On Tuesday we visited Winchester where we saw King Arthurs round table, Greg visited 4 military museums and the girls found a street that reminded them of Diagon Alley. Like a lot of England they have big screens set up showing the Olympics, this one by the cathedral. The museum has 3 floors all with dressups! Greg is seen in Roman Winchester, Emma is in Mediaeval Winchester and all 3 girls in Victorian Winchester. We intended to drive to Weymouth on Wednesday to go to the beach and hopefully catch some Olympic sailing, unfortunately the traffic heading south was horrific so we changed plans and left Greg at the Tank Museum for the day while we went to Alice in Wonderland Park near Christchurch! Our final day at the cottage in Kingsclere was spent locally shopping ... read more

Hello everyone! This has been a long time because our last days in Paris were too hot to do anything and for our first week back in England we have no internet! We are actually sitting in the carpark of Winchester Motorway Services on the M3! Back to Paris. On Monday we took it easy in preparation for Greg rejoining us and making us do heaps! Then the 3 days Greg was in Paris the temperature hit 30 so we did only about half of what we planned. On Tuesday we took a boat down to Notre Dame Cathedral and in the evening had our usual picnic at the Eiffel Tower. Wednesday we were up super early as only 1 of the 4 lifts is working at the Eiffel Tower so we wanted to try and ... read more

This blog is really just for Emma's Grampy as Sunday was totally dominated by the Tour de France, as was Paris. All the websites suggested finding a place to stand at least 2 hours before the Publicity Caravan was due, which is 2 hours before the cyclists are expected! I decided that I didn't want to be standing for that long and as I was also leaving the girls at the apartment I left home about an hour before the caravan was scheduled. I was surprised how easy I found a good spot right on the barrier alongside the Tuileries, there were less people than I thought there would be, although it did get busier especially just before the actual racers arrived. Apparently people camped overnight on the Champs-Elysees! The publicity caravan was interesting but disappointingly ... read more

Today was supposed to be our museum day, starting with the British Museum, but it was packed so we fought our way to see the amazing egyptian mummy display and greek statues before under supervised school groups drove us mad and we left. After lunch Carol and Laura went to see The Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, while Greg and Emma went to some art galleries. They started at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, found a rainbow coloured sandpit by the Thames, and finished at the Tate Modern Gallery, where Emma commented that "these people don't know anything about art!" The family all met up again just in time to see Tower Bridge open to let a tall ship through. The day finished back in Greenwich with a visit to the National ... read more

On Tuesday Greg went to Churchills war cabinet rooms while the girls went to Florence Nightingale Museum, where the audio guides were stethoscopes, very ingenious. Then we met up and headed down past Horse Guards Parade, which is all fenced off ready for the Olympic Beach Volleyball, to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. The crowds were huge, despite the showers, as Olympic tourists are starting to arrive, so we watched the new guards leave from the Wellington barracks and the old ones return. An added bonus was the mounted guards going to and from the Prime Ministers place past the Wellington barracks because Horse Guards Parade isn't available. Next we checked out the Queens Mews or Stables although Emma was more interested in the very tame squirrels in St James Park. After ... read more