Mooching and Shopping in Old Kathmandu

You know how when you live in a place, you tend not to do the touristy things? When I lived in Stratford on Avon I NEVER did a walking tour or visited Ann Hathaway's cottage, even though I walked past it on my way to work every morning. And we'd lived in Llangollen for several years before I went on the steam railway there, and then only because my best mate was visiting with her littles.
But here, yes, we are doing the tourist things - and loving them.
In the UK we could visit friends and family, escape to any number of amazingly beautiful, wild, green spaces ( we lived on the Welsh-North Shropshire border - just beautiful!), spend happy afternoons pottering about parks and play areas, swim easily and using child friendly change rooms, and if all else failed there were hours of delight to be found at the local soft play area (plus squishy sofas and decent teas and coffees for the grown ups - none of your chairs-bolted-to-the-floor-squalor!)
But here none of those things are available, and even though we have a happy home with plenty of fun inside it, sometimes we feel the pinch of it and need to get out.
So we reach for the Lonely Planet and find a walking tour, and hey presto, we are challenged, overwhelmed, and ultimately refreshed. Grubby but delighted. Tired but elated. We got out, we negotiated a taxi, we found our way through the unfamiliar labyrinth of streets and alleyways - yay for us!
(Um, and I spent the birthday money my mum gave me on some GORGEOUS shawls and a pashmina - photos another time.......sshhh )