HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIANE!!

Monday 11th May 2015

A very happy birthday to my lovely wife who is celebrating another one.

She is ** years old today - there will be no disclosure for fear of severe retribution.
 

Diane with Banjo

wedding day with her Dad and Mum...

...with sister Vivienne...

...and a family holiday - she dared to wear a different colour

There was a full day of events planned but of course every day commences with coffee in bed along with the iPad and phone to catch with all of the blogs from other boaters; breakfast was made and consumed and then we hit the road leaving at just after 10am.
 

ready to leave - note the new shoes

First up we topped up the Oyster cards - they had been taking a battering in the last few days; then some tickets for an up coming trip to Manchester and then we were away properly.

We caught the tube to Leicester Square to check out tickets for the theatres - principally Phantom of the Opera (she has only seen it 5 or 6 times already) or Les Miserables.
Unfortunately where we tried there were no discounted tickets available from the places that we tried - a bit of disappointment there.

So after a coffee we were off again - an unlikely venue appeared to occupy us -

 

M&M World...

...Vote for Red...

All aboard

After which we found another ticket booth which was advertising discounted prices and luck was with us - tickets for Les Miserables for tonight at a decent price.
 

prized tickets and good seats as well -row G

a couple more Shaun the sheep statues were found

When we left earlier we only had one planned event which was not until 3pm so we decided that we would spend a bit of time at The National Portrait Gallery which was just around the corner from where we were.
This was an item on our list of things we wanted to see and we had a lovely time wandering through the various galleries.
 

Diane with a portrait of Oliver Cromwell

the familiar Richard III

Sir Francis Walsingham - in the time of Elizabeth I  - he was the
equivalent of the head of MI5

This was rather interesting to see General Cornwallis and George Washington
together - the opposing generals at the final battle of the American War of
Independence at Yorktown

Captain James Cook - discovered the east coast of Australia

Next along the way was our booked event - Diane had wanted to have an afternoon tea at Hilton on Park Lane - in fact it was a chocolate afternoon tea - well fancy that - that she would enjoy a chocolate one.
 

Wellington Arch

It was just too enjoyable and we both felt a bit on the overfull side and in need of a bit of a walk - luckily just

pure decadence - but utterly delicious

across the road was Hyde Park where we could just stroll along without any worries and just enjoy the sun and the afternoon - I resisted the pleading from Diane that we should try out the pedal boats (I think that they are called pedalos here) - I know from history that I end up doing the pedaling and she sits back and relaxes - birthday or not it wasn't happening.

So we just walked a bit further along; we had only ever been to Hyde Park once before and that was with the kids back in 2000 -it was November and cold, so a much better day today.
We ended up at the Princess Diana memorial fountain.
 

beside the Princess Diane memorial fountain....

...and the Isis statue

By then the time was getting along a bit and we caught the tube backdown to Picadilly Circus and found a Three-shop and managed to get our phone sorted out so that a new sim that we had would finally work with its data access - we had tried getting and storing the APN but it just wouldn't store it - now all sorted.

After all of that we grabbed a chance to sit down for a final coffee across the road from the Queen's Theatre - then took our seats at a bit after 7 pm and enjoyed a brilliant performance.


The final trip of the night was back to Paddington via the tube - very much have the hang of it now - back to the boat to write this and then off to bed - way past our normal time.