England Part 2

We are in week five of our six-week extended holiday in England. We've had three weeks at Andy's parents house followed by a week in sunny Spain (which I will write about in my next post) and are now back in England. I wrote about our first week in England here. This post is a recap of weeks two and three.

At the start of our second week I managed to escape travel to London to catch up with some friends. I left for the day around noon, taking the fast train to Waterloo, which takes just over an hour. From there I headed to Oxford Street to get in a bit of shopping before meeting my friend Alison for dinner. I was on the search for a raincoat to get me through the predicted non-stop rain the next two weeks. 

Even on a weekday afternoon, Oxford Street is a zoo. I went there because I knew there was an excellent variety of stores, but in reality I found the whole thing very overwhelming and gave up after about two hours, sadly still without a raincoat. I am definitely not the same gal who could shop for hours in my twenties! I decided to head to Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus, the largest bookshop in Europe. It has six floors of books plus three bars/cafés, so I decided to treat myself to a new book and a glass of wine. 

Browsing through a bookshop with no time limit is one of my favourite things to do, but with two kids it pretty much never happens. I was in the mood for non-fiction, so selected this book and headed upstairs. I started my book and enjoyed a glass of dry rosé (my summer drink of choice) before heading to Brixton to meet Alison. 

We went for dinner at Senzala Creperie in Brixton Village, and old favourite, and it was like I’d never left. Alison and I talked non-stop, catching up on each other’s lives. We keep in touch fairly regularly, but texts and FaceTime are no substitute for meeting up in real life! After dinner we headed back to Alison’s apartment for peppermint tea and more conversation before heading to bed. 

The next morning I got up early and headed to a yoga class near Alison's flat at Dragonfly Yoga Studio. It was the perfect start to the day and I even found some excellent coffee nearby. After a lovely slow morning I headed up north to Kilburn to meet my friend Sinead. I took a quick detour to a random shopping centre on the way, and low and behold, I found a raincoat! Hurray!

Sinead is one of my best friends from London. She was one of my bridesmaids, and she lived in Melbourne with her partner Jon during our first year there. I was gutted when they moved back to London and we are still in touch, but again not nearly as much as I'd like. Sinead and her little boy Charlie met me for lunch at The Alice House and we spent hours just talking and catching up. Charlie, who is nearly two, was actually very tolerant of this, and even had a giant two hour nap so we could catch up properly! I headed back to Andy’s parents in the late afternoon, having had a lovely bit of me time and break from being a mum. As you've probably noticed, I didn't take any pictures at all. I guess I was just enjoying myself so much I completely forgot!

Later that week I took Ella to her first play, an adaptation of the book The Tiger Who Came to Tea. It was playing at the New Wimbledon Theatre in London.

Ella was super excited for our day out. We took the train to Wimbledon and she was glued to the window almost the entire way there, despite it taking two trains and being over an hour long. 

Sinead and Charlie decided to come along as well, so we met a few hours before the play started for some playground time and lunch. It was such a treat to see Sinead twice in one week! 

The play was excellent, Ella was focused on the stage the whole time and loved it. It's so exciting to see how grown up she is getting and I will definitely be taking her to another play sometime soon.

After the play we had an ice cream treat and then headed back to Grandma and Grandad's on the train. This time she was pretty tired out!

We had lovely weather on the following Saturday, so Andy, Dave, Ella and I went to Portsmouth Harbour for the day. The main event was watching the Royal Navy's largest warship, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, leave the harbour and go out to sea. 

Prior to seeing the warship we got coffees from a cute café called Canteen, located in the arches of the war barracks located along the harbour in Old Portsmouth. We walked along the harbour, enjoying our coffees, the view and the sunshine.

We then played on the rocky beach waiting for the ship to leave the harbour.

The ship is so incredibly huge it is hard to describe. We watched from the beach, where it seemed to pass by very close to shore. 

Our third week in England was not super fun. It started with Ollie having a cold and fever Monday night, which meant he was pretty miserable for the next few days. When he woke Thursday with both a fever and a rash, we took him to the doctors. They sent us to the children’s hospital in Portsmouth where we stayed for the next 10 hours while they tried to figure out what was wrong with Ollie. He had to have his bloods taken to rule out a bacterial infection, and at the same time he had a cannula put in in case he needed an IV drip for antibiotics. I have never heard Ollie scream so much while this was being done. It was absolutely heartbreaking. The poor kid was exhausted as well, and it seemed every time he finally calmed down and dozed off someone came to check his heart rate and temperature, which did not make him very happy. While this was happening his rash got worse, and the doctor concluded he had a virus, and it was possibly chicken pox. As we were meant to leave for Spain in three days, this was pretty devastating news!

We were allowed to leave the hospital that evening when Ollie’s fever finally broke, and he starting looking a bit more lively. The next morning he woke up fever free, and the rash hadn’t got any worse, so we were quietly hopeful that it wasn’t chicken pox. We watched him carefully over the next two days, and he continued to improve, sleeping and eating well, playing and even cracking the odd smile, and the rash started to fade. We were pretty sure it wasn’t chicken pox as the rash never blistered or scabbed over and Ollie didn’t seem itchy.

Andy's parents helped us out a lot that week by taking Ella on some day trips so that we could stay home with Ollie.

The local garden centre advertised an "enchanted walk" so they went to check it out one day.

Ella enjoyed it "for about five minutes" according to Andy's dad. She was far more interested in smelling every flower in the garden centre!

Andy's dad took Ella to Staunton Farm where she could feed goats, sheep, alpacas and llamas. We actually took her here last time we were in England, three years ago. Apparently it hasn't changed much, but obviously Ella was able to get a lot more out of it now than when she was only one!

Feeling confident after his solo outing with Ella, Andy's dad ventured further and took her out for another afternoon, this time to Southsea. They visited the Model Village again, and had a play on the beach. 

I'm happy to report that Ollie's health improved over the three days between our day in hospital and our flight to Spain, so we decided to go as planned. I'm so glad we did, we had a fantastic time and Ollie was back to normal within the first few days of the holiday. Stay tuned for my next post which will be about our week in Spain!