Flying Emirates, Walking in the Park and Celebrating a 50th Anniversary

Both our employers urged us to take our remaining vacation days until the end of the year, so we decided to spend an extended weekend in London as we felt that we lacked a bit of the buzz of a big city. So we booked one of these super cheap Ryan Air flights from Baden-Airpark (another former Canadian military base) to London Stansted from where we took a train to downtown London. We stayed in the same hotel as last time, halfway between Paddington station and Hyde Park and prepared for bad English November weather by carrying various layers of clothing, topped with rain resistant coats and an umbrella. As it turned out we had great weather, sometimes bordering at fantastic, with lots of sun, blue skies and no rain at all!

We hadn't really worked out a program, so on Saturday we decided to follow our noses, ending up in North Greenwich where we were hoping to get a good view on Canary Wharf. When we left the station we were curious what was meant with 'connection to Emirates Air Lines'... until we figured out that this is a Gondola via River Thames. Of course we hopped on and were rewarded with fantastic views over the O2-arena and the Wharf. We strolled around the old the old docks for a while: a totally different London!

After an extended walk in the fresh air we took the tube back to Canary Wharf, where we watched Ice Skaters on the rink at Canada Square Park and enjoyed awesome food at the Turkish Restaurant Hazev.

After lunch we rode to Baker Street, looking for address 221B, but we only found a very commercial 'Sherlock Holmes Museum' that rather reminded us of a tourist trap than a museum. 

So instead we decided to exploit the last sun beams of the day in Regent's Park. The autumn colours were stunning. We couldn't believe that it was a late November afternoon in London!

The only planned and pre-booked event of our visit was the 3D-screening of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary episode 'The Day of the Doctor' (WHO?) at one of the (smaller) London cinemas. The show was sold out, like in any of the other venues, and we enjoyed David Tennant, Matt Smith and John Hurt bantering at each other in their different incarnations and interpretations of the Doctor. And they even had Tom Baker and - for a split second - Peter Capaldi showing!

What a gorgeous day it was!