Wilfred and the Covent Garden Recovery

Hello everyone!  It’s me, Wilfred!  This week, my dads promised to take me on the Docklands Light Rail to explore Canary Wharf, but guess what?  We couldn’t go, because I got SICK.

My friend, Mir Ali, came for a play date Saturday.  It was a beautiful day without a cloud and hundreds of people were at Kensington Gardens to see the flowers and swans and the trees all getting green.  We couldn’t even get into Princess Diana’s playground - there was such a LONG queue.  All of a sudden, I got really tired.  I was so flippy floppy, I could barely eat an ice cream cone with chocolate flake.  After Mir Ali went home, I just wanted to nap.  Dad told Poppy I felt warm, so Poppy got the thermometer and I had a TEMPERATURE.   And know what?  I have been in bed, or on the couch, EVER SINCE.  



Me sick.


 I have even had to miss school (which I don’t mind too much).  My fever is gone now, but I still have a cough. So, I will have to tell you about the Docklands another day. 

Instead, I will let you know about a different favorite place of mine in London where we went last month:  the London Transport Museum.  The LTM is great for kids, especially if you are a six-almost-seven year-old boy. 

To reach the LTM, we got the tube at Gloucester Road and took the Piccadilly Line to Covent Garden. 

Me and Dad in Gloucester Tube Station

One of London's most crowded tube stations!

Covent Garden is a very crowded at weekends.  There is lots of fun stuff there besides the LTM.  It was a flower and vegetable market in the olden days, but they always had entertainment.  People used to come to watch puppet shows called Punch and Judy.  Today, instead of flower stalls there are shops and restaurants and stuff. 



They used to sell vegetables and flowers here



This is a famous church called St. Paul's (another one).  The side facing Covent Garden
Square was made to look like the front but is really the back.  Can you even believe it?

It is in the middle of the theatre part of London, so lots of people come to hang around and watch street performers.  I saw a fire juggler, people painted like statues, and a man and a lady singing opera, really LOUD! 

People pretending to be statues



Opera singers!  Really good...and really LOUD!

The London Transportation Museum is old outside but all new and modern inside.  After you buy your ticket, you take an elevator back in time. 

When you get off on the 3^rd floor, it is London in the 1700s.  There is a lady being carried in a “sedan chair” which is a kind of one-person carriage with no wheels that needs two strong men to carry on long poles.  There are different royal carriages, and stage coaches and carts and stuff.  One floor down is London in the 1800s with trams pulled by horses and horse drawn omnibuses. 



The oldest steam powered underground train left in the world - subways in Queen Victoria's days



Me and Dad in a Victorian 1st Class Underground train compartment

They also have the very first subway train ever, because the underground rail was invented in London.  It was actually an underground steam train.  Can you even believe it?  It made coal smoke and a racket in the tunnels.  In those days old tube stops like Gloucester Road were called railway stations.



The old sign on the Gloucester Road Tube Station

                            

                                                                                     I like these signs, too!

In Queen Victoria's time, they even built subways made out of wood!

Me and Poppy in the wooden underground car



The trains are all real...the people aren't. Except me.

One floor down at the LTM and you are way back in the 1900s and in the tube and on commuter trains and buses from those times.  There is even a subway that kids can drive with a screen that looks like a real tube tunnel that lets you control the speed and the brakes.  You even get to pull into a station – it is just like really driving. 



Me really driving a real subway... almost, anyways.

Then on the main floor there are all kinds of double decker buses you can climb on.  It is very cool, so if you like trains and buses (like me) – go there! 

Poppy and me on a double decker trolly

In our family, we call this time of year the birthday time.  Yesterday was Grandma’s birthday, today is Daddy’s and mine is in one week (so I have to get better fast!).  Both Dad and Grandma are really old this year.  For her birthday, Dad and Poppy have invited Grandma to come to London during my school break in April and our whole family is going on holiday to Scotland  to see where Grandma’s ancestors came from.  

Dad and Poppy like to go to special places to remember special birthdays and to celebrate Dad’s birthday, me and Dad and Poppy are going to Bath and Stonehenge.  I don’t know exactly what Stonehenge is, but Dad says he wants to go someplace that he is sure is older than him.  I will tell you about it next week. 

But I have to rest up and get better first! Bye for now.  Wilfie