Le Tour

We woke up this morning and were shocked to see a yellow ball in the sky, emanating heat and brightening up the general scene after what seemed like weeks of rain. So instead of the planned box unpacking (our stuff from Australia arrived this week - geez there a lot of it) we decided to head into London for the day to check out Notting Hill and the Portobello Road market - and look for the blue door from the movie.

Well it was all very nice and the antique stalls were particularly interesting - I almost bought a 100 year old leather football and a WWI helmet, but remembered we probably had something similar in a box somewhere at home.

Portobello Rd Market - more exciting for some than others


Lots of nice houses nearby, but we couldn't find Hugh or his blue door.

After quite a bit of browsing, we headed back towards Hyde Park to have a look at Kensington Palace, where Princess Di lived of course. There were people everywhere, many of them in lycra, and it slowly dawned on us that the Tour de France was in London today.

We followed the crowd and it was a bit of a hike, especially with only the single pram meaning Lucy and Caiti swapped spots every 50 yards. Eventually we made to an area with lots of people, flags and fencing and we could proceed forward no further - this must be it. I jumped up above the crowd and saw something that looked like a cyclist off in the distance, so now I can say I have seen the Tour de France. But little did I know that the real Tour was about to begin as we searched for a tube station amongst the crowds and blocked off streets.


The gardens at Kensington Palace.

A better look at the aforementioned gardens.

The Tour de France.... I swear its in there somewhere.

Excited cycling fans. One eating ice cream.


We couldn't even get near the stairs at Knightbridge tube station, and access to nearby stations was blocked by the race course, so we kept walking and eventually ended up at Victoria mainline station. Lucy was very good walking most of the way without complaining (much) so she deserved my generous offer of 20p to access the ladies toilets in the station.

The train for West Byfleet leaves from Waterloo, so it took a bit of fancy timetable investigation to travel via Clapham Junction to make it home. Clapham Junction claims to be Britain's busiest train station, and is the natural habitat of train spotters. We saw two of them with their notebooks out, which was quite a treat for us. It looks like Caitlin is a train-spotter-in-waiting, as she proudly announces "nrain" every time she sees one go past.

Happy train passengers.


Happy train spotter.