London: More Museums, Parks, and a Show

We were lucky that the weather held for our last two days in London, so that we could spend as much time as possible walking around and exploring. Our plan for Friday morning was to walk from our hotel to the British Museum. The walk took us through Chinatown and into the Bloomsbury area. I really love walking around London. We found a fun arcade to explore.

And decided where to shop if we ever go to Ascot.

We finally arrived at the line to get into the museum. Luckily, we had timed tickets. We explained to the people in front of us how to get them and told them that we would hold their place if they got some and came back. Sure enough, as we made it around the corner, they came by and were delighted to find us again. We chatted a bit as we slowly wound our way around the building and through security. Finally, we made it to the doors. 

The newer atrium is quite impressive, especially since we had recently seen it featured in Dr. Strange.

It did lend an interesting green tinge to our pictures though . . .

Jeff really wanted to see the ancient stuff, and since I have been teaching about Mesopotamia for the past two years, I was equally excited to see the familiar images from my teaching materials. 

Elena has been really into Greek mythology lately, so we progressed through the centuries to find her the ancient Greek rooms.

Vivian has already done a project on art restitution, so we tried to explain a bit to Elena about how the artifacts came to be in the British Museum and how the countries the items originally came from feel about that.

As the morning progressed, the museum got more and more crowded. This was as close as Jeff could get to the Rosetta Stone without taking out some school kids.

We figured that was our cue to leave and find some lunch. We continued our quest for interestingly named pubs and ended up at Shakespeare's Head.

It was the kind of place where you order at the bar and give them your table number. The food was meh, but they had our favorite beer on tap, so we hung out for a while.

After lunch, I wanted to take the family by Covent Gardens, because it's such a cool space, but the weather was getting hotter, and it was crowded, and Jeff and Elena especially were getting tired and grouchy, so they agreed to one picture, and then we headed back to the hotel.

You can't stay grouchy on a walk through London though. There's always something fun to spot.

We had a quiet afternoon to get ready for our big night out, Elena's first professional musical, The Lion King.

It's a great show, and the costumes and staging did not disappoint. We thought that caliber of performer was slightly better in New York, but everyone enjoyed it, so we called it a win. Elena also loved our pre-theater meal at a restaurant that was basically a U.S. diner, so it was very much Elena's night out.

For our final full day in London, we headed west, the one direction we hadn't walked yet. Hyde Park was to our west, and we walked by a World War II memorial and the Wellington Arch on our way to the entrance.

There were several people riding horses along the dirt path, and we discovered that Vivian is repulsed by the sight of people on horseback. Who knew? Luckily, we weren't interested in riding. We were heading for the rose garden, which lived up to its name with not only beautiful roses, but lots of other beautiful flowers too.

The girls very much enjoyed their role as garden admirers. 

And there was much to admire . . .

We really enjoyed the flowers.

As we got to the end of the rose garden, we spotted a pair of green birds. They looked like escaped pets rather than native inhabitants of the park. Jeff had a lot of fun catching pictures of them.

In the next part of the park, we found a giant tree cave. Jeff and Elena went in to explore.

Eventually, they came back out and insisted that Vivian and I had to come in with them. They theorized that we could live inside quite comfortably if we needed to. 

A little ways farther, and we got to The Serpentine, the lake in the middle of Hyde Park. There's lots of boating, and there's a place where you can swim, but what we noticed right off was all the birds. 

While the birds were lovely, there was so much bird poop everywhere that it didn't strike me as a great place to go for a swim. The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, seemed like a better option. It was bird free and presented a series of cascading platforms that children were happily splashing through.

Our final goal was the Natural History museum, so we turned south and passed by the Albert Memorial which is featured in Downton Abbey, so Jeff had to take a picture. 

We also walked by the Royal Geographical Society and tipped our hat to Shackleton as we passed.

