Sunday, April 25, 2010

Day 3 -









Well it finally happened, it rained in sunny London. Not too much mind you but still it did! London Marathon was on today so a lot of streets and public transport was affected by the run. We got up late and decided that the Marathon would not stop us from doing our touristy thing (transport to places might but not our desire to see what we wanted to see!) We were lucky that the buses were running and perhaps to our advantage as they seemed to be the only things allowed on certain roads with the London cabs! So we had no problem going into London to go to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens/Palace. We got to Marble Arch and walked from there inside Hyde Park to Kensington Palace. Mind you we had to ask a few people where the Palace was! But we got there to find out that they did not show Princess Diana's clothes anymore but had some 'Enchanted' childrens theme on instead. We decided to skip this tour and went directly into the shop instead! Lovely items and we did try some jewellery on but that is all we did as the prices were a bit too high for us! But it was nice to try it on! As it took us a long time to find and get to Kensington Palace we had to leave to try to make our lunch back at Waterloo for our lunch. We finally worked out what tube to catch only to find out that the line we chose was affected by the Marathon. We were told to catch another tube to another station to get to where we wanted to be. Got to the station to find hundreds of people everywhere cheering. We all looked at each and realised it was not for us (only joking we knew it wasn't for us!). There was hundreds of people cheering, we thought it must have been the finishing line but no it was just part of the Marathon run. So we walked around all of these people and got to our lunch at The Canteen in Waterloo (near Waterloo station). We had a really lovely lunch catching up with Rhian and Ramon & their beautiful daughter Saskia, Shefali, and Jon Hill and his son Thomas. It was great catching up with them all as I had not seen them for such a long time and we had a really great time working altogether at HSBC years ago. Saskia did really well for the space restraints and entertained us all with her antics especially with Thomas. Both Jon and Thomas had been at the Marathon supporting a friend of Jon's - so it was quite a long day for both of them as they got to the Marathon when it started at Greenwich! Saskia had a lot of fun with Thomas too. Rhian and Ramon are just the same as they have always been and now enjoying parenthood with their daughter. Hopefully try to catch up with Rhian when we pass by Winchester where they now live. I really appreciated that they were able to make the lunch and also for Shefali in helping organise this too. (Btw we will finally post a photo of Shefali with this post too!) After our long English lunch (which was really yummy too!) we headed back to Shefali's and finally got to go to the Tate Modern which is around the corner from Shefali's house. The Tate Modern is quite interesting with its art pieces of modern art but also for the way it displays these too. I must admit I do prefer traditional art but the Tate had numerous famous pieces that were magnificent. We finally got really tired and went back to Shefali's. Went directly to bed with no dinner or anything. WE NEEDED SLEEP!! (written by Tonia)

1 comment:

  1. Hi girls,
    Sounds like you are having a fabulous time. London is one of those exhausting places where there is never enough time to see it all. I am taking note of all the "must do" things for when we go back. Love the photos - are they from your camera Georgina?
    Look forward to the next installment,
    Lorraine

    ReplyDelete