London sightseeing, the first few weeks

Highlights from the first few weeks in London (yes we’ve visited lots of museums but the weather was cold!):
London eye (thanks for the thoughtful gift of tickets Megan!) - well worth doing. We were lucky enough to be at the top when the RAF did a flyover trailing red, white and blue smoke to celebrate their 90th anniversary.


London museum - an excellent background to the history of London including the fire, the plague and roman settlement.

Science museum - Dean’s favourite (of course). Plenty of interactive displays but quite a lot of kids, not surprisingly.

Tate Modern - I even remembered some of what I learnt in Art History.


War cabinet rooms and Winston Churchill museum - the only museum we’ve had to pay for, but well worth it. They preserved the rooms the cabinet worked from (and sometimes slept in) during WW2 underneath the Treasury, and have tacked on a really big museum of Winston Churchill’s life.

NZ memorial, Hyde Park - we visited the day after ANZAC day so plenty of wreaths about.

Camden Markets, Borough Markets and Portobello Markets - great to see some of the food we don’t get back home. Looking forward to having a dinner party as an excuse to cook some of it.

Les Miserables at the Queen’s Theatre - our first show, Dean got tickets and didn’t tell me what for until dinner beforehand. Apart from the tweenage girls sitting behind us singing along (despite my dagger eyed looks over my shoulder), we really enjoyed it.

Oxford v Cambridge rowing race - terrible weather but we got a good position right on the muddy bank * being the kiwis we are, we weren’t afraid to get a little wet.

Exploring Queen’s park, close to David and Hannah’s flat - we went for a few runs here and loved spotting the little grey squirrels. (Sidenote from Dean: They are evil little squirrels though, having invaded from America and taken over the habitat of the native red squirrels by passing on a virus that only the red squirrels are susceptible to. The red squirrels are not found in southern England anymore and are now mostly found in Scotland.)


Have also played pitch and putt, a great nine hole golf game, played on smaller greens (par 3-5 sort of holes). NZers would love this game, someone should take the concept back to NZ.

National Portrait gallery - was nice seeing Prime Minister Massey in an imgainery painting of WWI leaders sitting around a table, I thought of the Masseys back home!

Dean has also visited the Imperial War Museum, HMS Belfast, and "Firepower", the Royal Artillery Museum. He even got to a game of the Black Caps v England A, and proved that it is possible to get burnt in the English sun. (It did take him 8 hours with no sunblock to bring home some colour though).

We also enjoyed the changeable weather, with the photo of Dean and Zac in the snow only about a 2 weeks before a veritable heatwave of 20 degrees plus days.

He also took a tour of Lords, and was amused by the "entry" and "exit" signs on the doors (below).