Foreign Coffee – DAY 17 of 19

DAY 17
Friday
16th March 2007

Not everything went as planned today; Vaughan & Bronwyn were unable to make it. Bronwyn had a massage scheduled & Vaughan had to cash a cheque of some sort. So they weren’t able to travel over to London to see us. L

Grant also SMSed and said that he thought he was going to be able to make it over to visit, but that sadly, he wasn’t able to. Bummer. *sigh*

On the bright side, Julie treated Wayne & I to the “Deep Sea 3D” show at I-Max, it would have been £7.50 each, so we were really thankful that Julie sponsored us. It really good though & it was the first time that we have seen one. Julie took a shot of Wayne and I wearing our really huge 3D glasses, hehe.

Afterwards we strode about the Science Museum & stopped off at the Science Museum Store. They had a neat egg timer which cooks alongside the eggs in the pot & lets you know whether your eggs are soft, medium or well done. Seeing as it was such a handy gadget, we bought two at £4.99 each.

We then took a trip over to Harrods & looked about. They have a large HMV store there now, but at £50.00 for a series of F.R.I.E.N.D.S, we didn’t make any purchases.

The place reminded me of the Pavilion shopping centre back home, it has floor after floor after floor of pure shopping; most of it pure luxury. Their meat market even had quail… how um… quaint. There was a chocolate bar there too with giant vats of mixing, liquid chocolate. *yum*

There was also a pet shop there which had 4 Egyptian Mau kittens, selling for a cool £900.00 each!! Wikipedia has also done an extensive write up on them.

We also found out that the Toy Kingdom at Harrods was almost as large as Hamleys, but no version of Simpsons Uno Deluxe was to be found, a Top Trumps Simpsons Classic Collection did catch my eye though, but we made no purchases. It was a pity they did not have what I was looking for, since we did not get a chance to visit Hamleys… Nor for that matter did we get to visit Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

At the end of the day, Wayne still needed to cash some American Express traveller’s cheques. Lloyd’s was already closing & the Post Office takes a commission on American Express… It seems there is only one American Express place somewhere on the west side of London, the only other one is at the airport, where we decided to cash them tomorrow. Trust me, never take American Express traveller’s cheques to London, rather take Thomas Cook traveller’s cheques, they are everywhere, like rabbits.

We went past a Clinton Cards store as well, the primary stockist of Tatty Teddy. I did think we were just going to look… Wayne seemed a little disappointed that I didn’t make a purchase… But multiplying everything there by 15 to get back to Rands is just far too much for me. *gulp* Whilst I was browsing around, I saw some really neat iPod skins called iJackets.

On our way “home”, Wayne & I topped up our Oyster Cards with another £10.00 each, they are good for travel on both buses and the tube. We also stopped by Tesco’s on the way back to pick up some juice & milk… Still no Vanilla Custard Doughnuts for Wayne though; he has been raving about those things for years & I have not even so much as seen one! 😛

To my pleasant surprise, London has most of the basic necessities a South African like me would ever need, from the fact that they now have Appletiser *yay* right down to the delicious Cadbury chocolate that we are all used to back home. I even saw a Nando’s restaurant today and have heard rumours that there are Wimpy restaurants here too… I haven’t come across the infamous and somewhat elusive, yet infamous, UK South African Shop as yet however.

We have had good weather too, mostly sunshine, in fact, we have had good weather from the moment we arrived in the UK! Temperatures are said to start dropping from this Sunday & they are expecting snow next week! Wow, we are only just going to miss that cold fest!

Interesting titbit, is that here in the UK, is that they don’t charge you VAT on cold foods. In the USA, tax is 7%, whilst in the UK it is a whopping 17% !!

For dinner, Julie & Tom took us to their neighbourhood pizza place – Pizza Express. I had a delicious glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, along with a Regina pizza. Dessert consisted of a lovely Binoffy pie which Julie & I shared. It is a lovely restaurant, very family orientated; children who go there get to make their own pizzas almost from scratch. I caught a glimpse of quite a few smiley children kneading dough as only children could, with whacks and prods, as well as flinging on various toppings that were made available to them.

Hopefully we will have the time to visit Hamleys tomorrow. One of the things I was hoping to see whilst here in the UK was Mike Pilavachi’s church in Watford which is held in a warehouse, aptly named Soul Survivor, Watford. He is the co-founder and leader of Soul Survivor, a wonderful Christian event, which began as summer festivals and now only exists in South Africa as one night events. Unfortunately, apart from the fact that we were not in the UK over a Sunday, Mike and his team had in fact gone to Durban, South Africa for a Soul Survivor evening on the 16^th March. How’s that one!

Speaking of Soul Survivor being in Durban, South Africa, they are currently prepping for Soul in the City Durban in 2009. There is a great video about it on YouTube.

Despite missing out on seeing the Soul Survivor Watford Watford church, Julie did point out to me the church were the Alpha Course was started.

~ by Coffee on Friday, March 16, 2007.