Pictures:

May 23

May 24

May 25

May 26

Plan: If there is anything we still want to see in Edinburgh, we will do that in the morning, then take the train to London. I have a whole list of things see in London, but I don't yet have individual days planned yet.

What Actually Happened (per Christine): We got up this morning (a bit late), packed up and raced across the street to the train station to get on the 9:30am train to get us to London by a little after 2pm. We made the train, but there was a delay due to some vehicle obstructing the rails, so we sat stopped on the tracks for about 45minutes. It is currently 2:30pm and we are almost to London, though they think we may have another delay due to congestion before we get to King's Cross Station. Hopefully we will get there in time to check into our hotel and then go to the National Gallery tonight.

(I wrote that last part on the train on the way to London). We ended up not getting into London until about 3:45pm and by the time we got our London Underground passes, took the tube to our station and found and checked into the Cherry Court Hotel, it was after 5pm. We couldn't go to the National Gallery, so we decided to go on a double-decker bus tour of the city, but we found out that it finished up at 5pm, too. So, we decided to go find a laundromat and do laundry. The laundromat was just like the ones in the states; it cost 3pounds to wash, and 20pence to dry for 5minutes.. After finishing the laundry, we walked around a little (to Hyde Park), practiced riding the tube, went to London bridge (not the original in Arizona) and saw Big Ben and the houses of Parliament. We ended up eating at Pizza Hut, since Pizza Hut had been a landmark at every British city we'd been in. Pizza Hut always seems to sit at a crossroads near our hotel, so we know to just "find the Pizza Hut." It was actually a really nice place, with a salad and ice cream bar and pasta and wine on the menu and it had servers. The server was pretty good, but he was talking in another language to a couple near us and Mike and I couldn't figure out if it was Spanish or Italian, so we asked. It was spanish. We later heard him say something like "Italiano" to the other couple and jerk his thumb our way, so I guess he was laughing at the stupido Americans, or else we are just being paranoid. He then got into a huge conversation with that couple and wouldn't bring us our bill; we had to wait for like 45minutes for him to finish. I think it's the first time in my life that I didn't tip the full amount I should at a restaurant.

Because we had waited around so long in Pizza Hut, we missed the local Internet cafe, as it was now closed. We went to the Victoria train station to get wi-fi and upload the last updates. Then we went back to our room. A word about our room at the Cherry Court Hotel: The hotel was very nice and certainly one of the cheapest in London and the location was fantastic - very close to Victoria tube station. But it was the smallest room on the trip yet! I think it was smaller than the cell in the Victorian prison display in Edinburgh Castle. There was a double bed in the corner, pressed up against two walls. On the one side of the bed, was just room enough for the two of us to stand abreast (if we squished). At the foot of the bed, was just barely room enough for one person to walk; it was easiest to crawl over the bed to get to the tiny bathroom, with just enough room for a toilet, very tiny sink, and shower. No room for a swinging bathroom door; it had a sliding door. We had to pack everything up in our suitcases and zip them up every night because there was no place to store the suitcases lying down. . The one wall had a mirror on the entire wall to make the room not feel like so crowded. It was kinda funny and a definite adventure. And so we ended our first day in London. I am certainly glad that we went to Bath first and saved London for later; it is kinda overwhelming here, but at the same time, it looks like it would be a fun place to live.

Plan: Sights to see in London include: Westminster Abbey (with Newton's Grave), King's Cross Station (Platform 9 3/4), Leadenhall Market (The Leaky Cauldron), Tower of London, British Museum, National Gallery, British Library, changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, Shakespeare's Globe, Hyde Park, Covent Garden and anything else we can/want to fit in!

What really happened (per Christine): Our second day in London started out pretty early. We went out to catch a hop-on-hop-off double decker bus tour of the city. It was very cold (I was never so glad for both coats, gloves and long johns). It also was raining nastily (I thought at one point it looked a bit snowish). We planned to sit out in the open on the top deck, but it was too cold, so we sat right under the very edge of the half roof on the top deck. We started out on one bus, but Mike didn't like the guide (too dry), so we got off the bus on Regent's street and went and ate breakfast and tea to warm up. Then we got back on another bus and this guy was pretty entertaining. We went almost a whole circuit (about 2 hours) although it ended up taking about 45min longer because of bad traffic.

It was about 12:30pm when we got off the bus and headed for the British Museum. Britain is really expensive, but most of the cool museums in London itself are free, including the British Museum. Mike and I saw the Rosetta Stone and had lot of fun taking pictures of the Egyptian antiquities. Mike found the hieroglyphics for "cat" in an explanation about the Rosetta stone, so we spent a bunch of time looking to see if we could find the word for cat on one of the statues or carvings, but we never did find any. We then thought we should maybe get an audio guide for the rest of the museum and discovered that there was a whole floor we didn't know was there.....the place is absolutely vast! The British Museum has over 5 million items in its collection. Our audio guide tour took us to 50 highlights. We still couldn't finish that in 5 hours, while walking briskly through the rooms! We saw the Elgin marbles (the remains of the frieze from the Parthenon in Greece). I was amazed that it was in such a state of disrepair. I don't think there was a whole statue in there with its head and all its limbs. I don't know if it was due to vandalism or just the slow evolution of time and weather.

