London Day 2

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.

London Day 3

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 Towerand 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!

London Day 4

London Day 4

We had breakfast at the hotel with Laura this morning and then walked through Kensington Gardens (really Hyde Park) to go to the Hyde Park Ward for church. We only stayed for sacrament meeting, which was a good meeting. We got to meet and speak with Laura's program director, who seems like a very nice and capable fellow. Most of the people we heard speak in the Ward are Americans, but it seems like a good Ward.

We then we headed out to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is just down the street from the Hyde Park Ward building. We could have spent a week in the place, but we only spent about 2 1/2 hours. They have some of everything there, like our Smithsonian, and we saw some of it, including some amazing mosaic work, some interesting clothing, and other cool stuff.

From the V & A we went briefly to the Science Museum, which is a fascinating place full of information about how things became industrialized and modernized. We didn't stay long, but could have spent many hours looking at all the cool stuff.

We retreated to the hotel on the Tube for a brief break, and then went back out on foot, walking through Hyde Park where we made some friends: Then to Harrods, the famous department store: The place was packed! Think Tyson's on Christmas Eve. It was the last day of the winter sale and I'm certain people literally flew in for the occasion. We wandered around gazing at all of the expensive and amazing stuff they sell thereand we had a delicious lunch there of jellied eel. Just kidding. We actually had a delicious lunch there of soup and bruschetta. We also bought and consumed some sinfully delicious chocolates and saw some sinfully expensive watches and other jewelry like this diamond encrusted collar for sale for hundreds of thousands of British Pounds. Unbelievable. We took the Tube back from Harrods to the hotel to relax for a few moments and then went to a delicious dinner at an Indian place called Mahal very near Laura's place. The food was amazing, and it was a great finish to our dining adventures in London. Laura expects to go back to the place before she leaves London.

After dinner we went to the London Centre to hear a man who was a child during WWII talk at a fireside about what it was like to be in London during the war. It was interesting, but it was also getting late and we were tired. We said goodbye to Laura after the fireside to go back to the hotel and eat the last scraps of Harrods chocolate before collapsing.

One more English breakfast in the hotel tomorrow morning, and then we head to the airport.