Day 6 - London

May 7, 2008

You may (or may not) have noticed that the days in the titles of each of the previous blog posts has been updated; yesterday, Jeremiah corrected me on which day we were actually on, so I thought I had better switch them now before it got much later. Hope it doesn't confuse you :)

Yesterday we got out much later than we were hoping (mainly because it took a while to finish my post but I wanted to get it done before we left). After the bus ride to the Tube station, we stopped at a little convenient store to pick up some water and some chocolate! I picked out a Galaxy Bar and a Flake bar. Now that I knew what Flake is, I wanted to try it and with ice cream (it you are still in the dark about this one, please see the comment I left to the post entitled "Day 3 - London (continued) ). I was very excited and just needed to find some ice cream.

We got on the Central line and got off at St. James Park Station (I don't think we transferred). We didn't have time to go to Westminster Abbey before the Changing of the Guards, so we went straight to Buckingham. We found our way to the park, which is very beautiful, but didn't stop to enjoy it much as we were trying to make it to the gates before the ceremony started. When we got there, it was very crowded (now, we had been in tourist places before, but this was the most tourists we had seen in one place thus far - people were everywhere). After a little bit of nothing happening and of noticing that the guards were not the regular guards with the red outfits and big furry black hats, I found a police officer to see if we had missed the ceremony. Apparently, at the last minute, they cancelled the ceremony. To say the least, it was disappointing for me, especially as this was our only morning when we could take the time to do this.

So we walked across the lane to the Queen Victoria Memorial and took a few pictures of the palace. Then we found a nice place to sit near the memorial just to rest and look around a bit. A few minutes later we saw a parade of guards on horses coming up the street to the Palace. They do a ceremony themselves at the other end of St. James Park in the morning and I guess this must have been the tail end of it. They came up towards us and made their way around the Memorial and went out past the Palace down a street. The front guard played the trumpet as they passed the front of the Palace (he could use a few music lessons though :) ). So even though we didn't get to see the Ceremony we had come for, we did get to see something, so that was nice. Jeremiah then took my picture in front of the Memorial.

Next we walked across the street to St. James Park as now we had time to enjoy it. This park is much smaller than Hyde park but is so beautiful with a lake in the middle filled with various birds (we saw many pigeons - maybe this is where they headed to after Trafalgar Square - a stork, geese and other birds I can't name). There were many areas with beautiful flowers and each area showcased many different colors of tulips (my favorite!). We came just at the right time to enjoy these as you could tell they would not be around much longer. We took lots of pictures. There was an ice cream stand in the park, so we stopped and got some on a cone (mainly so I could try out that Flake). At this time, I didn't realize that you were supposed to eat the Flake with soft serve (found that out later last night from Gillian) so I just got the scoop ice cream (strawberry flavor - they have really good strawberry ice cream over here). We sat down on a bench and enjoyed the ice cream and Flake. Good to its name, Flake is very flaky; so flaky, in fact, that I dropped a decent size piece because it broke off so easily :( It was very good and we may have to have it again before we leave.

We then strolled through the rest of the park taking pictures and enjoying the beautiful day (another warm one). At one point, I looked over to my left and there were nice lawn chairs spread out over this grass area. It looked like they were for public use - very interesting as I had never seen that before). This park was obviously a popular place for both locals and tourists to relax.

We crossed the street from the park and went through the passage of another building. As we came out the other side, we discovered that it was the building for the Horseguards. There were even some outside so we took a picture.

We continued walking in the direction of Westminster Abbey and passed Downing Street again like the night before. We then made it to the Abbey and paid our admission to get inside (when we paid with our credit card, the lady at the window was having difficulty with the printer on the machine. It was not printing a good receipt - hard to read. Instead of changing the ink so it would print darker, she kept reprinting it, pulling out a long line of paper, print it again, and eventually changed out the entire roll of paper. We finally got a semi-legible slip to sign but I wonder where she got it in her head that the paper was the issue when the ink was not dark enough?)

The inside was beautiful and you could tell a lot of history has passed through this building. Of course, you couldn't take pictures insides but we did get some of the outside. We saw many of the kings' coffins and the oldest one was from the 1200s, I believe. I can't remember which king at the moment, though. Maybe it was one of the Henrys. We saw where Queen Elizabeth and her half-sister Mary were buried as well as Mary Queen of the Scotts. The Abbey had an interesting museum with some artifacts in it including some clothes. It was very nice walking through the Abbey and my favorite part besides all the history was probably the design of the ceiling - very beautiful.

After we left the Abbey, we found a Tube station to take us to the British Museum. We couldn't find it at first but we did find a Subway so we stopped for some lunch. So far this is the best and cheapest food out we have been able to find (we got 2 sandwiches, 2 drinks, and 2 bags of crisps for only £5.99 - not too shabby). After stopping in an electronics store to pick up another memory card for our camera (thought we had enough, but we discovered we were wrong), we asked for some directions. We finally found the museum and walked in the back entrance (this entrance is not nearly as impressive as the front so if it is your first time going there, make sure to find the front). This place is HUGE! There are so many different rooms with so many things in each. We first went up to the Mummy exhibit (Side note: by this time, and even a bit before, our feet, especially mine, were killing us - after walking and standing so much the day before, this was pretty torturous to do it again.). There was lots to see here. Jeremiah's favorite things to look at were all the coins from the different areas and times as well as the weapons. There was one sickeningly well-preserved body from around 1200 BC - a picture will come later. Apparently, when they buried people before without a coffin of any sort, the heat and dryness from the sand would preserve bodies really well.

