Today we went out to Hamstead to have a look around and to visit Hampstead Heath, which we had heard was a lovely park. So we caught the tube to Hampstead and talk a walk up the road to the Heath. Around the heath are supposed to be interesting historical places - Kenwood House - an art gallery with lovely tea room and beautiful gardens, and other old buildings with memorabilia to John Keats, the Freud museam and so on. It was a lovely sunny day - for a change as it has been raining all week here - well for the last 2-3 weeks!! So, off we head, we see the heath and walk through the grounds - absoultly beautiful and feels like New Zealand, it's all bush with ferns and tress etch! Very nice! However, after we have been walking for about 40min I wonder where these building are - so i ask and get some directions and off we go for about another 30min. Then still not seeing the buildings and my shoes are starting to hurt my feet. I had come prepared and already had plasters on both my heels and on the toes and had spares with me. So we stop and ask someone else for directions, well apparently we had been walking in totally the wrong direction and might i add by this stage were only interested in going to Kenwood House and primarly because of the cafe. We are told that Kenwood house is on the ohter side of the heath! I could not even begin to describe just how large this park really is! So 2 hours out from arriving and asking 3 more people for directions we make it to Kenwood house! My feet are killing me even with the spare plaster on i have developed a lovely blister that has managed to pop and get infected all in the space of 2 hours! Next time - we take a map!!!! The first thing we did was sit down and have coffee and salad for lunch and lay in the sun - very nice and the gardens were very beautiful. We had a wonder around the art gallery i was promised rembrant however i did not see any! Not that i would recognize his work but i was reading the captions! Due to gross fatigue and feet i wanted to chop off we did not get to see anymore of the historical buildings nor did we feel like walking through anymore lovely gardens! So we walked back to the tube or should i say hobbled to bus stop to take us 10min down the road as i felt i couldn't move an inch! Somebody should have said you go there for walks - i would have taken my sneakers!!!! Anyway, it looks very nice and we have a map for our next visit out there to see the rest of the historical places!!! And of course we forgot the camera so the one photo is again off my camera - but better than nothing! We came back and Josh had his haircut as he is off to Frankfurt on Sunday (today) for a work seminar that lasts all week, he will be back on Friday. Lucky thing! He has the camera this time so hopefully he remembers to take some photos and when he gets back i'll put them on the blog.
