London Sunday - rain, sunshine, a mall and a pub

What started out as a promising morning soon turned to rain. This was taken at 5:30am from Karen and Paul's balcony. 

Again we headed to the cafe across the road when it bucketed down, cafe was chocker so we decided not to take the long walk beside the docks opting for a shorter walk to Canary Wharf DLR. 

We really like the DLR, Karen hardly ever uses it and we took Don on there for the first time later in the day - yet they have both had many opportunities.  

Our destination - a Mall. If you know Steve well you will know how much he hates malls but with the rain and his needing new jeans a mall seemed like the right option. We went to a giant Westfield at Olympic Park so got to see the venues from the train. This one isn't an air traffic control tower apparently, is a viewing platform and soon to be a slide! It's red just didn't come out well but you get the gist. 

Proof Steve made it to a mall. 

Trying to get some scale on camera, this is the restaurant wing. 

Our drink stirrers at Giraffe and a jellybean portrait of some people the Brits are obsessed with. 

Don joined us in the mall slightly unimpressed with the whole shopping thing while hung over. We headed to Greenwich via DLR with Karen leaving the train to go home. Here is Steve and Prue's cute street. 

A few drinks in the kitchen before we headed off to the Cutty Sark tavern for dinner. 

Florence's friend Kate (who she flew over with) also came out for dinner. Just to demonstrate how small world kiwis in London are - she went to her first London party last night! Yep she was at Don's flat warming!!!!! It took them about an hour to figure this out but omg hilarious. 

Loved the walk to the pub along the Thames. The sun came out and we scored a table outside. 

Lovely dinner. We headed back as it got dark and the most amazing rain happened, almost tropical. 

That's rain not fog in the sky. So much water followed by this lovely sunset, can see why everyone we are staying with lives beside the river (Florence and Kate taking pics, Prue is easy to spot with her orange umbrella where all others are black). 

We were going to walk under the Thames so Don could experience that too on the way home but the rain sent us back on the DLR. said goodbye to Don at Canary Wharf where he caught the tube for his 70 minute trip home (don't think he will be heading out to Greenwich too often). 

This is where we had lunch with Nic during the week, a bit less crowded in the weekend. Lots of Boris bikes in use too at the weekend.