Trip to London - Jan 9th 09

I had picked two main destination which were a little outside of city center.
My first journey brought me to Kew Gardens. It is an extensive garden with a several temperate houses. I started with the Palm Garden. It was so warm and damp that me and my camera were temporarily blind and had too wait a while, before we were able to discover the place. I would have stayed there fore even longer. It was such a fun to take pictures there!!! Downstairs I even found aquariums, but most of the fishes were too fast for me and not too keen on being photographed.







After the Palm Garden I returned into the cold and followed the route, passing Kew Palace, to the Tree Top Walking.
Very exciting, even for me. Almost a little too exciting, and I'm not usually frightened of heights, but if you looked down through the iron grid, it felt as if you were high up in the sky. You could not be sure that this grid was strong enough...
The first few metres were fine though. I even enjoyed the view, but after the 400 metres, my knees started feeling wobbly and I was glad to return down to the garden grounds.



Next stop was the Temperate House, a huge building with several connected buildings, colder and not that damp as the first one though, but as amazing!
























After having extensively explored these gardens as well, I had to visit the Japanese Garden last. The pagoda didn't quite look like these I had seen. The Chokushi-Mon is the exact replica of the Karamon gate at a temple in Kyoto...




Eager to get to my next destination, I left Kew Gardens (I definitely would go there again!), returned to the subway station and went directly to Chislehurst station (DLR). Here I visited the caves which are not naturally developped caves. Nobody really knows who started mining there. Some say the earliest traces date back to the Druids, later the Romans and the Saxons. But one can't be sure. However, it was impressive! A nice Australian lady who came over from Australia ages ago to spend a year in Europe and who then just stayed here, because there are still too many places she hasn't seen yet, guided me through the caves. Flint and chalk were mined there; flint for the flint guns and chalk for building houses.
In more recent times the caves had been used during the wars as a shelter and thousands of people had stayed there over the night very close to each other. Bunkbed places were marked with numbers, rules about how to behave had to be complied with, otherwise you would have had to leave. You needed to pay to stay there over night... It pretty much looked like an underground hostel. They even had a small hospital and some offices there.
She demonstrated the effect of sound which was escpecially remarkable in total darkness; we were at that part of the cave that was said to be the Druid one. I can quite understand the power of these old rituals, although I do not believe that this part or that altar where children should have been killed for ritual purposes was really from that time of period and used for this purpose.
She did not forget to mention some ghost stories and the competions to stay overnight in these caves. Some tried, but only few actually stayed there overnight. One of them was a police officer who carved a horse out of the stone to not think about that heavy breathing he could here right behind him. Two others, tour guides in these caves, stayed there two, seperated from each other to not be influenced, and not allowed to talk. Then one of them suddenly heard the other person screaming and when he ran to him, he found him with a dislocated shoulder and without any memory of how that had happened... Believe it or not!




Thus, very pleased and absolutely happy, I left Chislehurst and returned to town to explore another underground place, the Greenwich Foottunnel. First, I ended up in North Greenwich where I saw the O2 stadium.
I had to go back to Canary Wharf subway and board the DLR to go to Greenwich. So I left the tube and was suddenly in the business district surrounded by skyscrapers. Very impressive too. Especially because the station was close to the Thames as well and I had a wonderful look along the riverside. Not too mention that this station was architectural very interesting too.








I finally arrived at the Foottunnel around sunset. The entrance was close to the river and I could see the exit on the other side. I followed the staircase down and met two giggling girls in the tunnel one of them explained me that her friend felt quite sick under the water. After a while I knew why. The tunnel was first descending and then slightly ascending again. Because there was no way of actually seeing it, you soon starting feeling a little nauseatic. Amazing!


On the other side of the tunnel I found the Greenwich conservatory and while strolling through the park and around the houses, I heard the students exercising...