Day 2

Thankfully we woke to overcast skies, but no rain - the weather-gods were listening to us.  We had a very nice English breakfast at our hotel and then set off to do a geocache on the way to Victoria station.

Having accomplished that, we set off again for the tube station and then came the highlight of my day, my holiday, my life! We were ambling along and as we came to Westminster Cathedral we noticed that there was a film crew at work, so we stopped to have a closer look (as tourists do...) and then Paula sort of hesitantly said "I think it may be Colin Firth..." Ohmysoul, I nearly had a heart attack... there was Colin Firth himself, in the flesh, the very man!  A security guard, helpfully pointed out that although we were not allowed to take a photo of Colin (omg, omg... Colin Firth....!) he could not stop us taking a photo of the cathedral......sooooo... we took a photo of the cathedral.....ooops..... Colin got in the way......

And yes, yes...... Westminster cathedral was very pretty too:

We then split up (no, I did NOT leave Grant to run away with Colin!!) Grant, Rox and Dad went off on a Hairy Goat walk and Paula and I went on a London Walk to Notting Hill and Portobello Market.

What followed was definitely one of the best mornings Paula and I have ever spent together - I know we'll treasure the memories for the rest of our lives.  As my blogging buddy Andrea would say, "it was a diamond of a day".  The walk was such fun, Notting Hill is really the loveliest area. 

A relic of the past, this old kiln is all that remains of the potteries that once were here

We went to lots of places that featured in the movie "Notting Hill" (one of our favourite movies!)

Above is the travel bookshop on which the bookshop in Notting Hill was based



The location used for the travel bookshop in the movie



we saw Robbie Williams' house

and also caught a glimpse of Annie Lennox (how lucky were we? 2 celeb sightings in one day!) as she said good-bye to someone in the doorway of her home. 

 Annie Lennox's house

Once the walk was over, Paulzi and I hit Portobello market with a vengeance! 

Paula went mad over all the Beatles memorabilia and I went nuts over just about everything else ;-)  We ate the most delicious Nutella and banana filled crepe and a whole pound of cherries and chatted and laughed and ooohed and aaaahed for a good couple of hours.  At one point the heavens opened and we were sloshing our way up the road, drenched to the skin, but still having the time of our lives.

That Paula and I, who have no sense of direction whatsoever, managed to navigate from Oxford Street to Notting Hill and back again, all by ourselves, is nothing short of a miracle!  Especially when you take into account the fact that in order to find our way to the Notting Hill tube station we relied entirely on the one snippet of the directions that we both managed to pick up from our tour guide (we somehow missed the rest of the conversation, oops) - he said "as long as there are people walking towards you, you will not have gone too far".  So that is how we navigated our way to the tube station, we just kept on walking while there were people walking towards us..... and bingo!  We found the tube station! So proud of us!

Once we had all found our way back to each other, and a pub, we went to Westfield Mall (good grief, it's huuuuge!) to meet the Smiths.  We hadn't seen the Smiths since our last trip to the UK in 2009, so I was pretty excited to see my BFF again!  We had some coffee, took a meander around a tiny part of the mall, and then had supper together in a nearby pub.  We'll be seeing the Smiths again when we get back from Ireland.

After supper it was back to the hotel for some much needed sleep!