Down South! My thoughts...

Recently, my brother and I started a journey that would eventually end in Sussex. It was the first time we had truly been down South in a good while, mainly because of the current pandemic. I enjoyed it immensely and will walk you through some of the highlights:

To Kings Cross (and beyond)!

We started the trip by traveling to London Kings Cross. With pre-booked seats and a saver railcard, the journey was no fuss at all. For the majority of the journey, I read my current book: ''The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'' by Haruki Murakami. So far it's an interesting book about a man who has recently lost his cat, and his wife who hires a psychic to try and locate it; although it is early days, the cat has not yet been found.

When we arrived at KC, I noticed a large construction site to the right of the station.

The construction site can be seen at the top right of this image. All Photos taken by me.

 

After doing some research, it seems this large construction site is in fact a new Google HQ being built. Although the idea and scale of this project seem impressive, I wonder how it will survive with the rise of remote working from home.
 
Alas, we crossed the road from Kings Cross to St. Pancras International, aiming to catch a Thameslink service towards Brighton. Before we did though, we noticed the piano in the station was free. I played ''Lady Madonna'', while Zak opted for some Chopin.
We were in a bit of a rush to get to the platform, and when we did, the train was just pulling in. If Zak or I were to have played a few more verses, we may have missed the train.
Still though, we did make it. This particular journey was very quiet and peaceful, and the window view of Greater London was pleasant.

A view from the window, leaving Kings Cross.

 

 

When the train pulled in, we were driven to our cousin's home in Sussex where we would stay for the next 2 weeks.
Although I could go into a lot of detail about our time there, I feel like it would be too much writing. Instead, I will focus on a particular day when we returned to London for a day trip.

 

London! Tate, Science and Cycles. 

After waking early, we were treated to bacon butties for breakfast. I'm sure this is the greatest start to the day possible, but I may be wrong. After clearing our plates, we returned to St. Pancras International on the same train we came down on. After passing through the ticket barrier, one major thing changed: we would no longer be using tickets. Oh no... We had entered the world of the Oyster Card.

We headed down to the KC and St. P underground station and set off for the Victoria line. Tapping our Oyster Cards on the way in was great. I loved how simple and effective the small, plastic card was. After entering the station, we followed the light blue signs to the Victoria line and got the 11:02 train to Brixton underground, although we got off at Victoria.

On the tube.

We avoided the rush hour, and as you can see in the photo, it was not very busy.

After exiting at Victoria, we got the District line to South Kensington. We did this as we wanted to see the famous Victorian pedestrian tunnel that led to our next destination: the Science museum!

 

Zak in the tunnel, and the exit sign.

The exit to the tunnel came out next door to the Science Museum. As with all our museum/gallery visits, we had to book free tickets beforehand.

Without going into too much detail about the Science museum, we saw things such as the Mathematics room, medicine department and an exhibition on ''Brass, steel and fire'': all of which were very interesting.

Next up: lunch at Hyde Park.

We walked down from the Science museum to a nearby Tesco Express, grabbed a meal deal each, then walked back up Exhibition Road towards Hyde Park. We decided to eat lunch at the Diana Memorial Fountain. Many children were playing in the water, which is probably what Diana would have wanted.

Diana Memorial Fountain.

After eating a lovely lunch at the fountain, we decided to pick up 2 Santander cycles from a nearby car park. It was actually relatively easy to do, the only downside being you can't use Oyster Cards to pay for the bikes. 2 Bikes for less than 30 mins cost only £4, which I thought was a very good price.
We biked down through Green Park, then up towards Buckingham Palace. It was a lovely journey and 80% of it used cycle paths. I thoroughly enjoyed feeling the wind in my face, riding on a cycle path, knowing there were no cars near me.

 

 

Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace.

After enjoying the sights at the Palace, we rode our bikes down towards Victoria Underground station. Luckily, there was a docking station for our bikes nearby, so we docked them and walked to the tube. This time we took the District line to Blackfriars, which is a lovely station indeed. It is also very conveniently located opposite our next destination: Tate Modern.

As mentioned earlier, we had to book free tickets to get into the gallery, which was extremely easy to do.

When we walked into the gallery, we were dwarfed in comparison with the mighty turbine hall. It is huge! Furthermore, the gallery was doing an event in the hall where you could draw all over the floor! Many people had drawn various doodles of flowers, cars, etc. I instead opted for a large caricaturesque face. All of this was extremely fun and made me feel like I was 5 years old again.

A portion of The Turbine Hall.

 

 

We followed the collection route round all the open rooms and exhibitions, which included: ''In the studio'', ''Materials and objects'', ''Artist and society'' and my personal favourite ''Media Networks''.

Here are some photos of my favourite pieces we saw during our trip.

Various artworks

One piece I found particularly interesting is the bottom right (or last for mobile users) of the photos above. It's called ''Babel'' (perhaps a Bible reference). It consists of over 800 radios, from different eras (the higher the newer), stacked on top of each other. The thing that makes this piece interesting though is the fact that every single radio was switched on, which created a confusing mess of noise. Personally, I really enjoyed it. Walking around one side I could faintly hear Bruce Springsteen, yet the other sounded like Radio 3 on steroids.
There were many other great artworks, but I don't want to clog this post up with a million photos.
 
We left Tate at around 6 pm, after spending a couple of hours there. We then walked to the bus stop on Blackfriars bridge, and caught the 63 bus back to Kings Cross. One thing I found interesting is that the bus didn't accept money at all, only card/oyster. I suppose in this new day and age money is becoming more and more obsolete. It was no problem though, we just tapped our Oyster cards and off we went!

63 bus.

 

 

 

We travelled back to Kings Cross extremely easily, and hopped on the same Thameslink service at St Pancras to go back to Sussex. We spent another week in Sussex, then travelled back on the 9th of August. The train home was no bother, as we got lucky and both got a seat (we didn't book on the way back).
 

Thinking back, our trip down South was amazing. I enjoyed every second of it. And yet, here I sit in Yorkshire, feeling great also. I must admit it is nice to be home. 

I can safely say the phrase ''Home sweet home'' does have a lot of truth in it.
In 2 weeks though, the tables will turn. Instead, WE are the ones being visited! Until then though... Signing off.