A Day in London - Covent Garden and a Few Surprises

Today we ventured down to London because we needed to head out on some type of adventure. Eventhough the weather is warmer here than the Midwest during the winter, the sun doesn't shine a whole lot and when it does you need to take advantage of it.

We like heading down to London for the day and picking one thing we'd like to do and then let the rest of the day take care of itself. Today we decided to checkout Convent Garden which is home to loads of shops, the Jubilee Market, and lots of street entertainment. We decided that we've been in the UK for a while now and that we better start collecting a few special items to have when we go back home instead of waiting until the last minute. So we picked out some great photographs of famous places in London that we will get framed someday. I also picked out a new scarf because the are just need little things to have and since I'm not much of a fashion guru, it's really the only thing I have to give me the "English" look. We enjoyed a great lunch at one of the millions of Bella Italia's and got there just in time because the tiny little place was packed full about 10 minutes after we arrived. I got out the camera to take some pictures and to capture some moments and the battery died after 8 pictures and of course in true luck of mine, I didn't have the spare battery!!!

As we were walking by one of the more cheesy looking street entertainers we saw someone waving at us...it was Lana Dobberfuhl and her girls (they are the other American family who live in Glinton with us). They were down visiting with her parents who were in town to visit them. We sat with them for a while to watch the crazy guy who claimed to be able to juggle while riding an 8 foot giraffe unicycle. Ultimately I wasn't too impressed with this fellow because first of all he started walking towards my daughter and Lana's daughters as to draw attention to them and ended up frightening away Amy and Emily and then brought Addison to tears in front of the whole crowd. The crowd did boo him as Addison rushed to my arms. Secondly, he was a bit vulger because he stripped down to what looked like a wrestling singlet and ended up grinding is crotch on some guys head as he was being boosted up on his unicycle. He asked families to donate 5 GBP to his hat at the end since it was the cheapest entertainment they would get during half term break. Kevin did give Addie a few coins that he had to put in the hat but he was horrible.

After all that we just started walking and ended up crossing the Waterloo bridge and found the Southbank Book Market which had thousands of used books for sale out in the open on tables and then some skateboarding park that smelt like freshly spray-painted graffiti. By that time both kids were zonked out and Kevin and I made our way down past the Eye, Big Ben, and finally got out of the millions of people as we headed to St. James Park (one of our favorite places)!!!

How ordinary, but extraordinary London seems to be for us. There is always something new to see and do. I have a whole list of different things that we are going to check out on future day trips and we'll see how many of them we will get to see and what new things we'll find along the way.