London Part One

London was such a great time!  How could it not be?  The beginning of our London experience was a bit rough because we got stuck in Friday rush hour traffic.. oof.  Then we may have gotten lost.  After 2 hours of driving in slow, slow circles, we made it to the rental place to drop off the car.  Once we got to the flat we rented, we were in much better moods.  The flat was cute, very small, with many slanted ceilings in important rooms that being able to stand in would have been nice, but we did enjoy it.  Having our own place really made a difference!  We didn’t want to eat out at every meal, so we cooked a lot of dinners at home.  The flat was in a really cute neighborhood near Notting Hill. 

The first full day we went to Portobello Market, which was cool to see.  There were tons of vintage clothing stalls, cutesy house stuff, and good food.  Then we headed to the Big Ben/Westminster area to do a walking tour.  For the trip we bought a Rick Steves England guidebook which proved to be indispensable.   He put together these walking audiotour podcasts, which were amazing.  Basically we just walked his tour with our headphones blocking out the noises from the crowds and traffic.  He also had a lot of interesting facts that I never would have gotten otherwise.  Rick Steves podcasts = highly recommended!  The Westminster walk took us to Trafalgar Square, where we went to the National Museum.  Then we walked around Buckingham Palace and the parks and went home to cook dinner and watch Big Bang Theory (it is on ALL OF THE TIME). 

Mom engrossed in Rick's tour

The second day was a day full of Ricky’s audio tour podcasts.  We started at the British Library where we saw some pretty cool documents.  There were first records of the bible, Da Vinci’s science drawings, the Magna Carta, Jane Austen’s writing desk, Oscar Wilde’s notes, the Bronte sister’s letters, and then a Beatles exhibit.  It was pretty neat to see the evolution of writing and words and books.  And that sentence right there may be one of the nerdier ones I’ve written.  After the Library, we grabbed a cup of tea and headed to a park to eat lunch.  Incidentally, we ended up at the same park that we went through on the post- high school Europe trip, where we saw John Clease!  It was pretty cool to remember being there a few years ago.  We sat in the park and enjoyed people pigeon watching.  Thank goodness for the Stevester at the British Museum.  I enjoyed it way more than when we were there previously.  Emma and I just synched our podcasts and enjoyed his walking tour.  Like I said, it’s cool to hear things that you wouldn’t normally.  Especially with about a billion tour groups in your way.  

Day three began at the Tate Modern.  The last time we were there, we just played around in the kids exhibit on the bottom floor, so it was interesting to actually see the museum.  Which was just a bunch of modern art.  Then we did another of Stevie’s tours, the City Walk.  It took us through the “old London” which is now just a business district.  It was also where the Plague killed like half of London’s population and the Great Fire destroyed the city.  Pretty cool!  In the middle of our tour, we stopped at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the Evensong, which is basically an abbreviated service where a choir sings all of the prayers and psalms.  The church was beautiful and good old Rick had a podcast to tell us a bit about the church whilst waiting for the service to start.  Once it started, we got to sit in the important people’s section (I don’t know what that means either, but in relation to Princess Diana’s wedding, it was the main part of the aisle).  After the service we finished the walking tour on the London Bridge and headed to a pub for drinks and refuge from the wind.

Gringotts!