Out in the London sun with the locals in Regents Park

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As promised by the forecasters the day has dawned bright and sunny and a high of 25C expected.Tour director,Gretchen has a plan of a visit to Regents Park after we try again to buy a replacement camera from one of the camera shops in the Tottenham Court road area.
The sun streams in our studio windows and with the sun rising at 4.50am it meant another early wakeup.
The shower gave up on us this morning after I had my shower leaving Gretchen a bit distressed.So we rang the landlady up and she eventually turned up with a key to one of their other flats nearby and Gretchen was relieved.
The shower is heated by some electrical gadget that had blown a fuse or something and couldnt be fixed until tomorrow.So the landlady escorted Gretchen over to the other studio for her ablutions.Hopefully by tomorrow things will be fixed and back to normal.
This little problem delayed us heading out for the day and it was late morning by the time we got on the subway.We had one Oyster card to use that Leigh had given to us but had to buy another so that we each had one.The cards are very convinent and save heaps of money as they always work out the lowest fare for wherever you have travelled between.
We joined the long queue at the station and then realised we could have brought the card from the store next door to the station with no queue!!
The London underground is a breeze compared to coming to grips with Moscow and we made the interchange and arrived fairly quickly at Tottenham Court Rd to see what cameras and deals were going.
It would have been best to simply replace the lost camera with one of the same,a Kodak,but we soon realised that the High St shops don't carry this label anymore.
We called into about 3 or 4 shops and got the same sales pitch in each as we looked at just about every brand on the market in the point and shoot range.But Gretchen couldnt make up her mind and so we thought we would do some sightseeing in nearby Regents Park while thinking about all the cameras we had seen and their features and benefits.All the salespeople offered a discounted price to what the article said on the shelf and this seemed to be the way they did business.Interestingly the discounted prices for the same articles were the same or just about the same from store to store.
As we walked along the road further we came across PC World and checked out what they had in their range.The store is the sort of place where you dont have shop assistants wanting to demonstrate and sell it to you.Rather it was a help yourself and pay at the checkout.This is often the best way to go when you don't want to be confused by items that salepeople would like you to buy but is beyond what you are prepared to pay.
Well PC World carried most of the brands we had already seen but also Kodak.They even had the same camera model that we had lost although the sales person did say it was now obsolete and they didnt have any in stock.Seems their display was a bit out of date!!!
They did have the latest model Kodak of this series with the camera now doing both pictures and video in HD and it was at a price similar to what we had paid for the older model in NZ when the conversion was done.
Gretchen thought she would like to think about it a bit more so we strolled onto find Regents Park.
The park was magnificent and it was an absolute pleasure to join the hundreds of Londoners all out enjoying the warm late sunshine amongst beds of flowers,roses and trees that seemed to be everywhere.
We first wlked up an area called the Avenue which had statues down the middle and beds of flowering plants and trees in formal rows.
People were stretched out on the grass verges soaking up the brilliant sunshine.It was here we were introduced to a sight that seems to be peculiar to this part of the world.A very white shirtless pale body exposed wanting to make the most of the sun.There were numerous examples of the shirtless Londoner as we strolled through the gardens......most f them overweight!!
The rose garden was just beautiful with the roses in their forst flush of the season.we were fortunate to be on a bridge over a canal that runs through the park when a canal boat passed underneath.It looked fabulous just quietly gliding through the water with people stretched out on the roof of the cabin soaking up the sun.
It took us nearly an hour to wander through the gardens coming out the other side near to Lords Cricket Ground.We thought that perhaps we might be able to take a peek inside.After all during our trip to India 12 years ago we sneeked into the ground in Calcutta and surely we could do the same in London at the home of cricket.
Not so and we had to be satisfied with a look through the fence.We had missed the tour that they gave for the day.
An advertising sign stated that NZ were due to play India in a 20/20 warmup match on Monday which was to be a Bank holiday.We had other sights to see though and the game would probably have been booked out way.
We headed back through the park taking in more sights that we had bypassed earlier and were sorry that the stroll had to come to an end.
We stopped into a pub,the Northumberland,on the way back to the subway and ordered up two pints of what we expected to be a beer but found out at the first taste they we had ordered cider.Never mind it was cold and refreshing after such a warm afternoon!!
We joined the rush hour crowds for the subway trip home and sqeezed into the train.
The day had been a great introduction to the many gardens of this city and we look forward to visiting the other royal parks over next 4 or 5 days to compare them to the beautiful Regents Park.

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Comments

[Rin]

Regents Park is my fave London park...probably because it was the first one we ever visited too and it always seemed to be lovely and sunny whenever we visited it - as it looks like it was for your too! :-) Spy any squirrels??