Royal lantern

This Hague Lady is not impressed

The Flaneur greets the crocus on the Lange Voorhout

The garden is planted

All we need now is sun and rain to make everything grow!

The Queen, her dad and great great grandma

A life on the ocean waves

Decoration on the Whitechapel Gallery

1899

This is Baynes Street 1742 - I think

At the bell foundry

Inside F&M

One of Eros's cherubs

The strong arm of the Ritz

Burlington House post box

Good place for afternoon tea

Very smart socks

First Daffodils

It's taken a while this year but here is a clump of the first daffodils to come out at Wisley. Definitely a good sign that the ground is warming up - there'll be 'swathes' of them by Easter.

Monopoly Day 2

Day 2 of the Great Monopoly Quest began at Whitechapel - although there was a slight detour through Liverpool Street Station to get there. There was a lovely market going on outside the station with fruit and veg that certainly weren't that familiar to us. We made a point of going to see the blue plaque commemorating the house where the founder of Tesco grew up. Then, on the side of the London Hospital we also found one honouring Edith Cavell.All the while, Whitechapel Road was buzzing with people doing whatever they do on a Saturday morning. We found the foundry where Big Ben was cast and then we entered the lovely building that is the Whitechapel Gallery. Here we could see the tapestry of Picasso's Guernica that normally hangs in the UN. Apparently it was covered over when Colin Powell went to address the UN over the Iraq war and he thought he heard the Minator roar in its darkness. The tapestry was on display in the Gallery in 1939 and this return visit is in honour of it's reopening. They serve very good coffee and cakes upstairs in the cafe with its splendid etched mirror wall.

Fenchuirch Street Station was next, quickly followed by our first gaol, the Tower of London. We walked around the outside - it takes a long time to visit the whole of the tower - and then headed off across Tower Bridge, looking very spectacular if what looks like a very recent paint job.

Fenchurch Street Station

Samuel Pepys

Our next goal was the Old Kent Road, but everyone felt in need of more coffee etc. and a wonderful opportunity presented itself in Del'Aziz.

Enormous tarts, a meringue and a sandwich were consumed with an equally large beer, cappuccino and fresh Moroccan mint tea.

The Old Kent Road was less exciting, only leading to the Channel Tunnel, so we turned towards the river and Borough Market, a wonderful place for food and drink, only open Thursday to Saturday. More wonderful fruit, veg and wine, crowds of people and noise.

Borough Market

It was getting late, so we decided our last stop would be the Clink Museum - a genuine prison along the South bank of the Thames. Gruesome torture was carried out here by all accounts - quite a sombre note on which to finish Monopoly Day 2.

E A Bowles was a famous horticulturist, plantsman and garden writer who was elected to RHS Council in 1908 at the age of 43, then became a vice-president from 1924 -1954 when he died. He was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour from the RHS in 1916.