We went through the Europe room next and saw many neat artifacts that were found in England. At this point there was a tour going through the room, so I kind of tailed along to hear more of the stories of different items (that's what I like to do in museums, hear a story while you're looking - just looking is rather hard on me, as my parents well know :) ). There were some chess pieces that washed up on the shores of Scotland around 700 years ago and made of whale ivory - very interesting (they were also what the first Harry Potter movie modeled their life-size pieces after in the chess game). There were also pieces found from a ship wreck near England somewhere and from the pieces they could tell that the people on board must have been royalty.

The tour finished not too long after I joined, so I went back to find Jeremiah. I then took him on my version of the tour and tried to remember what I had just heard. After a bit, we went out of that room and walked downstairs to find the Rosetta stone. This was also very cool and we took some pictures of it as well. We tried to make our way into the Greece room, but the museum was closing so we were kicked out. We got about 2 hours in the museum in the end and I don't think our feet could have taken much more even though there was a lot more to see.

We went out the front entrance which was very grand and found a place to sit for a while. We took a few more pictures and then found a Tube station to take us home. Unfortunately, because of the time, it was rush hour and the trains were packed. When our train came, I barely found a place for myself and then they announced the doors were shutting, so Jeremiah literally pushed his way in to make it on. Eventually, we made our way through to the middle of a row of seat as people continued to exit and enter at each stopped and we eventually both got seats which was very nice as we still had a bit of a journey left. I found a paper and read a bit for the trip will helped it go by much faster than I thought it would. We got off at our stopped and headed to the bus station. Just as we were crossing the street to the station we saw our bus drive by. There was no way for us to get on so we had to wait about 15 minutes for the next one.

Our bus finally came and we made it to our stop. We stopped at an ATM to top off before we left for the country the next day but had problems getting the money - it denied us and said it was unauthorized. We thought it was the ATM since we had withdrawn cash from it a few days before. We walked around the corner to the next ATM and had the same problem. We then knew that a hold had been placed on our card by the bank even though we had called them last week and gave them our travel dates to make sure no holds would be put on when we used our card over here. We stopped at the convenient store next door and picked up some water and some Carmel McVitties for our trip. We then walked back to the house and were greeted by Mike. Dinner was just about ready, so we thought we would try and call the bank right before and just get it over with.

We got put on hold a few times and it took a lot longer than we would have liked but supposedly we got everything working again. The representative that we talked to said that she doesn't know why the hold was put on, but whatever was supposed to be unchecked in their system wasn't so she unchecked it right then. She mentioned something to Jeremiah about calling to do this the day before you leave on travel, otherwise, if you do it too far in advance, it gets wiped out of their system (Becky, don't know if you should call them the day before just to make sure you don't have any problems; hopefully not). What a pain. Who wants to be making calls like that the day before you leave? We did get a good laugh out of it, though. When Jeremiah was on the phone we had to repeatedly, at various times throughout his conversation, reiterate what day we were coming home and that we were already in the UK. By the fourth time we heard him say it, we couldn't hold back the snickers. It was like she wasn't even listening to him! Oh, well. At least that mess is cleared up.

After dinner, we went into the front room and finished watching that show that was on a few nights prior (Flood) and had some dessert (French crapes - like Dad's Swedish pancakes - with melted chocolate in the middle and some vanilla ice cream on top - very yummy). The movie was very good and we all enjoyed it. Towards the end of the movie, we enjoyed a nice cup of tea and a little Cadbury chocolate (I know, you must be thinking "Wow, they're eating a ton of sweets!" but we're on vacation!).

We then sat at the dinner table with Mike and he went over the best route on how to get from their house to the motorway. Then he helped us find our way to Winchester and Jane Austen's house. Gillian came down and they both told us about little places along the way that would be nice to visit and which ones had nice gardens. You could tell that just as some of your are living our adventure with us through this blog, they were starting to do the same through looking at the map to the different areas were were headed for (Mike even said he wanted to go with us!).

They are both so sweet and like parents away from home. I can see why you all love them so dearly. We really hope they will be able to make it out to California sometime to visit all of us so we can spoil them in return.

After looking at the maps for a bit, we headed up to our room to get ready for bed and to pack. We made it to bed around 11:30pm.

We got up this morning and have been getting ready for our departure. We are headed to Jane Austen's house, Winchester, and Stonehenge (and another other little place along the way we can find). We will be staying at a B&B just south of Avebury. We don't know how much Internet access we can find over the next two weeks but we will do our best and write as often as we can. I do have a journal with me so don't worry about missing out on any of the details; they will all be written down; it's just a matter of getting them to you.

Thank you for all your continued prayers; we really appreciate them. Jeremiah is doing much better. He is not nearly as sick now and his eye looks a lot better. Please continue to pray for our safety as we are now headed to the crazy backwards roads of England. I've been trying to practice them in my head the last few days so that hopefully I can help keep Jeremiah on track.

We love you all and will talk again soon!
S&J