London

Sunday day trip to London - parked at the O2 (for the bargain price of £6 all day on a Sunday) and hopped on the Jubilee Line). Would have got off at London Bridge, but the station was temporarily closed due to an incident of some sort. Still, it worked out in our favour as we got off at the next stop (Southwark) and had a pleasant stroll along the South Bank, and ended up stopping for lunch at Porky's BBQ, just down the side of the Globe Theatre.


After lunch we carried on along eastbound, through More London, passing under Tower Bridge, and to the Design Museum, where we enjoyed assessing the entries for this year's Design Awards. A couple of my favourites were the polystyrene and bamboo Toyota, as well as the Bradley Timepiece (designed to be a wristwatch that can be worn easily by blind people), Jake particularly liked a rather funky new keyboard, and whilst it wasn't one of the entries for the award, I think Nicky wanted to bring home a new clock.


One of our observations on the museum was that whilst it was excellent, it could really do with some more space, and it turns out that they are on the case - they will be moving to a new, purpose built home in South Kensington in 2016, so we can look forward to another visit then.

After leaving the museum, we walked across Tower Bridge, and passing the Tower we marvelled at the poppy gardens that are under construction (note to self - apparently there has been a rush on ordering the first batch of poppies but I think some more are being made - must investigate how to get one / some), and then headed to Bank to get on the Central Line.


Destination Tottenham Court Road tube (and not just so that we could all be reminded just how much of a dump Centerpoint really is - are they pulling it down - let's hope so!) so that we could pop down to Denmark Street and to a couple of music shops where Jake got a couple of new books, and then we took a stroll from there to Carnaby Street.

Now as anyone who knows London will know, the walk from Denmark Street to Carnaby Street passes through a rather interesting area of town. We had an amusing wander, but didn't go in anywhere!! I especially wanted to into one particular establishment, just so that I could say that I had had a "Snog in Soho", but sadly we moved quickly along. For the avoidance of doubt, Snog sells frozen yoghurt!!

We enjoyed a wander along Carnaby, but didn't get anything other than a big box of Ben's Cookies to bring home, and so headed for Oxford Circus (Bakerloo to Waterloo and then Jubilee to North Greenwich) and back home.