Our first day started late, coming in on a red-eye flight didn't quite settle well with the whole group. I am notorious for my insomnia, so I function very well on very little sleep, but that is not the case for any of the in-law kids - my-Steve, Rachel, and Amy are all sleep-addicts! So after a bit of rest, we all headed to the Tower of London, with barely enough time to see it all. We were too late for any of the guided beefeater tours, but we did get to see the Crown Jewels with no crowds - a nice treat for the Lindsay clan. And Rick Steves guidebook gave a good description of what we were seeing - the 530 carat diamond that was just one of nine stones cut from the largest diamond ever found, over 3000 carats - is in the center of the Sovereign's Scepter - we never would have appreciated that fully with good ole Rick. (Rick came along on all our adventures, so I really did act as tour guide for most of the trip. I have to admit, I was a little nervous about being "in charge" of my family, but I had done my homework, so it all went very smoothly. )
After the Tower, we took a river cruise up the Thames to Westminister Pier, snapped some lovely pictures of Big Ben, then had dinner at the Red Lion pub - rather good for English food.
We were up early every day, hitting it hard all day long. We were the first group into to Westminister Abbey on our 2nd day - lunched in St. James park on sandwiches, then visited the Churchill War Museum. It was so cool to see the actual room where Churchill commanded the Allied troops during WWII. I've never been a war buff, but ever since "Saving Private Ryan", I feel more of a duty to understand as much as I can about our grandparents generation and the sacrifices they made on our behalf. Learning about the "Blitz" means so much more to me now that I've seen beautiful chapels at Westminsiter Abbey that were nearly destroyed by the night after night bombing that went on for a year. From here we walked to Buckingham Palace then caught a bus to the British Museum. We spent considerable time in the Parthenon galleries. Vin, did you all think it funny that Lord Elgin had taken the marble panels and justified it as preserving art and history? Sure, that may have been the case in 18-whatever when he took them (lots of treasure seeking tourists removing a bit of some priceless artifact - even my papaw claims to have a piece of the Blanery Stone in his fireplace!), but that's not the reason to keep them today! It should be interesting to see how this little drama plays out.
Saturaday morning we got up early, again, this time to see a true street market at opening time. We chose the Portobella Road market in Notting Hill - but probably should have gone to the Camden Lock Market. Portobello was dull, with no good deals to be found. We left early and were at Harrod's by 11:00 - did a quick canvas of the place, but as Vin said, it's really just a department store, so after an overpriced and not very exciting lunch, we headed to Kensington Palace to see the Diana Exhibit. It was fun to see the dresses I had admired in pictures; the dark velvet gown she wore when she visited the White House and danced with John Travolta was one of my favorite. And the portraits and audioguide were well worth the price of admission.
Saturday night we saw the Blue Man Group - the theater was very intimate and the audience participation was suprisingly hilarious. At one point, I was laughing so hard that I just stopped, felt guilty that I had stopped, but realized that my face was hurting again so I had to stop, and then started laughing again. So much fun!
On Sunday morning Steve and I tried to attend a Vineyard Church plant, but here my research failed me. I should have called them before showing up at the address, as it turned out to be an apartment building and most likely the address of the pastor. Opps. But it did get us down to Bankside early on Sunday, so after a short time of prayer and Bible reading by the Thames, we strolled along the Jubilee Walk, passing the Clink Museum (the old prison where we get the phrase"thrown in the Clink"), City Hall, and stopping for a tour of the new Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Steve had to be convinced that this replica wasn't a total waste of time, but I didn't want to back down here again, so I dragged him in. It would have been more fun to see it while watching one of the bards' plays, but, alas, the season hadn't started yet so we had to do with our guided tour. We then ate fish and chips at a pub in front of the Tate Modern (we didn't go in even though it was on the itinerary), and then walked across the Thames on the Millenium Bridge. We hopped on the tube to Piccadilly Circus for more site-seeing, grabbed some ice cream and then wandered on to Trafalgar Square and toured the "Monet to Picasso" exhibit at the National Gallery. I had no idea that I like Van Gogh so much, but his works were by far my favorite! Then we popped into St. Martin-in-the-Fields church where a choir was rehearsing for the final service before closing for extensive remodeling until September. The acustics reminded me of Hughes Auditorium, but on a more intimate scale. I can see why so many wonderful classical pieces are recorded there!
