Sandra and I thought we’d do something a bit touristy today with a visit to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not in Piccadilly Circus.

You’ll find all sorts of weird and wonderful things here at Ripley’s Believe It Or Not – including the fact that you’re pocket is nearly £27 lighter (if you also do the Mirror Maze which is arguably one of the highlights though at £5 is quite overpriced!) – believe it or not. Top advice if you don’t want to feel ripped off, and you will if you pay full price entry, is to look for a deal. (Sandra found one for us on lastminute which saved us a bundle of money.)

Next bit of advice is to get to Ripley’s when there aren’t a lot of people there – either first thing in the morning or maybe late at night though I can’t vouch for late at night (its open until midnight (last entry 22.30)).

So what’s inside? There the good old shrunken heads, the Tower Bridge built out of matchsticks, animals with two heads, circus acts (that is, humans and animals born with defects), etc. There is even a painting by a horse! And portraits of royalty made by pennies.

Then there is the midget in a cage.

Can you guess what these are?

There is enough inside to entertain you at least for about an hour, 90 minutes if you really take your time. However I do admit thinking, that as we made our way through the three floors, when is the big ticket item going to make an appearance. It never really did.

We did, however, spend about ten minutes in the mirror maze trying to get out! Ha ha!

Considering Cadbury World has been on my to do list for a number of years now I shouldn’t be surprised that when Sandra and I finally made it the “Adventure” it was kind of .. a let down.

In hindsight perhaps visiting on a Saturday wasn’t the best choice, as it was extremely busy, but neither of us were willing to sacrifice a day at work to come visit. At any rate strangely, as the day unfolded, the most irritating and rudest individuals were the adults. In particular this middle-aged Indian couple who I’m sure didn’t even have children with them. But I digress.

So Cadbury World consists of the major exhibition, which is built around the factory and at the end of which you are spat into The World’s Biggest Cadbury Shop, the Bourneville Experience, which “celebrates the founding of the Cadbury factory and the Bournville village” and Essence where, after watching a presentation, you get to create your own flavoured liquid chocolate.

The journey through Cadbury World is a self-guided journey. You make your way through various exhibitions and visual presentations. Though they advise that it will take a couple of hours we whipped through it in less than an hour not including the time we spent waiting in line for Cadabra (an It’s A Small World-esque type ride but with cocoa beans.) Highlights would have been the demonstration area (had it not been so crowded) and seeing the factory in operation. The Purple Planet, an interactive play area, would have also been fun if we’d had the place to ourselves. We did, however, get a few bits of chocolate at various spots and at Essence you get to drink liquid chocolate and make you’re on concoction (choose two ingredients to dump into the liquid chocolate.)

I guess I’m glad I’ve been to Cadbury World and I imagine it would have been more fun visiting with a kid who could appreciate the magic and simplicity of the presentations. I would well advise anyone visiting to look for discounts because to pay full price … well, there are better uses for £14.

It was a total loss. I’m thinking we spent most of our time in the Cadbury Shop and best find of the day – the Cadbury Magical Elves which were a combination of milk chocolate and popping candy! Score!

Thanks anyway to Sandra for driving us up to Cadbury World.

Practically everyone in the world knows Big Ben but hardly anyone realises that as a UK resident you can arrange a free guided tour through your local MP. Just to clarify your understanding the tower, which most people refer to as Big Ben, is actually the Great Westminster Clock Tower and Big Ben is the affectionate name for one of the bells housed within the Clock Tower – officially it is the Great Bell.

The guided tours up Big Ben are given four times a day, five days a week and with only a small number of people taken up on the tour (16 according to the website) you can imagine that places on the tour is extremely difficult to come by and you often need to book at least a few months in advance. Tours take about 75 minutes including the 15 minutes you need to get there before the start of the tour. No photography allowed unfortunately.

In 2009 the bookings were also expected to be even more tough as the Clock Tower was celebrating a double-150 anniversary with both Big Ben (remember – the bell) and the Clock Face turning 150 years old with the clock being about six weeks older than Big Ben.

