London the Capital of the World

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Wednesday 30 June

Yesterday morning we awoke to the first rain of our trip thus far. However it didn’t last for too long and by the time Stacey and Rhys arrived at Earl’s Court to meet us, the skies were almost clear and our plans for a visit to the Adventure Playground at Holland Park were not disrupted. After the hugs and kisses and introductions to and amongst the boys, we walked up Earl’s Court Road to the park. We worked out that we had last seen Stacey ten years ago when she was in Australia for the year she spent studying in Melbourne. That was in 2000, the year we arrived in Sydney and Greg was born, so no wonder my recollections of seeing Stacey that year are a bit vague.

As we walked we chatted and filled each other in on our lives. Rhys chattered away too, holding his mom’s hand as he walked. He was very friendly to me, but a bit shy with the boys at first. However once we reached the playground he was soon off running around the play equipment with Greg. Ryan took Dean off to explore and we sat on a park bench and attempted to catch up on the past ten years. We then went to the cafe in the park for a lunch of (toasted) sandwiches, and then took a rather long walk along High Street Kensington to the Science Museum, to continue our exploration of the hands-on activities in the Launchpad - boy heaven!

After about an hour there, it was time for us all to go our respective ways, Stacey to take Rhys back to her mum’s and then to play at a gig, and us Kluggies back to the flat for a quick stopover before heading back to Wimbledon for our second attempt to gain entry to the grounds. We arrived just after 5 pm and it was impeccable timing, as the queue was almost non-existent compared with the previous day. We still had to walk the entire length of the line, which is probably a kilometre or so, and along which there are queue toilets and queue food outlets. We were given queue place numbers as well as stickers which said ‘I queued for Wimbledon 2010’ of which the boys took lots of extras for their friends. Once we reached the front of the queue we had to pass through metal detectors and have our bags scanned, and we thereafter we finally arrived at the ticket office and purchased four groundpasses for fourteen pounds each, which gave us access to all the outside courts (not centre court or court one or two). As Dean is under five years, we had further restrictions in that he was not supposed to go to any of the show courts (there were about three or four of these).

On arriving at the electronic board which showed all the games being played that night, we realised that it was ‘Doubles Night’ at Wimbledon, which was perhaps the reason we had got in so easily! At the information booth where we made some enquiries as to what was on and what we could watch, the assistant suggested we go quickly to Court 9 as ‘Sharapova was playing there’. On arriving we discovered that it was a junior girls doubles match, and the Sharapova on court was not the well-known beauty of the tennis world that we had been expecting! There were no big names on any of the courts, so after watching a little of the junior doubles, we went to Court 12 to watch a men’s doubles so that the boys could see some real power hitting. A very nice official told us that as it was a show court, Dean wasn’t actually supposed to go in, but we could sit near the back where it wasn’t too serious if he made a little noise. We assured him that we would leave if he became too loud, but in fact he was extremely well-behaved and spoke only in a whisper. Of the four players on court, the only name I recognised was that of the Dutch player, Paul Haarhuis. We stayed until the end of the match, which Haarhuis and partner lost, and then went to an interactive expo tent where Russel and the boys, Dean included where he could, attempted most of the activities, for example having the speed of their serve measured, and playing a few points of tennis against the assistants.

Our next stop was another show-court where there was an invitational or masters’ match between Pat Cash and Mark Woodforde, and John Fitzgerald and Vijay Amitrage. Again we managed to get in with Dean and he didn’t cause any disturbance. We saw a bit of banter between the players, as well as some fairly decent tennis. We weren’t there too long before the match ended, and we then walked up to the outdoor big screen and food court area, where we bought some fried chicken strips and chips, which we ate outside on the steps in front of the big screen. An official walked past and gave us a Wimbledon tennis ball that had obviously been used in one of the matches as the inscription was a bit worn. Who knows which players had handled that very ball? We will never know!

Our final stop was the Wimbledon shop where Greg chose a cap for himself and a keyring for his friend Josh, who is tennis-mad. We then walked back to the station and took the underground back home.

Thursday 1 July

The last day of June was another warm summer’s day in London. We took the train to Russell Square and walked to the British Museum via Russell Square Gardens, a beautiful, shady formal style garden with a central fountain. Arriving at the British Museum, we admired the magnificent building with its soaring columns, before making our way into the central Great Court. We headed straight for the upper floor and the Ancient Egypt rooms to see the mummies, including the renowned Mummy of Hornedjitel with its enormous coffin. It was fascinating to see the bodies in various states of wrap and unwrap, and to see how well preserved the mummified bodies and their sarcophagi still are after all this time. Even Dean was interested at first in seeing the ‘pharoahs from Egypt’, but as far as the boys were concerned, if you’ve seen one mummy you’ve seen them all, and they quickly got bored. We walked quickly through the upper east wing, stopping at Lindow Man (a well preserved 2000 year old body found in a peat bog in England and nicknamed Pete Marsh) and the Lewis Chessmen (elaborately carved 12th century chess pieces found in the Outer Hebrides, off the Scottish coast). Unbelievably, we didn’t get to the Rosetta Stone, which is apparently the most visited item in the museum. Oh well, there’s always next time.

