Saturday, January 30, 2010
London Day 3
This morning we had another yummy breakfast at the hotel, this time staying away from the sausage, the pork and beans, and a few of the other things that probably taste great to Brits but seem odd to us. Laura didn't join us for breakfast this morning, and wasn't with us until dinner, because they had a field trip to Southall.We walked over to the Paddington train station
this morning as a test of whether we can do that with luggage when we leave on Monday, and we can. We'll do that to avoid a whole bunch of steps on the Tube if we take the Tube to the train station. I hauled the bags up and down the steps to get here, and I don't want to haul them back. At Paddington we followed the signs for the Circle Line train to take us to the Tower of London, but when we got on the platform we wondered if we were headed the right way, so we went back in to the main station area to double check, and were we ever glad we did. There was a rather small sign posted, which we had missed in the crowd of people at the station, saying that the whole Circle Line was closed for the whole weekend. We then had to navigate to the other side of the station, which wasn't easy, to get to the Hammersmith & City line, which would get us close to the Tower of London. The Circle Line would have put us right at the Tower. We got close to to the Tower, but still had to walk more because of another line -- the District Line -- also having reduced service this weekend. But, it has been a beautiful sunny day, so walking was good.We had a great time at the Tower of London. The guide dressed in costume was funny.
We saw the crown jewels and almost got kicked out for taking this picture of the vault doors:
We also saw the various towers, the info and implements used to torture prisoners, the grafitti scratched in the walls by prisoners:
The armor and cool stuff in the White Tower
and on and on. We even saw a guy straight out of the middle ages: 
We spent more than 3 hours there.From the Tower and the Tower Bridge
we walked along the Thames 
to the London Bridge, where we crossed over
to go to Borough Market, 
which is an open air food market that was jam packed with people. The sights and smells there were interesting. For lunch we found a nice restaurant called Fish in the midst of the market area and were lucky to get a table because the place was packed. We were so happy to be off of our feet in a warm restaurant for a hot lunch!
We had fish and chips,
which were tasty but also expensive. The restaurant was net to Southwark Cathedral, so we stuck our heads in there before getting on the Tube and going to the Imperial War Museum.The Imperial War Museum was incredible.
It's like the Air & Space Museum 
only with more war stuff, including tanks, jeeps, 
small submarines, and a desert truck built by Chevy and used in the African desert during WWII and left there until it was found in 1980. 
The museum also had a very graphic and sobering Holocaust display that was amazing and very sobering. What a great museum.
Forgot to mention that as we were walking on Lambeth Street to the museum we walked past some row houses and on one house was a plaque that said William Bligh, captain of the Bounty, had lived there in the 1700s. I couldn't believe it. 
Having read Bligh's own account of the mutiny on the Bounty and a compilation of the accounts of others, and having seen a couple of movies on the subject, I couldn't believe we just stumbled on a place he had lived. Also, parked in front of the museum was a Mr. Whippy ice cream truck. 
After the Imperial War Museum we mad a made dash on the Tube to Trafalgar Square to try to get to the National Gallery before it closed at 5, with the last admission at 4:30, or so I thought. We got there right at 4:30 and were pleasantly surprised to find it was open until 6, so we spent about an hour there looking at paintings by some of the masters, mostly stuff from the 1200s through the 1600s. No pics allowed inside, so this was outside of the art museum:
We then went back to the hotel to chill for a while and met up with Laura
and 4 of her fellow students (3 girls and 1 guy) for dinner at Zizzi's pizza. It was delicious and the kids were a lot of fun. One girl (pictured on the left), whose last name is Barker, looks and acts just like Katie Barker. 
She does not know of any relation, but we're going to check because we believe they have to be related.
After dinner we came back to crash and we Skyped for a few minutes with Yeppy to learn more about the snow situation in DC. Tomorrow it is off to the Hyde Park Ward for church in the morning and then more museums and fun stuff in the afternoon. Ta ta!
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