Covent Garden to Hyde Park

Garry and I took advance of today's sunny weather and went for a walk through Central London. We started our afternoon walk at Piccadilly Station and finished several hours later in Hyde Park. Our first stop was Soho, where I grabbed a quick haircut, then on to Covent Garden via Seven Dials.



We spent a delightful hour wandering the markets halls and watching street performers. On any given day you're guaranteed to see a gaggle of living statues (today's performers offered the full spectrum of statue colours including black, bronze and silver), jugglers and acrobats.


We stopped at Wagamama's for lunch, then dropped into the SANZA shop for a few quick snacks from home. A short walk soon had us fighting our way through the "Love Music Hate Racism" concert crowd in Trafalger Square. Nelson's Column is currently behind scaffolding as it under goes its latest cleaning and restoration. The noise of the band was deafening at the Square so we ducked down The Mall only to be confronted by rows of riot police waiting in nearby vans.

St James park was filled with families and couples enjoying the spring weather. It's clearly not summer yet. At least half of the rental deck chairs were empty (£2.00 for two hours resting in uncomfortable green stripe canvas). Buckingham Palace was attracting its usual horde of tourists and the surrounding parklands were filled with late blooming daffodils.

From here we crossed to Hyde Park Corner and Wellington Arch. The Australian War Memorial, dedicated in 2003, is located here. The flagstones are still covered in ANZAC day wreaths and floral tributes. It's odd to sense a piece of home so far from Sydney.

From here we caught the tube home in time to wash the SAAB. You can see it here, parked outside Swiss Cottage. You can see how quickly the trees are starting to green. The top two floors of windows on the left-hand side are our new home in London. The uppermost set of windows is home to the sunny nook in our main bedroom.