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..
