London Eye

Had a wonderful time at the London Eye today. My first time here - after almost 12 months being here. The children loved it - a big ferris wheel! A dull grey day and few incidents, but ended off really well with excellent views of London.

At ground level at the base of the Eye, lots of passers by, all jostling for a ticket and lot of performers. This area on the Thames is called Southbank, just near Waterloo overlooking Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

I took a few snaps while waiting for a ticket.

The kids played on the playground.

Experimenting with some b+w shots. This is Waterloo bridge..i think. Over the other side of the river is Embankment.

And a colour equivalent.

I quite like this shot. Took this while waiting in the queue to get on.

A shot from inside the capsule looking up.

Nic and Jes had a great time inside. The whole round trip took about 20 minutes or so.

A view towards Big Ben and the House of Parliament.

Another view of the capsules and Waterloo Bridge.

Nic took this shot, looking North-west of London.

Wow, looks like we are in space.

Shot of Westminster, Ben etc

Nic and Ben.

Nic and me, with Westminster in the background.

AFL at the Oval London

The annual AFL excursion to the UK, we made it there. First it was supposed to be a surprise to me by Phillipa, but I suggested it this morning so that didn't help. :-) The game between the WC Eagles and Fremantle Dockers was played at the Oval (remember the Shane Warne stump dance ?...) up there on the left-hand balcony.

Okay game on, WCE vs Dockers. Into the second quarter and it was became very clear there is no love lost between the teams - plenty of scuffles and mellees, plus who cares? No reports, no tribunal (as far as I know)

A lot of the stars like Pavlich, Judd, Cousins, Wirru, Kerr were not playing. Bit dissappointing, but the best bit was to sit amongst a heap of Australians, who were mostly pissed up to the max.

The sun decided to be part of the game every now and then. Couldn't see how it could manage it, the sky was completely greyed over.

The mexican wave made a welcome appearance, everyone throwing their beer cups and general rubbish in the air.

Go the wave

You can see Troy Cook and Sandilands in the foreground there.

Okay game over, WCE lacked star players, Dockers won by about 20 or so. Leading up to this signs were being displayed to not go onto the ground, mainly to save the cricket pitch. But do you think they were going to stop 20,000 pissed Aussies?

One intoxicated girl wearing a WCE jumper and a tutu managed to run onto the pitch. Go girl!

The security guards were taking their jackets off at this stage...

Phillipa and the washed out look. We're going to figure out how to fix that when taking pictures.

Then people started kicking footies around, and it was no-rules tackling.

Now time to figure out how to go home.