "History, Art and Shopping". Remy took this on our little verandah which Dion accidentally discovered had a view of the Thames by craning your neck around to the right and leaning off the rail.

After a few days of drizzle and cold, the weather is good enough to do this. Nice one London, sizzling at a peaky 20 degrees.

The shot above was taken within the grounds of the Tower of London. These are perfectly preserved Tudor buildings that are now housing for the Tower's elite - generals and stuff. This place is a military green pasture. If you've done the time in the services, say 20 years with lots of active duty, won a few medals and never disgraced yourself in even the most minor way, then you get a crack at being a Beefeater - OK literally called a Yeoman Warder, and from there you get to live within the Tower of London fortifications and continue your service to the Crown. They are actually locked in every night at 10.00pm. Oh yeah, the amazing modernist building in the BG is called the shard - tallest building in the EU - at the moment.

Our guide was a Yeoman Warder and he was gobbsmackingly informative, witty and bloody hilarious. He was ofcourse a military guy with 40 years experience in the services and kept breaking out the sargeant major commands that made the hair on your neck stand up and your knees go weak - and then said something to crack you up laughing. Mate, talk about death and bloodthirstyness - the history of the Brits is littered with beheadings and swimming pools of blood. Our Beefeater guide delighted in descriptions of axes loping off heads and the quiet deaths of young princes in line for the throne that were found a hundred years later stashed under the stairs. One beheading was done by a drunk executioner who took 6 blows, only a few of which made it to the neck while others severed other body parts. Even then the head had to be removed by means of a drawn dagger sawing through the remaining gristle. Blood was everywhere and the screams can still be heard echoing through the oak panelled walls of thick stone - but only on certain moonless nights..scared yet? Oh did I mention Grant Hacket and Andre Gaze were on our tour through the Tower Grounds?
Here's our pics..

Karol and I went to the Tate Modern while the boys went off to Shoreditch for more markets and a haircut. We all met at Harrods and my Credit Card went red...almost..OK pink.

As a Sydney sider, when someone says they're going to Camden Markets, I think of a quiet semi rural town with rolling hills in the distance and maybe a growers' market. The Camden Markets in London are massive. There are literally thousands and thousands of people everywhere. The variety of the markets is breathtaking if not overwhelming. It's a typically congested little London suburb criss crossed by raised railway lines (and hidden underground ones) and the shops and houses are shoulder to shoulder Victorian terraces - or so an Aussie would describe them as such. The architecture in inner London is like a whole lot of small public schools. Narrow buildings with tall pitched roofs and built with thousands of dirty brown bricks.

At the many markets, you're in the population density of an Indian city and yet there is a calm and a light heartedness with everyone that drifts by you. They're actually in slow motion - really - there are way to many people in every direction so they all just shuffle along politely and side step each other very politely.

To add to the mix there's a bloody canal with cute little barges, ducks and weeping willows slap bang in the middle of it. Huh? I liked it a lot but was glad to get my personal space back after we got back to our lodgings! phew..

Karol had a hunch about a crazy 2nd hand / antique shop in among the stalls. She was blown away to discover a small beautifully carved poodle - small enough to fit in your hand and made from coal no less. You may not know this about my lovely Karol, she collects dog minatures - always has - and she has a fine collection too. I wish I could make her as happy as when she finds another one. Oh well, I bought a nice hat, Remy got an original mint condition 'Doors' album - 'LA Woman' and Dion got a very cool brown leather day pack. You got to leave a place like that with something! Check out the pics..

We spent the morning at the flea markets - I found an album by Frank Zappa called 'Mothers (of Invention) - Filamore East'. I heard this as a teenager and it rocked wild - have thought about it many a time since then. It was Frank Zappa live, tearing up politics and sex in his 'take no prisoners' way - it felt radical in 1971 - can't wait to hear it back in Sydney on the record player!

After the markets we did the tourist thing and took an open bus tour of London for about 2.5 hours. The guide was amazingly articulate, witty and managed to be both funny and scholarly. Check out the pics.

Arrived at dawn into Heathrow after flying all night from Singapore. This was the only leg of our journey where we split up. The boys had to negotiate the departure and Customs themselves. Bummer I forgot to give them their Singapore Immigration certificates and they had to fill out forms rather than wait in the departure lounge. Oops.

Our apartment is in a Thames side suburb called Greenwich North and a few minutes walk from am Olympic site called 02 - see pic above. The area feels like Homebush Olympic Park. Walking through it on the way to the Tube (Underground Rail) we walked past large white marquees set up with x-ray machines for the coming crowd control next week .

Dion and Remy took off on their own and discovered nearby Greenwich and had their first Tube experience in London. While Karol and I went to the amazing Courtauld Gallery - amazing because it's like a big old palace with oak floors and tiny winding corridors leading into small rooms with priceless masterpieces or huge salons with ornate ceilings and even more bloody masterpieces!

Starting to get the hang of it now. Hassling around trying to find an ATM to get local cash, getting the travel sim card working on our various phones (absolutely not easy and fails to call land lines - like local info lines), hassling around getting a cab, waiting and then giving up on long queues. It's not easy to do the simple things that you  take for granted, BUT, and there is a but, you'd be a mug not to accept these things as normal. None of us stress about these little annoyances. More wonderful is the sameness-es and differences. One thing I've noticed about some of the everyday people we've met is that they seem calm and unhurried even when everything and everyone rushes around them. They recognise a kindness and return it with a grace and held eye line that connects you with them for a time. I like that, not there always but precious when you find it. Is it a Buddhist thing?

We spent the day at 2 major botanical areas in Singapore. The first place we went to was a multi billion dollar Botanical extravaganza called "Gardens  By The Bay". There are 100s of trees from around the world housed in 2 main superstructures with controlled environments that are acres big - one for temperate climates and one for cold mountain top areas. Remy described it as the Jurasic Park of plants. It has a futuristic fortress like feel and like the new Marina Bay Sands hotel it screams of hideous wealth and over the top design, designed for effect and status - still very impressive on the scale of human endeavour and not humility.

These 2 pics show some of the super trees that are over 20m tall and apart from looking amazing at night have started to be covered with tree ferns, orchids and other epiphytes (I just wanted to use a big word). This hyper botanical development is as much a celebration of nature as a celebration of it's taming and reconfiguring to suit the architect of a hyper community of status, monied design and privilege for the deserving.

The queue to get into the covered forests was hour's long so we jumped into a cab and went to the incredible Singapore Botanical Gardens which really really blew all of us away. Orchids! Did I say orchids! You've never seen so many orchids. Remy had bought a new lenses for his camera earlier today and this was nirvana for him...check out his pics of the gardens..

Steamy hazy Singapore from our Hotel Room Balcony.

Check out the gallery for our little boat trip on Singapore Harbour

Phew, 8 hours later we have arrived in Singapore. We were so eager to get to the hotel, we jammed ourselves into a taxi - 4 people - 4 suitcases - lucky the driver had a hockey strap to hold the boot down. Oh yeah, didn't bother getting cash and had to fumble around at reception to get payola for the driver! By the way he flew around singapore at over 100 kmh and only breaking when it was absolutely necessary. After the clustrophobia of the plane it was excellent!