Raynes Park, London

The next two and a half weeks we spent seeing some more of London and chilling out some more, at Matt and Anna’s place, as they were in North America. We saw the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Library. We explored the law area of Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn and the Royal Courts of Justice – stumbling upon a free chamber concert and an interesting bail application for suspected terrorists. Richmond Park is in the suburbs of London, but is huge, with deer and woods that feel totally disconnected from the city nearby. Kensington Rooftop Gardens were amazing: beautiful designs, as well as grass, trees, water and flamingos seven storeys up! We saw Les Misérables in the West End, and wandered down to Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square afterwards at midnight. We checked out Borough Market, and I went to the alternative Camden Market.

One of my favourite places in London is Speakers Corner, where anyone can literally get up on a stand and speak about whatever they like. It’s particularly alive on Sunday afternoons, and I went a couple of times. There are always a couple of Muslims and multiple Christians, as well as some Socialists, angry people and weirdos. Interesting melting pot of ideas! Another favourite thing of mine was seeing Scott, from Swing Patrol in Melbourne, up on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, as part of an art installation. Each hour for two months a different person was put up on the plinth, to do whatever they liked. Scott advertised Swing Patrol in London, with music blaring and him dancing on the plinth, and London Swing Patrol on the ground below him, dancing away too. Awesome!

We visited All Souls and Holy Trinity Brompton churches (very different from each other!) and St Lukes Wimbledon Park with Matt and Anna. And of course, we tapped in to their DVD collection too: The Bourne Identity, Rage in Placid Lake and Bonhoeffer. We went a few times to the BIGGEST Tescos supermarket ever – it went on forever and even had an upstairs and a café inside. We were so overwhelmed that we just found what we needed and got out of there! We enjoyed English strawberries, which are so much tastier than Aussie ones. We had lunch out with Andy, Kim and Jonny, and dinner at our place with Sally, a Melbourne girl living in London from Mum and Dad’s CU days. Dad celebrated his birthday with a crazy day of picking Manna and the twins up from the airport, racing to pick up the hire car before they closed and minding the girls for the arvo while Matt and Anna recovered from jetlag.

We spent a few days in our last week travelling down to Kent and Surrey, south of London, to see places there. Hever Castle was owned by the Boleyns, Chartwell House was Winston Churchill’s home for most of his adult life, Leeds Castle has been inhabited by various aristocratic families through the last centuries, Knole is a house with huge grounds, right in the middle of Sevenoaks and Sissinghurst has a beautiful garden created by Vita Sackville-West and her husband. We stayed with Gillian and Humphrey, friends of Mum’s parents, for a night in Sevenoaks, Kent.