Bruton Family Holiday - London 2008,

This was the holiday that wasn't really meant to be a holiday. Initially this year we'd only thought we'd be going away just once to Northumberland. But sometimes circumstances dictate otherwise. Instead we headed down to London for me to see That Petrol Emotion once more and Louise and Molly to go and see Grease at the theatre as a birthday treat.


(York Station. Molly in charge of camera.)

It was also the first trip with Molly's new camera and she became principal photographer for the entire journey, with me only being allowed access to the camera when she was too busy having fun doing something else.

The majority of the photos from the trip are at Molly's Flickr stream. And I'm on a very tight end of holiday schedule so it's only the briefest of write ups about it all.

As I remember about the first time I went to London the thing that Molly enjoyed most was the Underground. Whether it was busy, empty, fast, slow, long trip or short - she just loved whizzing around London at will - especially the escalators:




(Molly outside St Paul's - one of the few occasions I was allowed the camera)

The quick itinerary went as follows:

Tuesday - train down, check into Youth Hostel at St Pauls, off to Camden Market and Covent Garden for mooch. Then off to gig and theatre. All was enjoyed. More on the That Petrol Emotion Gig here.

Wednesday - tourist overload - Millenium Bridge, London Eye, Buckingham Palace & The Mall, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Parliament, Comic Shopping at Gosh (well, it wouldn't be trip to London without it). Tea at Rain Forest Cafe. I'll end up writing about Gosh somewhere else no doubt, but the whole day was a whirl of tubes, walking and doing all of the big tourist things. I'd recommend the London Eye to anyone, a great way to get an overview of London. Dinner was at the Rain Forest Cafe, not so much as a restaurant as one big excuse to sell children merchandise with a meal as a minor part of it. A rather upmarket version of the Happy Meal if you want to think of it that way. But very, very nice food and Molly picked well, getting herself a lovely Orang Utan from the shop.





Thursday - Houses of Parliament tour, Tate Modern, train home.
Unless you're very, very against the idea of government and the opulance of Westminster, I'd definitely recommend signing up for the 75 minute tour during summer recess. Fascinating for all three of us.
Tate Modern was great, but not quite as wonderful as I was hoping, probably because there was nothing spectacular (indeed, nothing at all) on view in the Turbine Hall. So the visit was essentially a trip around the galleries. But just four public galleries took th ethree of us 2 hours (and that's doing the quick tour with Molly pushing us on).


(Outside Tate Modern, almost art in it's own right.)


(The outer wall of Tate Modern - by Blu from the recent Street Art exhibit)


An exhausting time, but very enjoyable indeed.