This meant getting up early and getting out amongst it. So at 8am we were out the door and heading to Colliers Wood to catch the tube. This, I soon realised as my shirt soaked up the sweat of the cyclist pressed up behind me and I struggled to blow the long-blonde hair belonging to the girl in front of me out my face as my arms were pinned to my side by a train door on one side and an Arabic business man on the other, was not early enough.
We got there in the end however, and amid the selfish push and shove of the multitude of super-important business people frantically rushing to their super-important jobs, we emerged in what I will refer to from this point on as 'Wanky London'.
Now please don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful part of town, the history, the architecture, the parks and walkways - amazing. But everywhere you go there is an overwhelming sense that people are looking at you and thinking "who let in the proletariat?" or "Oh my Beatrice, it appears someone left the gate to the commons open again!". I swear to cow, there was a guy getting his shoes shined! He's sitting there with his wanky hair, in his wanky suit, while some bloke on his knees shined his wanky shoes.
But this is a digression. Point is, we saw some cool stuff.
We started at St. Bartholomew-the-Great, big old 12th Century church with a big old admission fee, so we didn't go inside. We did however go through the beautifully restored Tudor gatehouse and saw the Smithfield Market, where Sir William Wallace was executed.
We walked down Little Britain onto King Edward Street where we saw a large tree among the starkness of office buildings marking the entrance to Postman's Park. This little park basically sits on what were formally a pair of church burial yards. For a while there, due to limited space, remains were placed on top of the ground and then dirt was piled on top of them. Because of this, Postman's Park sits about a metre above street level. Once it was rezoned as parkland all of the headstones were shifted and they now line the edges of the park.
The most interesting part of Postman's Park is the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice. Created by George Frederic Watts, the tiled wall commemorates everyday people that lost their lives in service to others.
After that we walked along the highwalk past the ruins of the Barbicans, defensive towers built along London wall. Just north of the Barbicans there is a large area that was laid to waste during the Blitz and redeveloped as the Barbican Estate and Barbican Centre throughout the sixties, seventies and early eighties.
The best way that I can describe the Barbican development is that it fills me with the same feelings I get when I go to the Crown (née Burswood) complex in Perth; it's grand, distinguished, opulent and classy - if I was in 1985. Now it's just kind of tacky.
There's also a secondary 'crypt-chapel' underneath St. Mary-le-Bow which we had a quick look at on the way home.
This is a bit of a long one, sorry about that guys. Please comment, love hearing from you.