If you asked most Australians what it is like in London, most would say that it is dull, grey, wet and cold. If that is your thought then you would have been right today.
It was slow start today. Mum and Dad let Amelia and I sleep in because we did not have any need to get ready quickly and no where we had to be.
While eating breakfast we agreed on our plans for the day. We already had a rough idea from our chat during dinner last night but this morning we fine-tuned it.
After we were ready, we rugged up and headed down the stairs to find it raining. Not heavy rain, but definitely annoying and enough for me and mum to get our umbrellas out. Amelia had her rain jacket on and dad was too hot so used the rain to cool him down.
We walked to the underground and got on to the Piccadilly Line train to take us to Leicester Square. When we arrived, I thought Amelia’s head would burst with excitement at all of the musicals being advertised. The grey skies made all of the colourful lights stand out.
First stop was the Lego store. I wanted to get some more minifigs and the Lego store lets you make your own. I made 3 pirates (with mums help) and also bought 3 pre-made minifigs – a knight, a gamer dude and a person in the shower with a green rubber duck.
Across the road was the M&Ms store. 5 floors all about chocolate M&Ms. I reckon that they were pumping a chocolate smell through the ventilation. We went to this store on our last trip, but Amelia and I wanted to go back because there is an M&Ms mood scanner. I was a cream M&M which meant that I was currently being creative, which was true since I had just made Lego. Amelia’s colour made us laugh. It was Orange which meant that she was nervous about people eating her peanut M&Ms in front of her and not saving any!
The chocolate smell intoxicated us and made us hungry but we braved all 5 floors before leaving to have a sandwich at a Pret a Manger store. These are everywhere in London – in fact yesterday we found 3 in just one train station.
After lunch we walked to Covent Garden. On the way, Amelia found many more musicals to take pictures of, text about and be generally excited about.
Mum was very excited to go back to Covent Garden because it was one of her favourite places to visit when she lived here 20 years ago. Mum also enjoyed showing us all of the side-street shortcuts that she used to use.
Last night Amelia told us about the film museum in London which had a show called Bond In Motion. This was really cool for all of us, although Amelia has not seen a Bond movie I think she was still interested. My favourite thing to see was the vehicles from the next Bond movie and the black boat from Tomorrow Never Dies. Dad joked about buying a door mat that said “I’ve been waiting for you Mr. Bond”, but I don’t know how we would have got it home.
We then walked down the Strand, checking our the lights, while heading for the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Even though galleries are not my favourite thing to do, I could still find things in some of the paintings that caught my eye, were interesting or a cool way of painting.
Even though we were all pretty tired by then, mum said we could go to the worlds largest toy store – Hamleys. This store has 6 floors with every toy from Hornby Train sets to Frozen 2 figurines and everything in between. In the store there were plenty of staff who specialised in the toys and gave detailed demonstrations – I reckon this could be the best job in the world.
We had a soggy walk to Oxford Street station where we had to work out which tube lines we had to use to get home because we’d walked so far from home that we needed to change lines twice.
When we got home, we chilled out and built our Lego before having a delicious dinner of meatballs, vegetables and pasta – thanks Mum!
