This is my last week in London, England and Europe so my lovely friend Tans has taken the week off work so we can spend some quality time hanging out together.

Across from Tanya’s flat in South West London is a great park, complete with its own cafe.  One of the owners went to Melbourne and brought back with her the recipe for a dish consisting of toast with Marmite, avocado, then scrambled eggs with sweet chilli sauce.  She calls it “Aussie Eggs” – seriously, try it!

Check out what is written down the black section of the wall – I felt a kindred spirit connection when I was in there.

So today’s adventure took us slightly further afield from the park and cafe across the road from Tanya’s house.  Today we were going to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew – South East London.

The day was quite chilly and yet blue skies – which was perfect.

This is ‘The Hive’.  It’s a light and sound installation in the gardens that is representative of a proper working bee hive.  When you walk inside, you can hear the sound of bees working and the lights intermittently flash as if they were working bees.

Robin at first was pretty unimpressed, but once he got out of his pram and got to walk around and play with the lights, he was very excited and very sad to have to leave.

This is me getting arty with photography….

I thought this was quite reminiscent of the John Lennon “Imagine” memorial in Central Park in New York.  What do you think?

More artsy fartsy stuff.

Robin realised that he could actually control the light in front of him going on and off by sticking his finger into the 12 IND. Hex Washer Selfdrill screw which was underneath the lightbulb.  Every time he stuck his finger in it, it turned on.  Genius!

What do you mean it’s not me controlling the light?

Pretty happy with his achievements.

“I controlled the whole hive with this one finger!”

You can spend a whole day just wandering around these gardens.  There are ponds and hot houses …

 Exhibitions and cafes and ducks and geese…. and peacocks!  Well, just one peacock to be exact.

This is the tropical palm house.

Which, funnily enough, is full of palms.

There is also a rose garden with two of the prettiest blonde flowers in all of the UK!

As the day went on it just got better and better and the sky got bluer and bluer.

There is an awesome vegetable patch with huge pumpkins and tomatoes in it – amongst other veggies, but my favourite bit was this secret garden door…. now where did I put that key?

Robin’s highlight of the day was sitting on this bench. Seriously, he was so happy to be sitting there!

I love this kid!  He can’t quite say “Shell” yet, but he does have a crack at “Sh” every now and then though which is a start.  I think he’s holding out on me…. I bet he waits until the day I go home before he says, “It was great spending time with you Aunty Shell, see you next time.”