Houses of Parliament & some Jeffress history

Wednesday 21^st August

The pedometer reading for today is a massive 16.28 k’s…the good news is that we are both happy campers :-)

We set off early this morning and headed to The Palace of Westminster to see if we could book in for a tour of the Houses of Parliament & were delighted to be able to buy tickets & be ushered to go through security straight away. It was a FANTASTIC tour…1½ hours & we would recommend it to everyone as a ‘must do’ in London. The history, traditions & current protocols are fascinating. The Victorian Gothic architecture and the works of art and national treasures it contains echo many of the historic events that have taken place within its walls. Andrew was disappointed that photography is not allowed inside but he did take heaps of photos outside…he really loves Big Ben :-)

We then wandered over to Westminster Abbey and decided the queues were too long and opted for an ice cream in the shade instead!

We then headed off to visit St.Paul’s, Deptford the church where William and Sarah Jeffress were married on March 2^nd 1823 and their eight English born children were baptised. They came to Australia where William worked for the Australian Sugar Company, later known as CSR. They had quite a few more children in Australia too.

William & Sarah are Andrew’s great, great, great grandparents.

If you look carefully you will see Andrew on the steps. We will post more about our visit on the Jeffress Family Facebook page in the coming days.

Next stop...back to Westminster and even though we’ve done it before we wandered up Whitehall past No.10 Downing Street and Horse Guards.

It was time for lunch so we headed to St James Park, found a shady spot to sit and bought a very glamorous hot dog and sandwich from a nearby kiosk …I’ll let you guess who had the hot dog! We then made the brave decision to walk back to Paddington via Green Park and Hyde Park…it’s quite a long way but we agreed that we should make the most of the beautiful day. We passed the entry to Clarence House where we admired the Queen’s Guards. Along the way it was great to see so many people having picnics, playing soccer and generally enjoying the park. We were also amused by the antics of quite a few squirrels along the way.

After a little rest…I must confess to a bit of a nanna nap we set out for dinner in a local pub, the food was excellent and I enjoyed a glass of wine with my fish. Andrew asked the waitress for a local beer to have with his pork & caramelised onion sausages with mash…he loved his meal but the beer (a pint of lager) was WARM! I think he's learnt a big lesson about ordering a local beer in the UK.