Friday 10 July 2009

May Trips - London Week

Well, to begin wrapping up this blog, I do have to tell a little about our trips in May. After that, maybe only a few short posts and I think that will have to be it.

Bree flew over on Saturday and we spent the afternoon gathering groceries for the following week and hanging out with the Picketts and playing games. Sunday was church, and then Monday morning Bree and I prepared to go to London. We had train tickets from Corby and because Bill needed the car, we had to take a taxi. I left calling the taxi a bit too late and when he
arrived I told him we needed to rush to the train station. He was very obliging, zipping us around the town roundabouts at a rapid pace. The train was sitting in the station when we arrived and the taxi driver gave him a little honk and we raced out to get on the train - just in the nick of time! Not a great way to start off, sigh.


First in London that day was the Tower of London, a tour well worth it. This was my second time there, as I had been with the Kruppas in December. The display inside the White Palace had changed so that was very diverting. The Crown Jewels were as stunning as ever and all in all it was a great tour.

After leaving there, we headed down to the riverside to walk up to the Tower Bridge, the idea being to pay to go through the upper level of it. When we arrived there though, the upper level was closed, so we continued across and walked what seemed to my tired feet and aching back like an eternity of streets until we arrived at the next subway station. There at the
Tower station, we became confused by which turnstyles were for train and which were for subway. After some trial and error we eventually got the correct ones and went on down to the London Eye.

Once there, I decided to use my time wisely by laying down there on the grassy park and having a snack. Bree whipped through a very short line and was up the Eye in no time, taking her fifty million pictures of the view. After this we headed over to Harrods to gawk at the hugest department store, the finest of goods, and the huge rooms of makeup. We spent a while going through the food halls and chose a few small items for our dinner. We took these back to St. Pancras and once on our train home, we ate.


Tuesday, Bill and Philip joined us for another day down to London. The bulk of this day was spent doing the Original Tour - the double decker bus - of the city. I was pretty happy to do this because it involved a lot of sitting. It is also a really great way to see a huge amount of the city that otherwise is difficult to do in a short time.
We got off at Westminster, trying to get into the Abbey, but there was a huge long unmoving line, most likely due
to the Indians striking in Parliament Square. At this point we decided to get on the river boat tour, which was also a nice way to see a lot of things from a different view. We landed at the Tower of London, where we settled in for a serious caffiene fix at Starbucks. After this it was back on the bus
until we got to Buckingham Palace. There wasn't a ton to do at Buckingham because the palace was closed, and there were no fuzzy-hatted guards for us to gawk at outside the gates, so after getting our pictures and loads of tree pollen in our eyes from the wind, we finished our bus tour. We then had a nice meal at Texas Embassy, stopped in at some souveneir shops, and took the train back home.

Wednesday, we were off to tour Burghley House, an Elizabethan era mansion. This is very close to us - about 30 minutes, so it made for a shorter day. The house is very elaborate inside - painted everywhere and you get a bit of a crick in the neck looking up at the ceilings. The gardens are fairly pretty - and someone has an obsession with modern sculpture, as it is all over the gardens. Some of it is just weird and stupid but some was fairly neat and interesting. The Garden of Surprises is full of water features and would be much more suited to a hot summer day, of which that day was not.


Thursday we went back for one last day in London and started off at St. Paul's Cathedral. The interior ceilings are somewhat like a wedding cake - very white and fancy in decorations. I found this cathedral to be very pretty versus Westminster which is somewhat stern and impressive.
The dome makes St. Paul's distinctive and we determined to go up all the steps to the top. In the whispering gallery, the first level you reach in the dome, we sat for a few minutes to recuperate, got in trouble for getting up on the benches, and then decided to head for the top. The very top was closed off, but we made it to the upper level that is outside. After our trek down all the spiral stairs, my legs were shaking, so we headed for Starbucks to remedy that. The rest of the afternoon was spent at the various exhibitions in the British Museum, followed by a Wagamama's meal, and then the trip home.

Saturday, we took all the kids with us over to Warrick Castle - an original William the Conqueror castle, but now owned and operated by Madame Toussad's. The various rooms are adorned with period decorations and wax figures. The castle grounds are very neat and the tall towers are very impressive.
Once again, it was many hundreds of spiral stairs to tour around the towers and walls. Our day there was enjoyable, if not off-and-on rainy.

So thus finished our brief tour of England - hitting London, a palace, and a castle, all in one week. Then we turned our attention to laundry and packing for Paris!

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