Dinwithy: First Impressions

We have been in London for 6 days. I asked the children what they have noticed so far that is different from New Zealand.

Luka - Cheerios are a breakfast cereal rather than small red sausages

Maria - they have small front yards

Luka - they have pillar box mail boxes

Joel - and Eccles and Blue Bottle (from a Goon Show sketch they enjoy) aren’t in them

Luka - they have underground tubes

Maria - and double decker buses

Luka - the chocolate tastes more watery

Tim - what have you noticed about the houses?

Joel – they are tall

Maria - they are stuck together. They’re squished together

Joel – there’s not much space

Maria – some of the people don’t even have a backyard

Joel - don't go on the tube in rush hour

Luka – the tubes at rush hour can be really rushy

Joel – there are lots of buskers

Luka – there are squirrels and foxes

Joel – even in people’s backyards

Grace - there's a cat called ‘Me’ (Grace has just stuck 5 pieces of sellotape on her face as whiskers and is pretending to be a cat)

Maria - we can't make lots of noise in the houses because they are stuck together. The days are shorter (Light at 7.30-ish and dark by 4.30-ish)

Luka - there are some policemen on horses

Maria – it seems like there are 150 million people here in London

The first double decker bus we saw

We went on a ride around the touristy area on the top deck of a double decker bus

The kids were fascinated by a 'live' statue. Grace couldn't stop talking about him for days. She repeatedly tells us about his every movement...which, as a statue, were few!

Our first Royal Mail pillar box

The weather is a bit colder here. This is ice in the gutter. In New Zealand today it was a high of 24 degrees centigrade. In London it was 4!

The tube's noise and motion can be sleep inducing. My second ride in London, back in 1997 still suffering jet-lag, had me falling asleep and waking up about 6 or 7 stops past my one!

Some things here are just plain weird - don't get me started on the banking system! This was the control system for a roundabout. We watched the lights and the cars for a while and concluded no one was even looking at it...except the tourists, who were all taking photos of this traffic light cactus

London Eye and the Thames

Westminster Abbey

New Bond Street Christmas lights

Oxford Street lights - did you notice we're collecting Monopoly properties?

Despite the wonderful light display the kids got tired of walking while trying to avoid a 'million' other people. They chose to go into a toy store to look at...Star Wars Lego!

The kids' strength moving to the Northern Hemisphere, like Superman arriving from Krypton, has increased markedly

We set off for the Science Museum and took a slight detour where we stumbled across the Queen's horsemen leaving Buckingham Palace

The flag was up, meaning Liz was home, but we never got invited in for a cuppa

We stayed in this neighbourhood visiting friends. The house on the right was the new one of the two here. It was built in 1673. The one on the left, with the small room between them, was from the 1400s. Apparently it's like a hobbit hole with tiny rooms and teeny doorways

So often the extremely old meets the brand new

St Paul must have been a big chap as the door to his cathedral was enormous

The doors might be big here, but parking in London calls for small vehiles. You don't know what parallel parking is until you see what they can squeeze into in London