Doctors, sheep and the Shard – an unusual weekend out in London COMPLETED 6/3 - Page 5 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Saturday 23 May – part six: watching London transform into darkness beneath us
Then we settled down on the floor to just sit and take the view in. Then I figured I’d better go and see what else was going on, and sure enough, a lot had changed in the landscape beneath us as the darkness grew more intense…
The River Thames by Charing Cross
Looking over towards the London Eye (top of shot)
The London Eye and the Houses of Parliament
Looking over to Canary Wharf and the city of London
Tower Bridge
Tower Bridge with London City Hall to the bottom right of the photo
The Tower of London
Just to the north of the River Thames, opposite the Shard
HMS Belfast
The Sky Garden in the centre, better known to most people as the Walkie Talkie
The Tower of London in shot towards the bottom near the Thames
St. Paul’s Cathedral to the right of the shot
The Houses of Parliament
It was a beautiful sight out there, and everything looked so peaceful far below us. We got talking to a lovely couple, who were visiting London for the weekend, and they were about to head to one of the lounges in the Shard for dinner. The guy said he’d tried to get into the restaurants, but you had to book about six months ahead. Sound familiar anyone?
I happened to look up and what a neat view of the top of the Shard!
By now, it was 9:30pm, and we’d been up there for over an hour. I couldn’t believe how long we’d spent up there, but it had been a great experience, very relaxing, and with mainly adults there, it was nice and peaceful.
We made our way back down to the lower viewing area…
… and had to make a restroom stop. Talk about a restroom with a view!
With that, we headed back down to ground level, and made our way over to the McDonald’s we’d seen opposite earlier on. Mark got a Big Mac meal, while I finally got my donut I’d been looking forward to all night.
On the way out, I got a photo of the Shard at night from the ground…
Once we were done eating, we took the Tube back to Wembley Park – thankfully it’s all on the same line, so we were able to snag a seat and just relax. It was interesting to see how busy the Tube trains were going into London, whereas ours was just constantly emptying out.
When we got back to Wembley Park, we had a great night-time view of the stadium…
We also encountered some football fans who were a tad bit merry, shall we say? It was good humoured, with one guy singing “we’re going up” (it was the playoff finals, with the winner going up a league), although he was at the bottom of about 30 steps that you needed to climb to get to the Tube station. How the heck he was going to climb those in the state he was in, I do not know!
When we got back to the room, they were only just closing the phone lines for the Eurovision Song Contest (if you don’t know what this is, do look it up, just for entertainment’s sake ) so we watched some of the votes coming in. The thing started at 8:00pm, and was still going at midnight… by that time, we were in bed, as it had been a heck of a long day!
The weather today was dry and cloudy early on, with rain and drizzle later, then dry and blue skies by the late afternoon with temperatures in the low 60s. The best thing today was the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular. The worst thing today was the rain in the afternoon. Today we tried hunting the various Shaun the Sheep statues And the result was we had a lot of fun finding some of them! The most magical moment today was sitting up at the Shard, watching darkness fall over London.
Love the views from up there! Think we'll try to do that if/when we get back to London (maybe August 2016 - we are hopefully sailing out of Southampton).
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I just love all your pictures of London! The pee guy was gross. Unfortunately I have encountered something similar in Chicago. Speaking of Chicago, a couple of years ago they had something like Shaun the Sheep, only it was cows. You would have loved it! What a beautiful ending to a long, fun day!
Love the views from up there! Think we'll try to do that if/when we get back to London (maybe August 2016 - we are hopefully sailing out of Southampton).
London is so pretty lit up at night, but I especially love your photos of the Tower Bridge. Just gorgeous!
It's beautiful at night, isn't it? Don't get me wrong, I like it, but it's not one of my favourite buildings in London, but at night, it does look stunning.
I just love all your pictures of London! The pee guy was gross. Unfortunately I have encountered something similar in Chicago. Speaking of Chicago, a couple of years ago they had something like Shaun the Sheep, only it was cows. You would have loved it! What a beautiful ending to a long, fun day!
Oh I would've done. We did see some of the cows somewhere - maybe Bordeaux, I want to say? Mark bought a couple of them for me when we spent the weekend in Brussels - the happy birthday cow and the pirate cow and I believe they're all based on the cow parade.
Sunday 24 May – part one: look what they have in this park!
After our very late night last night (it’s rare we’re up past 10:00pm, so this was a late night! ) we surfaced, and got going relatively slowly – that was, until I heard on the weather forecast that basically we were likely to get rain by lunchtime. Ok, time to head down to breakfast then me thinks…
They certainly had a good selection here…
I was very pleasantly surprised to see spinach on the hot buffet – not something you usually get for breakfast. My only disappointment was that I thought I’d seen smoked salmon somewhere, but it turned out to be grapefruit – just as well I realised before taking any, otherwise that could’ve been a bit of a shock!
We got chatting to two sisters sitting next to us, who went to see the evening show of the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular. It was a surprise from one to the other one, and apparently she’d had it booked for nine months, kept it quiet, but more impressively, so did everyone where they work, as apparently they work together. Fair play everyone! She only found out the day before they were coming up to London.
After we’d had breakfast, we picked our stuff up, checked out, and headed out in the car. We couldn’t get over how much of a change Wembley has undergone since we were last up here. For the life of us, we can’t remember what we saw or when it was, but I know it was a good few years ago. There are so many new hotels here now, and lots more building going on, which look like a lot more apartments going in. It’s obviously a real up and coming place.
We headed out on the North Circular Road again, and yet again, it’s dual carriageway here. It does make me sad that the south of London doesn’t get the same facilities.
We were heading out towards Heathrow, as perhaps you can see from these photos…
We were making our way out to Osterley House and Park, a National Trust property. When we got there, I managed to snag another couple of photos of planes coming into Heathrow…
… but more importantly, we found these cuties as well!
They look so peaceful, don’t they, but look what regularly flies over them…
We made our way towards the park, seeing some beautiful shrubs on the way:
This is the Great Lake, and in the distance, in one shot, you can see the house…
We found some absolutely adorable ducklings in the Great Lake:
It was quite scary to see how the ducks attacked each other, and how the ducklings make high pitched noises, almost like squealing, whenever they’re not with their parents.
As we made our way up to the house, someone managed to roll their ankle – and it wasn’t me. I couldn’t believe it, as I’d managed to roll mine, the bad one where I had a strain in the Achilles many years ago, on Monday of this week. Thankfully it’s Ok now, but what are the chances?
Not long afterwards, we spotted this guy, and I told Mark he was coming out in sympathy with him!
I remember seeing those adorable ducklings on Facebook! I love your walking tour. Poor Mark and his ankle. I have done that and it sure can put a damper on things.
I remember seeing those adorable ducklings on Facebook! I love your walking tour. Poor Mark and his ankle. I have done that and it sure can put a damper on things.
With my Achilles injury, I know that only too well!
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Mark bought a couple of them for me when we spent the weekend in Brussels - the happy birthday cow and the pirate cow and I believe they're all based on the cow parade. 
She only found out the day before they were coming up to London. 
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