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...

 

Sunday Walk in Weybridge

Still in Europe, still in London, on a sunny Sunday, after a really good lunch it was time for a walk along the river.

Weybridge is not really known for being a poor area of Greater London, I was struggling to decide which one of these houses I should buy (just in case one day I have a few spare millions...)

I think I'm going to go for the last one hidden by the huge tree so no one can take a photo of me!

 

Otherwise, the locks are good fun to watch, apparently these boats can be rented for the weekend but they seem to be quite hard work! (According to the couple we helped)

 

London marathon 2013

The London marathon happened during my previous trip to London but I didn't take the time to post the photos. It was actually less than a week after the terrorist attack of the Boston marathon. I did wonder for a while if going was the best thing to do, but in true London spirit I decided that it's not because a few crazy people try to scare us that we would stay at home in bed!

So on a freezing but sunny day, I went to Canary wharf to cheer the very brave people who were attempting the 26miles run. I was on time for the people running it in 3h, there were very few women and they all look very fit!

Runners all run for a charity which they usually have on their tee shirt and it also display their names so the crowd can cheer them by their first name. (I discovered that after thinking for a good 5 min that the person standing next to me really knew everyone who had entered the race...)

After a good moment spent in Canary wharf, I went to meet my friend C to go to the Wallace collection, we made it back to the marathon later, after nearly 7h of race, 200m away from finish line on the Mall. It was this time a very different group of people, most walked but were trying a last attempt at running to cross the line, fancy dress were everywhere, a few American flags to pay tribute to Boston etc

It was a really good day, even the sun had decided to come out, and it nearly gave me motivation to start running! (I did say nearly...)

 

Snowy London

Last time I got out of the airport in London, it was February, so I'm guessing I took these photos of snowy London, or actually snowy Richmond back in February! (I did say that the posts were coming in random order...:-)

Adults and kids seem to make the most out of the thin layer of snow in Richmond park.

European break

There has been a break in the SE Asia traveling as we went back to Europe for 10 days.

A nice little tour including London pubs:

A poor start of the rabbit year for some rabbits (Borough Market, London bridge):

A fantastic exhibition at the Tate Modern (millions of hand painted ceramic sunflower seeds in the Turbine hall):

Then we passed Paris but we were too busy eating drinking and catching up with friends to take photos...

And finally skiing in Switzerland, including some mountains without snow, some with snow, colourful bears climbing cranes and a parma ham (comfort food after hours on the slopes!)


I'm now nearly up to date with the blog (1 more missing article on the Philippines) but no worries more will be coming, we are off to Sumatra next WE!

English food

People say that British food ranks very close to the bottom of the world list. As I had some fantastic meals during my recent visit to London, I would like to prove the opposite, here are a few descriptions and photos.

I hope you enjoy as much as I did!

First, brunch in Chiswick with my friends F. Next WE try to add cherry tomatoes and chorizo to your scrambled eggs, very tasty!

and the classic but always brilliant oeufs Benedicte.

Second amasing food stop was dinner at the top of the OXO tower with my friend P. Several points to highlight: 1. the view is amasing on both sides. 2. we waited for quite a long time at the bar before getting our table and that allowed us to have a look at all the plates coming and going, so when we ordered we already knew what we were going to get! and that was very impressive, crab with lemongrass madeleines, canneloni of smoked salmon, duck, lamb and the rhubarb souffle I still dream of...

Enjoy!