A wee trip to London :)

Hi every one :) its gonna be a loooonnngggg post ...lol so grab your cuppa's and your dunkers and settle down for some excitement ;0)
Last Sunday DD and I went down to London via Globe Tours, they are building their website at the moment ... we had the front seats and a good view all the way down and the weather wasn't too bad , just a tad windy .... we stopped about half way down at Northampton service station I think  and we decided to have a Mississippi mud pie Mc Furry as a treat .... I went to order it and the young man behind the counter said " do you want hash browns with those ?"  well after I doubled checked as to what he said I gracefully declined the offer ....lol ...
we arrived in London with a few hours spare before our hotel room was ready at the Tower Hotel .... so we pottered around the tower grounds and found the tube station and got some maps and an idea of the prices of tickets etc ..... we then went to the nearest Weatherspoons and had a delightful Sunday lunch/tea  before meandering back to the hotel and checked in .... we were on the 8th floor and thank goodness for lifts ...lol ....
Our room was lovely and the view well it was fantastic .... we looked over onto Saint Katherine's Docks and beyond and looked down on to the Queens Jubilee Gondola ... in fact we didn't shut the curtains all week as no one could see in and the view was just amazing at night as well as the day time .....
Sunday night saw the start of the storm that hit the UK and apart from some minor damage we got off lightly where we were .....and luckily we had booked the coach trip to see the  Harry Potter Studios as the trains the next day were not running ....
The tour round the studio was fantastic and we even tried "Butterbeer" which is definitely an experience ....lol and I want to do it all again ... and again ....
that evening we went to see "Wicked " at the Apollo Theater and the peeps we saw were just amazing singers .... DD wasn't as impressed as they had changed a lot from the book which she had read ...but me... I thoroughly enjoyed it  :)
Tuesday ermmm what happened Tuesday ... ohhhh yeah we got up early and went to Covent Gardens and found .... they weren't open until 10.00am sheesh  sooo we hummed and ahhhd and decided to nip back onto the tube and go to Harrods ... only some one forgot to mention that the stairs down to the tube were equivalent to 15 stories high = 193 steps !!!!!  Any hoooo we got to Harrods in one piece and had a nice browse around without collapsing at the prices of stuff ...lol  and then we decided to go to Hyde Park for a wander while the weather was nice and some how we ermmmm managed to end up towards South Kensington and off my wee map ....lol sooo we did what all good explorers do..... find the nearest tube and get on it back to Covent Garden ... which by this time was open ...lol and we got to go in the Moomin Store :)
Needless to say by Tuesday early evening the intrepid explorers were snoozing ... I only managed to put a few stitches into Miss Peepers!!!
Wednesday we awoke bright and breezy and still foot sore ...lol and decided to stay near the hotel and potter around the shops and have a late lunch before we got back on the coach home and instead .... we walked over the Tower Bridge and down the water front to over the London Bridge and back again !!! then we had lunch ...lol 
All in all it was a wonderful few days away but I was glad I was still off to recover .... and do a wee bit more stitching on things I can't show as yet *sigh on the plus side a new patchwork shop has opened near to the mouse house and I have bought some dies that go in my big shot that cut the fabric into triangles with the 1/4 in seam in and some other shapes too ... sooo I have been playing :) oooo almost forgot to say I got my exchange piece from Jan (photo below) 
Well by now you will be needing another cuppa sooo I shall go and fill the kettle and load up a few of the photos I took ... don't think you want to sit through 792 of them do you ????
oooo and it is also TUSAL sooo I will show that too *waves to Daffy :)

November Tusal

My  Autumn exchange piece from Jan 

The journey begins

The Shard 

oooo there's me ...lol

aptly named "girl with Dolphin"

The Tower 

watch out below

these beefeaters are getting smaller 

seafarers monument in the fore ground  

ooo another beefeater

view from room window

we know all the best peeps you know ... the Queens Gondola 

getting dusk

says it all on the bus ....

compact and beju  Harry's room

The Great Hall

original costumes 

Diagon Alley
(death eaters there as it was Halloween and halfterm)

stupendous model of Hogwarts simply stunning :)

Back of Prince Albert's memorial 

Squibbelllll

Tower Bridge at night 

Cooo look a new start ... Miss Peepers by LHN 

she had just said she was engaged to Thomas Becket
hence the pulled face ..lol

And there you have it in a nutshell ....hope you have enjoyed your wee tour .... its back to work for me tomorrow and hopefully next time you call, there shall be some more stitching to show you ....

take care one and all and have a wonderful stitchy week :) love mouse xxxxxx