England - London

As part of our saving money on travel we took a bus to London, spent the day there, and then caught another bus to Ireland. This may seem like quite a good idea, but actually the bus from London to Ireland passes about 30min drive from Newent, and if we had gone straight from Gloucester to Ireland we would have saved about 8hrs travel and 7hrs in London. But .... we didn't because we managed to save £60 (the tickets only cost £20) by doing it via London.

So we had 7 hours in London. We walked across Hyde park in the sun, stopping at the new ANZAC memorial on the way. There were lots of spring flowers out and the park looked very beautiful. We ate our packed lunch at the Prince Albert Memorial, its very impressive, with statues depicting the different parts of the commonwealth.

Then went to the Natural History Museum. The museum was really good. It had an interesting collection of stuff, from really cool looking minerals, to old stuffed birds, and other animals. There is a huge number of dinosaur fossil, and lots of reconstructed dinosaur skeletons (Marli would have loved it all). The building was also really impressive with lots of carved marble and stone work.

We went into Harrods department store to have a look around. We felt well out of our league amongst the $1500 hand bags, diamonds, and general opulence.

The bus trip over to Ireland was pretty gruelling. 16hrs with interruptions to change onto the ferry, and very little sleep.
Great price, crap trip.