Dear Readers,

Firstly, my apologies for the first blog entry - I can only plead jet-laggedness and a brain still trying to catch up!

So, for a more detailed version of our first couple of days...

We arrived slightly early into Heathrow and thought we'd be standing in the queue for aliens for hours.How wrong we were!Must have been all Brits coming home on our flight because we were in the queue at passport control for a whole five minutes.Tony asked for a stamp in his passport (he has a little competition with the kids for number of stamps) and then we were at the luggage carousel.Not so lucky there, took ages for the bags to come off.Through the deserted and unmanned customs check and we were out.We were supposed to look for someone holding a placard up with our names on it but there was no-one there.Then I heard someone call my name and there was my cousin Geoff which was a wonderful surprise (Geoff is one of my favourites) and I should have remembered that my auntie is an excellent and practised liar!

It was just after 7.00am when we got back to my auntie's and we were determined to stay awake the whole day to combat jetlag.I ended up cooking muffins with Amy (my cousin's 11 year old daughter) and spent some time trying to get Josh (Geoff's son) to talk to me.Sadly I'm not nearly as interesting as a Playstation.A couple of walks, a visit from another cousin Tracey, a game of Trivial Pursuit and a LOT of talking and we pretty much made it through the day.Tony went to bed about 7.30 and I went when I realised that I had fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation with Geoff; fortunately he's very understanding!

We were up nice and early the next and after a leisurely breakfast, we set off with Lynn to see St. Paul's and the Globe Theatre.Naturally we did the tourist thing and sat up the top of the double decker bus, right at the front.Great view!St. Paul's is magnificent but Lynn was quite surprised that they charge you to go into a church.When she caught sight of the admission prices I thought we were going to have to carry her home on a stretcher!£14.50 for an adult!Lots of monuments etc and the architecture is magnificent.We climbed up to the Whispering Gallery and then out onto the Stone Gallery which allows views across London.We couldn't really be bothered standing in the queue (yet another one) to go up to the next level which is right at the top of the dome.The crypts were my favourite (I've always been a bit odd like that) and some of the tombstones down there had dates from the 1700's and there were even a few broken sculptures and stones that had survived the Great Fire when the first St. Paul's burned down.Lists of church officials dating from 1066 (OMG) and elaborate memorials and tombs for some of history's most famous cheek by jowl with complete unknowns.

From St. Paul's we tried to backtrack to go to Grays Inn Lane where there is a coffee shop that was once owned by my great-great-great- grandfather but the bus was diverted and several roads were closed so we ended up giving up on that and headed for the Globe Theatre.Unfortunately we arrived there within half an hour of its closing time so it didn't seem worthwhile to go in - perhaps another day.Several photos and an expensive boat ride across the river and we were on our way home to a scrumptious roast lamb dinner cooked by Geoff in our absence.Watched the first episode in the new series of Doctor Who (suffer in your undies kids!) and went to bed totally un-jetlagged and ready for Covent Garden in the morning.