The final chapter

My last days in Sheffield passed extremely quickly, with a really nice and relaxed chinese dinner at Louby's place, philosophising over a bottle of wine on the Wednesday evening. Thursday was actually quite a busy day - I did all my washing, started packing, went for a walk in Sheffield to collect photo evidence that Sheffield is not as ugly as everybody made it out to be, had dinner at Rachel's place (her mom made us another traditional english roast - YUMMY!) and finally a quick drink Louby's local pub the Thursday evening, before catching the coach on Friday 19 Jan, back to London. Before I knew it I sat back in Victoria station with the Sheffield trip all behind me.

(Chinese dinner - sitting on the floor just like the Chinese do)

(Photo evidence 1 - Aldred Lane)

(Photo evidence 2 - Peace fountains)

(Photo evidence 3 - Winter gardens)

As Jacques works during the day I had some two hours to kill before going to meet him at the Blackfriars tube station. I spent my time in a nice little Italian restaurant where I, for the second time in London (the other time being when I went from Victoria station to Sheffield), I was quite embarrassed to see how young South Africans (obviously on a working holiday visa in London) being being rude, arrogant little brats. They were openly discussing how stupid the person working behind the counter was (it was in Afirkaans but it was very obvious with them pointing and laughing at the poor guy behind the counter, who just trying to earn his living) in a very rowdy and loud way. I must say that if I was a Londoner or Englishman I would've been severely irritated by these "foreigners" invading London.

Ok, that was my rant - back to the actual travel blog. I met up with Jacques and we went to his apartment in Putney, opposite the Putney common, to drop off my stuff. I must say that he did a really good job in finding that apartment - it has a view over the Putney Common (open area park), a garage (!!!! yes, a garage in London!), on-suite bathroom, is furnished, 4mbps broadband internet, etc etc.
As 19 Jan was Jacques birthday we went out on a walk in Putney to explore (he only moved in in his apartment on the Sunday), where we had a really nice dinner in a very cute little Italian restaurant (one really can't do burgers on a birthday!), after which we went and checked out the Eight Bells pub close to the Putney tube station. I had a really great time catching up with Jacques as we were working quite hard at the end of 2006, trying to finish everything off in inte and never got round to seeing each other in either November or December.

Saturday was again a busy day as I helped Jacques with some household goods shopping (it is quite a procedure to buy all these house things of which you never thing, from dishclothes to bath mats to microwaves) and then met Louby at Paddington station. Louise and I have had this "discussion" about the crown jewels in the Tower of London which England "stole" from South Africa back in the days when SA was a colony of England - and the deal was that if I ever would get to London that we would go visit the Tower of London together. So, we set off to the Tower of London by black (blue actually, but who would ever know!) cab, courtesy of Louise, past the Buckingham palace and the Houses of Parliament. After paying the wopping entrance fee of 15 pounds (we actually only wanted to see the diamond, not buy it!), we made our way over to the jewel colleciton. I think all the other tourists there probably thought that we are quite weird tourists, racing past all the antiquties just to see the sceptre with the Cullinan diamond in it (see the wiki on it here - by the way Louby, according to Wikipedia the value is over two million pounds sterling for the diamond!).

(Tower of London of course!)

(And proof that I was there......)

From the Tower of London we met up with Jacques in Oxford street, had some drinks and then dropped Louise off at the station for her trip back to Sheffield before visiting some colleagues of Jacques for the evening. Jacques' apartment is really well located with bus 22 and N22 (which starts at Picadilly Square) stopping right in front of his house, which avoids the whole issue of the tube closing down at 11o'clock-ish. The nightlife in London seems amazing, although obviously something which one should not try to experience with rands earned on a tiny salary! We walked around for a while in the area of Picadilly square, did some midnight shopping at the Virgin Megastore and then took the scenic bus ride back to Putney. A very nice day filled to the brim with events indeed!

It was not as if Sunday was much more of a rest day however as Jacques and I spent the Sunday investigating the sales in Oxford Street (Harrods, etc) and also did some more household shopping (bedside lamps, etc). By 16h00 we were both completely exhausted and went back for a nice relaxed evening at Jacques' place before the start of the week.

And so my last day arrived, raining, wet and grey in London - just as it should be! I lugged all my stuff over to the left luggage storage, booked it in for a rest at Victoria Rail station (for future ref, 6 pounds per item per 24 hours) and then went to the Tate Modern, my favourite museum in the world. I spent about 4 hours in the Tate Modern, took a leisurely walk over the Millenium Bridge, to St. Paul's cathedral (past the very impressive international headquarters of the Salvation Army and interestingly enough the headquarters of Old Mutual in the UK).

(The Tate Modern from Millenium Bridge)

(The Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern with the current Unilever exhibition)

(Millenium Bridge in direction of St. Paul's)

After some gadget-browsing in Tottenham Court Road, I went and collected my luggage and headed for Heathrow - my month-long holiday had come to its end, much faster than I wanted it to...

ps- Sorry for the absence of photos... all the photos are on my laptop at work, so check back later this week for the photos