After leaving the museum, we walked down Bloomsbury Street to Oxford Street, stopping to buy take-away sandwiches and salad for lunch, which we ate as soon as we came to the closest park, Soho Square. We sat on the grass in the shade along with hundreds of others for our lunch break. In the centre of the square was a small Tudor style building, and on the pathway facing the entrance was a statue. Both made the setting so uniquely English. After our lunch, we continued to walk along Oxford Street. The number of people in the street was mind-boggling, and it was impossible to walk at a decent pace. The enforced half-pace walking kicked in a lower back-ache that lasted the rest of the day. The enormity of choice of shops in London - how does one decide which to enter and what to buy? Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your view) I didn’t have to make any such decisions, as there was no way I was going to shop with my four males tagging along, dragging their feet! No, it has definitely not been that kind of holiday. No, we were heading for a different kind of shop entirely.

We turned left into Regent Street and then detoured down Carnaby Street, then returned to Regent Street for our much anticipated visit to THE shop, Hamleys, the world’s biggest toy store. Unfortunately for Dean, he had fallen asleep in the pram, and missed out on the bubbles that greeted us at the door as well as Russel’s impromptu juggling display. We did each of the five levels of the store in great depth, with Ryan and Greg running around like kids in the proverbial candy store (although I’m sure if the proverb had said toy store it would have been just as effective) and watched the demonstrations of various gimmicky items by the very enthusiastic sales assistants. We gave each of them twenty pounds to spend, but told them they could only decide what to buy once we had been through the whole store. We also had size and weight restrictions that needed to be taken into consideration, and had the right of veto.

We managed to wake Dean up in time for the pre-schooler level, where the Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends display was enough of an incentive to keep him from his usual post-sleep hangover. I’ve never seen him up and out of that pram so quickly! He was happy to leave Thomas to see the rest of the store, but as soon as the other boys decided what they wanted to buy and went off to get it, Dean was back at the Thomas display, watching the engines going round and round and round...
After we had made our purchases, we walked back to Oxford St and turned left towards Bond Street. We popped into a souvenir shop to make a few purchases (definitely the second most popular type of shop for them, and for Greg in particular, who is looking for little presents for his friends). We then boarded the Jubilee line at Bond St and headed north to Finchley Road, where we met Barbara and Mike Freed and their two boys, Benji and Zac, for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. It was lovely to catch up with Barbara after all these years and to meet her family. After eating and chatting, it was time to head home.

Today July dawned and London officially began its summer. Weather-wise, summer is indeed here, and I believe for the first time in a number of years. We coincided it’s arrival with a trip to Greenwich, or ‘Green-witch’, as the boys were inclined to call it. The journey took an hour fifteen, by underground to Tower Hill and then Docklands Light Rail. On arriving, we first went to the market where we looked at the interesting merchandise and made a few small purchases. We then had an early lunch at a local eatery as everyone was hungry, although none of us enjoyed our meals too much. Our next stop was the Visitor Information Centre, where we learned that Henry XIII and his daughter Elizabeth I were both born at the royal palace in Greenwich, and Henry, who had a great love of jousting, had a jousting arena established there. The boys tried on a replica of the protective armour worn by the jousters, which were extremely heavy and uncomfortable, and had just a narrow slit to see through. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to sit on a horse wearing just such an item, in addition to full body armour, all the while holding a heavy and cumbersome pole, and gallop alongside a low fence with your opponent racing towards you from the opposite direction, trying to stay on your horse while attempting to remove him from his!

Finally, after obtaining some maps and directions, we were ready to head through Greenwich Park and up the steep incline to the Royal Observatory and Planetarium, and discover what Greenwich was all about. We made our way to the Meridian Lind courtyard to join the queue to take photos of ourselves with one foot on each side of the famous Meridian 0 degrees longitude, the Prime Meridian of the World, where east meets west. We looked at the Camera Obscura and Russel, Ryan and Greg did a very quick walk through the display buildings which were not pram-friendly, so Dean and I stayed outside. Our next stop was the Astronomy Centre, where we engaged in some of the interactive activities and learned a little more about the mysteries of the Universe (anyone out there heard about dark matter?) Unfortunately we just missed the Planetarium show and weren’t prepared to wait an hour for the next show, so we headed down the hill and across the park to the National Maritime Museum.

We had a quick look around the ground floor displays, in particular the highlight of the exhibition, Lord Nelson’s actual uniform that he was wearing when he was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, with the fatal bullet hole clearly visible. We then went up to the second floor to The Bridge, a hands-on interactive area with a ship ‘simulator’, where Ryan and Greg each had a turn to steer a ship into port, and both did remarkably well at it! We left at 5 pm as the museum was closing, and went to the pier to take a boat trip back to Westminster - a far more relaxing, albeit expensive, way to travel than the underground. Of course we then had to take the underground from Westminster back to Earl’s Court! We stopped in at a local and seemingly authentic Italian restaurant, owned and operated by genuine Italians (even their London-born son had twangs of an Italian accent), for a pasta dinner. By this stage Dean had nodded off and he slept right through dinner, so it was relatively quiet and relaxing. He skipped supper altogether, as we transferred him to his bed on arriving back at the flat (‘our London home’, as he calls it).

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