The travels of Tim and Megan: Visitors, Lord's, Arsenal, War, Greenwich and Billy Elliot

What a busy weekend!

Tim's brother, Brendan, and his dad and step-mother were all in town for the weekend. On Friday night we all met up for dinner at a restaurant called Bond's, which was fantastic. It was great to catch up with everyone and to hear stories of their travels, especially Bernie and Margaret's trip to Ireland, where we are heading in a few weeks. It was surprisingly hard to find a bar for a drink after dinner. They all seemed to be closing around midnight. Poor form London. Tim was so upset that he took it out on the washing machine went we got home, turns out the machine couldn't take the assault - oops!

Anyway, it was probably for the best that we headed home when we did, as it was an early start on Saturday morning to get to the home of cricket by 10am. The tour of Lord's was excellent. We had a brilliant tour guide who had a lot of interesting stories to share. The highlights of the tour were seeing the real Ashes trophy close up (although it was encased in glass), the Brian Lara exhibition in the museum, wandering through the famous Long Room and checking out the dressing rooms, where the honours boards showed that a few New Zealanders have succeeded at Lord's. Megan also liked the memorial to the sparrow that got clobbered one day - it lives on, along with the ball in a display in the museum. We were also amazed at the remarkable slope across the playing surface at Lord's. The ground actually slopes 2.5 metres from one side of the field to the other. Insane!!!

After the tour and a pub lunch, Bernie, Megan and Tim hopped on a train to the far north of London to see fourth division Barnet take on Arsenal in a pre-season fixture. After delays getting into the ground, we saw a very strong Arsenal side dominate the first half, but lack the finishing touch. Understandable for the first match of the season. In the second half, Arsenal fielded a youth team. Bernie enjoyed his first live soccer game since seeing Tim turn out for the Marist Under 6's in Invercargill. He was a big fan of Emmanuel Adebayor who opened the scoring in Arsenal's 2-0 win. We think he has caught the bug and will be hooked for the rest of his life. He even bought an Arsenal cat bowl for his cats at a market the following day!!!

On Saturday evening we set a new record for most people in our flat (five). A few drinks in the lounge were followed by drinks at one of our many locals, The Barley Mow, and dinner at an Italian restaurant on Victoria Road.

Sunday we took a spin around the Imperial War Museum which was fantastic. We got to see most of it, other than Megan who spent too long crying over the WWI part and will have to go back another time to cry over the WWII stuff (and the Holocaust exhibition, and the crimes against humanity part...might have to take it in stages). After waving goodbye to Brendan we spun out to Greenwich to participate in a massive downpour - shops flooded in about 3 minutes. We luckily stayed afloat, consumed some fantastic Mexican (plenty of talk of repeating the Tequila shot boat races from Steph's 21st but not action) and bought some goods from the market. By then we had tired the parental folk out so we left them to prepare for Monday.

The final act of our time with B&M was going to see Billy Elliot in theatre. I think we were both a bit sceptical but our fears were unfounded, it was a class performance by some very young (and old!) actors. Recommended for the London fans, will keep you tappity tappity tap tapping for days.