In lieu of birthday parties this year we promised the girls a special surprise day out on Saturday, chosen as it was about half way between their two birthdays. Flo, bless her, was convinced we were going to Disneyland Paris, not helped by the recent ad campaign on tv at the moment. Scarlett made me tell her the first part of the treat, so by the time we made it to London they both knew we were all going on the London Eye. We drove to Giles and Lucys' in Wimbledon to park the car and then caught a bus and train to Waterloo, using public transport arguably just as exciting to Scarlett and Flo as the big wheel itself. After about only half an hour of queuing, we were stepping into our glass bubble for the 30 minute spin over the London skyline. It was a lovely clear day and we had great views for miles. My favourite bit was seeing the quads and courtyards inside all the big government buildings, whereas Flo was immediately mesmerized by a performance artist dressed as a lion back on terra firma. We did our usual face pulling, ruining the group photo of everyone else in our car, before coming safely back to earth. We walked along the south bank, running the gauntlet of performers including the world's most pierced woman, the lion and a very strange group of girls dressed in bonnets and pink frills and having a tea party.
Best of all were the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck lookalikes who had Flo convinced we had indeed made it to Disneyland. All during lunch, she kept saying "Can we go back to Disneyland after we've eaten?" After yet more cuddles with the Donald Ducks (who we thanked warmly for saving us about a grand in airline tickets and Disneyland passes) we moved onto part two of the treat - the London Aquarium, which the girls loved but Rob and I found massively overcrowded, claustrophobic, hot and noisy. What a pair of miseries. It was also pretty lame on the wildilfe front, probably because we've seen a lot of the stuff in there, swimming around the beaches of Sydney. One display featured an empty mussel shell. Seriously.
We finished the day back at Giles and Lucys' eating Indian takeaway and being very restrained on the drinking front - we were all in bed by 10.30pm. On Sunday morning the kids played beautifully (read quietly) allowing Rob, Lucy and I to devote our energies to drinking tea and watching back to back episodes of trashy reality tv shows. Giles lifted several fingers by playing football, grocery shopping and throwing together a delicious lunch.
In other news, the girls have now both learned to revolve their eyes away from their noses at the same time, a skill that is sure to come in handy later in life.
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