Too good to be true?

Usually, when something appears too good to be true, it is!  Not in this case, though.  The other day, I happened to see a post about the Sainsbury's Picnic Pavilion, which is, or perhaps I should say was, a pop-up special from Sainsbury's.  Held in a venue called The Stables in Covent Garden, the blurb said you paid £5.00 - yes, that's right, a fiver - for which you got 90 minutes to have a picnic with the hamper they provided you, containing, so they said, at least £55 worth of food.

So I thought this sounded like fun, although I had no idea what it would be like.  And, you know what? It was brilliant!  We took the Northern Line to Leicester Square, and walked from there - only a few minutes.  It was easy to find, and the receptionist found my name so I didn't have to fish out our ticket.  We had only a few minutes to wait before they told us our table was ready.  I hadn't booked chairs (the normal seating is cushions on the floor around a low table), but they offered us them when we arrived, so I thankfully said yes please.  There was a bottle of sparkling lemonade on the table, and the waitress bought us a bottle of Sangria and one of a raspberry daiquiri mocktail.  There was a box with wooden plates and cutlery, cardboard tumblers with paper straws, and nibbles of garlic and rosemary twists, foccacias (those dried crouton-type ones) and crisps.  Then there was a proper hamper filled with two Scotch eggs, two boxes of "dinky" feta and tomato puffs (which we agreed would be much nicer hot), a huge pork pie, feta with garlic and parsley, two different salads, tzatziki, olives, hummus, fruit salad and lemon meringue nibbly things.  All this for a fiver!

Needless to say, we didn't eat all of it, contenting ourselves with the Scotch eggs, a couple of the tomato puffs, the feta with garlic and parsley, some of the tzatziki and most of the fruit salad, a couple of the garlic twisty things and most of the raspberry daiquiri.

Well, that would have been enough on its own - but the best bit was, you got to keep the hamper AND such of its contents as you hadn't eaten, to take home!  And on the way out they produced a coolpack to go in the hamper, and an ice lolly - I had coconut and lime and the Swan Whisperer had chocolate and raspberry.  I mean, talk about AMAZING value!  Pork pie and salad for supper tonight (we had not eaten lunch to be suitably hungry for 14:45, and as we didn't stuff ourselves, we should be hungry again).

After this, we walked down through Covent Garden and past Charing Cross Station to pick up a bus on Whitehall.  We had just missed a 159, but an 88 came along almost at once, and we took that as far as Stockwell, when we changed on to a P5, and so home.  My new smartwatch boringly took ages to find the satellites, which isn't too surprising in an area like Seven Dials, but my new sandals are now worn in and as blissfully comfortable as the old ones!  

Dinosaur hunting

 Many years ago now, we took the Boy to Crystal Palace Park to look for dinosaurs.  Today, we took his brother.  Boy2 is 10 now, much older than his brother was when we went.  We had planned to catch a train from Brixton to Penge East, and then come home on the no 3 bus, but when we got to Brixton Station, the train said "Delayed", and the one on the opposite platform didn't seem to be going anywhere.  Citymapper told us that there was a big problem at Victoria with trespassers on the line, which had closed it to all traffic in and out of the area, and was not expected to reopen until 11:30.  It was now about 10:30, so we got a refund on Boy2's ticket and went on the no 3 bus, after all.

In many ways, this was a good idea, as the park slopes very steeply downhill from there, and if we'd gone the other way round, we would have had a great deal of uphill walking, which might be very good for me, but I do not enjoy.  

So we caught the bus and in due course arrived at Crystal Palace bus terminus.  We walked down through the park, passing various sphinxes en route.

 We would have liked to have visited the farm they keep there, but it appears to be part of a college now and no longer open to the public, as far as we could tell.  But it was not far from there until the first of the dinosaurs appeared, and we had a lovely walk down the lakes looking at them all (most photos on Facebook).  They aren't actually all dinosaurs - some are extinct mammals.  It was fun looking at the images on the placards we passed, showing how the Victorians thought the various animals might have looked, and how we now think they looked.  

Then we walked on past the café, and out of the park to Penge East station, which has a lovely waiting-room with a free library and piano!  We didn't have long to wait for our train, and then back to Brixton and lunch in Mama Lan!