The Scroop's European Holiday: London

This morning we are up and out by 8:30 with our first stop being Lords “The home of cricket”. We need to ride the tube from Covent Garden to the Warwick Avenue stop. This requires 1 change at Piccadilly Circus and takes us about 25 minutes. Once out of the Warwick Avenue station we then need to walk about a kilometre to the main gates at Lords. The tour went for about an hour and a half and it was fantastic. It also made us realise how much we missed out on with the tour we did last time we were here. Due to a cricket game being played on the day we did the tour we didn’t get to see the Pavilion and long room, the changing rooms or the media centre. I was in my element and I think Tyler was getting visions of his name going up on the honour board for when he makes his first hundred playing for Australia. The only issue we had was when this pompous old fool at the entrance of the museum who thought I’d taken a photo started yelling at me not to take photos inside the museum. It wasn’t even me; it was some Indian dude next to me. Anyway, it was a great tour and I would highly recommend it and our guide was fantastic. When the tour finished we walked back about ½ km where the street was lined with cafe’s to have some lunch. This seemed to be a very rich area with lots of business men and plenty of very expensive cars. It kind of reminded me of Double Bay in Sydney. After lunch we decided to go and check out the Abbey Road crosswalk as it was only a kilometre or so away. The kids were starting to wane a bit by now but they soldered on. The whole crosswalk thing was rubbish but being so close we had to do it. We walk the 1½ km back to the tube and this time we were off to Wimbledon. This takes us about ½ an hour by train and when we get out of the Southfield tube station we are faced with another 1km walk to the front gates. We pay the £70 which seemed a bit steep and we set off with our guide at 3pm. The Wimbledon tour ended up being so much better than we were expecting and was well worth the money. Our guide, a very proper English lady, was fantastic. The highlight was definitely Centre Court. Once that was over we were then faced with the trek back to the train station and the half hour train ride home. The kids had been dragged all around London and were well and truly shagged. We got back to the apartment and had a quick shower and headed straight back out for dinner. Tyler has been begging for us to go back to the Jamie Oliver restaurant we went to the night we arrived so we promised him that tonight we will go. We walk down there and the place is empty, it’s shut. There is a sign on the wall saying Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Union Jacks is closed due to a fire. Bugger, had we missed something? I don’t remember a fire. So we end up having dinner at this trendy joint called Bill’s and it was good. After dinner we head to the ice cream shop for the kids and the coffee shop for me and Kris and into bed. It’s after 9 and we are all buggered. We think it will be a slow day tomorrow.

Footnote: On our tour of Lords there was this dorky guy correctly answering all the obscure cricket questions put to him by the tour guide and Kris nudges me and says “That’s Frank Spencer”. I couldn’t stop laughing!
Check out the photo at the bottom.