175 steps

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Cherrio ladies and gents...

Happy Tuesday, almost Wednesday. Slept nicely yesterday. If you're ever in London, recommend staying at the Marriott Regent Park. It's not city center, but it's just a stones throw from the Swiss Cottage tube station - Jubilee line. You can pretty much get to city center within 15-20 minutes.

Today was a nice leisurely day for us. We woke up early enough and had breakfast about the Swiss Cottage area at this nice little neighborhood joint called Pasticcio. It was really a italian cafe, but they also offered the full english breakfast. I only ordered half and I had to decide between white coffee and black coffee. I can only assume that the white coffee had milk in it and being quasi lactose... I decided to go with the black. It was good. A nice little pick me up in the AM. I also had toast and fried egg. Yummy. Kristen got the eggs, toast and bacon. It was the nice and salty kind. Today was also Ryan's birthday! Everyone wished him a Happy Birthday, but he wasn't quite in the happy mood just yet... he needed a little shot of adrenaline before he was willing to smile. He got his energy boost when we arrived at the Russell Square tube station. Once we minded the gap and proceeded to walk out, we noticed that everyone was waiting in the queue (see, I"m already starting to sound British aren't I?) Anyway... where was I?? Oh yeah... we noticed that everyone was standing the queue for the lift and we couldn't figure out why... The stairs were on the right and why wouldn't you take it... We found out why not.. there were 175 steps... Yep, that's right... 175 steps.... Birthday boy sprinted up the stairs and was all smiles for the rest of the day :O) I barely made it up those stairs... may need to rethink our Thursday mission at St. Paul's. To get to the top of the dome... there are 520 steps.... yikes!

At Russell Square, we caught the hop-on-hop-off bus again! We had a 24 hour ride time, so we took full advantage of it, except that there was mega traffic and we were stopped like 20-30 minutes not going anywhere. The bus even got fed up. They ended up stopping at picadilly station and made us get off... Told us, that they were not making the Russell Square route again because of the traffic. So we hopped on the tube and headed for Harrods. We spent about 1.5 hours there trying to figure out what we were going to do for lunch.... We ended up buying sandwiches and took it to Hyde park to enjoy a nice picnic. Note to the Deppes... 10 slices of salami=not so much salami :O) Ryan threw some bread to a pigeon and the next thing we knew, there were 6 pigeons flocking towards us. We made Ryan stop and thankfully, the birdies flew away.

After lunch, we walked towards the museums at the Kensington/Knightsbridge area. Aunt Poysee and I went to see the Victoria and Albert one, while the Deppes went to the Natural Musuem. They thought the kids would enjoy that more so than British Art. The V&A (as the Brits call it) was neat. The jewllery section was very neat. They had ton of gems and rings throughout history. Got me excited to see the crown jewels at Tower of London! We met up afterwards and headed back to Harrods. For his birthday, Ryan picked up 1 pack of Pokemon cards and a very expensive tin from Harrods, that wasn't so special after all...... Everyone else picked up some nice souvenirs as well. From there and then we had pub food. We ended up at the Bunch of Grapes pub. When we were walking out, a drunkard local told us that the fish and chips sucked... Rob, Poysee and I poo pooed his comment and had fish and chips,. Yummy! The fish was nice and crispy and not too oily. The chips were crunchy and even the peas were good. Oh, and the Guinness was quite smooth. #1 MIkey! Hoping to make it #2 tomorrow.

Afterwards, we had some nice adventures on the tube. Our normal tube station line that we take, was closed due to a power failure. So we needed to have backup plan. BUT when we got to our backup plan, it told us that our train was severly delayed due to trespassers.... Go figure. We were going to attempt the bus, but thought, might not be a good idea trying to figure it out so late at night.... So we boarded the train and hoped that the severe, wasn't so severe. Thankfully it wasn't.

Finally, we ended up back at the hotel and in honor of Ryan's birthday, had dessert a la Harrods. We had a Frasier which was pistachio cake with cream and strawberries. AND we had creme brulee. All yummy. Then Ryan and Kristen whipped our butts at 13-cards. All in all a gorgeous sunny and fruitful day.

Tomorrow begins another adventure. We attempt the train train.... Heading to Windsor Castle....

and so the story continues......

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