Thursday 8 August 2013

Anniversay Celebrations in London

We decided to celebrate our special day by combining it with a trip to London that our 4 year old Tiddly Toes had been asking for. We took the bus to our local railway station and caught the train to London Victoria.....very exciting. We arrived at a huge Victoria station, busy and bustling, loud and colourful.

We walked through the station to the Underground and caught the line to Westminster.

Again very loud and busy and extremely exciting as the trains emerge from the tunnels pushing the air in front of them and causing your hair to blow in the wind.

We emerged like Wombles from our underground hide out to the side of St. Stephens tower and Tiddly Toes started jumping up and down shouting it's Big Ben!!!



We took a look at Westminster Abbey .......



.....and then decided to move ourselves on to the riverside in preparation for the Circular River Cruise.

We grabbed a coffee on the way and sat for a while on a bench in the shade of a tree looking over the river towards The London Eye....



another surge of excitement for Tiddly Toes, this was really the purpose of the visit, a ride on 'the Big Wheel'!

We boarded our boat and sat on the top deck, but it was so hot we burned our bums! We decided to leave the sun worshippers to it and retreat downstairs to the cool where we could open the windows, sit in the shade and enjoy, almost to ourselves, our own personal cruise with commentary.

We saw Tower Bridge.......

 
The Tower of London .........

 
The Shard ..........

 
The Globe theatre ......

 
and the Houses of Parliament and St. Stephens Tower containing the famous bell known as 'Big Ben'.........



 The round trip takes about an hour, it was so relaxing. Here is Tiddly Toes enjoying the river with her beloved 'Big Wheel' in the background....

 
We came ashore and walked Westminster Bridge to the other side, closer and closer to the huge Eye.

There is a park just next to it, it was full of children on their school trips, it was lovely to see them having lunch and chatting excitedly about their day. We had our lunch and watched the world go by.




We wandered a while to find a 'Statue-man' that Tiddly Toes had seen in her Topsy and Tim book, but sadly, no 'Statue-man' that day. So we decided to grab an ice cream......



 and join the queue for the London Eye. The queue was huge, but it moves quite quickly....then all of a sudden, there we were at the head of the queue, jumping into a moving Pod. And we were off!

 
Now, I hate heights, I'm better than The Hubs who can't even climb a ladder without getting weak at the knees, but I have to say, I'm OK with the Eye until I reach about the 120 degree point, it's the mix of knowing you are not yet at the top, but there is still a way to go and yet the ground seems so far away! As it climbed higher, it stopped on several occasions, not great!

It was a fantastic day, clear for miles, we saw St Paul's Cathedral......

 
 
The crown of Wembley Stadium.....

 
 
 The park where we had eaten lunch.......

 
The shard........

(No, that's not Superman arriving at The Shard it was
the sunlight bouncing around the glass of the pod!)

And finally Westminster Abbey, 'Big Ben' and Westminster Bridge with a classic red double-decker crossing it!......
 
 
We even stopped right at the very top....wow....what a view....unnerving, but we did make the most of it.


After that you know you're on the way back down to earth and you can really enjoy it. It was thrilling and Tiddly Toes rushed about asking what things were and in addition to the places we managed to photograph we pointed out Buckingham Palace and  Horseguards Parade.... there's so much to see from up there!

And she reliably informed me that the people looked 'as tiny like ants!'

We returned on the trains, underground and overgound.

It was the hottest day this year....boy do we know!

We got home and then made our way back in to our local town for a meal at Ask, relatively new to the town and new to us....lovely!

We discovered via the newspaper on the way home from London that Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge had gone into labour in the early hours of the morning. And upon our return from the restaurant watched the famous easel being put out at Buckingham Palace to announce the new baby's arrival.

It was very thoughtful of them to give The Hubs and I such a delightful Anniversary present, a new future King, Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge...... we are delighted and thank them so much!



All in all, it was a fantastic day.

Back soon with some more 'stuff'.

Until then, take care,
love,
Nora
xxxx

1 comment:

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