Ages ago, when I was putting some TOIL days into my diary, I noticed that I would be off on Mr J's birthday, and set about thinking of something fun that we could do if he got the day off too.
Because we are saving for Australia, we have kept things like Christmas and birthdays fairly low key, but I wanted to do something a bit special and I decided to look in to a day trip to London. London always holds a little bit of magic for me - since my first visit as a starry eyed wee child from Norn Iron, then on various school trips, and my 21st birthday trip on the London Eye - I've always felt a certain amount of excitement going there and seeing "famous" places from the TV or films or books!
Trains to London are usually so expensive, but because I was booking well in advance I managed to get us a really good deal on tickets that would get us in to London by mid morning and home again late enough to make the most of the day (staying over would add to the cost too much) but early enough to still be ok to get up for work the next day! It also included a travelcard for the Tube so we had the freedom to use that as much as we wanted.
We arrived in at Paddington, picked up a few geocaches, and then headed off on the Tube towards the Holborn...via a coffee shop for a tea break first of course!
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| I used to be scared of the Tube but now I love it! |
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| Tiniest teacup in the world! |
We then made our way to the
British Museum, (via a few more caches!) I had never been before and was pretty impressed by the imposing building which seems to be tucked away and appears out of nowhere. Inside was equally impressive, I loved the big light and airy atrium which continually buzzed with the chatter of voices without being too noisy.
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| Outside the BM looking every bit the British tourist! |
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| Inside the Atrium |
The BM is so huge we had to be selective about where we wanted to go, but even so we still managed to see a lot in the couple of hours we were there. I chose to see the Egyptian displays and British/European history, while Mr J chose Japanese history. I love the "
A History of the World in 100 Objects" podcasts and was thrilled to spot so many of the objects as we were walking round.
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| Egyptian scultures |
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| Rameses II |
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| This boy loves his Samurai history! |
After the BM we headed towards Trafalgar Square with the intention of having our packed lunch there, but on the way we were sidetracked into Chinatown. The delicious smells and dishes of yummy food were too much for us to resist so we decided to have our main meal there and then and save our sandwiches for the journey home! We opted for a buffet as there was so much choice - it was great value and the food was lovely.
We obviously had to walk all of that Chinese food off so we embarked on an epic journey around London's famous sights - starting at Picadilly Circus, down to the Mall and across to Horseguards, down Whitehall past Downing Street to Westminster, over to Big Ben and the Westminster Bridge to sit and watch the crowds go by, then back past Westminster Abbey and Birdcage Walk up to St James' Park and Buckingham Palace... then back down the Mall to Trafalgar Square. Phew!
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| Giant man in Piccadilly Circus! |
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| Horse guard in Horseguards |
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| No sign of the PM but that's probably a good thing! |
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| Big Ben |
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| Cheese! |
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| Houses of Parliament |
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| London Eye - can't imagine they had a great view in that weather! |
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| Westminster Abbey |
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| Buckingham Palace peeking through the trees at St James' Park |
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| No Royals on the balcony today :( |
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| Guard playing peek-a-boo at St James' Palace |
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| Lord Nelson looking none too pleased at the gloomy weather |
Our legs felt just about ready to drop off us at this point so we grabbed another cuppa and then headed back to Paddington. We were quite early for our train and unable to get an earlier one without paying extra, we went to find a few more caches in the area then sat in Costa just drinking tea and reading our books.
We had such a great day and it was a lovely way to celebrate Mr's birthday. We are already planning a return trip to see the Imperial War Museum (which was unfortunately closed for our trip and not open til July), and perhaps go to Harrods food hall for the craic!
