A Birthday Trip!!!

Today, I got up early and took Kidney Beanie for his first ever adventure!!!

First, we went up to the bus stop.......

And the the bus along to here and then walked up the road ....

...to the train station!!!

We didn't have to wait long for our train and we got a window seat too!!!

Kidney Beanie left a floppy disc on the handrail!!

And we're off!!!!

Love this bit!!

OOOooo!  There's the Shard!

Kidney's never seen the Shard before!

Impressive huh?!

We got off the train at Blackfriars Station and came out opposite St Paul's Cathedral!

It's a lovely view here..... 

We made a video of the view!!

We had a bit of time to spare before we had to start the main expedition so we decided to leave some CDs out for people!!

Kidney Beanie's getting the hang of this!!

Now, I wonder if you can tell where we're at?!

Looks good there huh?!

See that train at the bottom of the glass building.....?

That's the train tracks that our train came in on!!!!

Left some more stuff for people.......

......and some more......

And we've come to see Rodin!!!!!    At the Tate Modern!!!

And spotted this funky grafitti under the Millenium wobbly bridge!

There's St Paul's over there...!

And then it was time to go in!!!  Kidney Beanie's really excited now!!!

Oh wow!!! They got jellyfish balloons!!!!

Coo.....!

We had to get the lift (elevator) up to the third floor - and we found a statue of a couple snogging!!!!

EWWWW!

The actual expedition is in there..... let's go!

Oh wow!

That's the Thinker fella!

There was lots of plaster body bits, they were practice ones before he did the actual clay version!

That's the view from the expedition room......

In one of the little rooms, there were some of his watercolour sketch paintings!!

We liked the bloo ones!

These are some heads made of a Japanese dancer.

And this is a copy of the Burghers of Calais.

There's a bronze of this near the Houses of Parliament in London

And there's one in Calais too.

Andrea says she's seen the one in Calais and it's enormous!!

That's a picture of Rodin's studio!

He did a heck of a lot of stuff!!

LOADS of it!

After we saw the expedition, we did some shopping in the gift shop outside (we'll show you later) and then used the facilities.  After washing our paws for half an hour, we went back downstairs and looked round the big gift shop downstairs (we'll show you later)

Then, as it was nearly lunchtime, we decided to scoot off for something to eat!

On the way, we left some more stuff for people to find!!

It's good fun doing this!!

We're going to Tas Pide near the Globe Theatre!!  We've been here before, but Kidney hasn't.

We got a ginger ale drink - but they didn't get us any flatbread with a yoghurty dip or any olives.  We were a bit miffed about that.

Then we got some red lentil soup - and they gave us some hot flatbread to go with it, so we were happy!! It was all proper nommy too - I'm glad we got this because it was a bit of a chilly wind outside this morning!

Then we got a chicken casserole with rice and that was proper nommy too!  We were so full up we couldn't finish it all though!!!

After Andrea paid the bill, we got a piece of Turkish Delight on a stick and ate it outside!

Then we wandered along the Thames towards the Shard.  Pence and Groats, huh?  Sandy Bear got a 50p about pence in the Case of the Missing Bullion!!

We found a muriel about Shakespeare too!!  Sandy's got a Shakespeare 50p as well!!!

We left another floppy disc on these railings too!

And we found another muriel!!

Oh wow, those are a bit fancy!

Borough Market?  This is a food market!!

And it gets ridiculously busy at lunchtimes!!

Ooo pumpkins!  Are we going to carve a pumpkin this year?

Gosh, it's a big place this market!!!

Oh there's the Shard!  We've made it to the other side of Borough Market!!!

See?!  

Then we walked up to the bus stop - bus bingo cards at the ready!!!

We got the number 43 bus!!!

And then we crossed over the Thames.....!

We put a CD on this bus - and it's already been claimed on our found art blog!!!

Yippee!!!

We got off here - that's the Bank of England behind us!!  Moriarty Beanie stole the coins from there, in the Case of the Missing Bullion!!!

Then we crossed over the road here - that's a Crown Court in that building!

And waited at this bus stop for another bus.  Bingo Cards at the ready!!!

We got the number 26 bus!!!

And we're off!!!  Where are we going?

We got off here outside Australia House at Aldwych!!!

We then had to walk down the road a bit past this fancy fence......

To another bus stop!  Which one now, Jeeves?

A 91?!  Bus bingo alert!!!

We tied a CD on the hand rail!

And then got off here at Euston Station!!!  Are we getting ANOTHER bus?!?!

Yup!  A number 30!!!

They got a CD tied to the hand rail as well!

And then we got off here at the British Library!

We didn't want to go home straight away so we had a bit of a wander round - this is the entrance to the Golden Arrow which is a ground floor restaurant of the Pullman Hotel near the British Library. They do good pan fried salmon in there.....

Around the corner from there is an Indian restaurant called Yatri!  Never spotted that before!

Then we backtracked past the British Library....

And left another CD on a railing!

And then decided to head back to the train station!

What a fab day out!!

The Fortnum and Mason's shop have done up their windows!!! We didn't go in though.

But we DID stop at the Laduree concession!!!  (we'll show you later!)

Then we used the facilities one last time and washed our paws carefully for half an hour.

As we walked down to the train station, we spotted people making a radio programme!  We didn't stop and listen though.

Aha!  Here we are - we just missed a Brighton train but it's only 15 minutes for the next one.

And here we are on our way home!!  We got another window seat too!

We made some videos of the train ride home - this is coming into Blackfriars station

And we're coming into the London Bridge/Borough Market part of town here, where were after lunch!

That's Southwark Cathedral, near where we got the bus over the Thames!

And that's our train going over the viaduct!

We're heading towards the South Downs now.

And we're home!!

Wonder if there's a bus outside?

HURRAH!!  We don't have to wait for the bus home!!!

Ooo they're making a new muriel!!

We got off here and just had a short walk home.

We got an eraser, pencil sharpener and pencils for bingo prizes 

And some postcards of the Rodin show.

We also got some London magnets for bingo prizes!!  And a surprise present for someone else.

MACARONS!!!!  But there's only four..... there's five of us lot.....

CAYKE!!!  Wiv a macaron on top!!!  Kidney Beanie and Andrea got me a birthday cayke!!!

Everyone shouty sang "happy birthday" to me completely out of tune, too, it was brilliant!!!

What a fab day out!!!