Europe Trip: London

I've decided to share about our Europe trip one city at a time. So, hopefully, I will post each day for the next (let me count...) 8 days. I will try to limit the number of pictures and words I use to keep it interesting.

Our first stop was London, after successfully saying goodbye to the kids, leaving a messy house for my parents to clean up, almost losing my boarding pass (it was totally a scene out of the Amazing Race...there were many of those on our trip where I would think "We could totally win the Amazing Race" and other times where I was embarrassed imagining watching us) and suffering through a long airplane flight with a pretty bad cold. Jeremy is the master at working the system, so we got upgraded seats without having to pay for them and I got to select 2 mediocre movies to watch on my own personal screen.

Many people acted surprised when I told them that we didn't have everything planned out and that we hadn't made very many reservations (my mom's exact words were "that is the most brief itenerary I have ever seen"), but that's just how we roll. Well, actually, that's how Jeremy rolls and I have learned to roll with him. We know it means there will be some frustration when we have a hard time finding a room or are tired, but we also know that the trade-off is more spontaneity and freedom. More about how that worked out later (i.e. Munich).

We did have reservations for our time in London. In America, a reservation means that the people at the hotel actually hold the room for you, in England, it seems, reservation means that you will think you have a room and will navigate the subway system to get to said room and you might just run into a whole section of subway that is under construction so you have to walk and walk and walk but it's okay because your room is waiting for you and then you walk some more because the numbers on each side of the street don't actually coordinate with each other like they do in America and then you get to the hotel and they look at you cross-eyed and say they don't have a room for you (like every situation in life, there is actually a Seinfeld episode about this). Yes, this actually happened. So then we had to take a taxi across town to another hotel which ended up being great and cheaper...well, I guess at that point, we were easy to please because they gave us a room in the attic that looked like this:

Imagine Chris Farley singing "Big guy in a little ro-om"

We lost most of our sight-seeing time that day with the hotel mix-up, but we did drag our tired (and sick) selves out to SoHo and Picadilly Circus that evening.

We experienced "full English breakfast" (which we became very familiar with for the next 8 days) which is bacon (sort of) sausage, eggs, toast, tea, coffee, juice, beans (huh?), tomatoes, and various dairy products and cold cereal (which was always offered as sort of an appetizer while they cooked your breakfast). It sounds like a buffet, but it wasn't...all of those things were actually served directly to us. It worked out okay because jet lag made us hungriest in the morning and our budget made us fill up at breakfast to save money later in the day. We may or may not have smuggled various bread products out of dining rooms in our jacket pockets.

We headed out (by city bus...the subway (tube) was closed all weekend...it was a proud "Amazing Race Moment" (A.R.M.) to see how well we handled that) to catch the double decker bus to tour around London (that's when Jeremy rolled with ME). I was holding back from trying to rush to see the changing of the guard because it seemed so touristy and stressful to try to make it but I secretly really wanted to. We managed to get on a bus (with a Rick Steves' guidebook discount) and, following Rick Steves' advice, got to Buckingham palace and found a great spot to see all the strange festivities. I felt a little choked up when I saw everything--the "wow, I'm in England" moment Tim Darby told us about. I don't understand a lot of why the British do some of the things they do, but tradition is obviously very important to them (If you have seen the changing of the guard, you will understand what I am talking about...like, for example, can someone tell me why they are called "beefeaters"?)

The Original Bus Tour

I often found myself playing cheesy "majestic" music in my head when I would see stuff like this ("du-um dum dum dum, dum dum dudumdum dum") or imagining the clip-clop of horses pulling a royal carriage up to the front gate

Here I am enjoying the moment and holding onto my purse for fear of the Artful Dodger

The thrill of the changing of the guard (or the thrill of seeing every tourist in London in the same place at the same time holding up their arms in a strange international salute)

The statue of Queen Victoria (where we stood to watch the events), depicted in the act of nursing one of her babies...can you imagine if someone in the U.S. wanted to put up a statue of a woman politician nursing?!

Our next stop was Hyde Park for sandwiches and Speaker's Corner. Speaker's Corner is a place that has a long tradition of people standing on their "soapboxes" (literally) and shouting about hot topics of the day. We saw a Messianic Jew singing, an American "Cowboy" ranting and raving about Islam and Christianity, and old woman ranting about Islam, a black man preaching Christianity, and some Muslims preaching Islam. This tension seemed to be a reoccurring one during our whole trip and with travel warnings in effect in the countries we visited, I often felt a little uneasy. The climate seems to be changing in Europe, and not in the ways our politicians are busy talking about. That's all I'm going to say about that.

We continued to ride the bus around in the rain (we stayed on the top level despite the rainy weather) and learned about the plague of 1665 (which was wrongly blamed on cats and dogs, therefore leading to the required extermination of them, which in turn led to a proliferation of the actual culprits--rats), the fire of 1666 which destroyed 80% of London (and effectively stopped the plague as well), stopped in at the British Museum (a lot of old knick knacks and water jugs, we wish we had gone to the British Library instead), passed by the Tower of London and wished we had gone there, and made it to Westminster Abbey in time for the 5:45 organ recital (a clever way of getting inside without paying--thanks for the tip, Rick).

One of my goals on the trip was to hear bagpipes being played...I didn't imagine it would happen the first day! My other goal was to see Morris dancing, but that never happened.

I learned why people love English Gardens, and it wasn't even summertime!

Whenever I saw slummy areas, I imagined Oliver Twist and Nancy and Bill Sykes living there.

British Museum

Westminster Abbey (no photos allowed in most cathedrals, but donations gladly accepted)

We finished the night sharing a plate of delicious Thai food with locals and then fell into bed in our little attic exhausted and glad to finally be warm after all day in the rain!

Next stop: Cambridge--Tension, Resolution, a Cemetery, and Shoes