The Accidental Tourists

Despite thunderstorms and a serious SERIOUS case of The Tireds, the weekend just gone was one of unexpected delights - among them Star Trek and and an Oporto burger....

With a brain truly mushed from a week of exhausting over-thinking, and not even girl over-thinking, but thinking over-thinking it was always going to be a cruisy kind of weekend. Rain legitimated epic sloth sleep ins but yesterday (I still haven't gone to bed so it's technically still Monday....) was one of those funny London days where a casual adventure turns into an inadvertent trip through Tourist Town. I finally got to show LB the Columbia Rd Flower markets, which were a riot of colours and cupcakes and people wielding enormous bunches of peonies and bluebells and roses and sunflowers.


Shuffling our way through the reams of people we then meandered off in the direction of the Tate Modern. Robert Morris, a minimalist artist who's been around for decades, has re-created his bodyspacemotionthings installation that originally featured in the Tate Britain in the 1970s. This time around the naked women exist only in the requisite grainy black and white video documentation and the interactive adult's playground has been well and truly reclaimed by the children.


There is certainly something beguiling about the innocence and uncomplicated enthusiasm little humans have for new experiences and it was great fun witnessing all these little people enthralled with this silly thing called art.


Sadly us bigger kids didn't get as much out of it as we might have hoped but it was a lovely excuse to meander along the Southbank. We'd hopped off the bus out the front of St Paul's cathedral and dazzled by the reprieve of sunshine we decided to find ourselves a park for some lying and some reading of the papers. A shameful but totally delicious detour via Victoria for some nostalgic Oporto goodness and we headed off in the direction of St James's Park. Which inevitably led us past Buckingham Palace and the Pall Mall. Flags aplenty, tourists aplenty, there was a certain bonhomie to the whole spectacle and the ominous sky above only heightened the theatricality of it all.


We finally found ourselves a spot by the ducks in St James's Park and indulged in the Sunday papers until it started to spit with rain and we got a bit thirsty.


Heading towards Soho we couldn't fail to avoid Trafalgar Square, thus rounding out our accidental tour of some of London's major historical sites but it was quite fun to realise, yet again, just how casually cool this city is when it comes to those "oh my god I actually LIVE in London" moments. If ever there was going to be a montage of those moments, Sunday would have been it. Set to "Raindrops keep falling on my head" perhaps.

Off to Venice in a matter of hours. At least I'm packed. Mmmmm. Gelato and art. Bellisimo!