We rejoined the group Sunday night and had dinner at a french restuarant (per Stephen's request, who was tired of bad English food), and i tried raw oysters for the first time. I was surprised that I like them! From there, we walked back to Trafalgar Square and took pictures by the Lions, though it was dark so I doubt they will turn out. Then Amy needed a bathroom, so we ended up in a bar and had a drink and I got my groove on down in the basement dance club.
On Monday we scheduled a private tour guide to take us to see Stonehenge and Bath - what a disaster! It was the one day that I thought would be delightful and easy to enjoy, but instead it was by far the most frustratingly annoying days of the entire trip! It really wasn't that bad, but just very disappointing as there were so many awesome things to see in Bath. The problem was our tourguide. She either doesn't like her job or really likes being rude to Americans - something it seems many elitist Europeans feel entitted to do. (We ran into a few more of these people along the trip, but she was by far over the top!) We got off to a bad start as a couple of us (me included) showed up with cups of coffee and snacks to nourish ourselves on our 6 hours in the car. Without welcoming us to our tour and oh, I'm sorry, we don't allow food in the vehicle, she very nastily told us off and then ordered us to dispose of the contraband and load up. Mom gets very car sick in cars and always has to sit in front, but she was actually trying to get one of us to ride up front with her so she wouldn't have to! Our favorite comment of the day was, "You all would make Hitler proud" referring to the 4 of us women and our blond hair. Nice. She did warm up a bit after she had half a pint at lunch and I'm sure we surprised her when we handed her a 40pound tip (Dad made us each cough up 10p and let me tell you, I did NOT want to. He said it would be a good witness, blah, blah!)
Bath was beautiful, I only wished we had had more time there. We got trapped at the Roman Baths behind hoards of locals as Monday was a bank holiday and everyone was off. The JaneAusten Centre was my desired destination for our time in bath and I barely had enough time to do it justice. I will just have to go back to Bath and do it right. Thankfully, the weather had cleared by the time we got there as it had been cold and rainy for our visit to Stonehenge - I really didn't think much of Stonehenge. Having been to some amazing pre-western pyramids in Latin America, I'm sorry but a few rocks in a circle were not that impressive.
(Nearly done with the blow-by-blow trip details - are you still hanging in there?? I started this 10 days ago and have had little time to stop since I've been home, so be happy I'm not just writing, "It was a good trip. We had fun." Okay?)
Mom and dad, Stephen & Rachel and Steve and I started our last day at St. Paul's Cathedral. Dusty and Amy stayed at the hotel as Amy had a migraine; Dusty ended up at the Imperial War Museum by himself for 4 hours. I guess maybe he started getting into museums after all! We climbed all 434 steps (plus 12 for me - I wasn't going to go up to the 3 rd level, so I headed back down, only to be talked into going up to the top, adding 12 steps onto the 434 total!) From St. Paul's, Mom and dad did the Victorian and Albert Museum and another trip to Harrods (not sure why). And Stephen and Rachel went with Steve and me to Windsor and Oxford. We weren't really planning to go to Oxford, but Steve REALLY wanted to go, so we hopped another train and took a guided Oxford hop-on-hop off tour. We had dinner at the Eagle and Child which was VERY yummy, surprisingly. Windsor Castle was just beautiful and the weather was completely perfect. Our favorite thing was the Queen Mary Dollhouse - a perfect replica of Buckingham Palace given to the Queen as a present from her people. I've always loved miniture things.
Wednesday morning, we left our hotel at 5:30 a.m. and really only slept about 2 hours that night. We got through security at London Healthrow and crashed a little - steve did some shopping and I had one last treat from Eat, my favorite London to-go food store that offered fresh sandwiches, croissants, coffee, and all other yummy FRESH healthy delicious thing you can imagine. Unfortuntantely, our fatigue caught us a little off guard and we didn't realize that we left something VERY important at the security check point: Steve's laptop. When we got to JFK and had to go through security again, Steve opened his brief case to put his laptop through the x-ray machine and it wasn't there. He had left it in London. He had insisted on bringing an extra carry-on and so he had just too many things to keep track of and he simlpy forgot to pick it up. It is 17 days since we returned and he still hasn't gotten it back - they did find it, but it has been a nightmare getting it shipped back. We have never tried to import something before, so we don't know if FedEx is being ridiculous or if this is just what we should expect.
