London – Day 3

This morning I was up early and I headed out at 6am to get some groceries. The grocery store we normally go to doesn’t open until 7am but there is another one on The Strand down towards the River Thames that opens at 6 so I wander down there. It is another beautiful morning with just a bit of crispness in the air. The store turns out to be a dinky little 7-Eleven style shop so I can only get half the stuff I need. I get home, we have some brekkie and Tyler and I head back out to the other store we normally go to and get the rest of the stuff we need. Funny thing I realised, AECOM’s London office is just over the road. We are off to the London Eye this morning so I convince the family it would be a nice walk rather than use the tube. Everyone’s on board so we start the trek. We walk through the Covent Garden markets, along the Thames and across the bridge to the London Eye. We buy our tickets and go straight into the “London Eye 4D experience” which is a 4D movie of the London Eye and is really cool. After that it is straight to the wheel and no queue means we can jump straight on. Visibility is excellent today, better than last time we were here. We decide to continue walking after we get off and we make our way over Westminster Bridge past Big Ben towards Westminster Abbey, then along St. James Park past the guards watching over 10 Downing St to the Horse Guards parade. We are getting peckish so we continue on into St. James Park to try and find some morning tea. There is this little kiosk selling waffles and cakes so we get some stuff there. One thing we have noticed about London is it’s bloody expensive to buy food. And that’s before the woeful $AUD kicks in. We are not getting anywhere near as much value as our last trip here. It doesn’t help either when the food you buy is crap and the coffee tastes like shit! So we eat the crappy food and tip the coffee out and get cranky that we were slugged the equivalent of 30 AUD for the privilege and continue on. We start heading toward home through Piccadilly Circus and Leister Square and make it home to have some lunch. All up it was a 6km round trip and the kids haven’t whinged or complained once. Good onya kids. After lunch we tube it to London Tower and pay our £60 entrance fee. This is where they guard the crown jewels. I was thinking this was going to be rubbish but Kris really wanted to see it. I said to Kris see could have checked out the family jewels for free! Anyway, it ends up being really interesting and well worth the dough. We feel it’s been a tough day so far and we have developed a thirst. So we get back on the tube and head to one of the pubs near our apartment down towards Leister Square. We have a few drinks overlooking all the people moving about. A couple of hours pass and it’s time for dinner. Tonight we are going to Jamie’s Italian which just happens to be about 50m closer to our apartment. The food at Jamie’s was fantastic and very well priced. The only hiccup was when Tyler and I went to the toilet. There was this little old lady walking in front of us and she opens the door to what we could only assume was the lady’s toilet so we continue on assume the gents must be the next door. When we get there we see a huge letter F on the door. We back up and yep, the little old lady has gone in the gents! The door had a huge M on it so her eyesight must have been really shit. Tyler is laughing his head off on realising the old duck is in the gents. We go in and we do the urinal thing while she must be behind the dunny door. Tyler and I are in stitches so I finish up and bail ASAP and leave Tyler in there with the old bird. He comes out and says “Dad, you should have seen her face when she saw me”. It was pretty funny. We finish dinner and go to the ice-cream shop and get the kids an ice-cream while Kris and I get a coffee and head back to the apartment. Tomorrow we are doing Lords and Wimbledon. Last time we did Lords there was a game on and it was hammering with rain so we weren’t allowed to do half the tour. Hopefully tomorrow’s tour will be better.

Waiting in the Underground

The Sussex pub

 

Jamie's Italian