London: Buckingham palace, Westminister and The British Museum

I recently decided that it was time for a well deserved break away from Cardiff and so after a little research I settled on a trip away travelling to Brussels and Amsterdam.

After a discussion with my friend we decided that going by Megabus would be the way forward. After all it was both cheap and reliable and afforded us the opportunity to spend the day in London before travelling onwards.

After arriving in the early afternoon we decided to first take in two of the major sight seeing sights in London; Westminster and Buckingham Palace. Because we were travelling in January the grounds around the palace were quite quiet and we were able to wander around the fenced off palace and the statues surrounding it in relative peace and quiet.

Afterwards we took a stroll through a lovely nearby park to Westminster, where we wandered around the government building and took pictures of Big Ben. Afterwards we went to London's comic book museum and had lunch before heading off to The British Museum.

This Museum really is one of the highlights in London, stuffed as it is with statues, curios and religious artifacts and housed in a magnificently impressive building. We started in a section filled with golden clocks, delicate astrological equipment and impressive statues. Afterwards we wandered through the distinctly painful looking acient America's section (with delightful statues threading rope through their tongues) before taking a turn through Classical Greece, Stone Age man, Babylon and Ancient Egypt.

We left the museum thoroughly impressed with what we had seen. Afterwards we had food at a particularly delicious and most importantly cheap Mexican take out place.

When we had eaten our full we wandered back through the city ready to take the bus through to Brussels and the start of our European adventure.

Dalat

My first impression of Dalat, besides beautiful surrounding countryside that (sadly) didn't extend to the city  was distinctly leopard print shaped. My tiny but very comfortable alcove at the hostel I was staying at was decorated in some of the most garish upholstery I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing.

I'll be honest and say that Dalat wasn't the best places i've been in Vietnam but in its own way it still had a certain charm. I started my first proper day there by visiting an old fashioned steam train, I then took a stroll through a particularly pretty floral show before heading to some of the temples that lay around the town. After being entranced by some particularly lovey statues of Quan Am, a Buddha of compassion.

While wandering the temple I was invited by the local woman there to stay and share the truly delicious food they had made. I chatted to them about why they were making food, what it was the monks did in terms of charitable work and even made a donation to help the poor there.

Afterwards I took a taxi to see the appropriately named crazy house, A particularly strange piece of architecture designed to make you feel like you had wandered into a scene from Alice in wonderland. All strange shapes, abstract structures and weird animal statues.

That night I went out for a tasty group meal with people from my hostel, after chatting to four traveling journalists I even got interviewed by them for their website (Human Unscripted, find the link below).

After exhausting all that I felt Dalat had to offer I decided to move on to the wonders of Cat Tien national park.


http://humanityunscripted.com/