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Friday, 23 May 2025

Riding the 25 bus.....

 

We're on holiday for the rest of the month and today we're going out!!

We went up to the bus stop and left one of our smile cards on the information board!

And then we ended up at the train station!!!

And our train was waiting for us!!   Hurrah!!

And we're off!

There's Millwall football stadium

And the Shard is over there!!!

See?!  Told ya!!

Then we went over Borough Market....

With an interesting mix of old and new buildings.

And then came into Blackfriars station, but we didn't get off here!

We got off here!!

But we didn't go out the usual way, the St Paul's Cathedral side.  We went out the Holborn side!

There's the main road down there!

Oh yeah, I know where we are now!

Now, we got to find the right bus stop, I think it's over there.

Aha!  This is the one!

We left another smile card here!

We're getting the number 25 bus all the way to Ilford!!

We tied a weathergram to the rail, too!

And we're off!!!

The bus in front of us is the 133 - we've ridden that one as well!!

That's the top of the Old Bailey, the famous law courts

Oh this is fun!

Ooo that's pretty!

And past here again....

There's St Paul's Cathedral.

Think this is the Royal Exchange....

They got Fortnum and Mason tables and chairs outside!!

We're heading into the financial district now....

With funky air vents!!

There's the Gherkin!!  We used to call that the bullet building.

OH!!!!  Hahaha!!  (we're in the East End now, near Whitechapel!)

Oh wow!  That's pretty!

That's the East London Mosque.

Oooo there's a street market here!

That's a statue of William Booth, he invented the Salvation Army.

We went over Regents Canal too!

Oh wow!

More oh wow!!!!

There's some interesting buildings along this route!!

And here's Bow Church!!

That's a pretty church!  The 205 bus stops here.

But this one carries on..... there's a flyover road there

Ooo, the Olympic park is over there, we must be in Stratford now.

Wonder if that's part of the Regent Canal?

We're in Newham now....

We're going an awful long way!

That's a funky sculpture!

Oh hang on!  I recognise those

We're at Stratford train station now..... we've gotten the underground through here.

Oh!  A rusty train!

Those are green and yellow metallic "trees" - we've seen them from the underground!

They're really pretty!


There's blue ones too!

See?!

Then we carried on past a church

And along here....

This is a very long road, you know!

Ooo, that's pretty!

Oh!  They're painting a big murial!

That's rather grand!

Are we nearly there yet?!!?!

.....another canal!....

Oh hang on, we're in Ilford now!!!

And we got off at the very last stop!!  It's called Hainault Street

And there's a Starbucks right there!!  That'll make a certain bear very happy!!!

And there's Hainault Street!

We went back and left a smile card at the bus stop

And then had a wander round to see if we could find any restaurants to have lunch at

There was an indian restaurant up the other way but it was closed, so we came down here.

That's the town hall.  Bit posh, innit?!

There were loads of fast food places, fried chicken, burgers and noodles, but any restaurant type places all seemed to be closed which was disappointing.  We did find a clothing store with a funny sign though!

And this one as well!!

And we also found the Kenneth More Theatre, named after Kenneth More the movie actor.

Then we decided to go back to the bus stop to get the bus back into town.  We had an idea of where we can have lunch!

So we got the 25 bus back!

And we're off!

We left a weathergram here too!

There's a totum pole there!

This is quite a residential area...

With a lot of shops (no restaurants though!) and another murial there.

It's a very long road though....

Oooh, there's that spikey sculpture again!  We're back in Stratford!

Back at the station again....

There's the metallic trees again!

They're so pretty!

Really like those!

What do you think?!

Still heading towards central London

Back over Regents Canal.  It would be fun to ride the Regents Canal - it goes through Camden and Little Venice, you know.



There's the street market again


There's the East London Mosque again

And we got off at the next stop.

Which is at Aldgate East Station.

We're going to eat here!!!

We started with a ginger beer.

And spotted their brolly stands!  Oh what fun!!

And we got a plaice and chips!!!  YUM!!

We used the facilities and left them a weathergam

They had skeletons by the front door!!!

Scary huh?!?!

And then went back to the bus stop to finish the route!

They got another smile card!

And got the next number 25!

And set off past Whitechapel

Past a sculpture

There's St Pauls again!

And got off at the last stop!

See?!  This is where we started off this morning!

We had time go scoot back the way we came a little, because we saw something interesting.

We got off here, it's a side entrance to Leadenhall Market with the walkie talkie building behind it!

Then we walked up Bishopsgate to get another bus and found a giant gold paper bag.

And went past some pretty gardens

And found our bus stop!

Then we got a 205 bus

They got a weathergram too!

And we're off!

We went past some posh terraced houses.

And got off here at St Pancras.

It's time to go home!

We popped in here quickly (we'll show you later) 

Oh!!!  Dragons that blow bubbles!

And we got to the platform with 3 minutes to spare for our train home!!

And we got a window seat too!

We went back through Blackfriars.

Across Borough Market

And across the countryside

And got back to Brighton!

Then it was the last bus of the day....

And a short walk home from here!!

We got some almond butter for our breakfast toast.
What a day!!

Saturday, 10 May 2025

A late night in London!!

This afternoon, Andrea said we're going out again!!

And we're getting a train!!

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

And we're off!!

Oh what a fab day to get out and about!

OH!!  Now we were supposed to be getting into St Pancras International just before 5pm, but the train terminated here AT 5pm!!  And apparently we're meeting up with somebody later on!!

So, we had a slight change of plans on where we're going to eat dinner!
We're staying in London for dinner??

We left a CD here....

And then went over to this bus stop....

....to get a number 43 bus that was waiting!!  That's handy!

They got a floppy disc!

There's Borough Market over there!!!

We're going over London Bridge now!

Ooo that's a fancy building....


Gosh it's gloriously sunny!

And we got off here, near Angel station!  I thought we were going to Islington Green for dinner??
Oh, we got off early by mistake.... OK!

We had a little wander round and found this place....... so we decided to have dinner here.

We had a fizzy drink.....

We had ravioli with a parmesan cheese sorce.
PARMESAN CHEESE SORCE???!!
OH YUM!!!!

Afterwards we had a tiramisu in a jar.

Hmm.  We normally like tiramisu but this one was really gloopy, and had no espresso coffee OR ANY ALCOHOL!!!!!  Well that's not on...!

We had time for a wander round to check which bus stop we need to get the train back, and found this interesting building!

AHA!  This is our return bus stop!  We left them a weathergram....

And then we went back to Angel Station to meet up with our friend

And we went to Sadlers Wells!!!  We're going to see a ballet performance!!!

We had seats right at the top too!!!  Oh what fun!

AND IT WAS BRILLIANT!!!

Lots of people stood up to applaud!!

It was really good!!!

They had this fancy murial in the first floor bar area.

And then we made our way back to the bus stop we needed, and said goodbye to Andrea's friend.

We left another weathergram!!

BUS BINGO ALERT!  We got the number 214!

And we're off!

And London's starting  to look more sparkly with the lights coming on!

And we got off here.....

Round the corner from here..... we're going home!

We used the facilities and left a floppy disc

And went down to our platform.

OH!  Our train gets here in a minute!!

We got another window seat!

Blackfriars Station is so different at night!

Going towards London Bridge now....


And we had a snooze all the way home!

And not long for the bus home!

We got off at the last stop and whizzed off home!
Oh what fun!