On our first full day in London we had the morning set aside for meeting someone very important to us. She lives in a suburb of London, Honor Oak, so we joined the masses going on the London Underground in Victoria Station.
Eventually we got to Honor Oak. The old Honor Oak buildings (that we were familiar with from writings we publish) were larger than I expected. In the foreground were the residences with the hall in the third building along, so it was a collection of three joined buildings:
This was the hall that was (and still is) used for meeting in:
We walked up the hill to Greta’s house. Greta is the 92 year old daughter of Mr Austin-Sparks. Her daughter Gill was also there, and it was a great privilege to meet them both! We had a lovely morning with them.
Gill showed us the view of London from her mother’s house, of course a photo doesn’t do it justice, but they can see the Shard, the London eye, and basically all of downtown London!
Afterwards we went to Forrest Hill to catch a train back to London:
We found a lovely little tea shop and had lunch there first.
Then we returned to Victoria Station, marvelling at the engineering of the underground:
And being amused by this advertisement:
Then we visited Big Ben and Westminster:
Westminster Abbey costs “only” 20 pounds to go in. We didn’t. To be fair, they did warn you that there are pickpockets in the area! 😉
The rectory for the abbey was pretty nice:
I was rather surprised to see this statue of Abe Lincoln there though!
This was as close to 10 Downing Street as you can get, lots of security there, not surprisingly!
Very polite, the British are:
But this horse was friendly, I stood beside him and he nudged me, wanting a pat on the nose! 🙂
Cool Britannia. 🙂
Cool old shop!
And not so cool tourist stuff for sale. At least Dancing Bean is a play on words. 😉
London’s Chinatown was interesting:
We even found Durian there, not even smelly!!!
We also saw becaks/rickshaws (from the top of a double decker!)
In the evening we went to Piccadilly Circus.
We had reserved tickets for the longest running theatre play, The Mousetrap.
It was very good, a typical Agatha Christie Whodunnit. Going back to Belgravia after it finished, there was still a lot of traffic around for 10.30pm!