may 19

 Today we went to visit the City and the Southwalk.  

Gloria, Lise and Louise choosed to visit St-Paul only by the outside, because they will visit Westminster Abbey Monday.  So we went with bus 15 on the Strand to go from Trafalgar Square to St-Paul Cathedral.  

We crossed the Millenium bridge and we did a good visit of Tate Modern.  It was fun to exchange our comments between us.  Art is often a matter of personnal perception, which is why some pieces touch us more than others.

We decided to have lunch in the museum and we were lucky to have a seat in the window facing the Thames river and the magnificient bridge.  

We walked to Borough Market and on our way we saw Shakespear the Globe and we stop at the souvenirs shop called : The Red bus shop.  Everybody bought souvenirs to bring back in Montreal.  On our route, we crossed a beautiful pub, and just behind the pub you can see the famous Shard.

There was a crowd at Borough market, like always.  My friends were impressed by the gigantesque paella that was cooked in a stall.  We bought our dessert for tonight.

We followed our way to Hays Galleria.  It was just in front the place where I fell two weeks ago.  Not a nice souvenir...

Hays galleria is a beautiful place for photos.  I visited it last week, when my stitches have been removed.  This passage leads to the edge of the Thames.  The sky was blue, so we walk there to take photos of the Tower Bridge. 

Can you point The Gherkin and the Walkie-Talkie ?

We came back by London Bridge Underground and stopped at Sainsbury for the supper.  

We took advantage to the beautiful weather to have our apero outside on our cosy courtyard.

Tonight, it was chicken, potatoes and mix salad.  And we had those pastries from Borough market.  Miam!!

may 18

 Even after all those visits in London, I manage to discover new areas.  Today, my firends went to Windsor so I decided to go explore the neiborghood behind King Cross station.  What a beautiful new development !

It is a full pedestrian environment.  There are place to relax, to eat, to shop and even a wild nature park.   I saw in exhibition of 54 portraits of deaf persons from different ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation and career.   Very interesting!   

Here are some pictures of the pedestrian area.

One of the portrait from the Deaf Mosaic:

And the natural wild park, where I made a trail and sit in the in a quiet environment just behind the train station. Really particular!

     

After this well filled morning, after lunch I went to the British Library.  This is a place I like to visit once in the while.  Always a pleasure to visit.  

Being there give me the idea of visiting Daunt Bookstore in Marylebone.  I bought a new book called : Pretty city London.  It is a photos book of pretty places to see in London.  Daunt is really a beautiful place and had a place in the book of course.

  

After this visit, I walked around for a while in the area, before getting back at home.

Gloria, Lise and Louise came back later then expected because there was a major disruption on the rail.    It seem someone have been hurt by a train.  All the trains for this line were cancelled.  They finally came back with another line but they arrived about 2 hours later.

They were very please about the visit of Windsor, but they were exhauted because all the reorganisation of the transport for came back.

Here are some picture of Windsor.

For supper we went to The Rose, at it was hamburger night.

may 17

 As I have told you before about this tour, I will comment some pictures to describe our day.

First of all, it was the perfect weather to visit the city.  Not too cold, not too warm and a mix up of sun and clouds.

As we arrived in Green Park, the mounted police was there to water the horses. 

We then went on Old Bond Street were Louise, instead of doing shopping in those luxury stores,  got friendly with those celeb guys : Roosevelt and Churchill.

It is funny that I didn't noticed two weeks ago that there was a Stella McCartney store on Bond Street.

We continued our way to Saville Street, where the Beatles gave their last public performance on the roof of EMI studio, before going through Burlington Arcade for even more luxury.  It is cool to see how it is decorated to honore the coronation of the new king Charles III.

We took a coffee break in the Royal Academy of Art, on Piccadilly. 

It was now time to visit on of the high point of the day, Fortnum and Mason.  My friends were very impressed by this beautiful store. We all three came out with a small turquoise bag.  

In many stores we could see this message:

After lunch, we went on Piccadilly Circus.  Gloria felt dizzy from the traffic that circled around the roundabout.  

We walked the Regent Street to Carnaby Street and to Liberty store.

  

We took the bus to the British Museum.  It was very crowdy infront the famous Rosetta stone.

As it was getting late, we skipped the Russel Square visit and we headed up to Neal yard.  On our way, we noticed cool architecture, mix of old and new.

At that point, we were in need to sit a little bit, so we went for half a pint in a pub. The Cross Keys is a traditional pub, with a very typical decoration and local people.

We did a last stop in Covent garden where we had the chance to see a live performance, before coming back home for pizza night at home.

We enjoyed to stay in the comfort of our home sweet home tonight, in so good company.