Londons the kew.

Today, I was finally back on Norwegian soil, for all of about half an hour. After the voyage from Hamburg to Oslo, my dear wife joined me onboard for a very enjoyable 1 night preview cruise when I swapped my boiler suit for my best attire.

I took a long weekend in London during the time that "Freedom of the Sea", my second home it seems, was laid up in dry dock in Hamburg. The ocassion was my cousins (on my dads side) wedding. A lovely affair it was too.

Mrs Longship joined me on the Friday morning and we indulged in a "shopping spree" in Harrods. Well, a few olives, some tights and some sweets. We did enjoy the Sushi bar though, I never knew just how tasty raw fish could be, it was exceptional.

Anyway, to the point of my ramblings from Freedoms internet cafe.

For me, there is no City I have visited quite like London. For people such as myself who are curious in nature and find facination in so much of life and history, London is frustrating. It's not the lack of interesting things, no, quite the opposite. There is so much of interest that you don't know where to start, and worse, when you do start you know that you'll never get to the end of it always feeling that you leave wherever you were half finished.

As an example, it was not before the umpteenth time I was in the science museum that I thought it would maybe be a good idea to start at the top floor, only to find that there was a huge aviation section on the 5th floor, which I had never seen because I was too busy looking at the steam engines, boat and cars down the bottom floors.

This time it was Kew Gardens that provided us with a wonderful but frustrating day out. We did admittingly give ourselves a rather short time, after the festivities onboard Hispanola the night before, Sunday did start rather slowly.

We headed sraight for the first victorian greenhouse we saw, the tropical rainforest one. By the time that we had finished enjoying the Banana trees, the rubber trees, the worlds largest palm, ginger, bamboo and so much more, we were already running short of time, only to discover the excellent aquatic display in the basement, which took up another chunk of time. This was followed by a wander over to the worlds largest compost heap, the one thing we had to see!!! A very friendly and peacock, who endulged us in a show of his wonderful tail. A chat with a few very brave and curious squirrels, a stroll through the Rodedendrums over the the Veg plots and the Rock Garden, before finishing off purchasing a starter kit for canivorous plants (Venus Fly trap attempt #6......)

Kew is a fantastic and fascinating place. I am so very jealous of folk who live in the proximity to make a season ticket a possibility. In the 3 or so hours we had, we were altogther to rushed and probalbly saw 15% of what we could have seen.

So, we decided that another trip to Kew is in order, a full day perhaps during our next visit to London town, whenever that will be. But then we would be missing out on the Natural History Museum, the Tate, the Tate Modern, HMS Belfast, the science museum, the London Observatory, the London Eye .................