As we got closer to the Natural History Museum, we could see a crowd of people outside of it, even larger than the crowd outside the British Museum the day before. Between us and the crowd was the Science Museum with not a single person in front of it. We made an executive decision. I got on my phone, got us timed entry tickets to the Science museum, and in we went! It turned out to be a great choice. There was hardly anyone there, and there were lots of interesting exhibits to look through. We started in the aviation hall. 

Viv and I enjoyed a quick walk through, but Jeff and Elena were dedicated to fully tracing the history of human flight.

Once we finally dragged them away, we were able to look at a few more exhibits before heading out to meet my parents for lunch at the Churchill Arms.

They had gotten back to London that morning, and one of our friends had insisted that we had to go to the Thai restaurant that was at the back of the pub. While it seemed like a strange combination, the place was packed and the food was delicious.

We were just a few blocks from Portobello Road, and since all the ladies are Bedknobs and Broomsticks fans, we all had the Portobello Road song stuck in our heads and had to go for a visit. 

It was Saturday, so the flea market was in full swing. My mom was in her element, but Jeff took one look down the crowded road and started to back away.

The girls decided to stay with my parents, and Jeff and I decided to walk back through Kensington Gardens.

Our original plan was to walk for a bit and then take a taxi, but the taxi we managed to flag down said he wasn't going to go that way because there was a protest and the street was closed. We were a bit discouraged, but decided to just keep walking. We ended up walking about three miles back to the hotel, but the silver lining was that we found the Peter Pan statue, which is also featured in Downton Abbey and which brought Jeff joy.

He also got some cool bird pictures as we walked back along the Serpentine.

When we got back, my parents and the girls were already there. They had found a more intrepid taxi driver than us, and he had found a way around the road closure and gotten them to the hotel.

The adults had a drink in the lovely hotel lobby bar, and then my parents took Elena out for mussels, while Jeff, Vivian, and I had the club dinner offerings and finished packing.

The next morning, we filled up on our last delicious hotel breakfast, and then began the process of getting all of our suitcases down to the lobby. The hotel staff were wonderful, and between them and the driver, they were able to fit all of our bags into the back of the van which was going to take us to Southhampton. It was impressive.

With all our things secured, the six of us got in the van and headed off to the second half of our epic journey home, the Queen Mary 2, which would sail us across the Atlantic and back to the U.S..

London: Parks, The Tower, and the Theatre

We had three days of sightseeing left in London, and the weather was incredibly kind to us. It was a bit chilly in the mornings, but it was sunny and warm for most of the three days. We took advantage of the weather and our central location and explored all over the city.

Our hotel was near the Green Park, so on Thursday we walked out of the hotel and through the park towards Buckingham Palace. While the name Green Park doesn't sound very original, it is very accurate. There was green everywhere, and the sun coming through the trees made for a great start to our day.

When we got to Buckingham Palace, there was hardly anyone around, so we had lots of time and space for pictures. The sun being in our face didn't help, so we had to move around a bit to not all be blinded.

The sun started to warm us up too as we took more pictures.

Once we had our fill of pictures, we crossed another street to get to St. James's Park. It was still pretty early in the morning, so there weren't a lot of people, but there were a lot of birds.

Jeff and Elena had fun trying to match the birds to their pictures and names.

But Elena was displeased with the pigeons, and kept trying to chase them off while yelling, you are not a featured bird!

Aside from Elena and her assault on the pigeons, it was a very peaceful park.

We even got to see a group of pelicans, which we hadn't been expecting.

One of my favorite things about St. James's Park is that it's nestled in the middle of the city, so you can see famous landmarks, but you're apart from them.

We even found a little cottage with a vegetable garden, definitely the stuff of fairy tales.

We decided this park was a family favorite.

We emerged from the park near a bunch of government buildings, and we found a stereotypical phone box for a great "London" shot.

Our goal was to get to the river and see about getting a boat up to the Tower, so we walked along taking pictures as we went by Westminster.

Jeff had fun playing with the morning sun.

We didn't go in, because you had to pay for the tickets in advance, and there were huge crowds of people. We finally made it down to the docks.

