Photo diary of winter and christmas in London

Christmas lights outside Harrods
Ice-skating rink beside the Museum of Natural History

Winter frost around Chiswick and Gunnersbury reserve:

Sledding slope set up in Hyde Park, part of a Christmas Fair
Ferris wheel in Hyde Park
The madness of Christmas shoppers on Oxford St
Angels on a side street off Oxford St

Christmas tree in Trafalger Square
Choir singing christmas carols in Trafalger Square
The distinctive architecture of our local tube station
Christmas lights amongst the shops in Kingston

Christmas Day:

Boxing Day walk in Chiswick Park

Harrods and Museum and Monks

Shaun perusing the many types of cheeses in the Harrods food-hall
Pizza parlour in Harrods - and sign pointing to pharmacy, they do have everything!
Just one of many intensely decorated trees
Top floor of the Egyptian stair-well
75,000 pound woolly mammoth tusk - an essential item for any home

The Museum of Natural History

Central atrium of Museum of Natural History
Roaring T Rex

Shaun and his arctic friend

Huge whale model

Julia and ancient tree sloth friend...he would have needed a sturdy tree to lean on

As we descend into the wintery months we are struggling to leave the warmth of our house and venture into the cold..but we have managed to make it out a couple of times.

We have been to Harrods, where we were amazed at the prices, the range of products on offer, the interior decorations…..The store is so huge, and very easy to get lost in! The ground floor is very impressive, with a food hall with all sorts of fancy food on offer, a pizza restaurant, an ice cream parlour, a mini sushi restaurant, etc, etc… The Christmas store was amazing, with some truly awesome Christmas trees (Jasmin I think you would be impressed!) it was so hard to resist buying all the cute decorations! You could even have a Harrods-themed tree. The Egyptian stair-well was also very impressive, and included an opera singer, warbling from a balcony above the escalators.
There are about five floors, full of everything your heart desires.. pets, antiques, furniture, pianos, sports gear, school uniforms, books, a travel agent, and more, and more…The antique section included a woolly mammoth tusk, for a cool 75,000 pounds. And it was just sitting out on a table! You wouldn’t want to knock that over. There were a lot of astronomical prices, so that by the end we weren’t even fazed by a vase that cost 16,000 pounds!

On a more educational note, we also visited the Museum of Natural History, which is apparently mainly aimed at kids, but we were still impressed. The dinosaur section was full of dinosaur skeletons (surprisingly), and even included a huge model of a T Rex that moves and roars. The mammal hall has loads of life size models and skeletons, all dwarfed by the blue whale that hangs in the middle. It does give you some interesting size comparisons..where else do you see a hippo next to a deer, next to a sheep. There were cabinets full of weird and wonderful stuffed animals, some of the highlights included the polar bear, the wombat, the sloth, the amardillo that rolls into an armoured ball, and a model of a skeleton of the ancient giant tree sloth! I would have liked to have met one of those…..

Last Friday night we went to see the Shaolin Monks show at a West End theatre, which was a very impressive display of martial arts, men walking on sword edges, lying on beds of nails, having bricks broken over their heads, and many other awe-inducing stunts - all the more amazing because it was real!

And now we hunker down for the winter months, and discover the joys of central heating, perfect the art of speed-dressing (taking on/off coat/hat/gloves/scarves as you switch between inside and outside) and forget what the sun looks like.

Thames Festival and Notting Hill Markets

A beached whale beside the Thames
More of the whale....
The Tower Bridge opening to let a ship through
Row-boats on the Thames

Julia on one of the many bridges over the Thames

One of the many buskers at the Thames Festival
4 signs warning about pedestrian congestion, which was very prevalent
Cars made out of beer and coke cans
Shaun on Millenium Bridge with St Pauls in the background

Guy falling off his stilts at the start of the Thames Festival Parade
Cute strawberry-kids in the parade
Huge float of 'Ganesh'
Fireworks over the Thames

Old rugby balls for sale at Notting Hill Markets - only $72 each!!
Crowds on Portobello Rd, Notting Hill

Stalls on Portobello Rd
Giant pumpkins and zucchini and other miscellaneous vegetables
"Winnie-the-Pooh" Russian dolls - with a pot of hunny in the middle!
Julia and the watch-maker
The angry grey cat has found a friend....he still doesn't look too happy about it though

The past few weekends have been choc-a-block with sports, from 8 games a weekend of world cup rugby, to twenty-twenty world cup cricket, to the final series of both the Nrl and Super League, so understandably it has been quite difficult to manage any sight-seeing adventures. However due to demand we have squeezed a couple in.