After the British Museum, we were a little museum-ed out, but were determined to hit the British Library, as they had evening hours. It was pretty cool. Nice and dark, quiet and serene after the craziness British Museum. And it only had one room of "treasures" to view. We saw the Magna Carta, very early bibles, illuminated bibles, Torahs, Qu'arans, and other holy works. We saw early printed documents from China and one of the Gutenburg bibles. We saw pages from da Vinci, Newton, Galileo, and Darwin. We saw a Shakespearean first folio, an original hand-illustrated version of Alice in Wonderland, original copies of Jane Austen's and the Bronte sisters' books. It was very cool. Steve would have been in heaven. Unfortunately, absolutely no photographs, so we can't show you any of it.

We then stopped off at St. Pancras train station to search for the "true" Platform 9 3/4. When JK Rowling first started writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, she was in Spain. she got her train stations mixed up. St. Pancras and Kings Cross Station are right across the street from each other. JK wrote about a platform between 9 and 10 and she was thinking about the one at St. Pancras, but accidentally wrote Kings Cross. When Warner Brothers did the filming, they filmed between platforms 4 and 5 at Kings Cross station (we have a picture of that from London day 1), but the real Platform 9 3/4 should be at St. Pancras. Unfortunately, they are doing a lot of construction there and I don't think that it looked like the right place at all, but Mike got a photo anyway.

We then decided to go try to find someplace to eat dinner. We got out the Rick Steve's guide and found someplace that was relatively near our hotel, since we were getting really tired out. Turns out, it wasn't all that near our hotel and when we got there and looked at the menu in the window (restaurants here have their menu in the window, so you know if you want to eat there), there was almost no non-meaty stuff. So, we wandered, looking for something better. And we wandered.....for probably an hour and a half. At some point, we were relatively lost (we had a map and our underground passes). We started just looking for anyplace with anything vegetarian, but places were starting to close. We finally found a place called Spaghetti House; it was an upscale italian chain that was open and we gratefully went in. We both had baked penned, garlic bread and salad. When we left, we realized that we were just around the corner from the train station by our hotel (we just hadn't realized it at the time). So we went there and collapsed into bed.

Plan: More sightseeing in London.

What really happened (per Christine): It was a much nicer day weather-wise. No rain and quite a bit warmer, probably in the 60s - one coat weather for me. :-)

We got up and headed to Westminster Abbey. No photography inside here, either, so no pictures for you. It was quite crowded and whoever had designed the place certainly didn't have hordes of tourists in mind :-) It was really quite pretty and we saw lots and lots of graves, including Mike's favorite, Isaac Newton (same memorial featured in the da Vinci code, so it was quite popular with the other tourists, too, though for a different reason than Mike). We also saw Shakespeare's memorial, Dickens' and Chaucer's grave, Lewis Carroll's grave (which was kinda funny, considering that that was just his pen name, not his real name), lots of king's and queen's graves and the grave of a guy who claimed to be 152 years old. We also saw the Coronation Chair, where the Stone of Scone (pronounced Skoon) used to be. There is still a hole for the Stone of Scone and it will be sent back down to England to be placed in the Coronation Chair for all future coronations, then sent back up to Edinburgh Castle when not in use.

After Westminster Abbey, we hurried over to the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. It wasn't particularly exciting. There was so many people, you really couldn't see much, except the bands marching down the street through the gates into the yard at Buckingham Palace. Apparently, they were doing a bunch of stuff in the courtyard there, but we couldn't see any of it. We waited around for about half an hour for them to come back out, but we got bored and decided to take off.

We then grabbed sandwiches and snacks and headed off for a picnic at Hyde Park. It was great! The weather was perfect, we sat by a waterfall on the Serpentine and we at our lunch. We had pigeons begging for food, but it is illegal to feed the pigeons in London, so we didn't, except maybe they liked our crumbs, because they kept hanging around. But then, we had the cutest squirrel come over and beg for food and we hadn't heard anything against feeding squirrels, so we gave it some apple bits and bread bits. He got really, really bold, at one point even climbing up my bag to try to get more food. I've never seen a squirrel that close up before, though Mike had a pet squirrel once, so it was not that new to him. We have some cute pictures of the squirrel.

After lunch, we went to the National Gallery. First we sat out front of the gallery in Trafalgar Square and watched all the people hanging out at the fountains. Then we went into the gallery. No photos here, either. Mike suggested that we hit the "modern" art first (1700-1900) and it turned out to be the best part of the museum. We saw Van Gogh's sunflowers and a really cool Van Gogh I had never seen before with 2 crabs. We saw a bunch of other impressionists, post-impressionists and the portrait painters of the 1700s, like Monet, Gaugin, Gainsbourough, Turner, Reynolds. Mike really liked one by Delacroix about the execution of Lady Jane Grey. He liked how everyone in the scene is really dramatic, except the executioner, who looks like he's just got to finish his job so he can go home. We got to take our time with our audio guides with that, then raced through the earlier art. I'm sorry; I guess I just don't appreciate dozens of medieval "Madonna and childs." I would rather see relatively realistic portraits. Mike said it would make a great drinking game to walk around with some wine and drink every time you saw Jesus. You wouldn't be able to walk after the 1200s.

