"Her Majesty The Queen" (Tues July 3)

We seem to have finally recovered from our jet lag.  Everyone was up and going at a respectable time today.   We spent most of the day at Buckingham Palace.

We started the day at the Royal Mews (stable/ garage).   

The Golden Carriage.  King George III was riding around in this gilded thing while George Washington was chopping down the cherry tree.  Scott was a bit underwhelmed overall, but even he had to admit--not everyone has one of these in the garage. 

Next we headed to the Victoria Memorial Roundabout for the obligatory changing of the guard.

Break in adjacent St. James Park.  Waffles for lunch--who knew it was such a good idea! 

Aftyerwards we headed to the "Queen's Gallery."  This is where she showcases a rotating display of royal treasures.  (Yes, you pay to see the stuff bought at taxpayer expense--and there is a gift shop too!   I wonder why we revolted?!)

On display this season was the Queen's collection of Leonardo DaVinci's anatomic drawings.   Apparently the royal family bought them in 1690 and left them in a drawer in the castle until 1900.  Meanwhile, Vesalius became the leading anatomist of the Renaissance and DaVinci's work in anatomy remained largely unknown (...thank you House of Windsor).

Leonardo's views of the skull.  The detail is amazing and the accuracy is 98%+ of our current knowledge .  And he did all this with a pen and quill!

Davis demonstrates Leonardo's Law of Human Symmetry (your height is equal to your arm span).

 At this point we headed back to the Palace itself for the tour.  It was surprisingly extensive and took a couple of hours to go through.  It was very well organized and the boys had a great kid's audio guide that was actually better than the adult version.  We did get stuck in an in-palace traffic jam when we got to the point where some of the Royal Diamonds, including the Queen's "working crown," were on display.  Afterwards, we enjoyed a late afternoon tea on Her Majesty's back porch.

Boys had hot chocolate.  Scott had tea.  Crumpets were unavailable.

In the Queen's "back yard" (30 Acre Private Gardens).  There was a gift shop on the right just out of the picture and a concession stand just down the garden path (I am not kidding).  Scott was glad to see that Capitalism was still alive and well in the British Isles.

Back on the Outside of the Garden Wall.  Apparently they're not too keen on you getting in there under normal circumstances.

 We still had some daylight so we headed back to Trafalgar Square and spent an hour whirring through the National Gallery.  What an astounding collection of beautiful work.  You could spend days and days in there.  We saw a few great things, including Van Gogh's Sunflowers, before being shoo'ed out at closing time.

Big Ben from Trafalgar Square.  What's the fuss about such a tiny little clock?

Every tourist climbs the lions at the monument to Lord Nelson

We enjoyed a tasty dinner at the creepy sounding, but very nice, "Cafe Crypt" in the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, on Trafalgar Square.

A More Reasonable Day (Mon July 2)

Their whirlwind world tour finally caught up with them and the Three Mighty Men were not so mighty this morning.  Scott said "let them sleep"--they finally crawled from their beds around 11:30 AM.  Since this was just in time to get lunch our itinerary was somewhat limited today.

After lunch we headed for a river cruise on the Thames.  Our colorful captain gave quite the commentary along the way.  We disembarked at Westminster. 

Back for more at Westminster Abbey.

 Today we went back to Westminster Abbey for the full tourist tour.  It was fantastic...worth every pence!   We wish that everyone had the opportunity to make this visit once in their lifetime.  It's just astounding to stand on the spot where kings and queens have been crowned for 800 or so years.  The place is surprisingly accessible.  You can walk right up and touch most stuff...even though you feel you shouldn't!   It was astoundingly beautiful and it is just awesome to see all that history you've read about all your life "in reality" there in front of you.  There is no photography allowed inside--but we think that might be good--everyone was engaged in soaking up the experience instead of framing their next shot.  Scott would have stayed in there 2 more hours but we ended up being gently shooed out in time for the start of the 5 pm service.  This was enough time for the boys, who were just about done by then anyway.

Westminster Abbey--10 Thumbs Up!

 We briefly visited the Wellington Arch.  We heard that you could climb to the top and peek into the Queen's private garden, but it was closed by the time we arrived.

Wellington Arch

 We headed to the nearby Harrod's Department Store, purportedly the largest or one of the largest in the world.  Think Neiman-Marcus on steroids--upscale to the max.  It is slightly ironic that we are staying in the fashionable West End and visiting Harrod's with all the beautiful people.  Can you say "stick out like a sore thumb?"

At Harrod's.  We were pleased to find that this stuffed gorilla toy will only set you back $1800.

The Princess Diana Memorial at the bottom of the Egyptian escalator.  You will recall that the Owner's son was Diana's "friend" at the time of her death.

The Egyptian Escalator

Logan checking out the fresh rabbit in the food section.

We bought some very sophisticated cupcakes and headed home.  We picked up dinner at a local place which shall remain nameless (all of you have eaten there), ate our decadent desert, and settled in to bed.   The Three Musketeers, however, were not interested in an early bedtime and ended up being chased back to bed after midnight--looks like the yo-yo circadian cycle continues!

A Whirlwind Sunday (Sun July 1)

We had grand plans to arise early Sunday morning, but a red-eye flight took its (delayed) toll on some members of the family.  Scott got up early and went for a slow run past Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, the Thames River, the London Eye, Parliament /Big Ben/ Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and Sotheby's Auction House.  He returned home and announced that he had seen it all and was ready to move on to the next city!

We had to resort to McDonald's for breakfast since absolutely nothing (and I mean nothing) is open Sunday morning in London.  According to Scott, that is because most Londoners are headed home to bed around 6 AM.  Once we did get everyone going we rode one of those hop-on, hop-off bus tours.  We know they are a little cheesy, but it was a good way to get a general overview of the big sights.

