I'm in London still

I fulfilled two lifelong dreams today. First I took a tour of Lord's Cricket Ground, then walked down the street to Abbey Road studios. The tour of Lord's was fantastic - not only did I stand on the hallowed turf, but also went inside the press box and the member's pavilion (including the Long Room, Committee room, and players' dressing room). Then we of course saw the urn in which the famous (or indeed infamous) Ashes are kept. I learned from where we get the names gully and silly mid on, and saw the first known record of the Laws of Cricket. I could barely suppress my excitement. The whole place is covered in memorabilia, and of course all the places where the MCC members hang out are totally opulent, so everything we saw was interesting and exciting. Our tour guide was a member, a typical moneyed English establishment type, but nice enough.

Abbey Rd wasn't quite so exciting, because they don't let you in to have a look around, but I got a big kick out of taking my picture next to the sign, and imagining how many times John, Paul, George and Ringo would have traced the same steps I was taking. I took a picture of the outside of the studio, but as the snooty receptionist in the lobby told me, "This is a private recording studio", so no looking inside. Makes sense really, or the place would be crawling with tourists and nobody would get any work done.

More typical English weather today - but as I was on cloud nine I didn't care at all - it could have been raining spiders and I would still have been skipping along singing "Strawberry Fields".

These last few days have been so exhausting I think I might actually be kind of relieved when the time comes to settle down for a while and work. While sightseeing is fun, it takes a lot of energy to keep going and going all day, and frustration mounts as you find that you don't have time to see anything properly. One hour in the Tate Modern Art Gallery is a travesty really. I just got to see enough to really want to explore the place, and I had to leave. I was just as surprised as anyone to find out I liked modern art though. It's a far cry from that yellow mattress sculpture there was such fuss about in the Nillumbik Leader! But I feel I got as much as humanly possible out of these last five days, and that makes me happy.

Tomorrow I leave for Copenhagen. Again I feel the same fear that plagued me before I left for Europe, since from now on I won't have Bianca's friendly face to keep me company. But I know I'll make many new friends - as well as Klaars, the doctor from the plane, I got talking to a bus conductor from Yorkshire today, she was a lot of fun, and had a totally cool accent.

Oooh, I almost forgot! Yesterday I hung out in Greenwich, which I have wanted to see for ages because the Royal Observatory there stands at the Prime Meridian, the longitudinal line from which all the world's time starts. But what I didn't know was they have a planetarium there! I've always wanted to go to a planetarium, and now I've been to one. It meant hanging around in Greenwich all day, since the show was at 3:00, but Greenwich is a pretty place, and they have a cool maritime museum and of course the Royal Observatory, which were both free (yay!) so I didn't mind. Planetariums rock.

Tonight B and I are having a quiet drink at her local typical English pub, to say goodbye to London. I know I'll be back though, since it's only a hop, skip and jump from Ireland. Not to mention I still have to go to Liverpool. So I won't really be saying goodbye to London, but, as the French would have it, "Au revoir"!