Tag Archives: england

Share Your World Monday 06 January 2025

Here are my answers to this week’s SYW Challenge from Di

1. What is the weather like today where you are?
Today is Tuesday 7 January 2025 – I am answering a day after the challenge was posted. I live at the southern tip of Africa. If we’re lucky our mornings will be windless. However, it will blow in the afternoons! So today started slightly overcast with no wind, but now it is hot and windy. Yesterday was also hot and windy. Tomorrow will be hot an windy!

2. Have you booked your annual vacation yet?
We take multiple vacations each year and have just returned from our summer stay in Plettenberg Bay, where we spent time with our daughter. All three of our daughters and two of our grandchildren were also there. After that, we spent a week in Cape Town with another of our daughters. We haven’t booked our next vacation yet. We tend to do things spur of the moment. However, traveling internationally with a South African passport requires careful planning, as most countries require SA tourists to obtain visas. The process of applying for these visas can be both costly and time-consuming. Since we plan to cruise later this year, it’s time to start our preparations.

3. Do you have a passport, and when does it expire?
I do. It expires next month which means I need to go to Home Affairs to renew it next week! In the city this would mean queues hours long. But where I live, it won’t take long.

Taken from the internet – no queues but that’s unusual in most places!

4. When was the last (or first) time you went abroad?
The first time I embarked on an international journey was back in 1988. At thirty-six, I had my adventurous 9-year-old daughter by my side. Our destination? London, to visit my younger brother who resided there. We spent an entire month soaking in the city’s charm. We explored every nook and cranny of London, and the excitement of navigating the tube trains and London buses was an experience my daughter cherished deeply. She fell head over heels for London, later working there for two years in her twenties. To this day, she seizes any opportunity to return.

Christmas in London 1988 – Paddington Bear was a gift from her uncle.

The last time I traveled abroad was in June 2024. My husband, our London-loving daughter, and I spent two weeks exploring London. Afterwards, we joined another daughter for a 10-day Adriatic cruise.

Gratitude:
I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to travel both within my own country and abroad. Some of my best travel adventures have been right here in South Africa, where I have explored every province and visited nearly every national park our country has to offer.

A Travel Adventure with Our Children – Buckingham Palace, Paternoster Square and Covent Garden

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The weather has not changed. Every day we dress in summer clothes but take along jerseys and jackets. When the sun comes out it is quite warm but mostly the skies are overcast. Today it did not rain.

When one is used to driving everywhere, taking buses, trains and underground tubes can be exciting but also a little scary. The Earl was with us today and was a tad nervous about the whole procedure. Of course, he wanted to know how it all worked too. Tapping his card to get in and out of the underground was completely confusing. How does it know where I’ve been and how much money to take off? I have no idea but I told him to trust the system and soon he was happily tapping like the rest of us. All the walking was a challenge too. He seldom walks anywhere! Well, today he clocked up over 14000 steps!

We walked to Clapham Junction, took the train to Vauxhall, changed to the underground then used the tubes to get us to Green Park and then St Paul’s where we met Lollz’s cousin, Kevin for lunch. After lunch, we took a bus to Covent Gardens and then took the tube and train back to Clapham Junction.

Green Park and Buckingham Palace

Click on the first photo, then use the arrows to watch the slide show.

The Goddess Diana is seen as you come out of the Green Park Tube Station

I find the King’s Guards fascinating. Imagine being clad in those red tunics and strange bearskin hats and standing to attention, not moving for ages. At first glance, they look like statues. The two we saw had a break from stillness and marched up and down a few times. Phew -that must have been a relief.

St Paul’s, Paternoster Square, and The Millennium Bridge

After disembarking at St Paul’s Station we found ourselves in Paternoster Square where we were to meet my nephew, Kevin. Having only heard the word Paternoster associated with a small West Coast Town I wondered what it might mean. Google is such a help – The Lord’s Prayer. That made sense as it was in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral! We ate lunch at the Paternoster Pub. Kevin and Lollz ordered sandwiches – Kevin had a BLT which was fine but Lollz’s cheese sandwich was inedible. I shared my Caesar salad with her instead. The Earl had pork bangers and mash which was excellent. They did not charge us for the cheese sandwich!

We found Paternoster Square quite fun. They had some wildlife sculptures on display. These sculptures are done by a husband and wife team who are very much into wildlife conservation. You can find out more here A Wild Life for Wildlife – Gillie and Marc®↗

Covent Garden

I wanted to go to Covent Garden to see street performers like mimes, acrobats, magicians, etc. I was disappointed that not much was happening. We only saw a magic act and an artist painting a portrait of Amy Winehouse while playing a recording of her singing.

My brother Nicholas worked at this perfume house when he first came to England.

Some photos Lollz took with her phone.

A Travel Adventure with Our Children – Exploring London

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Thursday, 30 May 2024

Last night we slept like the dead and awoke with the wonderful realisation that we were not at the Southern Tip of Africa! Instead, I opened the blinds to behold the Thames waking up with boats and barges starting their day’s work.

I received a WhatsApp from a friend telling me that it was windy, cold and wet in Cape Town. I replied that it was overcast here in London and that the temperature was 13 degrees C. “Oh,” came the reply, “it’s warmer than that here!” Ha! Ha! I will never complain about our weather again.

But the day was not that bad. We dressed in layers and dodged the showers and sometimes had to remove our jackets when the sun came out.

The Earl decided that he would take a rest day. He did not relish the idea of buses, tubes and lots of walking in London! So after cooking scrambled eggs and bacon Lollz and I left the flat at 10, walked to Clapham where I found a Halifax Bank and sorted out some issues with an account I have there. I was seen immediately and had the most awesome help from a lovely young lady named Lisa. All is now in order and I have pounds to spend!

After that Lollz and I went to have a coffee at Neros. I try not to compare how much what I buy to eat and drink would cost at home! It is always way more than what I pay at my favourite coffee shop in Struisbaai! But my Americano was excellent and it went well with a small bar of Belguin dark chocolate!

I was so pleased to have Lollz deal with all the direction finding and bus/train negotiating. Thanks to modern technology she has these useful apps on her phone! Also she understands them and knows exactly how to use them. All I had to do was follow my leader! All the angst of travel was removed. I can highly recommend going abroard with a tech savvy younger memeber of your family!

We took a bus to Westminster and all I had to do was tap my credit card and climb aboard. I was as excited as a kid at Christmas boarding a red London bus and going up to the upper deck with his marvelous views of London flashing by as we travelled to our destination.

A funeral procession – horse-drawn hearse!

We had fun walking around, seeing the houses of parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey etc. We then hopped on the tube and went to Oxford CircusWe spent the afternoon shopping but not did not buy very much. Hopping on and off busses and riding the tube is very convenient and simple but we also walked a lot – it’s cheaper and good exercise! We clocked up over 20000 steps today! A tube train from Oxford Circus took us to Vauxhal and from there we took an overland train to Clapham, shopped for our dinner then walked to the flat. We thought it would take 10 minutes but only realised we took a wrong turn and got quite lost! It was all part of the adventure during which I managed to have an unfortunate accident! We stopped to get our bearings and I allowed my shopping bag to slip to the ground – crash – the wine bottle broke! Oh dear what a waste! But we found an Indian cafe that sold wine and we got a bottle of Savignon Blanc – a Western Cape wine called Secretary Bird!