Summer in London

I've been neglecting the blog a bit lately. At least as far as yesterday was concerned, I have an excuse: we spent the whole day down at the beach. Have a peek over at Instagram for a few photos from the day.

Anyway; a few weeks ago the Husband, E, and I had a chance to spend the day in London to visit with our brother & sister-in-law, as well as a few friends who were in town from the States for a couple of days. And let's be honest: when do I not jump on a chance to spend more time back in London? So we hopped in the car and hit the road to catch up with our friends and do a bit of sightseeing as well.

checking out the Shard in the background.

 Our first stop was Borough Market. I hadn't properly toured around the market since I was a student on my study abroad semester five years ago. Holy crap. How has that much time passed since I first came here?

But the market was lovely. We had a good time looking around at the stalls, though it was absolutely heaving with people that day. We weren't sure we'd be able to find the crowd we were meeting up with, but we found them well enough in the end. After a tasty lunch of bacon butties, we dashed across the street to grab a bit of ice cream. The store was cute enough, and the ice cream wasn't bad, but I was still holding out for a Snog frozen yoghurt later in the day...and you'd better believe I got it, too!

He was happy with any excuse for a treat.

 After a bit of logistic debate amongst the party, we decided that the next stop on our tour of the city would be to head back up to Exhibition Road - a familiar stop for all of us. And aside from the nostalgia factor, we would have the chance to take Ethan to see...The Dinosaurs! Oh yeah. I think I was more excited than Ethan was about the prospect of watching him roar in harmony with the animatronic T-Rex and growl happily at all the fossils and reconstructed skeletons.

Rawr!

 Of course, first, we had the Tube ride over to South Kensington, and that was a hoot. Ethan loved his first chance to run around the Tube car as we rode. He was quite firmly strapped into his buggy when we came back at Easter...plus it was packed everywhere we went, so there was no good opportunity to let him really soak up the experience until now.

Chillin' with Uncle Jake on the Tube.

Let no one say he didn't make the most of it. Once free to move about the cabin, Ethan wandered across the aisle and picked his own seat, sat in it politely, and enjoyed the view of everything whizzing past the windows of the car. Time of his life. Seriously; I'm glad we had dinosaurs to look forward to after that because nothing else would have been impressive enough.

After South Kensington, it was time to head a little farther north to Camden Town. Another place I hadn't really seen in five years. (I used to live on Steele's Road.) We went to hang out and relax at our friend Paul's flat. He and his flatmate (and another friend) Morgan keep bees out on their balcony! This is a serious operation: there's the framed hives, a beekeeper suit, sugar water for the bees, and all the stuff to extract and jar the honey. It all looked pretty awesome. The Husband even geared up to take a closer look.

Turned out this wasn't such a good idea. It was hot and the bees were angry, and one particular bee took a strong dislike to people being in its personal space. This dislike was expressed by a vicious sting to the forehead for the Husband. Poor thing: that bee sting was agony for the rest of the day!

But that didn't stop us from having some fun with E out in Regent's Park and having a lovely dinner at the Camden Town Nando's before heading back home with Angus and Emily to hit up a gathering at the in-laws' house the next day. All in all, our trip was a really good time.