London

I am completely behind my schedule with updating my travelogue. before i procrastinate any further, ..

The view of the London eye..the queue was so long, we thought we would do it another day, but we never got around to do it..

human statue..

A wizard
Me with Big Ben and Palace of Westminster aka Parliament House.

Can you see Superman and Lara Croft?

Leon and Big Ben.
Another shot of Big Ben. Silly me used to think Big Ben is the red double decker.

Parliament House and Thames River

Mind the Gap, the famous London Tube.

When we were there, the Londoners were having their Mayoral Election. Some of the campaign banners of the candidate. Unfortunately 'Ken' (Ken Livingstone) lost to Boris Johnson.

Anyways, it was a lovely day..fine but still chilly..we also went to meet Karen (see previous post) and then from Karen's location, we bus to Trafalgar Sq. and walked past Pall Mall. (I can't believe I was walking on the landmarks from Monopoly Original version) Next stop, we went to Chinatown.

i am a bit of a serial 'chinatown' visitor. I always want to take picture with the 'gate' of the Chinatown.
The 'avenue' is lined with restaurants and asian grocers.

Typical souvenir shops in UK. They are dominated by the Indian communities.

A statue in front of a theatre.

Trafalgar Square area,National Art Gallery etc..

Lunch with Karen

We meet up with Karen for lunch. If you don't already know, the Brits have claimed (would not apply to all Brits, of course) chicken tikka masala as their national dish. Karen wanted to share with us where she normally has hers...so we headed to Hot Chilli

We ordered our lassi..
Jake busy checking out the reviews of the shop.

Me and karen posing..

That's our feed for the afternoon. The 'orangy' dish was the chicken tikka. The one next to it was lamb dish and we ordered a mushroom rice and another chicken dish. Upon's karen's recommendation, we also ordered this huge roti.. Just to give you a rough idea how huge the roti was, I asked jake to have his hand on the roti

Eileen, you should definitely check this place up. I know karen's invited you for the umpteenth time. *LOL

Swag Restaurant before musical

The girls before our food arrives.

Entree - the satay skewer..

We went to watch musical with Eileen & Fai and Karen and their friend, PL. They managed to find a dinner and show deal and it was held at Holborn area. Some of the menu for the night was fish and chips (smartly wrapped in newspaper), satay skewer, burgers, and chicken breast ..

Me and my burger..
The girls after the food arrived..

Featuring the fish and chips..This F&C is much better than the ones I had in Wales.

Jake's main - healthy chicken
Our dessert

Us posing in front of the theatre before we get ushered in..

As you might already read in karen's review, I fell asleep while watching the musical. It is not to say the musical's boring but the environment is really condusive to take 'short naps'. And I was really impressed with the makeups, set up and of course the performance.

Our little trooper @ 9mths

Our little trooper turns 9 months 2 weeks back. He's into crawling, he's starting to clap hands (it's more like kungfu chops at this stage) and he just had his wellness check on Saturday. He was weighed and measured ...he's 8.71kg and 71cm tall. Jayne, our Plunket nurse also showed me N's upper incisor which are waiting to come out.

I know the incisor are coming out because N's not sleeping well the last few nights. he rubs his ears, his eyes..and he needs a lot more cuddles than usual. he will be due for another immunisation jab when he turns 10 months...Boy, time sure flies..

More of England pt 2

after the salisbury cathedral we drove a short distance to Stonehenge, the mysterious monument. we past by the meadows of 'canola'..at first i was excited each time i see the yellow meadow, but then after a while, we see it like everywhere we drove..the excitement died down..




we paid for entrance and got our audio set and set off to see the stones. it is believed that the stones have been there for thousands of years and believed to function differently throughout the ages..

the isolated stone

another pic of us posing ..jake brought a tripod to the trip so when weather and crowd allows, he would prop them up and insist we took numerous shots to get his money's worth on the trip.

Following stonehenge, we drove to our Bath. Bath is famous for its naturally-occuring hot spring where the Roman built bath houses. Below is the bath house.

The city is also famous for its Georgian architecture. See pic below of 'The Circus' (circus is latin for ring, oval or circle) The building consists of 30 townhouses all set in a semi circle..(my picture don't do justice)

Our last destination of the day was Cardiff.We knew we had arrived when the sign started to show dual language.



It's interesting to note that we experienced almost 4 season in a day. First it was raining at Windsor, then it was a generally nice day at Winchester and Salisbury. At Stonehenge, it was very fine summer day and it started raining again in Bath. Finally Cardiff was freezing cold for us.



The City Hall.
Cherry blossoms.
Leon posing ..
Us with the sign Clock tower

Millineum Stadium

We wanted to try 'Welsh' food. We spotted many English and Irish pubs. Then we saw the HRM Prince of Wales. We decided to try it, but who knows when we got inside, it turned out to be an English chain, so we ended up with .....(see below)




Boring Sunday roast, fish and chips and nachos and rice.

Returning to London was quite exhausting...but I guess given our time limit, this is worth going.