Feeling like a tourist in London

I now have to admit it, I am like a tourist in London!

Having left my "home location" (as BP would say) more than 3.5 years ago, I am disconnected with what is London today. In my defense, the Olympic Games happened in between and so many things were done/redone for the games.

With D and A visiting for the weekend, I had made a fantastic plan, we were going to take the train to Waterloo, get on the Boris/Barclays bikes (never tried them), cycle along the southbank all the way to Greenwich, get on the Emirates cable car, cross the Thames, potentially go up the Shard (potentially, as it is atrociously expensive), then head for afternoon tea, take the sun in Hyde park and then go for cocktails and dinner.

But if everything else has changed in London, the British weather is still the same! Guess what, my master plan got disturbed by a full day of rain from start to finish! But after all I'm nearly British by now so I kept calm and carried on! ;-)

Train to Waterloo - Done

Cycle along the southbank to Greenwich - replaced by trip along the Jubilee line, walk around the O2 and coffee at Costa's.

Emirates cable - Done, couldn't see much but anyway spotted, the Excel, London city airport, the O2 and the Thames barrier

Shard - so glad I hadn't booked tickets, we would have wasted them!

Unplanned activity - racing boats in St Katherine dock getting ready for a race around the world with people who have never sailed before (I have to admit that the concept still escape me a bit...) boats were huge, security staff outnumbered public (easily), pub looked beautiful!

Unplanned activity 2 - getting absolutely soaked walking to tower hill station! 3 French girls in London, 1 pair of open toes shoes, 0 waterproof jackets, 0 umbrella... Keep calm, I said...

Afternoon tea at the Lanesborough - Finally somewhere dry!!! We dried our feet in the bathroom, made an attempt at looking presentable despite the wet hair and the soaked jackets! I still think that the guys opening car doors at the entrance were more looking the part than us...

We stayed over 2h, ate a huge quantity of sandwich, cakes, quiche, biscuits, scones, canapés and other delicacies, drank tons of hot tea and listened to the lovely lady playing the harp with music sheets on her iPad (beauty of modern technology!)

Taking the sun in Hyde park - the what?

We decided on making our way back to the hotel, switching the rain for the hot tub! 2h later when we decided to go out again, it was still raining...(the capacity of the sky to retain water sometimes amazes me!)

Cocktail in London got replaced by Tapas in Richmond! Not bad, they even had non-alcoholic sangria! (Thanks for virgin cocktails!)

And that's how you convert a plan for a sunny day in London into a pretty similar plan for a very wet day in London.

Obviously on Sunday, after having dropped A at Heathrow, the sun was out and so were the fancy cars!

(Photo credit goes to D and Instagram!)

D and I were able to enjoy a bit of dry outdoor walk in Richmond park where we met with some gorgeous deers.

Not to worry, as soon as I dropped D at Heathrow, it started raining again! If you can take me out of London, you can not take the English weather out...