Pennywisetours

27/02/2024

..and now I’m on the theatre tour. On the right, check all the everyday sayings that originated from Shakespeare’s plays

24/02/2024

Gloucester Crescent in Greenwich

26/01/2024

This is side-splitting!

01/01/2024

Wilkommen from the Beberplatz in Berlin where friends and I are seeing in 2024. Unusually, you have to pay to come into the Square on NYE which they have done to keep out the riff-raff. We slipped through the net though, obviously!😉 The posh pics are of our hotel, the 5-star Titanic (weird choice of name, I know!) just around the corner from where we are and a hop and a skip from the Brandenburg Gate. We couldn’t ask for a better place to celebrate! Don’t usually post pics of my food, but this is an exception tonight as they dished up this wonderful fondue, not to mention Apple Strudel, and I thought I should share it with you - though sadly for you, not literally of course!😉Anyway, Frohes Neues Jahr, and here’s hoping next year is also a healthy, prosperous and meaningful one for all of us!

25/12/2023

This was a unique experience!

Someone had to do it.

14/12/2023

Wise words from a simple flower girl

08/12/2023

Our mad English humour at its very best!

08/12/2023

Never seen the Shard looking so magical!

21/07/2023

Their Majesties and me!!

14/05/2023

Doggie-walking Italian-style. Spotted in the backstreets of Stresa on Lake Maggiore this morning. Looks like the dog is too old or perhaps injured. So no doubt its owner makes alternative static loo arrangements for his faithful friend, then jumps on his bike, reverses the roles and takes the dog around this way. What a man’s life that canine has!

03/05/2023

Coronation Countdown: One coming back

22/04/2023

- that’s definitely the same house on the two views you posted.

19/04/2023

It just had to be done - sitting on a replica throne sat on by all those Henry Vs and other Shakespearian royal types was just irresistable!

31/03/2023

An excerpt from Much Ado About Nothing in Westminster Abbey’s Henry Vll Chapel. The most glorious, atmospheric and artistic time I’ve ever spent in this iconic building on Tuesday evening where I had been guiding tourists only that morning. Immersive performances by actors from the Globe Theatre taking place simultaneously all over the church that you could just wander up to. The whole experience I can only describe as well-organised and joyful chaos! This was one of a number of snippets from the Great Man’s works being performed in every corner of this world-famous space. A regular annual event bar pandemics! Check out the details on the Abbey website and catch it if you can.

21/03/2023

The view from my train of lovely London.

15/03/2023

You don’t have to jump through hoops to go to the King’s Cross Gymnasium these days. But if you’d been here in 1865 you might have! This is where the indoor events of the first National Olympian Games in London were held, the forerunner to the full-blown Games that took place in same city in 1908. And this magnificent building? It goes back to 1861, was built for the German Gymnastics Society and was England’s first purpose-built gymnasium funded entirely by London’s German community.
The main exercise hall’s stupendous features are still evident now in its new incarnation as a top restaurant.
And as diners chomp away they’d probably choke on their food if they knew that among the now obsolete sports that athletes competed against each other to excel in was...Indian Club Swinging! Who knew?🤔

10/03/2023

This is a slogan from hit west end london show Great British Bake Off the Musical. Pinkies on and grab your rolling pins, chaps - you know it makes sense!😉

03/03/2023

That looks like an enormous sheep living in the lap of luxury, Dani the Guide😉

One of my favourite pick up spots for clients . Todays trip we are heading straight to the Churchill War Rooms. One of my favourite places to guide.

26/02/2023

The King, his lover and a dangling toddler - an everyday story of high stakes between-the-sheets royal dalliances - literally in this case!!
Exasperated because her lover Charles ll was being awkward about giving their bastard son a title, canny Nell Gwynn (pictured), his favourite mistress, dangled the wee tot from an upstairs window and threatened to drop him unless she got her way.
Great tale? Yes! True? Naaahh! But sometimes You should relax and never let the facts get in the way of a rollicking good story, so here’s the rest of it.
The scene of this fanciful incident was Lauderdale House in Highgate, north London, a place used by Chas and Nell for a bit of..errr..royal rumpy-pumpy back in the 17th century and where she and her children relaxed.
And how was it said that the quick-witted Charles saved his little one’s life?
When she screamed for the umpteenth time at His Maj “Make him a Duke or I drop him!” Chas calmly looked at the dangling babe and loudly replied with a flourish “God save the Earl of Burford!”
Colourful tall tales like this make ancient houses like Lauderdale come alive. And it’s not the only royal connection.
The other is the true story of Arabella Stuart, a close cousin of an earlier 17th century king, James 1 and a woman who many thought had a stronger claim to the throne than him.
Despite that, all was well between them until she married for love rather than who she was told to!
Unfortunately the man of her dreams was also a strong claimant to the throne, James felt threatened and had her arrested. She stayed two days at Lauderdale under house arrest on her way to eventual lifelong incarceration in the Tower of London.
Well, the course of true love never always runs smooth, does it?
These are the kind of stories I like to regale travellers with when I take them round London - well it makes a change from Harry and Megan, Prince Andrew and all the other ta**ry royal tales of the modern era!
Come with me and find out more of the juicy royal gossip.

26/02/2023

Used to pass this every day on my way to school and never realised the building on the far right was once a synagogue. Who knew? Not me - I was always too busy dreaming up excuses for being late!
I learnt this fact at a talk at opposite this building thanks to one of the volunteers. He told us about the history of the Jewish community in London and in this area of the capital, Highgate Village north of the city centre.
He wasn’t the only one to enthrall the weekend crowds. - aka former refugee Mehrdad Aref-Adi-Buddha also gave us some valuable insights. He is now a top media design guru and he gave us the lowdown on the story of how Iranians also found freedom and a new, enriched life in this area amongst other places in the UK.
The similarities between the two groups was quite extraordinary. Altogether a marvellous day out in the northern London suburb.

24/02/2023

Fancy-schmany cocktails with Blue Badge guiding Colleagues and friends at the Piano Smithfield while we wait for this evening’s performance by jazz singer Christine Mills, a cousin to my Blue Badge guiding friend

16/02/2023

Upside down art in London. Are you looking at the floor or the ceiling, or the ceiling through the floor - or down several floors to a bottomless pit of pure art?
And are you just observing or taking part? Be prepared to step into the picture and take part yourself.
There are four galleries showing different genres of art in a very different way at the Frameless exhibition in London’s Marble Arch.

07/02/2023

The old and the new close to each other like this gives me the goosebumps every time! Who’d have thought the ancient City church of St Helen’s Bishopsgate would look so good with the Gherkin looming over it - and vice versa?

06/02/2023

Wonderful Walthamstow - the William Morris gallery

06/02/2023

A Dutch warship that gave a bunch of pirates what for!
Came across this beauty, the Rotterdam which is part of the NATO force, while I was shopping in Waitrose!
Normally as a Blue Badge guide, I have to hunt images and good yarns down a bit harder. Makes my job so worthwhile!






Yo-ho, me hearties! As a Blue Badge guide I can tell you a few more derring-do stories about my capital city, so hope to see you one day!

06/02/2023

A riot of architecture old and new in Nine Elms, the home of the revived Battersea Power Station. Arrived by the London tube, left for central London by the fast Thames Clipper Uber boat. What a treat - and to think I was doing all this research as part of my job. What’s not to like?
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05/02/2023

0 Likes, 0 Comments - Penny Bowden () on Instagram: "A Dutch warship that gave a bunch of pirates what for! Came across this beauty, the Rotterdam which is part of the NATO force, while I was shopping in Waitrose! Normally as a Blue Badge guide, I have to hunt images and good yarns do...