The day The Queen came to Tea...

ok, ok...that's not quite what happened but the day did involve The Queen and Tea!

As part of the Jubilee celebrations we've had 2 Bank Holidays, which would have been fantastic if the weather had held out

but the weather turned on us and in true British tradition we've had rain, rain and a little more rain {all thrown together with good doses of gusty winds}

I've been coveting for some time a Jubilee tin, not just any old tin mind you but a gorgeous Jubilee Tea Tin from Fortnum and Mason

A break in the weather on Tuesday morning saw us packing coats, brollies and woolies into the car for a trip to London to visit  F&M's

There were flags flying everywhere

The roads in central London were chaos...every other one was either closed or had roadworks and we managed to get totally lost and ended up parking in Convent Garden...which was all jolly good as parking was unrestricted and free!

Totally out of the blue we found The Strand shut with barriers along the road, being true Brits we saw a que and joined it...I love being British :)

We waited very patiently...

And Im so pleased we did for we only had to wait 20mins and were rewarded with... 

Prince of Wales, Camilla and Harry

{Hand on heart Charles waved at me - honest}

Followed a few minutes later by...

The Queen

Talk about being in the right place at the right time!  We couldn't have planned it better if we'd have tried.

Everyone was in a friendly mood, one for all and all for one kind of thing...even the coppers were in a generous mood, letting the kiddos sit on the bike...

...

Deciding that the day was on a roll, free parking and The Queen so far...we headed to Leicester Square to grab a bite of lunch.  Everywhere was heaving with people, bodies crammed tight into every fast food outlet and every restaurant - Hell on Earth.

Down the side of the Trocadero centre is Ed's Diner, a fab little 1950's American inspired diner...more expensive than we would normally pay but worth every extra penny to avoid the crammedness, noiseiness

Great food, cool drinks {cola floats and ice cream shakes!} 

= LOVE IT!

...

Finally we were ready to head to...

I loved the Jubilee decorations they had...

Lots of The Queens Beasts and a lovely sales lady was handing out print outs which explain all about The Beasts

Tea, tea and lots of tea...

a sea of tea

It was hard not to stray from my original Tea Tin, there was an enormous selection of lovely Jubliee goodies to choose from.

A couple of little goodies found there way into our basket...Golden Jubilee Coins 

and some super tasty lollies

We managed to make it back to the car just as the weather turned {again}, it took an absolute age to get out of central London, the Parks were emptying as we were leaving which meant dodging traffic as well as thousands of revellers who had been watching proceedings {The Queen on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, the 60 gun salute, a fly by amongst other things}

Fantastic day had by all of us!

***