London Part 2

London Part 2

Just across the river was the London Eye and our first experience of queues in Europe during summer. Crikey, it was going to take us 45 mins to queue up to get tickets, and 45 mins to get on. Bloody hell, queues do not mix well with kids, so that idea was quickly postponed. Instead we walked along Southbank and crossed the bridge to walk up to Trafalgar Square to have some lunch.

What a wonderful way to have lunch, sitting in Trafalgar Square, chasing pigeons, getting sprayed by the enormous fountains and staring at good ole Horatio atop his pole.

We decided to go to Hamley's toy store (open since 1750s) on Regent St and accidentally found Stephen Wiltshire's gallery which Delia had been very keen to visit. Stephen Wiltshire has the extraordinary ability to fly over a city for 20 minutes, go back to his studio and draw the entire city accurately to the minutest detail. Quite remarkable. Look him up.

After that to Hamley's, quite frankly the best toy store in the world. None of this Americano barn nonsense. This one has been around for 250 years. They have staff demonstrating, well playing with, all sorts of wonderful toys and gadgets. We were all in heaven. We ended up in the basement where Ben was promptly assaulted by a staff member wielding a light sabre and Ben died an impressive death. The staff member was so impressed he gave Ben a light sabre and they had re-enacted the light sabre battle in Empire Strikes Back, including Ben falling to the floor with a “Nooooooooooooooo”

That's my boy.

Walking up Regent St with Maja determined to go by herself

I really don't know what we were thinking by going there as the probability of leaving there without major damage to the credit card was zero. We ended the day seeing and doing far more than we thought we would and headed back to our home away from home at Rani and Graeme's house where Rani prepared a wonderful vegie lasagna (much to Graeme's chagrin, bit of a carnivore is our Graeme)