London 2

After graduation we spent a week in London. This was Tony’s choice. He wanted to re-visit museums and sights that he hadn’t seen since we lived here for two years in the 80s.  I’m pleased he did. London remains one of the world’s great cities and, although busy as ever, it has tidied itself up in recent years for the Millenium and the Olympics. It is revitalised, clean and vibrant. There are walkways, cycleways and bikes for hire everywhere and no graffiti even in the Underground. We found some fabulous food and left feeling there was much we still wanted to see.

The weather was mostly kind. It warmed up sufficiently to not need a cardigan during the day. The sun shone most of the time. We stayed in Dulwich, in south London, an easy train ride into Victoria or London Bridge stations. We had a small apartment on top of a house overlooking the greenery of Dulwich Park while the girls stayed nearby with my brother and his family.

 

 

 

We did the tourist thing and saw the sights from the top of a double-decker bus, enjoyed the Harrods’ food hall, wandered through Hyde Park, loved the food at the London Borough Market, explored the newly trendy areas of Spitalfields and Shoreditch, tasted my lovely niece’s delicious

concoctions during a back-garden summery barbecue, discovered the Docklands area that didn’t exist in the London we used to know, now a mass of high-rise offices and apartments including the fascinating Museum of London Docklands, wandered the streets and shops of Soho and Covent Garden, walked the South Bank pathway from London Bridge to Waterloo, admired some of the art in the Modern Tate, and goggled at Waterstone’s bookshop with its myriad of books at prices we can only dream of in New Zealand.