Travelling

Firstly I must apologise for the gap between this and my last post.  It has been a tad busy what with a trip to London and some time off in between.

An and I went over to London with Pia, her best friend.  The trip is almost an annual event where we go over to shop for shoes and then take in a musical when we have time.  I am pleased to say that after another trip I am well on the way to completing the directory of shoe shops to be found in all parts of the Greater London area.  Actually our programme was quite comprehensive, which I shall now relate.

We set out at silly o'clock in the morning in a bid to miss the rush hour traffic on the Thursday morning.  We had to travel down from Aarschot, past Leuven and on to the ring road, then traverse the most congested part between Zaventem and the turn off to Antwerp (we carried on to the Gent exit), after that the run down to the coast was uneventful.  In fact we were quite lucky, apart from two drivers who I scared the crap out of by doing some enforced manoeuvres brought on by the erratic driving of other motorists.  We made it to the Eurotunnel in plenty of time and made the crossing ahead of schedule.  That was the 2 1/2 hour drive out of the way on this side, we noted the severe traffic jams on the opposite side of the road and were grateful to be heading in the other direction.  As we exited the tunnel and got underway things were going just fine until we hit an unexplained traffic jam as we got up towards the M20/M25 junction, we had plenty of time though as we did not need to be at the Albert Hall until 15.00.  I cannot remember when we got to the hotel in Ealing but it was around 11.30 ish.  We left the hotel not long thereafter and headed into town.

For those who do not know, the Victoria and Albert museum is in South Kensington, which is not too far away from Ealing relatively speaking.  We bought some Oyster cards, a very good tip, as they could be given credit which you use as and when you travel.  If you happen to reach the point where a travel card would have been cheaper then it caps the cost at this level, otherwise it takes fares as you use them.  The Oyster card has a deposit of £5, which can be reclaimed along with any unused credit at the end of your trip.  One point of warning though, you cannot get a refund from a combined Tube/railway station, it has to be just a tube station.  Don't ask why but that is the way it is.  We stopped off in South Kensington for lunch at a Pain de Quoitidien, one of An's favoured hostelries.  During lunch we played a game to spot those ladies who do not have to work for a living and decided that those carrying backpacks were definitely tourists.

Now I didn't know this, but the V&A is right next door to the Natural History Museum and both of these are well worth a visit.  We were a bit early for the David Bowie exhibition, which was being tightly controlled by using timed access.  We took the opportunity to traverse the shop, actually you could not get round this, very clever marketing.  There were a large number of kids in the shop who were, along with others, barging about and getting very excited about the souvenirs available in the shop.  It was not long to wait though and my feet were already protesting at the length of time I would be standing, a sad feature of my trips to London.

David Bowie is not someone who I am a particular fan of but then it is always nice to learn something new and to understand a bit about his work.  I have to say the two key points I picked up on was that he had had a fight when a boy and suffered a punch to the eye which left him with a permanently dilated pupil, the other was that he is called David Jones and changed his name to differentiate between the singer from the Monkees.  Both were a revelation to me and now I shall look closely to every picture of him that I look at from now on!  The rest of it was an education as well but he was really before my time.  We bought a platinum album which included songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s, clearly this had some dross on as far as I was concerned but I recognised quite a few of the well known ones.

When we left the museum we headed off towards Chelsea for the first of our marathon walking/shopping expeditions.  It was not far to go and to cut a long story short I ended up reluctantly buying a pair of shoes for £145, these were comfortable, initially but not when worn for the entire day the following day! 

We got back and had supper at the hotel, the service there was very good I have to say.  I did get an odd phone call asking if I still wanted to keep both rooms, which was odd as I was standing in one of them as I took the call.  It would appear that I had booked two rooms by accident, although I did not get the customary confirmation email when I did so.  More importantly the man I spoke to when checking in did not think to question the double booking at the time.  Thankfully I did not get charged otherwise I would have been most unimpressed.

The following day we took a trip up to Camden Town, where the girls bought no less than 5 pairs of shoes between them, including a pair of Doc Martin boots from the British Boot Company.  Camden Town is an amazing place, full of market stalls and interesting shops, I would strongly recommend a visit.  There is also a world foods area where you can get a whole range of different food to sit and eat either there and then or by the lock gates.  It is a place where you could spend a while with a camera and get some great shots.  I met an American Artist who had a tag which was called the Killer Bunny, he combined rabbits with movie and TV scenes with some quite disturbing images.  Not for the kids I have to say but fascinating as an idea.  He told me that he got his inspiration from Watership Down and chose to combine that with the Movies and TV.  I showed An the picture he had of Smurfs being nailed to the wall, she was not impressed (Smurfs originating from Belgium). Check out the website but be prepared to be shocked! http://www.killerbunny.co.uk/egn2/

We continued our trip by heading to Spitalfields and then Brick Lane.  Really it was just a shopping trip disguised as a sightseeing tour.  Brick Lane was not what I was expecting but Spitalfields is worth a trip.  We finished up by heading to my Aunt and Uncles place in Clapham and had a nice curry.  We made our delivery of Neuhaus chocolates and caught up with the family, apart from Max who was out at the time.

Saturday was also going to be a bit of a shopping day but we also planned to take in a Salvador Dali exhibition followed by a show in the evening.  There was a plan to get to Libertys and I wanted to get some photographic kit from nearby Wardour Street.  It was this day, with regret, that I wore my new shoes and paid the price with my feet.  I only had the whole day walking for God only knows how far.  You would think after having reached the age of 40 that I would know the risks associated with buying new shoes and then breaking them in.  When looking for the photographic shop on Wardour street I of course turned the wrong way down the street and walked the entire length of it before realising that the shop was in the opposite direction.  I had neglected to make a note of the number and knew only too well that had I abandoned my search down one end it would have been but 10 metres further on.  Anyway I did find it and it was disappointingly tiny but yet well equipped.  I was after a background support, which they had.  I also bought a couple of other things spending around £200 in the shop and now looking like an assassin carrying a rifle in my black elongated bag that held the stands.  It was heavy and awkward, but I was willing to bear the burden.   I also took in a trip to Hamley's, I could not walk by without checking it out as usual.

Once the shopping phase was done we headed off to see Rock of Ages, this is a show that takes well known Rock songs and mixes it with a typical story of hope, love and celebration.  It is really very funny the 'compere', for want of a better word, was outstanding.  I don't know what came first the show of the film but I just cannot imagine the movie because I cannot see how it would work.  I won't spoil it for you but you will not be disappointed.

For Sunday we took in the Bluewater shopping centre on the way back and also stopped off to get some nice things from a branch of Sainsburys, this was topping up on UK stuff.  Strangely enough we did this and then started the Dukan diet (a strict protein diet that lasts a while).  I currently have two blocks of Wenslydale cheese, two malt loaves, some crunchy peanut butter, Hartley's blackcurrent jam, sandwich spread and Pringles.  Thankfully they have a long use by date and we have some visitors in July so we will be breaking the rules then!