Time in London

Last week I spent a couple of days in London with Natasha on the sightseeing quest. She doesn’t often get the chance to come down to London and it is something she wanted to do, so although I spend all my working time down there we headed back there together.

We had already planned out a few things over the two days and it was good that it didn’t all involve shopping. A trip over to the BBC TV Centre was something that was very well worth doing. It’s a very big site and there are over 8000 people working there, 2000 in the news area. Some parts of the building are looking somewhere dated but is still a fascinating place and Natasha was happy in the end as she saw Blue Peter being filmed.

The TV centre is situated next to the Westfield shopping centre so we had a wonder through there and she spent ages in Hollister while I had my feet up relaxing in there :) The soft chairs are near the tills in that place and it was amazing the number of people that were spending vast amounts there. Sitting there you wouldn’t think there was a recession, they certainly not experiencing it. There was a constant stream of people going to the tills with loads of clothes and spending a fortune. Mind you was also a good place to see some of the spoilt brats buying things with mummy' in tow, and listening to what they were saying. Some of them just don’t understand the value of money, ‘I want this and that, oh and that it only costs £65 and will look nice with this top…’ and so it went on. Fortunately Natasha is still on the small side so struggles to fit into many of the items so the purchase amount wasn’t too bad :).

I love wondering around the busy places at night in London you get to see some fantastic sights and such diverse people wondering around. It’s something you tend to not notice that much when you work down there as you tend to rush from A to B, or just want to get back to the hotel for rest. But taking your time you see so much more. Some people have some very strange choices in clothing just weird at times. But there is definitely one trend that is both good and bad, there was a huge number of women wearing black leggings and deciding on the shortest possible skirt, or no skirt in some cases. Now being a bloke you would think this was great and yes in reality for many it is fine, but wow some women should come with a health warning when they try this! So a word of warning ladies skin tight leggings certainly suite a lot of women, but not all and us men have to suffer the consequences of the wrong decision!

Friday we made our way over to the British Museum. I’ve never been there but from the outside it looks like a magnificent building and it truly is. This was one of the buildings which benefited from the Millennium funding and has a new central structure which is in the centre of the old courtyard. What makes this even more wonderful is the glass cover which extends across the whole place, as can be seen in the photo next to here. The actual museum itself is packed with rooms full of displays from all over the world. You could easily spend a few days just going through each of the areas but on this occasion we didn’t get too much time, but it was great just to have a quick look around the place.

We did try to get into the Royal Albert Hall for a tour but missed the one before lunch and didn’t fancy sitting around too long. It’s an incredible building though wonderful architecture, next time will make sure we get on a tour of the place.

As is always the case with these London trips it is an exhausting time walking all over the place and seeing many different things. There were so many other places we wanted to go to but just didn’t have the time to get to everywhere. But that’s not too bad we can arrange another trip in the summer, or maybe even the May school holidays.

One thing for sure it is definitely worth spending some time looking around the capital when you have time and are not just rushing between locations.