The start of the tour is at Portcullis House just across the road from the Clock Tower. Entry into Portcullis House involves putting bags and body through a scanner, having your picture taken and a guest pass issued. The guide then takes you under the street across to the bottom of the Clock Tower.

For my tour a big group had apparently cancelled so it was me, three others and a bunch of the apprentices or interns, I would say, who work at the Houses of Parliament. I think the apprentices/interns would also be the ones who, if not give, help with the Houses of Parliament tours.

It is a total of 334 steps to the belfry (which is the peak of your destination – though it is another 59 to the Aryton Light, which is the light located at the top of the Clock Tower which signals when Parliament is sitting.) If this seems like a long climb it isn’t actually too difficult as the guide has plenty of long stops along the way (about four stops on the way up) at reasonable points of the tour. There is also, rather entertainingly, a defribulator on the seventh floor, should the need for one arise.

Your first stop is after about a hundred steps. At this stop you sit in a room with photos and a story board and the guide tells you part of the history of Big Ben and how it came to be developed. This talk lasts for about ten minutes.

The second stop comes about another 80 or so steps after the first where you are given more history.

The third stop is where it gets a bit more interesting. This stop takes you behind the four clock faces and you can walk right around behind all four. You can walk behind all four. The clock faces are lit by loads of bulbs. Each face requires 28 bulbs of giant (energy efficient) lightbulbs costing £150 pounds each but apparently lasting ten years or 60,000 hours. Before the modern era, of course, they used to be lit by gas light.

Some interesting facts: Each hour hand is 2.7m long and weighs 300kg, the minute hands are 4.2m long and weigh 100kg. and finally the hands travel over 190 km a year. The clock hands and clock face I guess are kept pigeon poo free by Hawks!

The final stop is the belfry where the bells are and Big Ben live. Big Ben is supported by four chime bells. The guide makes sure that you are up in time to hear the bells all go off (which will be 10, 12 or 3 o’clock bells depending on when you do the tour) but, considerately, you are given ear plugs for the loudness of the noise.

The walk down is also not without interest. You get to enter the room where they keep the mechanics of the clock. It’s a very hugely complicated looking contraption but the simplest of methods (weights via old pennies) is used to both speed and slow the clock if its getting too far ahead or falling behind. The clock is actually required to be wound every eight days and the bells (whose weights fall to the ground as they chime) have to be wound back up every two days.

The one rule that the clock must comply with is that it cannot lose more than one second every 24 hours. Given that this technology was developed 150 years ago you have to admire the fact it can keep time so well after so long. Most modern watches seem to speed up or slow down at will!

If you live in London its certainly worth getting yourself on to this tour.

Royal Day Spa in Tunbridge Wells was apparently voted best day spa in the UK by the Professional Beauty Awards 2009 and shortlisted for the West Kent Business Excellence Awards 2009 in the Tourism and Leisure category. Rewards are well and good but there is nothing like an actual experience which allows you to judge how good a spa is.

As I mentioned in an earlier post Sandra gave me a day at the Royal Day Spa for my birthday. It also included a 55-minute treatment which involved a Ko Bi Do facial and hot stone back massage. Use of the facilities at Royal Day Spa is called a confusing “Royal Password.” Basically a Royal Password gives you full use of the spa facilities throughout the day – facilities which include a gym, a pool, a sauna, a steam room, a jacuzzi, and bedroom with a giant bed!

In addition to the facilities the Spa also offers a number of classes throughout the day but as we went on a Sunday the morning classes (there are normally three or four offered) were replaced by a Brunch! So instead of working out we got to sit around on giant beanbags and indulge in orange juice, pastries, toast and cereal … even if we’d already had a not fried fry up for breakfast. Ha ha!

We thought that we’d spend the whole day at the Royal Day Spa so we booked our treatments for the end of the day and arrived at Tunbridge Wells for about 10.30. In hindsight this was probably a bit longer than we needed at the spa but at the time it felt extremely relaxing indeed.