Two weeks ago we braved the cold to head along to the Thames Festival. A weekend long event of performers, music, food, beer, wine and market stalls set along side the Thames. We went for the sunday part as it ended with a parade and fireworks over the Thames. The atmosphere was very lively and it had certainly attracted the crowds, at some points the congestion of the human traffic flow was worse than Auckland on a Friday afternoon. There were plenty of street performers, from Michael Jackson to Gandalf to a man who looked over a hundred but was playing his harmonica with the zest of a ten year old(and incidently was raking in the cash). The stalls comprised of everything from knick knacks to jewellery to a shop where everything was made from beer or coke cans(one of the few professions that require you to drink before you can get any work done!). Food stalls were providing all sorts from gourmet salads to jerk chicken and there was music for most tastes- as long as you like jazz. We spent the afternoon navigating through crowds and stolling across bridges and even just made it across the Tower Bridge before it was drawn to let a boat pass underneath and then headed off in search off dinner. Which I must add is not the easiest thing to find at 6pm on a Sunday in central London. With this in mind we set our sights low and went looking for a BK or Maccas. After wandering the streets for a good 45 minutes we gave up on the prospect of dinner and headed back to get a good viewing spot at the start of the Parade.

The Parade kicked off at a quarter to eight and with over 3000 participants was quite enjoyable. There was everything from a Giant Happy Buddha to Ganesh to a guy on stilts(who was trying so hard to look impressive he ended up falling off and being unable to get back up, and had to carry his stilts for I presume the rest of the parade), to a bunch of ragged, homeless looking guys who had been given drums to whack. All in all a thoroughly entertaining parade.

Once completed we headed up on to Blackfriars Bridge to get a good viewing spot for the fireworks. As we were at the begining of the parade, and the firewoks weren't due to start until its completion, we had a bit of time to kill. However by the time this realization kicked in the crowds were so dense that you felt to leave your spot would result in coming back to find the only standing room left would be behind a tree or Andre the Giant. So we stayed and waited and waited, passing the time by listening to an annoying bunch of American teenagers behind us and looking round at Big Ben(which seemed to stop moving at all after a while). The start time of 9.45pm passed and the crowd began to get restless and the Americans managed to get more annoying when from the barges below came a BANG and some smoke drifted lazily into the air. This was followed by another pause and just enough time for one of those intelligent Americans to ask "was that it?" and finally they began. However them starting just seemed to fuel the bunch behind us saying things like "these are crap have you been to (so and so) on the fouth of july" and "the timing seems to be off" when after a few baleful stares by onlookers and the onset of some much bigger,brighter and louder fireworks finally shut them up. It turned out to be an amazing 20 minute display of some of the most magnificant fireworks you can imagine, coupled with the background of the London Eye, Big Ben and the Thames it finished off a great day and more than substituted for an empty stomach and the company.

The following Saturday we caught the Tube over to have a look around the famous Notting Hill Markets, on Portobello Rd. The street was full of people, but we managed to squeeze through them to look at the stalls. The first section is mainly antique stores, with stalls outside displaying jewellery, toys, old maps, very old leather rugby balls and boxing gloves etc... Then there were food stalls overflowing with gourmet breads, meats, olives, salads, all looking very tasty. There was also a section with 'new goods', and new clothes and jewellery. They are pretty amazing markets, and it's obvious why so many tourists flock to them! We also encountered an ultra-hygeinic public toilet, which goes through a cleaning cycle after every person that goes inside it. It does make for a very long queue though...