Going down to London town

The best day was our visit to London. Christian and J only live an hour from London by train so we played tourists.

We visited the Bank of England Museum. I chose that one as we had all worked in banks at some point in our lives. It was fascinating! We did go into the British Museum but didn’t stay long as there was so much to see we decided a visit would have to be planned in order to get the most from it.

We had lunch at Borough Market. Venison burgers to be exact and they are delicious! In the afternoon we visited Liberty of London and spent an agreeable hour or so just taking it all in. We could have spend an agreeable amount of money too, but we aren't that rich. We also stood outside Buckingham Palace and watched the WI filing in for a garden party.

My shadow outside Liberty of London

Before our train home we ate at an Italian restaurant which wasn’t too expensive and the food was great. I've written a revue for TripAdvisor.

I hadn’t been to London for about 30 years and was amazed by the lack of traffic. Where we went wasn’t too crowded and the underground was fine too. I slowed us down when there were lots of steps to go down but they weren’t too deep so I didn’t suffer too much.

Needless to say we all slept well after a day like that.

UK revisited

At the end of May we went off to the UK for a week. The weather was typically British for the whole of the time we were there, with the exception of the last day of which we spent mostly in the bowels of Stansted airport. Other than that we had a good week.

 I met my grandpuppy at last, who is the handsomest, best behaved young dog we have ever met.

Are you my Grandma?

 The main reason for our visit was to see M-I-L in her new home for the elderly. It’s in a beautiful old house with incredible grounds. She has a room which is not too small or too big and looks out onto part of the gardens. She looks better that we’ve seen her for two years at least. The food is good and varied and what we saw looks very tempting.

 We managed to get into Worcester and had lunch at the Cathedral. The special on that day was toasted bacon, brie and cranberry sandwich which was to die for. The exhibition of school’s art and crafts was up already in the cloisters (I thought that I would be too early to see it), so we looked at that too.

 The free bookshop is still near to the cathedral, so I had two of those and Rob chose three so we put in some money as we didn’t have any to exchange.

To be continued...

Glory

This time last week we were still in the UK. MIL has had a stroke and we visited her in hospital several times. I stayed in the car on the last visit as my throat felt prickly and I was coughing (I now know why).

Winter Warmer, the soup was butter bean and garlic

We stayed with Christian and J a couple of nights and we went to the Cake Hole again for lunch. This time I had the Winter Warmer.

MIL planted this tree nearly 50 years ago.  It's a Red Maple and really beautiful

An Oak tree across the road

For the rest of the time we stayed at MIL’s house which was very strange as she was not there. It’s the first time we’ve been in the UK in winter in 30 years; I couldn’t get over how beautiful the trees are without leaves.

We saw an incredible sunset while driving back on evening, but by the time I’d got out of the car and run upstairs to take a picture it had almost gone.

When we were taking off on our way out to the UK I saw a Glory – a lovely name for a circular rainbow in the clouds. It was beautiful. I couldn’t get at my phone to take a pic.

A better Friday

This is what greeted me when I opened the shutters last Friday morning: 

 Later we went for lunch at our favourite restaurant.