No more Gothic churches, please!
We have been doing quite a few of the sightseeing buses to get a quick overview of a town - especially, like today, when we have limited time. In general they are fairly good and if the live guide has a personality, then they can be quite exceptional. Today's bus route went very close to our B&B so we left the car and caught the bus into town. This one had the prerecorded commentary so we hopped off in the centre of town to switch to a live guide. While waiting for the next bus we decided to have a quick coffee in the 'biggest bookshop in England". Big mistake! The coffee only took ten minutes but it took the BOSS a further hour to drag me away from all the books. And she only let me buy ONE!
We completed another full circuit of the town with a live guide - but he was a bit dreary with a monotone voice so I think we were better off with the prerecorded commentary.
It was all very interesting but unfortunately it did not motivate the BOSS to aspire to an Oxford education.
We grabbed lunch at the Crown pub - another excellent meal and then got back on the bus for the third and last time to return to the B&B. We drove down to London, arriving at Hendon before the peak hour kicked in. Over the internet I had prebooked our next two nights at Trident House (www.tridenthouse.net). It turned out to be an excellent choice. It's a new, clean hostel, outside the congestion zone and has free secure parking onsite. This is a big deal for London as parking tickets are not pleasant (as we know). Hendon station is one minute walk away and the ride into central London is only 20mins. The room had a full kitchenette so we walked down to Brent Cross shopping centre and bought food to cook*.
*Cook = heat up ready cooked meal in microwave.
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