Mike thinks that I am being too hard on him in the last paragraph, calling him an execution-loving, sacrilegious alcoholic. <grin> But I guess that make me one, too, because I just thought his comments were really funny.

After the gallery, we ate at a pub called Garrick's (after the famous actor, since the gallery is in the West End theatre district). It was pretty good food; we got nachos as an appetizer. I had a jacket potato (baked potato) with cheese and baked beans. Sounds like a weird combination, but pretty good. Mike had a jacket potato with fiesta chicken. I got my usual cider and now I even know it's name - Strongbow.

After dinner, we went back to our hotel and dropped off our day bags, then headed for Shakespeare's globe to see Pericles, the Prince of Tyre. I had never heard of this Shakespeare play before, but they had groundling tickets, so we decided to go ahead and go. We figured we could leave if it wasn't any good, since the tickets were only 5 pounds each. It turned out to be the highlight of London! The play was great! The actors were totally awesome and it was a combination of acting, singing, and acrobatics. They had modernized the play and they actors all wore modern clothes and used guns instead of swords, but they spoke the Shakespearean words. (kind of like Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet). The best part was how they acted using a minimalistic set, especially during this part when there was this big storm at sea. The actors used a two big poles together like a "V" for the bow of the boat, a gauzy "sail" and six ropes hanging from the theatre roof. They swayed the poles and sail to simulate the waves. Each of the sailor actors had hold of a rope, like they were working on the boat. One by one, they fell off the boat, and would swing on the ropes, swaying with the boat poles, so that it seemed like they were floating on the waves in the storm. My description here is inadequate for how cool it was! And being a groundling was very fun. We stood in the area around the stage; we could lean up on the stage and we had to get out of the way when actors were coming through. Sometimes actors would hand props to the groundlings and right after the intermission, the narrator guy asked the audience questions. The only disadvantage was that we weren't allowed to sit down throughout the three hour performance, except for intermission. Mike got blisters on his feet from standing around so long. After the play was over, we walked across the Millennium Bridge (a pedestrian bridge across the Thames) and caught the tube back to our hotel to collapse in exhaustion once again!

Plan: More sightseeing in London.

What really happened (per Christine): Our last day in London, we slept in fairly late from being so tired. The weather was mostly sunny; it only rained a little bit and it got quite warm in the afternoon. It was a raincoat/no coat kinda day.

The first stop was at the Tower of London. We got there at about 10:30am, when we figured most of the tourists would be checking out the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. We must have been at least partially right, because it wasn't very crowded. We went directly to see the Crown Jewels first. These were way more impressive than the Scottish crown jewels (except for the Stone of Scone). There were at least 5 different crowns, a bunch of scepters, orbs, rings, swords (the Swords of Temporal Justice, Mercy and one other one- don't they sound like magic swords from D&D?), and a whole lot of gold plated dinner wear, including a giant punchbowl you could practically take a bath in. Pretty cool, but, again, no pictures. They don't want people to learn their security setup. When we had gotten through the crown jewels, we went back to take a tour of the tower with a "Yeoman Warder", also known as a "Beefeater." Our tour group was huge, probably about 150 people, but our Yeoman Warder was really quite funny, taking us around and telling us about all the gruesome prisoners and executions in the tower. It was fewer than you would have thought - hundreds of "traitors" were imprisoned here, but only about 50 (<10%), were ever executed and only 6 or 7 were actually executed in the tower itself (considered a privilege, usually for has-been queens). The rest were beheaded on top of a hill outside the tower.

After the Tower of London, we went to Madame Tussaud's. I'm glad we went once, but I don't know that I'd go again, as it was kind of a rip-off. The tickets were 25pounds ($50) each and there was two big rooms of famous actors (one room recent actors and one room classic actors), then one room of political and religious figures, then the "chamber of horrors", which wasn't very scary, except when you think about how Madame Tussaud's started when she was assigned to make death masks from the heads of famous aristocrats that had been lopped off in the French Revolution, so those heads were probably pretty realistic, maybe even using the actual skulls. Ewwww. Then we went on a lame Disney-esque ride through a history of London; the only thing good about that was that we got to sit down. When it was over, it dumped us into a really bad gift shop. I was hoping that they would have some interesting stuff about how they made the wax figure, but there was nothing. At least we got a lot of really cute pictures there.

After Madame Tussaud's, we went to dinner at a place called Garfunkels, which we found out later was a chain and I think it was kind of the British equivalent of Denny's. The food was okay, we got an appetizer platter without the meaty stuff (though they forgot and had to fix it later); I got a salad bar and Mike got lemon chicken. When we first came in it was almost empty, but quickly filled up, especially with large parties loudly celebrating birthdays :-)

After dinner, we had tickets reserved to see Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap," the longest running play in London, like 54 years. The play was fun, especially because Mike kept trying to figure out "whodunit." (I remembered right away, but I wasn't saying anything!) We ended up falling into bed after another exhausting day.

May 23

May 24

May 25

May 26