Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Bank Holiday fun

Monday (yesterday) was a bank holiday so we packed up the car (little Pug 306 Hatch) and drove down to London to stay with some friends.

A quick surf to Google Maps and we were off. It was a pretty easy journey really. Down the M1 for about 70 miles into London follow the south-eastern ring road and a few turns later we where there. Total journey time was about 2 hours. Traveling down the M1 is fast, but you can't relax as you would on SH1. There is 3 or four lanes of constant traffic and you have to keep your wits about you. I usually sit on a comfortable 70-80 mph, but cars fly past on the outside lane probably going 100+mph.

Anyway, once in London we drove in Central London for some shopping. Well to clarify. I didn't drive into London, Mark who has been here a year took those honours, and again we didn't shop. Kim was meeting her sister in town to go shopping for bridesmaids dresses so we left them all to it and went for a look around and a couple of lagers.

Finally found the Apple store, which was impressive. Two floors of all the bits and pieces Apple makes. The just do it so well, which is not surprising being Apple! The whole bottom floor is for you to play on all the gear and you don't get bothered by sales staff. If you require assistance you can go upstairs and ask for help - they even run free training sessions.

Once we pulled ourselves away from there we looked around a few other stores and went for a beer or two and watched the world go by. A couple of Temuka boys shooting the breeze in the middle of London! Classy eh.

The girls finally finished shopping around 4 and we drove back and had a Braii. Which is basically a BBQ but South African way of saying it. (Mark and Vicki live with yarpies).

On Sunday we had a slap up English breakfast and said our good byes and headed to Bluewater which is off the M25 to the East of London. It is a HUGE shopping mall with over 330 shops and 40 restaurants. It took us 5 hours to look around and amazingly I didn't complain once! I bought some work trousers and a tie, Madison got a couple of toys and a swimsuit and Kim bought some towels. Flash eh!

Monday we just hung out at home, did the Supermarket shopping and watched the final of the snooker.

All in all a good weekend. There is another Bank holiday weekend in two weeks, and hopefully we might a little further.

2 comments:

Austy said...

Don't know if I like the idea of enjoying shopping! Did you catch up on the rugby coming up this weekend. Blues v Sharks in Durban and Crusaders v Bull at Loftus. Slim chance of final in Christchurch next weekend. Cheers

KiwiBastard said...

Sorry Austy, just read your comment. We wont talk about the Rugger....