A day out in London for a trip down the Thames

We thought we'd get back into London and treat the kids to a special day. We took the Jubilee line to Green Park then got a cab to Hamleys toy shop for our first stop of the day.

Six floors of toys!! Emily and Hannah both loved it......Emily ran around loudly proclaiming 'Daddy, I want that.....Daddy, I want that'. Hannah was pretty laid back and was happy taking all the sights in.

There were rickshaws, or Pedicabs, outside the store. Sharon and Emily took one to Trafalgar Square. They both loved it, though Sharon was a little concerned about their safety in busy streets.

Hannah & I walked down to Trafalgar Square and met up with Sharon & Emily. The square was bustling with tourists and performers. I really love it there. It has a great atmosphere.

We walked down Whitehall to Horseguards, looked at the horses..err...guarding! Well, the soldier on the horse was guardng..but you know what I mean :-)

We walked past MoD Main Building and then through Victoria Embankment Park. It's only a small park but great for finding a quiet place to sit and relax in the middle of London.

From there, we crossed over to the Thames river bus and took a round trip up to the O2 arena (Old Millenium Dome) and back to Embankment. Both Emily and Hannah loved it. You cn either sit inside or outside. To be honest the kids loved it outside more. The boat moves along at a fair speed and the wake off the back of the boat transfixed them.

The kids had a great time although it's not a cheap day out. Still days like this get their little inquiring minds racing.

(Sharon & Hannah on the Jubilee line tube)

Where's May gone??!!

Hi folks

Sorry we've been a bit quiet on here. I had a few issues with rejigging my spam filters and the botched job that is XP SP3. That was the first time I've had an issue with a service pack. Now if I was being cynical, I'd have said that Microsoft were doing their damndest to put people off XP and upgrade to Vista. But I'm not cynical - there's a heck of a lot they packed into it so I shouldn't be too surprised that there were some wibbly things going on.
Anyways, email is back to normal now folks.

OK, I've added a little poetry corner. Anybody got a request, let me know the poet or the poem & I'll add it on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, dependant on how you like the idea.
I've put one of my poems on for the time being.

I've more pictures to add from last weekend. We went down to St James Park because it's our favourite park in London and it was such a lovely day. I'll add them later this week.

Chat soon

A few more pictures of Emily

We're doing the touristy things around London....and the parks are a big must. Here's Emily & Sharon when we were walking through Horseguards on our way to St James's Park.....

...& in St James's Park...

.....& over to Regents Park.....

I know we've few more to do (but you gotta start somewhere!) so any suggestions gratefully received. We've done Battersea Park and our next one will be Hyde Park. We were going to do Primrose Hill today while we were at Regents Park, but (a) we thought it'd be nicer wihout the Baltic weather and (b) it would be nicer with a picnic!

Emily loves the parks and especially all the birds. She's a real animal lover. We take her up to feed the deer at Bentley regularly and then there's the ducks in Stanmore, and our cats!! She insists in helping to feed the cats at meal times - even though they are not too impressed with the over enthusiastic bundle of fun chasing them around the house with their food bowls!!! Still...it's good exercise for them all!!

We went to the RAF museum a couple of weeks ago in our bid to kick start the museum trails around London and found out that Emily really didn't like the mannequins in the displays. Bless, she went running into the Battle of Britain part of the museum where they have displays of wartime England at the beginning. She took one look at the dummies, froze, said 'no', shook her head, ran back to daddy and buried her head in my jacket until we took her out. The things that freak people out.......