The first of 4 - London, part 1

Gosh it seems a long time ago since we were in London and in fact it was, as I write only 2 weeks ago that we were packing the caravan up to leave our temporary home for 5 nights at Welwyn Garden City to drive back for me to work in the afternoon. It was an ideal base for us, north of London but easy to get to all our activities for the weekend.

We had a fairly busy schedule for the 4 days we were there and so were up and off by 9-30am on Thursday morning. After looking at going in to London by train from Welwyn or Hatfield I opted for using Just Park . If you have never come across this site and need somewhere to park in a city or town have a look. People who have a space on their driveway or piece of land will rent a parking space out for the day/week at generally a very reasonable price. It's a brilliant way of knowing that you have somewhere to park at a time you want. In our case, we parked on a private drive, 2 minutes walk from Highgate tube station for £6-30 and could come and go as and when. We avoided driving down there at rush hour and had an easy journey, finding it easily - absolutely brilliant.

We got the tube down to Covent Garden and headed straight for a coffee at Balthazar's

which also happened to be a french style bakery 

Replenished, we set off in the sun to wander around

finally (and I'm not sure how) ending up at Trafalgar Square

From there we decided that we would go and find the Aldwych Theatre as we were going there later to see

With the help of an 'app' on David's phone we found it

Then as time was getting on we went for lunch, choosing Carluccio's as I hadn't had time to look for anything a little 'quirky' plus we've never had a bad meal there.

Back to the theatre and despite our seats being restricted viewing we had a good view partly due to the fact that we were able to move our very comfy seats to get the better view. We LOVED the musical which brought memory after memory with the all the songs sung - well it is our era after all (the audience was definitely a certain age!). 

On leaving there we walked  (yes walked ) up to the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street to meet Jonathan as he finished work. We then braved the rush hour traffic on the tube (awful) to get over to Bethnal Green where we met my nephew and his partner at El Ganso for a meal

Very nice, it was quiet when we arrived but soon filled up

We all walked back to the tube station going our separate ways after a lovely evening. A none eventful journey home and we were soon back to the van and bed.