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Published: October 30th 2007
Covent Garden1
ET phone home.Nous sommes arrives a Paris! But first, here’s London. We arrived on time and therefore had plenty of time in the afternoon to begin our first forced march. We walked all the way to Covent Garden, Trafalger Square, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham palace, and then to Dave and Ginny’s much nicer hotel - a distance of some five miles. At Covent Garden, we watched a busker work with three brass cups and some rubber balls. He counted “One, Two, Three”, and then “Uno, due, tres,” then “Un, deux trois,” then (while smacking the table hard with his wand, counted “Eins, zwei, drei.” Finally, he said he would count like an American. “One,” he said, and then stopped, as if confused. “Another one,” he said finally. I laughed hysterically - perhaps more a sign of my fatigue than his humor! We ate at this charming pub (though the photo was taken the next day) and drank a pint of beer. Yes, only one. Have you seen the size of a pint?! Saturday, we took all sorts of public transportation - first to Westminster Abbey, this time to go inside. It’s full of dead kings, queens, and military heroes. Not a saint to
be found. And then a whole corner full of dead poets. Then we rushed over to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. We were able to secure places right by the fence in front of the left guard box. He marched around a bit, a parade of horses passed behind us, and there we stood… and stood… and stood. That was it. The horses. No formal guard changing at all! Another pint and lunch. Erik and I split an order of fish and chips. Don’t need to do that again. Off to St. Paul’s Cathedral - just in time to hear the last competitors in a children’s singing contest. They sang the traditional benediction - but it wouldn’t have mattered - the sound was so lovely. They say lovely a lot in England. Erik and I then climbed the 434 steps to the tippy top of the dome. Picture proves it. Once down, we trotted off to (ok, slunk off) to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels. They look much bigger on a large video screen. And, as if that wasn’t enough, we took a double-decker all the way to Harrod’s because we were
Parliament
On the bridge at Parliament. told we needed to see the greatest department store in the world. We did, it is, and then we left for dinner with some old friends from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Hillary and Rod Higgenbotham. They’re really British and say “Brilliant” a lot. Back to bed, if you could call the lumpy mass of congealed oatmeal in a mattress cover that, and off to la-la land. We slept like logs. In the lobby of this hotel was an ice cream dispenser. Why havent we thought of that? Breakfast, the train to Paris, one last luggage checker who called Erik’s bag “lovely” and here we are in our little apartment. Pics to follow. Any typing errors are because we are working on a French keyboard and we cant find the apostrophe.
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Margie
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Just lovely.
Hooray for London! I'm VERY impressed (but not at all surprised) by the massive amounts that you saw in just two days. Pictures are terrific, keep them coming!