Up with the commuters this morning and out in the sun for a run around Richmond town. Didn’t realise it would be so busy, so set off for a three miler around the place, and bumped into an old hotel I used to stay in called the Quinns – way back when I was working in the hospital. Got back and was sweating cobs, and just couldn’t get cool, I even had a cold shower – really cold – really very cold – but I was still sweating like a 70’s children show presenter.
Breakfast was in the old favorite – MaccyD’s – bacon baps and sausage muffins and we were ready to head into town. I bought the tickets today, and realised that you can use your friends and family rail card to buy the travelcards – so I saved about fifteen quids over mother who bought then yesterday. Quick spin overland first into Waterloo found us with loads of time to spare, so we took a stroll past the London eye and across Westminster bridge and into the throngs of mental tourists taking photos of themselves looking at various inanimate objects whilst causing traffic problems on the pavements. Not a moment too soon we were back downstairs into Westminster station and looking for the Jubilee line to London Bridge. Unfortunately some berk had got on the line, so Jubilee was shut. Quick panicky look at the map and we set off for Bank, then Northern line back to London Bridge – this detour cost some time, but we got out of the train and straight into the Shard queue.
A very polite bloke told us to queue up – over there, and then proceeded to tell another million people exactly the same thing with the same polite face and tone – why they don’t just employ a sign instead I don’t know – perhaps he was cheap? After a short wait we were on our way inside. Quick jimmy riddle for some of the party and we were into the first lift for the initial zoom up to the 38th floor. Then straight into another lift for the need zoom up to the 68th floor. The lifts are fast, 6m/s which is faster than grass grows, and pretty smooth. They also seem to work together – so as one goes down the other comes up, and when that one comes up the other goes down, you get the gist – I imagine there are other lifts for the hotel and office people, but we were shuffled into the View from the Shard lifts. Up at the viewing platform the views are rather spectacular – I hated it. I couldn’t get close to the windows, its so stupid, but I just found it quite odd. You could buy some expensive champagne here, and also walk up some more steps to the outside bit – which is pretty good, but even more frightening as you are now even higher! After some time people get bored of the height and terrific views and so the lift lifts you down to the floor again and the obligatory shop. Pop’s made me chuckle when he picked up a book with the Shard on the front and all blank pages – what kind of useless book is that he said…
Now time for luncheon, we walked through the station to Hayes Gallery and into Balls Bros. for some munch. It was nice in here, and they served Stella Black which I had never tasted before and we had sausages and burgers. As it was an all in ticket from my sister it was a fair price to be paid for the meal. After lunch we headed off to the mystery section of the day – which involved a train then DLR journey over to Royal Docks and a quick walk over to the Emarites Airline – which again had been kept quite quiet until the massive pylons gave the game away. So a cable car over the Thames to the Millennium dome, or O2 as it is now called – the car was high, but I wasn’t quite so worried as I thought I might be. O2 is now quite impressive, loads of food places and beer places, so we had a quick sit down in another slug and then once sated headed back to the tube for the next exciting thing.
We made our way to Island Gardens and went to walk under water. Yes that’s right, we actually walked under water – under the Thames to be exact, and-we-didn’t-get-wet – wow!!!! Kate had not done it before, and I must admit when I was 10 I thought it was a little more impressive than it was this time, but its still pretty cool in a subway, walking and avoiding bikes sort of way. Emerging into the sunshine we took a quick walk past the Cutty Sark and over to the Yacht (what a silly spelling thing that is) were we sat right on the Thames with a massive window and had the worst (or best perhaps) barman ever. He was surely high on Cocaine and poured shorts like there was no tomorrow – Rum – he poured a quick whiskey for someone, diet coke, oh i put fat coke in that one – someone from the bar will drink that, a water and ice turned into a vodka and coke but in all he only charged for some, and it was quite entertaining,
Once finished we began the trek back across town to Richmond and just over an hour later we were in the Indian gulping down Cobra like the day before Ramadamadingdong. One not very hot Vinderloo and an hour later we were again finito. After a quick stop to get some water we were back in the hotel for a final Stella and back to sleep before 10:30.