Aboard the open double decker bus tour

We got off the bus and headed toward some of the big sites.

Big Ben and Houses of Parliament in the background.

We had planned to attend church at Westminster Abbey, but assumed we wouldn't be let in when we arrived late.  However, they let slackers sit in the Nave.  Fortunately we didn't miss too much of the service.  It was quite  an experience to attend church with Isaac Newton several rows in front and Dr. David Livingston ("Doctor Livingston I presume") in the row next to you.   Besides, Winston Churchill had a worse seat than we did, he sits way in the back.

Westminster Abbey, on this site since 960 AD and in its present form since 1300ish.

Back on the bus, Gus.

We descended from the sublime back down to the regular Hubbub of London's traffic and seemingly continual scattered showers.  Of note, we did score some primo seats under the covered section of the upper section.

Regents Street, a couple of blocks from our apartment

Although we've been to "that thar big city" more than once, London seems more bustling and crowded than most.  We decided that they need to replace the "Please Mind the Gap" announcement on the subway with one that says "Today's Pedestrian Death Toll is _______."

The wavy traffic lines mean "please swerve wildly at this point"

We got in a little more sight seeing along the way:

Tower Bridge with its special 2012 olympic rings.  
You can see the Olympic preparations in place everywhere.
We are glad we will not be here for them--you can tell it's going to be a madhouse!

Davis at a playground adjacent to the Tower of London.
Gravity just hasn't been the same in London since Newton died.

"King of the Hill."  At the adjacent Tower of London,
they had more permanent ways of determining who would be King!

At the Apple Store.  The boys could only take so much of this history stuff.
They had all the iPads you could ever want!

We continued our "gastronomic adventures" with a trip to Subway.   We know!  We know!   But you try eating out all the time with three kids.  Besides it was still a cultural experience--did you know they don't have the "Cold Cut Combo" in the UK?!  Gasp!

All Saints Church, just down the street from our "flat."   We wandered up here because it looked interesting.  We arrived as the Sunday evening service was in progress.  We came on in, but we had to sit in the the telecasted annex in the Basement with the rest of the late slackers (late for church 2X in one day....we're getting a reputation!).  We were expecting about 30 people in there but found a vibrant congregation of a few thousand.  ("The Lord reserves his thousands").

On the Tower Bridge looking West along the Thames.  The Tower of London is at our right.

Everlie had been very diligent in her preparations and got us tickets to the "Ceremony of the Keys" at the Tower of London.  This is the nightly ceremony where the Yeoman Warders (aka "Beefeaters") lock the place up.  Apparently they've been doing this every night for 700 years.  About 50 people get to attend every night.

The Tower of London just before Sunset

The Yeoman Warder letting us in.

We had a long day and got back pretty late.  Traveling as a family is always a bit challenging, but we're only marginally irritable.  Each one of us has their challenges:  Everlie and Logan are both nursing colds, Davis and Ethan intermittently stare off into space due to lack of sleep, and Scott, well he's just like he always is!  Fortunately, we are holding together OK but look forward to getting everyone well and over the jet lag.

Logan down for the count.

Not Usual

This morning as we were getting ready Davis made an observation. He said, "Mom, do you notice anything not usual about this toilet?". His brothers quickly told him he should have said "unusual". But I think it is a good term & it made me think of some of the other "not usual" things in the apartment.

Below are just a few of those things this app will not allow me to caption or order photos but they include: lights witch, washer/dryer combo, strange shaped toilet with flush button on the wall, electrical outlets.

Saturday in Review

The area where we are staying is all decked out with buntings crossing the major streets.

It is 9:26 PM here in London and we are settled in for the night.  Hopefully I can stay awake long enough to recap some of our events so far.  It has been hard getting over jet lag, suffering with a terrible cold and non-stop touring to write as much as I would like about our adventures.  Maybe I can catch up a little tonight (until the Benedryl that I just took kicks in!).

We arrived on Saturday afternoon.  We took a taxi to our apartment.  We are in the Mayfair neighborhood which is a very trendy area with lots of stores.  If we were big shoppers, this would be a great place to be.  Unfortunately, I have not seen any yard sales yet so I haven't bought anything!  This photo is looking up to our apartment.  It is the two windows on the top floor.  The bottom floor is a Subway restaurant.

Our apartment is the very top with the two windows.

After a walk of just a couple of minutes, we were at Hamleys toy store.  This location of Hamleys is the world's largest toy store.  This location opened in 1881!  It was VERY crowded and VERY loud.

One of the neat things about this store was that you could try out a lot of the toys.  The salespeople were very knowledgeable and eager to let you try things out.   These remote control cars would drive anywhere and never get stuck.

The top floor had a huge Lego selection and many things made out of Legos.  We were able to have our photo with the Royal family and with the Queen:

After Hamleys, we got a bite to eat.  Scott got a traditional English breakfast, the boys had ham crepes and chocolate/banana crepes, and I had a jacket (baked) potato.

Then we found a real phone booth and had the obligatory photo inside:

We then walked to a nearby park where the boys played Hide and Go Seek.  You can see we were still celebrating Davis' birthday.  Since he jumped time zones, he got to have an extra 5 hours of being the birthday boy!

We then walked to Hyde Park.  Part of it was closed off as they are making preparations for a  concert venue for the Olympics.  But we still found a tree to climb and a playground to play in.

By then we war so totally exhausted that we had to take a taxi back to the apartment and collapse.  I think we packing in a good bit of fun for only a half day in a new continent!

Exhausted!

We have had quite a day! Highlights include worship service at Westminster abbey, bus tour of London, worship service at All Souls Church (yes, we went to church two times in one day while on vacation and both were fantastic!) and the Ceremony of the Keys at the London Tower. It is midnight now so we will give a full recap later.