Visiting the Britishers…

This trip was quite a surprise for us too…I mean we never knew we will be there…We were traveling back to US via London with a 15 hours layover. There was a lot of confusion with the visa stuff, so in actual we had decided to stay on the Heathrow airport and do TP. However, when we arrived on Heathrow, we thought – now that we have arrived and have nothing to do, why not try our luck for a transit visa. We got down at Heathrow Terminal 5 from the British Airways flight. So there we were proceeding to UK border security, filled a form “Landing form”…and voila! We got our passports stamped with a transit visa for one day….

Now see the odds…our mobiles were scarcely charged ( which we saved for photos), had a lot of friends in UK, but did nt have their numbers, hence no info as to where and how to go, Diya did not have a stroller…the list maybe endless…Par jab hamare Pandeyji (a.k.a.Mayur) aur unki biwi ofcourse, ne ek baar thaan li….toh namumkin kuch nahi…

After some enquiries on the airport, we proceeded for the Metro line. We had 2 options:

·         Heathrow express is fast but costly.

·         Underground is the cheaper option.

No guesses here because of course we took the cheaper option….We took the Piccadilly line. (12 pound per head ticket that can be used for a day). Diya travelled for free as she was below 5. We had to get down at Green Park station. Now the funnies thing happened here…..the train platform was crowded and underground and so we started moving with the crowd, hoping to get above the ground (that is exit the platform), however after a lot of walking we realized that the Britishers were running to catch another train, these people were busier than the New Yorkers, and when we tried to enquire about the exit, no one was able to guide us properly….! Do you know how we got out of that “bhul-bhulaiya”…As we were trying to find our way out, we felt a gust of wind coming from a duct, we followed the wind “Way Out” instructions and finally…we had exited the Green Park station.

Buckingham palace is walking distance from Green Park station (literally 7 minutes). It was evening time, almost 9 p.m. I guess, so we could see Buckingham palace from the outside with the gates closed. I really wanted to see those royal guards, but they are only during the day. Diya was quite excited to see a palace in real, and we had to tell her the stories about the queen and the princes..! We also visited the Victoria memorial opposite the palace.

Now that we were done with the palace,  we wanted to see more, infact all the things that London was famous for…

We waited for the local bus (the famous red double decker), but then it was too long a wait, so decided to take a cab. We covered a lot of touristy places within a 5 kms radius. First we saw “Ten Downing Street”, due to security restrictions stopping was not allowed, so had to take a photo from the cab. Then saw “Big Ben”, took pictures and then proceeded to “London Eye”, which is bang on “Thames River”. Took some pictures and then on the return to Green park, stopped at Big Ben and Westminster Abey.

The cab dropped us back to Green park (all in 20 pounds).

Took the Piccadilly line back to Terminal 3 for a flight to Chicago.

London kahani itti swatimayur purane sampanna..!