London & the Armitage connection

So, the family and I were in London for a week last week! My brother lives there and while I have visited him on my own or with my husband, my kids had never actually been to London! So, we did the whole touristy thing with them…

… we did the “London Eye”…

… we saw the changing of the guards and while we were waiting, this little boy walked by, fully dressed as a ‘Bobby’…

… we even took a quick peek at Greenwich, seeing the Meridian Line and sitting for a few moments in a park overlooking part of London (in the tree picture, that’s my daughter in the pink sweater with my son and the Millennium Dome in the background)…

We also went to the British Museum, which I hadn’t been to since I was 11 (!!) and were blown away especially by all the Egyptian artefacts. My daughter’s favourite was the Egyptian black cat which reminded her of our black cat at home and my son’s favourite was the Rosetta stone which was used for deciphering hieroglyphics. I was fascinated by the mummies.

As if that wasn’t enough, we had a great time visiting with my brother!

My son, my brother & my daughter in St. Alban’s (north of London).

He has a segway the kids learned to use outside Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath, my daughter baked a cake with him (the girl loves to bake and she really doesn’t get it from me!), he gifted us tickets to a production of “The Railway Children” which we all really enjoyed immensely, we cooked at his house and went out to dinner as well and one evening accidentally found ourselves joining in a pub quiz… which we won! We called our team “The Dutch Connection” and ended up being the best out of 7 teams; not a mean feat, right? Oh, and my brother told us that occasionally a fox visits his garden and lo and behold, one morning the fox rewarded us with his presence for a full half hour!

The kids even ‘dabbed’ with him! My kids have been ‘dabbing’ and my brother commented how his 12 year old daughter (who sadly couldn’t be with us) does it all the time as well. Apparently it’s all the rage to ‘dab’ right now, which of course originated in some music video. Here is the dab move, right in the middle of The Mall, near Buckingham Palace…

So, where in all this is the Richard Armitage connection? First off, I had my RA badge with me because I thought it could come in handy (see the small, white, round thing on my bag?)…

… then we passed by the BBC building just off Oxford Street which made me think of Richard and the BBC interviews he’s done (although not sure whether from that location)…

On the evening we won that pub quiz, it became clear not long after the quiz ended that Leicester was the Premier League football champion and the whole pub errupted in cheers. Fun atmosphere to be around and prompted me to even tweet in response to Richard’s tweet on the subject!

In London, by chance joined (our 1st ever) pub quiz & we won! Then saw Leicester victory on pub tv. Great night! 🙂 https://t.co/07C4szUAob

— Book of Esther Blog (@BookEstherBlog) May 2, 2016

Then there was the day we went to the British Museum: we unexpectedly passed RADA! For a moment I got really excited that I was passing the spot where Richard had studied acting, but then remembered it’s Tom Hiddleston who did RADA; Richard did LAMDA… Whatever… Still cool, so here is RADA. 🙂

When I got home, I saw pictures of Richard Armitage in his cameo role as the king in the new Alice in Wonderland : Through the Looking Glass film and it immediately made me think of seeing the crown jewels in the Tower of London…

@RCArmitage thank you for joining us on our adventure #ThroughtheLookingGlass #richardarmitage #swoon #may27 pic.twitter.com/qNn3PwRyr4

— suzanne todd (@teamsuz) May 9, 2016

But the best Armitage connection of all is that I met fellow RA fan and blogger Hariclea for dinner one evening! We met outside Charing Cross station and had dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant, which was absolutely delicious. Hariclea is a lovely person, sweet and chatty, and I loved meeting her. When I got back to my brother’s I was thinking of more things I would have liked to talk to her about, so I guess I just really need to go back again. Yep, we really need to do that theatre thing some time. Thank you for the lovely time and the lovely dinner, Hari!

So, yeah, the week in London was wonderful and already I am looking forward to my next visit! Oh, and should I go to London again with the kids, maybe I should take less pictures; the kids got very camera-weary… 🙂