London Visitor's in May

This post was sadly missed at the time it happened, due to visa stress and then an abundance of Croatia posts! But better late than never.

We had some visitor's in London in May of this year, my Aunt and Uncle, Ngaire and Peter, came to visit us all the way from New Zealand.

Bradley's family has been to visit us, but this was the first time I had seen any of my family in almost two years, so we were excited!

Unfortunately I don't have any photo's from Ngaire and Peter's first day in London, as the weather was horrendous so we couldn't do anything except sit in a warm pub and drink wine and cider. However, a few weeks later the weather took a turn for the better and we had a full fortnight of glorious sunshine.

Taking advantage of the lovely weather, and the fact Peter was going to an Air Show for the day, Ngaire made the trip down from Essex where they were staying to spend the day with Bradley and me.

The flags at the Apple Market in Covent Garden

We met Ngaire at Fenchurch Street Station in the City, and promptly headed straight for Covent Garden. We were in the lead-up to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and there were Union Jack flags everywhere. No matter where you went in London before the Jubilee, you were guaranteed to find bunting and flags in almost every shop and house window, it was an amazing sight.

After watching the street performers in Covent Garden for a while, we went to find some lunch. We ended up at the fabulous Belgo restaurant. Belgo is a really nice Belgian restaurant, which serves really good food for really good prices! We never get tired of going there.

Yummy steak and chips

After lunch we walked over to Leicester Square which has just finished a huge development. For most of the time we've been here, half the square has been hidden behind walls and scaffolding, but it has now been uncovered to provide a big open space and seating.

We spent some time in the huge M&M's store, and somehow managed to leave without buying a single thing. We've been there before last Christmas with Jenna and Andrew, but it's always an amazing sight. About four levels of all the different kinds of M&M's, plus merchandise and games.

Flags along Regent Street

After spending a fair bit of time inside the M&M's store, and having random conversations with store employees, we went in search of Hamley's, the biggest toy store in London. Bradley and I had been wanting to visit for a while, but the thought of the crowds on Oxford Street and Regent Street always put us off.

Luckily the crowds weren't actually too bad and we spent a good hour wandering around looking at all the thousand's of toys and trying on Star Wars masks.

Lots of my favourite Me to You Bears!

Royal Wedding dolls

Bradley looking like Thor (or trying to...)

Darth Vader with a purse

They had some amazing Lego displays. This one was my favourite, the crown jewels and a life size queen and her corgi's!

Our next stop was Trafalgar Square. We stopped on the way to have a Pink Lemonade from Costa, and to have some respite from the heat. We're used to doing a LOT of walking since moving to London, and we tend to forget that not everyone is used to that much walking. So I think Ngaire also needed a little break!

There were some streets artists drawing hundreds of different flags on the pavement in Leicester Square. Everyone was putting a few coins on their country's, with the artists's yelling 'Thank You New Zealand!' or whatever country it was for, each time. I thought it was great that they had Aotearoa instead of New Zealand.

Another street artist was drawing huge speech bubbles for people to write advice or inspiring messages to others. He had to keep making new ones as people were filling them up pretty quickly.

We headed back to Fenchurch Street Station for Ngaire to catch her train back to Essex before it got too late.

It was a great day out exploring London in the sunshine, and hopefully Ngaire left with some more positive feelings towards our city, since it's hard to enjoy London when it's bucketing down with rain!