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Published: December 29th 2006
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Well, first off, I need to catch ya'll up on last night. After I finally got a shower last night I felt like a new man and decided that I wasn't quite ready for bed yet. Mom had had enough and was already in bed. About 9:30 I headed out to wander around a little bit. I started making circles around the hotel and found myself at The Arthur pub. The building dates back to 1845 (which is really young considering the age of everything else around) when it was a workshop. Upstairs is a supposedly renowned restaurant and on the first floor is the pub containing the original bar and hand cut victorian windows. I had a pint of Carling and squeezed myself in by the fireplace. Not long after I was joined by a very charming older couple named Charles and Diane. They currently reside in Dallas, TX but at one time they lived in London just down the street from Westminster Abbey for six years. They had just arrived like us and their trip to their hotel was just as tiring as ours (their hotel is just around the corner from ours). Diane did most of the talking.
Cute kids
Kids playing at a terrorism memorial. I'm pretty sure that I only got about half of two good stories in and hour and a half, which as most of you know is a travesty. They were in town for a couple of days visiting friends before they headed off to ski in Austria and see other friends. They recommended all kinds of things for us to see and do: the British Museum, see a show(broadway style that is), go on one of the London Walks, etc. Their favorite part of this city, like mine, is how this city is oozing history, and in the oddest places. A hotel down the street they said has a 14th century crypt underneath it that you can go in and see. It's not advertised but it is open to the public. They didn't know about it until their daughter had her high school graduation at the hotel. They really were nice people but I new it was time for bed so I headed back to the hotel.
By the way, the famous hedge mazes at Hampton Court and Bath have nothing on our hotel. There are literally 15 turns that you have to negotiate to make it to our
Piccadilly Circus
The giant TVs like in Times Square. room. Our first room on the 4th floor had about twice that many. I have only taken a back stairway once because I feared on that trip that I might have to eat mom to make it out alive myself. She is still alive. I only felt like pushing her into the Thames (tems) River once today. Lol I don't feel too bad about it though, I have no doubt that I would have waived and smiled fondly at her as she floated down stream.... j/k
Today we go a late start and didn't make it out of the hotel until 10:30. That's 5:30am for all of you eastern time zone people and 4:30am for all of you central time zone people. We milled around Westminster Abbey and little bit and I drank a coffee that cost me $2.40. I wouldn't have minded the price except that it was a far cry from Starbucks. We proceeded into the Abbey which was magnificent (you won't see any pictures though because they don't allow any type of photography) and amazingly crowded. We saw that tombs of Elizabeth and Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots, and many, many, memorials. It was also
The National Gallery
The art gallery in Trafalgar Square cool to be in a place that they filmed the Da Vinci Code. In the end of the movie they are in the Cloisters and the Chamber Room. We also saw the memorial to Isaac Newton which isn't near as big as you would believe from the movie. We did spend about an hour in there and there was no wait when we went in. Coming out there was probably a 45minute line outside.
After Westminster Abbey we proceeded down Whitehall and tried to see if we could get into 10 Downing Street where the Prime Minister lives but it was closed to visitors and I heard yesterday that the prime minister is partying in Florida with one of the Bee Gees. Since it was closed we continued north to Piccadilly Circus which is the Times Square of London. Unfortunately the fountain was in the center of the circus was fenced in, presumably to keep people out during New Years celebrations. I have never been in Piccadilly when it wasn't packed and we weren't disappointed today. We walked around the circus and I showed mom the hostel that I stayed in last time I was here. Next to the
Lord Nelson
Sorry, but this picture isn't very good and its from the back because I was lazy and didnt walk around. I do already have a pic of this online somewhere. hostel is a theatre named Piccadilly Theatre that is playing Guys & Dolls. We took Diane's advice and bought two of the half price daily seats for 20lbs apiece (40 dollars american). The show wasn't until 7:30pm so we decided to head down to Trafalgar Square.
Now, everyone says that they have never heard of Trafalgar Square but they have heard references to it. If you have heard anything about feeding the pigeons, or seen Mary Poppins, then you have heard about it. They used to sell bread crumbs to feed the birds but this was stopped by animal rights activist for some reason I think. There is also a 120ft tower in the center with Lord Nelson on top and the National Art Gallery right there. We decided to check out a church on the side of the square called St. Martin on the Fields. Above it is a normally operating church but below it has crypts that they have turned into a cafe and an art gallery for local artists. The artwork was pretty good but I wanted to go there because I had read that you could do brass rubbings there. They have all kinds of
Tower Bridge
More commonly, but incorrectly called the London bridge. medieval brass plates mounted on boards that you can make rubbings of for anywhere from 4lbs to 15lbs. Mom did “Mary someone” (she couldn't remember who it was) and I did one of Richard I, the Lionheart. It was a lot of fun but you have to have a strong arm to do that stuff. Right now I am using my left had to type this blog because my right hand, from now on known as “The Claw” is only semi-functional as of yet. You have to go over each section repeatedly to get it to show up. I'd say we spent about an hour in there before I was satisfied with mine (I was being a perfectionist for some reason, weird I know).
From there we still had some time left so we had our first tube ride of the day without any incident.
We went down to London Bridge and took pictures of the HMS Belfast and the Tower Bridge. We walked along the river and on across the Tower Bridge. We were trying to get to the Tower of London before it closed but it was after 4pm by the time we arrived. We stuck around
and took some sunset shots of the the bridge and the south side of the city and had a bite to eat at Subway(no British food today, sorry). We now had some time to waste so we decided to walk the approximately 2.5 miles back to PiccadillyTheatre. We had just ate and obviously we were feeling saucy. I know I was pretty tired but I think it about did mom in. We were still a little early so went down to the theatre bar and had a drink.
The show was actually pretty good. I hoped it would be for the price of the tickets. Our tickets were great. We were on the end of the row, 4 rows from the stage. I think I got some spit sprayed on me. Lol It wasn't my first musical but it was the fist time that I got to see a show that had a real band in the orchestra pit. The production was played by Britains but they were surprisingly good at sounding like 1940s New Yorkers. I heard that the new production of the Sound of Music is playing in London and we may go see that as well.
Depends on the cost and availability of tickets.
Tomorrow we are off on our tour of Canterbury, Greenwich, Leeds, and Dover. It's a 10 hour tour so I don't think we'll be up to much else after that. I'll let you know how it goes.
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Tom
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Toppens a bag
That old lady singing on Mary Popins freaked me out a little bit. But I always wanted a toppens so I caould get a bag of those croutons.