Day in the City

Saturday I meet Caroline in London for some sightseeing! We headed to the south bank and did tourist stuff. :)

View from the South Bank 

Big wheel

We decided to go on the London Eye. It's worth the trip though expensive. At least the weather cleared up for us, and we got the fast-pass tickets so didn't have to sent an hour in a queue.

Headed up.

View over the South Bank 

"We love Data!" :)

Obligatory selfie.

Nearly there.

At the top.

The Thames

One of these is MI5.

Over London.

Big Ben and Westminster

With Caroline and Big Ben. 

After the ride, we walked (well pushed our way through crowds) over the river to Westminster for a look around. I have been around here previously as a kid but I don't remember much. Though I have now tagged some things to do in the winter when I want to sight-see (indoors).

Big Ben.

Houses of Parliament.

Cure lion. 

Slightly sheepish dragon.

London view.

St. Giles.

We walked past Downing street but there's wasn't much to see, other than a lot of people standing around. There also seemed to be some interesting happening at the cavalry museum but we couldn't get close. There is however a memorial to the women of world war II.  

Women of WWII.

After pizza and wine (because what girls day out is complete without those), we wondered around Trafalgar Square before hunting up more wine.

Lion.

National gallery

Dead horse statue

I am not really sure what the dead horse statue was about. (There was some writing on the ribbon but we couldn't read it). We found a really cool bar, but like all the others it was packed. We did end up finding some nice places to visit in the future in the hunt for a bar with empty seats, until we found somewhere. Next time we need to go earlier!

Bushy Park

Over the weekend, I went to Bushy Park, a few minutes walk from my flat. The weather was amazing so I took a picnic and sat in the sun.

Main walkway

Going posh for the picnic

Chilling

Diana fountain

After lunch and a lay in the sun, I took a walk around the park (mainly because I wanted to find the cafe).

Long walkways

And practically stumbled over some deer, relaxing in the shade. Not sure how was more shocked. Mostly me as they had very large antlers!

You could easily miss them

Relaxing.

Very large antlers!

Eyeing me suspiciously.

They started eyeing me up, so I moved on.

Got a wolverine-style hair style going on.

The cafe is in a deer safe area and has some lovely walkways, streams and shaded patches. And cake!

Stream

Sun!

I didn't realise how large the park was until I got home and check my Fitbit. So spent the rest of the weekend recovering. ;)

NOTHS sports day

Thursday was the summer party at NOTHS. The theme was sports day and they take competition very seriously. The 4 houses were named after the four locations the office has been at and each had its own mascot. I was in House Kew (we ended up with a cucumber because we were just too cool! And couldn't think of anything else). The others were Bardolph (dolphin), Mortlake (duck) and Red lion (guess). The psychological warfare started early in the week!

trying to psyche us out.

We even got T-shirts. Like quite a few people, I had to change mine for a larger size - they were designed for midgets! Not sure if a left or cucumber is a better mascot. Neither really inspire terror in the enemy.

House Kew!

Some took it more seriously than others. Well to be fair, everyone took it more seriously than our team. In school we would be the kids seeking off to smoke (or in my case, to the library). We tried but we also found the bar pretty early on in the competition.

Stretching

We tried some team spirit.

The ducks doing their warm up - with flapping arms.

Clair and I did not really get into the spirit of racing, so snuck off to the bar quite a few times, despite being different teams. My knees were not going to like it so I decided to just focus on the photos and occasionally cheering. I don't think the rest of my team believed I have bad knees (despite limping heavily all around the office last Friday - it was real!). They kept giving me dirty looks when I didn't volunteer. We were the smallest team as well, so when they needed 20 people for the race, there were only a few of us left. Very dirty looks. But no way was I messing my knees up doing this! So I brought other people drinks instead. :)

My team spirit improving - free pimms.

Getting ready for the first race.

The races were, for the most part based on the normal sports day games, though towards the end they gave up on that.

Giant egg and spoon race.

Skipping - this guy had been practicing!

Trying to psyche the other team out with close quarter cheerleading. 

I think my favourite was the sack race. There were some interesting styles, great faces, and a few accidents.

Concentration.

And we're down.

High jump?

Close (-ish)

Cowboy style.

The three-legged race was a disaster. The bands kept falling off.

There-legged race.

More concentration.

Hockey

After a point, it just got odd. There was a giant feet theme.

Big foot football

The oddest was 2 big feet with 5 people on them, walking. Some of it looked more than a little awkward and uncomfortable. Some teams figured it out. Some not so much. It got a bit painful to watch.

Walking big feet

Not getting it.

The last was the tug-of-war. People really got into this. The rules were 3 girls, 2 guys per team (which considering most of the company is female makes sense).

Going for it.

Go team!

I had to move pretty quickly after taking this photo.

Nearly there - we lost!

Kew House got 3rd places. But we missed out on second by only 1/2 a point! (And there was definitely some cheating going on!)

Winning team celebrating.

After the games (and awards), there was food (BBQ) and a school disco! Plus an ice-cream truck. Honestly, that was the best bit!