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Raheny Guides and Rangers visit Pax Lodge, London
Friday 4th to Sunday 6th November 2011
At 5am on November 4th, 29 sleepy eyed Raheny Guides, Rangers and Leaders gathered in Dublin Airport, bound for London for the weekend. We checked in our luggage, made our way through security and headed to the gate. Then the excitement hit us all!
After our short plane and bus journey, we dropped our bags at Pax Lodge and headed to find the famous Platform 9 ¾ from Harry Potter! We arrived at Kings Cross Station and began looking for the sign, we asked a station attendant who quickly recited a fantastic poem with directions that would lead us to the site! Then it was off to Covent Garden, with a necessary stop in the Disney shop of course! We explored the markets and some of us tasted the amazing ‘Bens Cookies’.
From here, we carried on to Leicester Square where the girls tried to guess what show we were going to that night as we passed all the ticket offices. Some of the Guides bought souvenirs in the shops and others went into the M&Ms store to stock up on all kinds of coloured M&Ms! After some more shopping at Hamley’s, we decided it was time for dinner and to give our legs a rest.
After our Milano’s pizza and drinks, everyone was super excited for the show. We walked the girls up to the Apollo Theatre where the lights outside were all green, inside the foyer was dark with green lights and outside a massive sign, ‘Wicked’. We took our seats and the spectacular show began. We were all star struck at how amazing the singers and dancers were and what an amazing show it was. After our long but exciting day of shopping, walking and musicals, we headed back to Pax Lodge for a well deserved sleep!
Saturday morning arrived and we were up, dressed and back on the tube again, ready for a day of sight-seeing. With everyone still talking, singing and quoting lines from Wicked, we left in time to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, which was hard to see because of the crowds but we managed to find spaces. We had a ‘pit-stop’ in the Girl Guiding UK Shop where the girls had great fun picking up guiding souvenirs, from badges to key rings and of course, the little torch!
We then headed up to Trafalgar Square where there was Nelsons Column, the Official Olympic Countdown Clock and the exhibition column which had a giant ship in a bottle. From there, we made our way to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey for some more tourist pictures before heading back to Pax Lodge. We all collapsed in the Library for a quick rest before getting ready for dinner. As it was Bonfire Night, all the fireworks had started lighting up the sky and as we walked up the town to mass at the local church, we got great views of some fireworks.
Our evening activities were organised by Pax Lodge, the girls learnt about the World Centres, WAGGGS and the girls experiences volunteering at Pax. We then brought the girls to a fabulous little crêperie stall in Hampstead for supper, where we had bought crepes ten years previous on our first trip to London! We munched on our crepes and headed home, sharing tales of our busy day.
Sunday morning came before we knew it. Once everyone had their haversacks packed, we left them in Pax Lodge and headed out for our last day of adventure in London. Our first stop was the famous Madame Tussaud’s. We spent nearly two hours taking pictures with the spectacular figures.
We then headed to the Science Museum. A few of the girls weren’t convinced about this when we told them we were going but every one of them had a great time. At the end, the girls were all excited and telling us about the different experiments. We then headed back onto the tube for the last time and were back home in Dublin Airport before we knew it.
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