Greg and Deb's Travel Blog

This all started when I asked Deb if she was doing the blog today, she had after all been taking notes all morning. No she said, I have just been recording flowers I have been taking pictures of (there were lots ? ), and besides, she had done all the other gardens!

So let’s begin and start with an apology for all gardeners out there who were expecting something more than my description of Kew Gardens.

Did a bit of cleaning of the flat this morning, looked better afterwards. There are a few plants here that I have enjoyed looking after, they look much happier after 2 weeks of a bit of love! FaceTimed some family too, enjoyed chatting.

Sometime after 10am, we caught the bus to the other side of Westminster Bridge. Stood for a while and soaked up Westminster Palace (parliament house), it is my favourite view of London, across the Thames.

This morning we were out early to tick the Abbey Rd crossing off our bucket lists. ✔ Done.

In many ways this was an amusing start to the day. The crossing is on a regular street (ummm Abbey Rd, go figure, huh!) with regular traffic.  The crossing is just after a round-a-bout, and the road, even at 8am was fairly busy. When we got there, there was already a group of about 7 or 8 mainly girls trying to figure out how the photo should be taken. The old guy helped them out with the help of Mr Google. Lol ?

We were out the door at 9.15am on the bus heading to The Regent Garden. We missed our stop as we were too busy talking! We got off two stops later! ? it didn’t matter, we got to see more of the garden than we planned, which is gorgeous. We came to see Queen Mary Rose Garden. I could have spent the whole day there, (if the hay fever didn’t get me first!). It is the most beautiful rose garden I have seen, I loved it. My photos don’t do it justice. I sat for a while and just absorbed its beauty.

Left home at 9am and caught a bus to Westminster Bridge and ferry to Greenwich. The ferry had an amusing and very informative commentary on the past and present state of the Thames and the buildings that line it.

Was another enjoyable day today, headed out around 9.30am, walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to The Natural History Museum (no catching the wrong bus for us today ? in fact I don’t think we took a wrong turn, things are looking up! ?)

I bought tickets this morning to the Photographic exhibition they have at the moment on Wildlife, there were more than 45,000 entries from 95 countries, the exhibition showed the top 100 entries. We loved the photos and the description of each one. There were also some entries from children aged 10+ that were impressive too.

We left the flat at 8:30am to get a bus to Vauxhall where we connected with a train to Kingston so we could have a look at the Kings Stone and then cruise to Hampton Court on the Thames. Well that was the plan, and as they are with well laid out plans, ours didn’t quite work out as we planned. Before we knew it we were pulling into Hampton Court Station, the end of the line!! No, we hadn’t missed our planned stop, this train just didn’t go the right way! Turns out, Kingston is on a spur line this train sped past!

This morning we went to the London War Rooms, Churchills headquarters during WWII.

This is the top tourist attraction in London. Neither of us are really interested in war, but we were surprised at how much we enjoyed the war rooms. We decided that it was more that it was about Churchill the man/PM than the war. The suggested time to go through the rooms was 1.5hrs, we took 1.75hrs, much better than the 30 mins I expected.

It has taken a week, I had a great sleep last night 91/2 hours, very happy.  Woke up at  7.45am, much better than 3am!  

We had a great morning, we eventually worked out how to get to the Columbia Road Flower Market, had to change buses along the way, even helped another couple who were going to the market too ? about a one hour trip, arrived around 10.30am.  This market only runs on Sundays.  It was fabulous, wish we had one at home.  There was a 6 piece band playing who we listened to for a while, was great music and a female Double Bass player.   The market was full of flowers and plants, and people, lots of people. The stall holders were funny characters.  I loved it.

We caught the 148 bus to Westminster. Silly us we got off 1 stop early.
We arrived at Westminster around 10am, imagine that, us being early!
The tour was due to start at 11am with admission 20 minutes beforehand. Lucky for us we were allowed to go in early.
Unfortunately due to all the restoration work being carried out a lot of the buildings are covered in scaffolding, and parts will continue to be covered until 2021.