London Swingers

 A foggy start saw another sunrise on the train.

 But we still weren't early enough to catch the worm of a hoped for Tower ticket without spending an entire day queuing!












Not a day to try to visit the Shard either.  Shard, what Shard?!

So we sat and had a cup of tea with a misty view whilst asking Tripadvisor what to do about it.

 Become Swingers it said.  Really?!

Errrrr ok.


It's easy to find it's right under the Gerkin.

Gerkin, what Gerkin?!

Anyhoo once we'd convinced the door man that Cog was 18, he was not easily persuaded, I was at the point of explaining that I was there at the birth so I was sure the date on her NUS card was not forged and offering to show him photos of her 18th birthday cake when he realised his life was going to be a whole lot easier without having a birth story from a middle aged bore, took pity on Cog, and let us in....

 ...to play crazy golf.

At London prices it was not the cheapest 9 holes we'd ever played, and probably 9 of the most boring but it was a really cool venue and good fun.

We rolled from the cocktail bar to Foyles tea bar for cake and a browse

 and then back east again (it was a day of zig-zags!) to the O2 to go on the cable cars, play on the flight simulators and grab a quick meal with about 2000 mini Disney princesses which was both cute and irritating in equal measure.

 Wanting to complete a full zig-zag we stopped off the tube at Waterloo and had a lovely walk from Southwark (yes you heard right - just don't ask - but it involved a wrong station exit and a ooooh, there's the last tube station moment) along the Southbank to Waterloo.

We passed a winter wonderland that appeared to be wonderland if you thought it involved about 30 log huts selling street food and the odd christmas tree.  And we had a wander around the mini christmas market there where the prices of the contents I suspect were considerably cheaper than the pre christmas prices, we got some very modestly priced pieces of woodwork.

We watched some guys setting up huge spot lights and running test lights up and down a building behind the wheel and only twigged on New Years Eve that it was for the celebrations.

We headed back to the train station and watched our train pull away. Which is a juxtaposition of always enjoying seeing a train pull out of a station and the irritation of knowing that the next one is already delayed and the people you ran over in an attempt to make the train are now shuffling up behind you with a smug "we knew there was no point in running look" (gits!!)

St Pancras is never too bad a place to hang around in (unless there are 2000+ people delayed on the Eurostar) I can stand and marvel at the roof for a good 20 minutes without a word!

We had another good day start to end