Thames Festival, London
15th September 2007Thames festival along the 3km stretch of Southbank between London Bridge and the Eye
A family member (Rita) has been in the UK doing some study at Cambridge and came to stay with us for a couple of days over the weekend before heading back to sunny California in the USofA. We went for dinner at Gallipoli (a Turkish restaurant) in Angel. Gallipoli is quite funny, in that, there are 3 restaurants a block apart from each other but on the same road (Upper Street, Angel).
On the Saturday we decided to check out the Thames Festival along the Southbank of the River Thames. We started at Borough Market (in London bridge) and walked most of the way to the London Eye. Although it is only a 3 km stretch, the walk was very tiring and there were a lot of people (the papers were predicting 500,000 on each day, Saturday and Sunday).
On Sunday, while Ashika was doing some other things around the house, I took Rita to check out Kings Cross Station and the infamous Platform 9 3/4 (which infact, does exist - as you will see in the pictures below). On Sunday night, Devan (friend from Australia, who is in town for work) dropped by for dinner too.
All in all, a very nice weekend.
| Mary had a little lamb poem, displayed in Borough Market |
Nice and chirpy when we started |
| St George dragon with the cross |
Rita near London Bridge |
| Nav & Ashika at the start of our walk |
Ashika tearing off the ginger bread cookies (free of course) |
| The amount of people around was astounding |
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was on the way too |
| The other side of the Globe |
Can you spot Rita? |
| A random scenic shot |
Many stalls we passed, this one had clothes made from Sari silk |
| There we many artworks on display, most done by high school children for the Thames festival | More artwork |
| We saw some BMX and skateboard tricks | On another bridge |
| Rita trying to jump off after the amount of walking we did | The end of the walk, and we had only done 75% of the route |
| National Portrait gallery | Rita needed to cool down after all the walking |
| We walked up to Piccadilly Circus | On the bus back home |
| Saturday night, on our way out | |
| Sunday | |
| Rita out the front of Kings Cross Station | |
| We felt like we could have been Harry, Ron or Hermoine |
Rita posing |
| Nearly there!!! | Oh my god, couldn't believe the other muggles couldn't see what we were seeing |
| Rita about the enter | Nav in full run |
| It was like being in the movie | The other muggles going about their day to day life not knowing what was on the next platform |