Yay! Its spring time.. no more big coats.... are you kidding? Its still nippy in the mornings and maybe a little into the afternoon. This morning we intended on going to see the Wallace Collection but due to the change in daylight saving we managed to miss the viewing. So we decided to change the plans and headed for Hyde Park.

Hyde Park is one of the biggest parks in London and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers Corner. The park itself is divided in two by the Serpentine Lake and joins together with Kensington Gardens. It has been used for music concerts by such bands as - Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Pavarotti, The Who, Eric Clapton, Bon Jovi and the list goes on...

Speakers Corner is quite an eye opener. There were around 10-15 different speakers standing up on the boxes provided for them, having their say. Topics such as Robert Mugabe, The war on Iraq and others were being discussed. Oh yeah, and the drunken gentleman standing on his step ladder chanting.. "ARSENAL, ARSENAL, ARSENAL...." over and over. We thought it was a joke but around 20 minutes later we looked back and he was still going.

At the top of Hyde Park is Marble Arch. It was originally used along the passage way to Buckingham Palace between 1828-1851. In 1852 it was moved to its current location, a popular story is because it was too narrow for the Queen's state coach to pass through, but in fact the Gold State Coach passed under it during Elizabeth II's Coronation in 1953.

After crossing Serpentine Bridge (which splits Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens) we headed for the Princess Diana of Wales Memorial Fountain. It was officially opened in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II. It has 545 pieces of Cornish granite. Although described as an oval stone fountain, it has the form of a large, oval stream bed about 50 by 80 m that surrounds, and is surrounded by, a lush grassy field. The granite streambed is from 3 to 6 m wide and quite shallow and is laid out on a gently sloping portion of the park, so that water pumped to the top of the oval flows down either side. When the fountain first opened people were free to wade in the water, until 3 people were hospitalised after slipping.

Whilst walking through Hyde Park we past some squirrels. They were amazingly small and cute. I squatted down and rubbed my fingers together and they can running. I got a pat and my 2 seconds attention then they went running because a dog was coming.

After leaving Hyde Park we headed for Harrods. Unfortunately they are doing construction on the front of the shop so no piccies... sorry girls. After wandering around inside we noticed that the amazing thing about was that it is just a shop with general products in it. It just also caters to those who have way more money than we are ever going to see... As we walked around, Laura made sure that I had my arms tucked into my side so that I didnt break anything because we wouldnt be able to pay for it.

On the way home we saw an ad for the Terracotta Warriors exhibit at the National Museum. After making our way to the museum we discovered that all the prepaid tickets were sold out and the exhibit ended on Saturday so we made the decision to come back on Saturday to see the Warriors. Wish us luck...