London

I really must blog our recent trip to London, if only for our own records. Please don't feel obliged to read on!

Wednesday 7th June - spent the morning packing and got going at about lunchtime to drive to the Travelodge on the M4 near Heathrow. It was the only one near London offering the £10 per night price, so Heathrow it was! We found it OK and unpacked the car, and then drove into West London to get the tube at Barons Court. My Mum used to live there so we know the area well. Jade was tremendously excited about being on the Underground as she absolutely adores trains and had been disappointed that we weren't travelling down from home on the train, but the price made that impossible, especially compared to our frugal Toyota Prius! Anyway we were off to Horseguards Parade to watch the Beating the Retreat. There were major security checks and Bill had his pocket knife confiscated(!) but it was a gorgeously warm sunny evening and the waiting was pleasant. We all thoroughly enjoyed the ceremony, the horses, the marching soldiers and seeing a small royal-blue dot on the dais in the distance which was the Queen! Thankfully we had binoculars so got a closer look at her and Prince Philip. Afterwards we walked up through Green Park and The Mall to look at Buckingham Palace. I reminisced about sleeping on the streets on the night of 28th July 1981, the night before the wedding of Charles and Diana! We got close-up to the Palace and saw they were about to do the Changing of the Guard, so that was fun to watch too. Then we walked back to the nearest Tube station and back to the Travelodge for a late night finish.

Thursday 8th June was Jade's 5th b'day. We had a slow start due to the previous late night and the mountains of prezzies to unwrap! She was thrilled with her pink Maglite torch, her binoculars, telescope, Fun Blox, and the promise of more to buy later with money she'd been sent. There was a slightly tense moment when she asked, "When are my friends coming?" and I realised I hadn't done a great job of explaining that this London trip was instead of a party .... Anyway she took it in her stride and soon perked up again at the thought of visiting the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. I think we eventually got to the first one around about lunchtime so it really was a slow morning, but we all enjoyed seeing the dinosaurs. Jade was absolutely awe-struck by the size of the big one in the lobby and was rather frightened of the large animatronic one! We also took a quick dash round the mammals section and gasped at the size of the blue whale and cooed over the panda. Must spend more time there when she is a bit older. We then went downstairs to eat, and discovered the 'Investigate' section in the Basement where there were all sorts of hands-on and educational activities to explore. We had a fascinating time there feeling all sorts of specimens like crocodile skin, crystals, lions' teeth and so on. When we'd all had enough of that, we moved on to the Science Museum, and at the birthday girl's request went down to The Garden in the basement, where she had a lovely time splashing and playing and generally spending ages doing her thing. Meanwhile Bill and a sleeping Shannon had a bit of a browse of the space rockets. They chucked us out at 6pm and we went back to where we'd left the car and then drove up and down Chiswick High Street looking for a particular restaurant that we had Tesco vouchers for, but didn't find it, so to avoid imminent starvation we just went back to the Travelodge and ate at the Little Chef. Another very late night!

Friday 9th June was Bill's birthday, so again it was prezzies in the morning after a relatively late start. Eventually we set off for the Tower of London. A few people on the journey commented on the cuteness of Shannon, which always warms a mummy's heart! We paid for the Tower with Tesco vouchers! You probably can't 'do' London cheaper than we did it! Of course there was much explaining to Jade about castles, portcullises, moats, slit windows, wars, attacking, William the Conqueror, Henry the 8th and much other stuff. She was fascinated that people used to travel by river and the Traitor's Gate into the castle. We looked at the scaffold site where several people had their heads chopped off, which she took quite calmly! After a bit more of a wander round, but not much due to Jade's nagging to get on, we went to see the Crown Jewels. That was brilliant. I have the vaguest of memories of going to see them when I was a child, but it was fantastic to see them again and the wonderful short movies they have running while you wait to go in showing the Queen's coronation - again very educational for Jade. We came out and had a wander round the Crown Jewels shop and although I would have absolutely loved to buy Jade the £150 set of miniature Crown Jewels, we settled for just one so she has the cutest little miniature Crown which was far too expensive really but I couldn't resist! It was already getting late on in the day by this time so we went off down the road to see the Monument near Pudding Lane. Jade has been fascinated by the Great Fire of London ever since she heard about it - I think it's something of a fearful fascination as she is quite scared of fire/candles/the gas cooker. But she was keen to visit the monument although I had not bargained for her wanting to go up it! But she did, so she and I went all the way up the 311 steps, waved at Daddy and Shannon from the top and then came back down again. It took a couple of hours before my legs stopped shaking! We then took a gentle stroll back up to Tower Hill and got on a boat for a short river cruise down to the Westminster Embankment. We had a quick ogle at the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben (yes, I know....) and then back to our car. This time round we found the restaurant, so had a fab meal out at the Cafe Rouge courtesy of Tesco vouchers but with two very tired girls by this time we had to cut it a bit short and skip dessert.

Saturday 10th June when the rest of you were setting off for Kessingland was the hottest day of an extremely hot week. After packing away all the stuff we thought it would be great to go to Kew Gardens before going off to the Polka Children's Theatre for which we had tickets. So we drove to Kew, parked down a side street and walked way back up the road in the searing heat, only to find out they charged an absolute fortune for entry, and we only had about 1.5 hours to fill! For some reason, I'd thought it was like the Royal Parks and would be free! Anyway, we walked further up the road and came to an open village-green type space where we settled down under a large maple tree and relaxed. The girls were quite happy tootling about there and playing all sorts of made-up games while Bill and I laid down and relaxed as much as possible. We eventually set off for the Polka Theatre, and got there in the nick of time to see a strange performance called "That's Mine" but Jade had so enjoyed the theatre when we went to see the Gruffalo a few months ago that I had wanted to foster her enjoyment by taking her as often as possible. Well, I have to really seeing as one of my brothers is a professional voice coach who works in acting and the theatre. The other one is an astronomer, hence the telescope we got Jade for her birthday!!

And there endeth the trip to London. We dashed home, unpacked the car and got up the following morning to do it all again for Kessingland. But that's another story.