The first boat wasn't until 10, so we walked back up to find a place to hang out until then. It's all government buildings, so the first thing we found open was a Starbucks. The girls sat inside, and Jeff and I sat outside to continue enjoying the fabulous weather.

Eventually, we headed back to the dock and found our boat.

We had a live commentary from one of the crew, and he explained that we were going to go across the river to pick people up before we headed towards the Tower. Jeff played with the sun again while we waited for more people to board.

The tide and the time cooperated, so we went back under the bridge to take another look at parliament.

Then we headed up the river. We went under several bridges, and he explained about them as we went, including the ones that aren't in use anymore.

London is such a cool combination of old and new.

We sailed by Shakespeare's Globe, which is a recreation of the original theater. We didn't get to it this trip, so it is definitely on our list for next time.

We went under the most recent iteration of London Bridge, not to be confused with its more famous cousin Tower Bridge which we sailed by shortly afterwards.

Our awesome crew checked the times when the drawbridge would be lifted, so we knew when to be on the lookout. Then, they dropped us off at the pier, not at Traitor's Gate, which we appreciated.

We got in just as one of the Beefeaters was about to start his tour of the Tower. We joined the crowd of people and enjoyed his humor and his knowledge of the Tower's history.

After about 20-30 minutes though, we were all getting a bit tired of standing around in a huge crowd in the sun, so we abandoned our tour guide and went up into the rooms along the walls.

It was interesting to see how people had lived in the Tower when it was a primary royal castle.

The stained glass in the private chapel was lovely, 

as was the view out the regular windows.

We realized this would be a perfect place to watch the drawbridge open, so we did a bit more exploring and then came back to claim our positions.

We had a great view, 

but we were a bit disappointed when we realized that all the hoopla was for a little boat that happened to have a big mast it wasn't even using!

Jeff's theory was that that was the whole point of the boat tour, to get the drawbridge to open, and that's what people paid for. He's probably right. Still, we got to see it and explore the Tower grounds, so that was fun.

We even saw a raven hopping around. They are big! And not really afraid of all the people.

We didn't go into the Crown Jewels exhibit, because, again, huge line, but we enjoyed our Tower visit very much nevertheless. 

Of course, the exit was through the gift shop. We couldn't resist a magnet, and Elena fell in love with the stuffed corgis, so we caved and got her one. She wanted to name it after one of the queen's corgis, so we looked up all their names, and she picked Jolly.

For lunch, we walked a bit to find the pub called The Hung Drawn and Quartered, one of the lovely punishments on offer at the Tower back in the day.

We went full British fare to fill up after our morning walking around London.

Jeff and I split the beef and ale pie which the menu said was for two, but was really for at least four. We couldn't finish it, but what we did eat, was delicious. 

That evening was a low-key one for Jeff and Elena. They did dinner at the club and relaxed in the room, but Vivian and I had plans to go to the theatre. We walked from the hotel to the theater district, which was about a mile away. We went through Trafalgar Square where they were setting up for the theater festival that coming weekend.

After a yummy dinner, we still had time, so we walked around the neighborhood a bit. I absolutely loved all the pedestrian streets and little shops. It's a good thing that most of them were closed, or I might have been tempted to buy something.

Finally, we made our way back to the Duke of York theater and our show for the night. 

I'll admit, I was skeptical about the journey from Spider Man to Romeo, but Tom Holland did an excellent job, and the way the entire production was put together and staged was really interesting, so I enjoyed it. One thing we were surprised to learn though, was that having food and drink at your seat is totally normal, which is not the case in the U.S., so the whole row of ladies next to us each had a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other, and they were drinking away throughout the show.

Vivian's favorite part though was at the end, when the cast was bowing and the lights were up. We were close enough to the stage that Tom Holland made eye contact with her and smiled. She was semi-hysterical for the whole evening. She insisted that we wait outside until he came out, so we did, along with at least a hundred other enthusiastic young women. Vivian was laughing and crying, and I wasn't entirely sure if taking her to see it was a good parenting move or not, but she assured me that she was happy, so I'll believe her and be glad that we went. It was a big end to a full day.