Saturday 24 July 2010

A Day out ...

Funny how we never really visit the places close to us; tourists travel hundreds of miles to see them but we forget they are there really - or we put off going there as "we can always go there". Years ago when I first arrived in London I visited the tourist attractions, such as Madam Tussuad's, but I have never taken my girls there, despite living in London all these years. We decided on a day out visiting some London landmarks and our first stop was the famous waxworks. We arrived about 10am and the queues had started to form outside. They didn't look too bad though so we merrily joined them - 12:35pm we were finally in!! it took 2.5 hours to get in, the longest and most tiresome queue I have ever accounted, I pity the people who joined after us as the queue grew enormous by the minute, and no doubt queuing time for some were 8 hours+!! If you go then I would strongly suggest either getting there when they open at 9am, or purchasing the priority ticket, which means you beat the queues, a little like the express passes in other attractions. You can see Aimee didn't look to happy in the queue here:



So AT LAST we managed to get in. Mostly it hadn't changed from when I first visited at the age of 17, there were new models of course, and for the first time also a few attractions. "Scream" had taken the place of The Chamber of Horror, live actors clamber around trying to scare the public walking through - very effectively too. Then Marvel 4D had taken the place of the London Planetarium that used to be housed within Madam Tussuad's. Good show and great effects. Lastly a new taxi ride attraction took you through the history of London, enjoyed that too - mainly because it was so bloody nice to park your bum somewhere!









An hours and half later we were out, longer in the queue than inside. Next we decided to visit the Tower of London, a historic landmark I again hadn't visited with the girls. Thoroughly enjoyed our visit there, you don't realise how much there is to look at and how big it all is. Must say that it is worth the trip just to gander at the Crown Jewels alone, one of the diamonds was over 530 carats!! A girls best friend or what!!!! Wowsa! It's apparently one of the worlds top quality diamonds and is located at the top of the Sceptre. There was a long queue by the entrance but I'd had enough of queues so popped in through the backway and straight into the Crown jewel section - nobody noticed, he he.






One of the Yeoman's who guard the Tower. They actually live within the Tower with their families and you can tell they really care for it. This jolly fellow was our tour guide, he had us in stitches as well as being hugely informative.


We stayed in The Tower until it closed and walked across Tower Bridge and along the embankment. A few things went on there so we watched as we strolled along. Finally tummies were rumbling so we went for a meal at Zizzi's by the Thames. Lovely meal, lovely service, great surroundings.

A good day was had by all, and the best thing was that as we live in London it didn't take us long to get home :-)

Sunday 18 July 2010

That summer feeling

Time for another challenge on Dottie's World and this time Louise set the theme:

I would like you to use a CHARMED DOWNLOAD to make a summery card - or something else if you prefer! OK so that doesn't sound very challenging.......I would like you to make your summer item DIFFERENT to what you would normally make. Maybe you always make tent fold cards so try a side fold card or something completely different! Maybe you always make big cards so make a teenie weenie one, do you get my drift?

OK so I didn't see the "make something different to what you usually make" when I created this one:



Very summary I think with about a million flowers and bright summer colours. Quite unlike my usual colours but I enjoyed playing with stronger hues this week.

I used one of our Meet The Martian images and merged it with a Meet The Martians sentiment so they stand in front of it. I decorated the inside too. Paper is plain cardstock and Bo Bunny striped Flower Child paper. Flowers are all Prima, I also used a couple of Prima Pebbles and various crystals and pearls. Eyelets are We r Memory Makers inserted with my Crop-a-dile (and from the Crop-a-dile pack).



So as I didn't quite get all the requirements I quickly made this side-stepper card, I have never made one of those. Again it is one of the images from the Meet The Martians bundle. Paper is Karen Foster "Rippling Waves", sentiment is K&Co Cut 'n Paste chipboard.


I am linking to:
Allsorts - Summer Days
Sukkersott - Summer
Daring Cardmakers - We are Sailing (my second card)

Pop over to DW and see what wonderful creations the other DT members came up with. Why not join in whilst you're there, there's a prize up for grabs this week :-)

Thanks for popping by ♥