Our London Trip - Visit to a small old town!

I have nearly forgotten about blogging and blog hopping for sometime now! Will start doing both regularly, hereafter!

This is my second trip to London. We visited most of the important tourist places last time. This time we visited some exclusive interesting places.

The one thing I like most about the English people is, they give lots of importance to their history and preserve their old things - esp. buildings! Let me write about our visit to a small English town, which looks and feel very old! The new box-type buildings have not invaded this town, yet. The town looks serene without much fumes from the vehicles. We were there during the daytime, so we didn't see many people - busy people, whoever we saw, were in a leisurely mood!

The old town Henley is situated on the banks of river Thames. Wikepedia says, 'Henley is a world renowned centre for rowing, each summer holding the Henley Royal Regatta, one of the highlights of the social calendar of the English middle and upper classes. The regatta is held on a stretch of the river that is naturally straight. The event became Royal in 1851. In that year Prince Albert became the patron of the regatta.'

The town might be busy during the times of the competitions, but when we visited, it was calm and beautiful!

Some photographs of the places:

This area looks beautiful from all the angles! The water is clean, no pollution from the vehicles!

This one and many other swans and ducks come near the steps of the river bank as soon as they see people, for food! Isn't she beautiful?!

The real town...I think this place is famous for the beautiful river bank. The economy of the town must be relying on this river bank, tourist town, maybe!

We saw many restaurants spreading outside their doorways onto the pavements, like here!

This boat belongs to an Indian restaurant, Spice merchant, which is situated on the road in the picture before this one!

This picture shows what we had for our lunch...tea, scones with cream and jam! The picture below shows the old English pub which is famous for this tea! I hopped up the high stool for eating this, which was funny for the people who were with me!

The inside of the old English pub!

We saw this beautiful creeper full of flowers in front of a restaurant

Later on, we visited a very old church, St.Mark's church, which is more than 800 years old!

The glass painting inside the church, so colourful!

I noticed many people taking dogs with them, most of the time, esp. older people. We saw many types of dogs everywhere! We saw boards in many shops saying, 'dogs are not allowed inside'! I was able to smile at strangers who were wishing 'good morning' or 'good afternoon', which is unthinkable here, in our country.

Except once or twice, I came across people who were friendly or were in their own world with their ears plugged with the earphone from their ipod! The trains (tube) were very clean and on time, but very very expensive. Comparatively, our country has got cheap and good train services! It is not an easy job to run so many trains for such a huge population and quite a good percentage do not hesitate to burn trains or buses for flimsy reasons. Still, the train fare is quite cheap, here.

One more thing I noticed is, I never saw people throwing things like paper or plastic bags on the roads or floors. It was clean, clean everywhere. And we met Indians everywhere!

One last snap of the riverbank:

More posts about our trip, will follow! later!