Day 2 - the rush to the London Eye

So after church, we parted ways with Karen and went to Leicester Square. We were going to meet up with Karen at Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Beckenham at 4pm.

Since there are no shows on Sundays, we went to an internet cafe to book tickets for the London Eye, and do some banking.

After lots of walking and taking pictures and people-watching, we started making our way back to Beckenham. At Victoria Station we realised that we were never going to make it back by 4pm so phoned Karen to give her new times.

I won't bore you with another one of those waiting-for-the-train pictures because that's what happened then and of course, Dion has LOTS of pics of the back of me, rushing off somewhere :)

Got back to Beckenham, had a delicious satay burger with Karen and Lara (one of Karen's housemates) and rushed home to pack.

We had to say our goodbyes while the cabbie was waiting (on the bright side, no chance of long, drawn-out farewells) and then rush to the station, rush to Travelodge in Liverpool Street, all with those bags that, even though were by now slightly lighter (because my method of baggage control is throwing away my clothes - yes, really), felt GINORMOUS on the underground and along the streets.

We dropped the bags and rushed straight out to the underground station again where we travelled to Tower Bridge. We were SO late as they say you have to be there 30 minutes before your booked time. Our time was 7.30pm and we only got there at 7.40pm but stormed into the office where a nice man said that we could still go.

As we were rushing there, I was thinking, "if we just THROW £23 (R370) down the drain, I'm going to be SO cross".

So the first few minutes were spent calming down from the SPRINT and then we started taking some gorgeous pictures.

This is one of my favourite pictures of the London Eye

I took this one - I feel like a "real" photographer when I take pics like this


Now this amazed me - look how dirty it is. Not a bin in sight, so people just leave their rubbish wherever they want


Afterwards, took some more pics and then went back to Liverpool Street. Had a quick burger at McDonalds and then back to the Travelodge where I TOTALLY collapsed with a headache, sore body and sore feet.

And so we finally realised what everyone else tried to tell us - that we were trying to pack in too much. So we made a new rule - only one or two activities every day because we are not as young as we used to be!!!

Day 2 - Hillsongs with Karen

We decided to go to Hillsongs church with Karen. Karen doesn't normally go there but very kindly decided to go with us to show us the ropes.

We left at about 9.30 to make the 10.30 service and amazingly enough, we were actually early for church! In London! Where it takes forever to get you anywhere! :)

So we decided to go to Starbucks - Dion had his usual, a latte, I had a caramel hot chocolate (yummy!) and Karen had a mango raspberry fruit drink. I'm not up to date with all these new-fangled drinks so I don't know the correct names or the Starbucks lingo :)

Karen pioneered that mango raspberry combo and the people working there kept checking, "are you SURE you want that? We've never done this before so we don't know if it'll be good together" and she was, "yeah, it'll be fine" And it was delicious. So if you're at a Starbucks, get them to make you a mango raspberry fruit drink, a la Karen Stally :)

So here we are in front of the theatre where Hillsongs has their services. I love that there's Queen stuff on a church building - so cool.


Karen and Dion and London's famous red telephone boxes


The underground station right THERE at the church - how convenient


Karen and Marcia in front of Bar Salsa - the place you must NOT go to if you want good food at great value...£25 each - enough said :)


Now my impressions of Hillsongs
Loved...
Big church with lots of people
Wonderful worship and sound
Let you take Starbucks into the auditorium
Excellent greeters and ushers
How soon they start marketing their events. We were there on 4 May and they were already marketing a conference a year away!

Not great...
Bad directions when I needed to get to the loo which was like 2 flights up and FAR, far away *grrrr*

Anyway, there was a guest speaker, Priscilla Schirer, who spoke on hearing God's voice. This was just outstanding and I took pages and pages of notes. The only thing keeping me back from buying CDs and books was the dreaded baggage allowance...