This may or may not be a clumsy attempt to fuse together two completely different days but hey, go with it. You’re used to clumsiness around here, right?
The first day was Friday and it was me and Eva strolling along London Wall in search of somewhere to eat. We’d been to a stay and play at All Hallows and considered walking down to the Museum of London, but then left her scooter outside Cards Galore and had to go back and the short version is….I abandoned that plan. I was just hungry and wanted somewhere for a quick lunch.
But it’s a depressing task on London Wall. It’s full of enticing-looking and -smelling eateries (Chilango! Vietnamese Street Food!) and none of them have anywhere to sit down in them. They’d all hollowed out their restaurants to maximise the queuing space, minimise the lingering space. Even Eva’s choice (McDonalds) has no seats upstairs and I was damned if I was going to settle for a lukewarm burger that I still couldn’t sit to eat. We ended up in Wasabi, which is always a bit disappointing, but it had the advantage of more abundant seating than Itsu. A 7-6 win if you will. And Eva liked the look of the shiny green chairs so I left her in one of them while I queued and hoped she would still be there when I got back. You’ll be glad to know she was. What happened to her hat was another tedious and annoying story.
So, over to you readers. Give me your best tips for eating places west of Liverpool Street where you don’t wait long, can sit down and buy something that a fussy 3 year old can eat (in this photo she’s eating popcorn from my rucksack). Toilets would be unspeakable luxury, but I have faith in you…you can do it. There may even be a prize for best suggestion. Maybe.
A more successful day out was had by Reuben and Nathan the next day. Eva was going to a party so they took the opportunity to have a boys’ adventure. Reuben recently studied the Great Fire of London at school and had lots of songs about the topic, so where better to go than Pudding Lane?
Apparently there wasn’t much to do in Pudding Lane, but the boys had another Great-Fire-related objective – to climb the Monument!
Only days before, Nathan had no idea that such a thing was possible. Roo suggested it and was mocked by his father for the very idea of trying to scale a solid stone tower. It was only when the internet and I agreed with Reuben that he conceded it might indeed be a possibility. You can ascend the Monument for the modest sum of £6 (Adults) and £2 (Kids)…and that includes a free certificate. So they did it – all 310 steps of it:
I was quite glad they’d left me and Eva at home – she starts whining if she has to climb the stairs to bath and it’s not quite my idea of fun either. But the views from the top were pretty:
And did I mention they got a free certificate? It didn’t exactly fill an entire day but it’s certainly better value than the Shard and my boys seemed have fun. I’m not sure that Roo had enough breath to sing “People are Panicking” all the way up the 310 steps like he’d hoped to, which is a great shame. And at least they didn’t have to find somewhere to eat in the City that was open on a Saturday…
Talking of which, get those suggestions in! I’ll start thinking of a prize…
