No…not the imaginary friend I had when I was a child…that would be wierd!

Especially when you consider that my childhood imaginary friend was only about 10cm high so she should come everywhere with me!

She was definitely not the imaginary friend I am talking about…this would be a little odd…

actually pretty cool…

but odd…

Anyway, I digress…

What actually happened on Saturday 19th February was much more exciting!!

You may remember that back in the early days of this blog, I made contact with a wonderful fellow 365er and fellow blogger named Nancy from

My Year[s] of Sweat

over time and many many comments it soon became apparent that we had a lot in common but she still remained someone I only knew via the interweb…and thus was possibly imaginary…

Until one fateful Saturday in February when I had it on good authority (hers) that my imaginary friend would be staying in a fancy pants hotel in that London! This I considered was worth braving public transport (more accurately…the public) for and I set off leaving my world of trees and greenery for the excitement of the big city!

Parking and train drama aside (I can’t go on a journey it seems without some sort of parking drama…) this was an awesome decision!!

Meeting up at (almost) 9:30 am the first thing that was needed was coffee…of course…what day of adventure could start without coffee!!!

Conveniently there was a starbucks…in sainsburys because where else would there be a starbucks…not that it mattered, we had coffee and chatted and it very quickly because obvious that we did get on just as well in real life as we did with the moderating influence of internet communication!

woohoo 😀 a real friend…I never expected one of those to pop up hen I started this blog! but I am so so pleased it is Nancy because it turns out she is awesome!

So after much chatting, some coffee and the decision that Nancy shouldn’t take her trousers off in a starbucks that is inside sainsburys, we made our way onto the public transport system to wend our way towards Greenwich.

As Greenwich was considerably further away from the centre of London than I realised (what? I am a Northerner who now lives in Sussex I don’t know!) we decided that walking there was silly and so we got on a boat…

Much more picturesque than a tube or the DLR

The boat took and hour but the driver’s friend (I assume he was another member of the crew…) told us about what we could see on each side of the boat…which we completely failed to look at because we were too busy chatting!!

We even did the proper tourist thing and sat on the top of the boat so we could see what was going on…

for all of 10 mins…

It was really cold, and windy!

What? It was February! I was just glad it wasn’t raining!!

We retreated inside and spent the next hour chatting…

When we arrived at Greenwich (which was easy to spot because it was the end of the line and they told us to get off the boat!) we made our way in a straight line to the first public building and asked for directions to the observatory.

The first building we saw was the Old Royal Naval College entrance…and the person behind the desk was moderately confused by the request for directions so told us all about the painted hall instead…we will come to that later…

when we eventually got instructions on how to find the observatory, we were told it was a long Walk…we thought we would risk it… and set off in the general direction we were given…

it wasn’t long before we found a helpful sign…

with such helpful signage, how could we possibly get lost!

as it happens, it was fairly straight forward! We were so close that any direction would have done…apart from turning completely round…

We shortly found the park and the path up to the observatory and walked along it belittling the alleged hill that was supposed to be there…

It turns out this hill was cunningly hidden by some trees and loomed suddenly causing Nancy to go into “I am climbing a mountain” mode and me to go into “I am not getting left behind by someone I have only just met no matter how awesome she is” mode 😉

luckily, it was short, steep but short and we only had to stop to catch our breath for a minute before we made our way into the home of time!

Did you know the royal observatory at greenwhich was the home of time? well it is… that is where everyone else in the world has to come to get their allotment of time! It is all stored there…we saw it…all kept locked up in big clocks!

It is ok if you run out though, we can give you some more for a small charge…

This is exactly how it works…exactly…

Then there is the meridian…that point from which all time zones are measured…that point that separates east from west….

this being the UK…there was a queue…but it was ok, there was some good chatting to be done whilst we waited 😉

then this happened:

Which was lots of fun, we were both east and west and neither east or west…if only the man who took our picture (and cleverly queue jumped at the same time) could have got out feet in the picture 🙂 ) I enjoyed myself immensely…I haven’t done that since I was about 8!

Following a rather good portion of fish and chips with out mushy peas because I am not silly, although Nancy braved them :-S we took in the rest of Greenwich…

probably not all of it mind you, we saw the naval college and the painted hall (it is very very painted!) and the Thames path which contrary to my previous belief, is actually in the Thames not along it…

We made our way back to Nancy’s hotel, along the way, I made the startling discovery that the Tower of London was right next to Tower Bridge…

who knew??

Shhhh! I told you, not a local!!

After a brief rest, and much much more chatting we headed out again to see more of the London! Nancy at this point saved my life as I never dress for the weather and she kindly gave me her lovely hand/wrist/ arm warmers which served to stop me freezing 😀 (I love them…I can wear them to work too as they don’t have fingers 🙂 )

We walked and tubed and walked and chatted and eventually decided to find some food…

A large amount of indecision later we settled on Persian. It was a spur of the moment decision, I decided it was a day for new things!

It was a good decision…and one that was to prove more startling than expected!

The food was very good…

The entertainment was unexpected…shortly after sitting down, a man came over and moved our table slightly and said, there will be a belly dancer…and boy was there a belly dancer!

Well I say belly dancer…she didn’t actually have a belly, which was teeny!! and wiggly very very wiggly…and animated…and to be honest if I was going to name the dance after any part of the body, it would be bottom dancing…not belly dancing…but still, it was an experience!

The meal and the (more) chatting sadly signaled the end of an awesome awesome day as it ws beginning to get late 😦

I am so pleased that Nancy managed to find time in her schedule to visit London! We managed to clock up over 25000 steps that day and hardly noticed it…what with all the chatting 😉

I love that I have a new friend for life, one that is no longer imaginary and definitely not a 55 year old sleezy man!

😀 😀