Annual Christmas lights trip 2009

That time of year has rolled round, as always, very quickly. In our madness we have made a family tradition of heading up to London to see the lights of the big smoke.

Last year, Farnham town council had done such a lousy job of making the town feel Christmassy it was a no brainer to head up to London; but this year? Well they've outdone themselves. A grand opening complete with singing school children, obligatory sheeting rain, and the Scouts doing hot chocolates.

The draw of the big city proved too much though and we caught the 11.28 train to Waterloo. Aproximately 4 hours later we arrived in Hyde Park to meet Katie at the Winter Wonderland. This might seem like a long time, but we managed to take a walk across the river, climb on the lions in Trafalgar Square, see the 'biggest Christmas tree EVER', get caught up in the Climate Change march, have a civilised lunch in Strada on the South Bank, walk to Green Park tube from Trafalgar Square when the tube was out of our reach due to aforementioned march, wait for two trains to get on a relatively uncrowded tube (please bear in mind I had to shout for people not to get on tube as they were pushing children) to reach Hyde Park Corner tube, in that 4 hours.

We then enjoyed about an hour of drizzling rain to persue the faux German winter wonderland, with beer hall and fun fair with rides that nearly cost us a new overdraft.

An exhausting day in all, but the kids got to go on a tube, bus (routemaster no less), cross the river, train, up-and-down-horses, helter skelter, cute cars roundabout so even if we had meltdown on the way home, they were happy campers.

And it only cost 70 quid. What a bargin.