20. Buy a bicycle

Summer of 2010 finally got me around to buying a bicycle to explore a bit more of London. I headed down to the Brick Lane markets to see what bikes they have there. I’m terrified of getting a new bike stolen in London – you hear about it all the time.

Anyway, the first bike that I bought ended up being unroadworthy. So I sold it for scrap and bought another bicycle.

London provides free cycle maps to get you around town. They are just as good – if not better than the A-Z street maps.

Should I have waited to get the Barclays Bicycles? Perhaps. But there seems to be either no bikes or no spots at the bicycle parking bay closest to my house. I might get the £1 per day pass instead. For now, I’m happy to ride my new bicycle around town whilst the weather is sunny and the days are long.

57. Go on the Jack the Ripper tour

Just a short and sweet post. Last year, a friend and I went on a Jack the Ripper Tour. It was the middle of November and it was so cold. I just couldn’t wait for the tour to finish. We did get to see three of the sites where the murders took place (they just look like your average lane or car parking lot these days so nothing spectacular).

The National Archives holds hundreds of pages of Victorian correspondence sent to the Metropolitan Police from individuals claiming to be Jack the Ripper. It is impossible to know whether any are actually from the individual behind the Ripper murders.

The tour guide is what makes the difference. Unfortunately we had one with an Australian accent who wasn’t a struggling actor making ends meet so I wasn’t overly impressed with the presented information that I could probably find myself on Wikipedia anyway.

30. Great British Beer Festival

The annual Great British Beer Festival is a London institution with over 700 beers and ciders from the UK and around the world on offer to try.

The chocolate and strawberry beers were a hit with the girls in our group - the guys preferred to make their way around the German, Czech and Belgian beers, saving the heavier English ales and bitters for the end.

Thursday was crazy hat day – so I hunted down the winner for a sneaky pic!