London – Day 1

Today we were up and out before 8. It is a magnificent day; the sun is shining, blue skies and it’s not too cold. The weather forecast for the next week appears to be the same if not getting better, you little ripper!!  We headed down to a Patisserie near Leicester Square for breakfast. This is the same patisserie we stumbled across on our first morning of our last holiday. After breakfast we wonder around a bit and find ourselves down at Trafalgar Square. We don’t have any plans at this stage apart from stocking up on groceries, going out for lunch, going to the pub and then going out for dinner.  We head back to the apartment to grab a few things and I realise I have forgotten my battery charger and my battery is dead. There is a camera shop along Oxford Street so we go for a wander and check out the shops while we are there. One thing about Covent Garden, it is very close to most of the main areas of London and everything is either walking distance or a short tube ride. After that, it’s back down to Covent Garden Market area for lunch. Being a Saturday the place is jam packed but we manage to find a spot at a restaurant overlooking the buskers. We order some food, have a few drinks and just ease into what will be our life for the next six weeks. We finish lunch and decide to go find a pub. There are a couple of pubs within 50m of our apartment so we go to the one we didn’t go to last time. It’s only small so a lot of people drink outside on the little cobble stoned street amongst the huge crowds of people walking back and forth. It’s something that just wouldn’t be allowed in Perth but it happens everywhere here. We drink inside because the kids need to sit down but that’s ok because it’s a great spot. We have a few drinks and get told at 6:20, “Ahhh, can you guys drink up because the kids aren’t allowed in the pub after 6”. Fine, time for dinner anyway. We make our way to Rossopomodoro, an Italian joint also about 50m from our apartment but in the other direction. The one thing we are not short of around our apartment is restaurants, pubs and shops. We don’t stay long though; I think yesterday’s long flight and the tough day we have just had is catching up with us. We are home around 8 and call it a day. We have decided we are going to do Camden Markets tomorrow. With tomorrow being Sunday and with beautiful weather forecast I'm sure it is a bad idea, but the lure of seeing freaks, and lots of them, is clouding our judgement.

Kris and Mia at Lunch

 

Tyler and Me at lunch

 

**FREAK WATCH**
Tyler wins round 1 of freak watch, probably not a
great effort but better than any of us could manage.
We are all hoping to hit pay dirt tomorrow!

We're here!

Man that took a lot longer than we remembered but we arrived safely in London and the flight over was pretty uneventful, no vomiting from Mia, it seems Mia never spews when you go prepared. I'm sure she'll spew just at that moment when we've dropped our guard. The only real action came when Tyler decided to challenge me at PONG on the in-flight entertainment system. After wiping him off the court in straight sets (3 zip) and feeling quite content with my performance, I decided to watch a movie while Tyler took to the practice court. He threw down the challenge again a couple of hours later and he soon had me down 2 sets to love, clearly the practice had paid off. In good old Tyler fashion he was giving me a bit of a sledge, saying "Geez Dad, you need to get some practice into ya, it would be good if you could make a game of it". Cheeky little bugger. Needless to say he beat me 3-1. He then took me apart again 3-0 and I lost interest in PONG after that. We got through customs at Heathrow and followed the signs to the London Underground for the final 50 minute journey to the accommodation. We popped out at the Covent Garden tube stop and it is exactly as we remember, bustling with Friday night revellers. We take the short walk to our apartment and we are shagged at this point. In the past 46 hours I had only managed 3 hours sleep and Kris had managed not much more. We get to the apartment, drop our stuff and head out. We may be tired but we are also hungry. We find a little restaurant in the Covent Garden Market area and check out the menu that is displayed outside. It just so happens it’s a Jamie Oliver restaurant called Union Jacks. We order some food have a few drinks before heading back to the apartment. The 46 hours has now turned into 48 hours and it's fair to say we are buggered!

New Blog Features

We have added some new features to the blog for this holiday.

Interactive maps with clickable icons which will direct you to all our accommodations websites.

Photos page (that works this time) which will have updated photos and videos including those taken by Mia and Tyler.

Itinerary: An updated itinerary that also includes clickable web links to view our accommodation.

Contact Us page has been updated and emails can be sent via the funky new form.

Follow by email button so you can submit your email address and whenever we publish a new post the post will be delivered direct to your inbox. Located just to the left under the Griswolds photo.

Feel free to leave a comment at the end of a post and hopefully it should work better than last time.

4 Weeks 'till Take-off

Most of the hard work has been completed now and we are just waiting for August 30 to arrive. All our train journeys are booked and paid for. We managed to get our final train journey booked just around the same time we start hearing news reports of a series of serious train accidents occurring throughout Europe. It is a little unnerving but certainly not off putting. We are now just paying final accommodation payments as they arise (most of the accommodation needs to be paid in full before leaving Australia) and we only have a couple of payments left. We also managed to book the car that will get us around Scotland for the two days starting in Edinburgh and finishing in Glasgow. We went for a little luxury renting a BMW 320d. The photos of the car look good so I hope when we pick it up it's not a pile of shite.
There are few updates to the blog this time around which I will outline in my next post.
Other than that, not much else going on.