Its a long weekend this time. Easter bank holidays clubbed with the weekend. One of the few bank holidays that UK has. Unfortunately we couldn't plan a trip outside London, So we decided to explore London instead.
A colleague of my husband's gave us 'A guide to City walks'. Very nicely packaged set of 50 cards, describing 50 different walking paths across different areas within London. Each card describes briefly things or building and other bits of interest that one could visit/see while walking on the suggested routes.
Thursday, we took the route close to old street (which is closer to our house). We saw the bar 'The Ten Bells' where apparently victims(mainly prostitutes) of 'Jack the Ripper' used to stop by for drinks. Close to this place is also Brick lane, where majority of Bangladeshi community live. A supermarket 'Bangla city' selling mainly South Asian food items and groceries, was a good discovery for us. I just realised, I could buy most of the Indian groceries here, and its quite close to where we live. We walked around the place, and it started to rain a bit heavily.
It was noon, and we were hungry. So we decided to buy some lunch and head home. We got into a Bengali restaurant and bought some Roti and curry. I have probably not had as much Indian food back in Bangalore :) (Considering the Chinese and the Pizzas we would usually order)
The next day being a Saturday, we wanted to visit a temple. We googled and found a 'Murugan temple' a bus ride away. The temple wasn't exactly what I was expecting. It was just some hall that was converted into a temple and was mainly visited by the Sri lankans I think. Nonetheless we waited for the pooja to get over and left. I had initially thought of walking one of the routes suggested by the guide. but decided against it. We decided to take the same bus back to London Bridge instead. After getting down at the Monument stop,bought some lunch, and headed for a nice walk alongside the river. Its a pretty long walk, from London bridge to Tower Bridge, and back (on the other side of the river). There are a lot of things to do around that area. There is a ferry ride. A tour on the HMS Belfast. A shopping mall. A climb up the Tower Bridge.
There is also the London Tower, which we decided to visit some other day as its a pretty massive fort and could spend the whole day walking inside.
While walking back, the sun came out so we decided to sit on the bench and rest for a while under the warm sun.
It was a good outing, and a tiring one as well. Time to head home.
