First of all, and because I wasn’t around to do this yesterday…….

HAPPY WORLD PRIDE DAY!

It’s been lovely flicking through all the Instagram posts of people I follow sharing their experience at the New York festival.
New York Pride is on my bucket list and I WILL make it there one year.

OK, so today is recovery day.
I got back from London yesterday after spending 4 days with my eldest daughter, taking in the sights, the sun and P!nk!!!

I’ve just been sorting out photos and I’m currently waiting for my videos to upload to Flikr, so I know they’re safe. Gonna take a while as there’s more than a few!
I’ll pick out one or two for this blog. There are actually 2 I can’t upload to Flikr because they are over their 3 minute maximum rule, so I may put them here instead.

Anyway, how was the trip?

FRICKIN’ AWESOME!!

So here goes.

THURSDAY
After a pretty miserable couple of weeks weather wise, the heatwave finally hit, just in time for the trip.
We took the train into St Pancras International and then hit the underground to get to our Hotel. Nothing fancy. A Travelodge with the basics. Bed, shower, TV, coffee. What more do you need?
Then we wasted no time in going into the city to enjoy the rest of the day.

We headed to the Embankment and over towards Festival Hall where the Underbelly Arts festival was in full swing. We found cocktails and Hot Dogs and basically took a leisurely stroll up the embankment, stopping off at various watering holes along the way. We had the obligatory stop off at our favourite pub, The Horniman, right next to the HMS Belfast before heading over Tower Bridge and then down to the Walkie Talkie.
We queued for about 30 minutes and then after being security checked we headed up to the Sky Garden where there are some incredible views over the Thames, including an amazing overview of the Tower of London.
Then the day started to catch up with us, so we hit a Tesco for supplies and headed back to the hotel to call it a night.

FRIDAY
We had a small lay in and then headed over to Camden.
We mooched around the market area for a few hours and then fuelled up with some food at Camden Lock and then spent an hour sat under the shade of a tree enjoying some ice cold pints.
This is where Murron received a message from Fanny Burns, a drag queen who frequents one of our locals back home, to say she was doing a gig at none other than ‘The Admiral Duncan’ in Soho that evening, so! the evening was sorted.

After Camden, we headed over to Covent Garden where we enjoyed a pint at the White Lion before we had an encounter with Mr Bean! We sat and listened to a wonderful busker who Murron had a chat with about busking in Covent Garden and then we took our lives in our hands and hopped on a Rickshaw to The Admiral Duncan.

Fanny and her colleagues were brilliant.
We met some lovely people and partied until the early hours before making it back to the hotel at 2am! It was an expensive cab ride back to the hotel as trains to our station stopped running at midnight!

SATURDAY
The whole reason for the trip in the first place.
We had originally talked about going into the city for a few hours before returning to the hotel to freshen up and head over to Wembley for mid afternoon. Well…. that didn’t happen.
We had a megga lay in at the hotel and eventually started to make our way over to Wembley. From our hotel we needed to change onto the Metropolitan Line at Rayners Lane but there was a problem. There had been a problem on the line that meant the trains weren’t running and there was no telling when they would actually start running again, so we hopped into a taxi instead. We finally arrived mid-afternoon as planned and headed up Wembley Way. We stopped off at a vendor where I got a glitter pride stripe down my face and Murron got gems and then we popped into Box Park to get some food and drink. Brilliant place!! If you’re going to an event at Wembley, I’d highly recommend it, and they don’t rip you off!
It is a basic hall with a bar in the centre that has long basic wooden benches and tables either side. There are lots of different food and drink vendors around the outside. You simply get your food and drink and find a space to sit down and eat. They gear up for big gigs with a DJ playing music and videos on a huge video screen. It was busy, but there were no huge queues or major waits.
Then we made our way into Wembley Stadium. The build up to the main event was wonderful. A DJ and two warm up acts consisting of Bang Bang Romeo and Vance Joy!
Pink herself was amazing and her aerial wire work was INSANE!!
We were treated to an appearance by her daughter Willow when Pink was announcing her dancers. The final announcement was Willow who cartwheeled onto the stage. jumped into her Mamas arms, waved at the audience, and then cartwheeled off again.

Getting out of the stadium was very smooth running. It was a little slow going down Wembley way when the Pink crowd from the stadium mixed with the Lynard Skynard crowd from the SSE Arena next door, it was well organised and kept moving but BOY was it hot!!!
We made it back to Rayners Lane in time to get the last train to our station and arrived back at the hotel at about 01:30.

We made the most of our midday checkout time and slept in as late as possible before heading back to St Pancras International where Murron couldn’t resist having a go on one of the pianos.

Then it was home time.
Trip over, just like that!
Good news is that I have just booked for another 3 nights in London for me and the hubby for our 25th wedding anniversary at the beginning of August.
I can safely say that If we won ridiculous amounts of money on the lottery, I would quite happily live in London.