So, this is how our day looked at the Royal Day Spa: Brunch, Swimming, Jacuzzi, Sauna, Swimming, Jacuzzi, snooze in the Bedroom, Brunch, Swimming, Jacuzzi, Steam Room, Swimming, Jacuzzi, snooze in the Bedroom, Sauna, Jacuzzi, shower, Gymball class, 55-minute treatment. Or something to that effect. Basically we ended up using most facilities a few times each! Heh heh.

We spent most of our time in the Jacuzzi which was moor mud infused whatever that means. It wasn’t literally filled with mud but clearly had the benefit of the minerals from the moor mud and was meant not only to be relaxing but help with your skin. We loved it! The other thing we fell in love with was the bedroom – I have never lain on anything so perfectly comfortable. The mattress was soft and hard at the same time. I could have slept there all day.

The great thing about the Royal Day Spa is the fact that it was never overly crowded. I understand that there are local members who come here to use the facilities like it was their local gym but they were few and far between today. At any one time there was only ever a few people in the people, a few in the Jacuzzi, a couple in the steam room/sauna and a few in the bedroom and as we all sort of moved in a routine circular manner you never had to wait really to use whatever you wanted to. Overall the most people I saw an any one time was probably eight – and that was in the pool room which had the pool, the Jacuzzi, the sauna and the steam room!

Although our treatment was not a full body massage the hot stone massage combined with the facial was amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever had a deeper more satisfying massage of my back. Not unexpectedly I think I fell asleep halfway through it! The strange thing was that my masseuse didn’t really exert that much pressure yet it felt like a very deep massage. Once we were done it was all I could do to stand up! And by the time I got home I was ready for bed though I’m thinking that was a combination of the whole day and the treatment.

The Royal Day Spa wasn’t perfect – for example we were supposed to have a half hour gymball (or fitball) class but our instructor was about 15 minutes late and as we had a treatment soon after the class we only fit in about ten minutes. However, that’s not to say it wasn’t challenging. He had us doing all sorts of things which I’m keen to try out … if only I had space for a giant fitball in the shoebox! I also thought the changing rooms were a bit small and not particularly well laid out. If there were more than four women in the changing rooms (which strangely happened quite a lot) it got quite crowded. Oh, yea, they only give you one towel for the day. We’re not sure if you could have requested more but water got absolutely everywhere – which could have been avoided if they’d at least given you two towels – one for the pool and one for your shower.

Otherwise it was a lovely way to spend the day.

London has been experiencing some absolutely awesome weather of late and with the long summer days it seemed a waste to simply go home after work or even to go out but still be stuck inside some building. Rita thought it would be a great time to get out to Hampstead Heath.

Its been quite some time since I’ve been to the Heath. In fact it may have been years ago that I came here! My most lasting impression, right or wrong, was of some giant chair. Oh, actually, the chair and the fact that the Heath was a large sprawling mess of uncut grass which was perfectly high enough to … er … have privacy to do … er … whatever you felt like doing! Heh heh.

Since the decision to go the Heath was a bit last minute we hadn’t really made proper plans on how to get there, I didn’t even print a map!, and we kind of met up late because we’d both gone home to get changed and Rita pick up the makings for a picnic. In short this lack of planning meant we firstly got lost trying to find the Heath from Hamstead station on the Northern line and then when we hopped on a bus, purely because it was heading to Jack Straw’s House (it made us laugh), we were dropped off somewhere totally random. We spent the next hour and a half or so trying to make our way to some sort of look out point and we were being directed all over the place. The Heath is not easy to navigate and though it felt like we walked for ages we later found out we hadn’t even moved beyond on eight of the place. The pond was the prettiest thing we saw!

The area we were in had all these trails where it wasn’t always obvious that the path actually lead somewhere. We started walking down a couple but it got quite narrow and treacherous. Quite creepy too in the falling light. The fact we were lost and couldn’t find a hill for a view of the sunset cracked us up however. So close to wetting myself I was laughing so hard!

We finally settled down on a bench to have our dinner at about 9.30! Rita had made some delicious roast chicken baguettes, bought some crisps, fruit and sundried tomatoes with feta. Dellish!