Friday, January 29, 2010
London Day 2
Started this morning with a large breakfast at the hotel.
Some interesting things served there, including mushrooms, baked tomatoes, pork and beans and black sausage. Laura took a piece of black sausage, but when I mentioned it might be made of blood, she didn't eat it. The mushrooms and tomatoes were good, as were the waffles, ham and several other things they served.After breakfast we set out for Portobello Street,
which is a fascinating street not far from the London Centre. The street is full of shops and street vendors. Laura bought a dress at a shop and we got some necessities for her at a place called PoundLand, which is like our dollar store. Necessities, of course, included copious amounts of chocolate. Very good deal. We also found a store called AllSaints
that from the outside looks like a sewing machine store because of the number of old Singer sewing machines used for decorations in the windows
and on the walls of the store.
Just amazing. 
They must have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of old sewing machines.
It's a clothing store. Only drawback to our walk to Portobello Street was some rain.We then took stuff back to Laura's place. While she ran upstairs we waited in the drawing room:
Then it was back to our hotel for a few minutes:
Next on the agenda: St. Paul's Cathedral.
The place was spectacular. 
No photography allowed inside so after seeing the inside of the cathedral where Prince Charles married Lady Diana, we climbed up to the dome and then up to two different levels outdoors above the dome. 
It reminded us of the climbs in Italy. What an amazing cathedral. Bird's eye view of the footbridge in Harry Potter 6:
The Globe Theater built in 1599 and part owned by Shakespeare:
Have some cranes! The torpedo shaped building is called the pickle:
Up as high as we could climb. Very cold and windy:
London is a curvy city indeed:
After St. Paul's we took the Tube to the British Museum, 
which is somewhat like our Smithsonian. Spent a good two hours checking out the cool stuff the Brits took from the many nations they controlled over the centuries. We saw lots of mummies:
And other stuff:
We then walked down Drury Lane (alas, there was no muffin man) to Covent Garden, which is a cool place that is full of shops and activity.
We got some delicious cookies there at Bens Cookies. This picture is of a random cupcake shop--not Ben's:
We took the Tube from there to the London Eye 
and had an amazing ride at sunset on that amazing wheel. The full (or almost full) moon was also up. Sitting in our capsule:
Some cool views:
After the London Eye we took the Tube back to the hotel. We thought about going to a show, but the cost and our tiredness dissuaded us. We chilled for a while at the hotel and then got kebabs for dinner at a place near the hotel and Laura's place. They were OK, but not nearly as good as the ones in Italy where Tom took us:
After kebabs, we gorged on chocolate items. It was another great day, and we look forward to a repeat tomorrow.
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