Seeing the sights

Today we had a pretty relaxed day, not getting out of the hostel until nearly lunch time. We had breakfast at 8, which consisted of musli and sweet bread with jam, not to shabby. After that we spent a fair bit of time browsing the net and matt and i caught up with the relies back home. We made our way down to Fulham on the tube. Its a suburb in south west london where lots of aussies live so we thought we would check it out as a likely place to live. I came across a bike shop looking for staff so i thought i might apply for a position in the next few days. Matt had a couple of phone calls from agencies, one which lasted nearly ten minutes, eventually we found the road we were looking for after getting slightly lost. After we had checked out the streets we took a train up to Westminster. Big Ben was quite an impressive sight as was the houses of parliament. Matt took off for the toilets while i took some snaps of the london eye. We walked round to the london eye and i got to see how popular a tourist attraction it was. I plan on going on it at a later date with a few more people who havent done it before. After seeing some painted up dudes doing strange poses we headed to trafalger square. Along the way we came across a few guards two of which were on horses so matt suggested he take one of me in front of a guard. Im looking very touristy with matt's massive camera bag slung round my shoulder.

Once we'd arrived i took a small video to illustrate the busy atmosphere. It was a nice day so there were plenty of people about. For some reason i had pictured it in my head as being bigger then it was, however it would still pack a huge crowd. We took a few snaps and headed up to the National gallery. The first section was all renaissance gear, i only however found one Leonardo piece which was a sketch. This surprised me abit, however the collection was extensive and most impressive. There were some german paintings from the same era in the adjacent rooom one of which was particualry large and showed two aristocracy men. A tour guide was giving a speech on this painting discussing its significance. There was a strange looking streak at the bottom which i was puzzled about, this was later revealed to be a skull. It was a cool optical illusion which when viewed from the side resembled a normal skull. There was such a large amount of amazingly detailed pictures i admit my appreciation began to wain after half an hour or so. The last works by van gogh i liked, just for their simplicity.
It began to rain so we made our way to the subway, not sure where to go next. Eventually we decided to go back to the hostel, quite famished. We ended up in this dodgy pizza place just up the road for tea, a decision we almost immediately regreted. The all you can eat advertising had drawn us in but the lead in our stomachs afterwards left us wanting more...or less depending which way you look at it :P With an aching belly clogged full of cheese we went for a walk down the side of hyde park and up oxford street. It struck me how the city never seemed to slow down even when it got dark. It gets dark around 9.30 pm here which takes abit of use to coming from hobart. I got tired soon enough so we hopped on a bus home and that was the end of another day!