Weekend trips: London!

Time literally flies here in Birmingham! It's hard to imagine that already 2.5 months have passed by. During the weeks the agenda is fully filled with work related activities (often including awesome things like factory visits, business trips to other sites for meetings or consumer tests etc.). During the weekends I make lots of day or 2-day trips to surrounding cities or nature parks. Travel wise, Birmingham has a perfect central geographical location to visit exciting cities like Oxford, London, Manchester, York, and Cambridge in only 1-2hours by train.

Last weekend I visited London. For me it was the first time to be in United Kingdom's capital city, and I absolutely loved the place! Although Paris might be prettier in the way it's build, London mixes beautiful architecture with history and very friendly people (one might think that the latter is sometimes less present in Paris...). All the (maybe somewhat touristic) highlights of London are now checked off my list, although I must admit that there are lots of museums that I still want to visit.

By coincidence we were just in the right weekend to see the memorial Poppy's that were placed around the London towers- very impressive and extremely crowded with people (see picture). These Poppy's (little red flowers) remind the UK of the First World War, which started 100years ago. Besides the large poppy exhibition, a moment of silence was held and veterans (I guess from the Second World War, obviously) participated in parades. As cherry on the cake, we saw the royal family passing by at Buckingham palace! Prince Charles, William and Kate drove by in beautiful cars. I guess that the queen took another, shorter route, since we missed her at the spot, unfortunately.

During the evening we saw the musical The Lion King in the Lyceum theatre: absolutely a fabulous experience (for me the second time) with a mix of beautiful costumes, music and acts! Overall I can really recommend everyone to visit England's biggest city. Although it's a bit expensive, it's really worth it!

Oxford is next on the list, and then Manchester and some nature parks, and, and, and... – fortunately, I still have until June to explore more about this country. Oh, and about the weather: it's really not that bad (until now) compared to the Netherlands. Thumbs up!

Cheers!