A Little Eccentric

Finally...the London Blog

‘ello!
I hope you all have had a good week. I had a jolly good time in London! I wish I could have stayed longer, but the conversion rate from dollars to Euros to pounds was killing me.
I noticed two things right off as soon as I walked into downtown London. One, there was English everywhere (which was so cool for me) and that the traffic goes in opposite directions. Once I got a little more used to the sights and sounds and had checked into our hotel, Tchykita and I went out exploring. The first day we walked to Westminster Abbey and saw Big Ben and the houses of Parliament. We dinked around in the Old London telephone booths and laughed at the double-decker buses everywhere. We checked out the Thames, but retired for a big dinner and an early night of watching English-speaking TV (something that I have not seen in over 3 months).
The next day we went to Buckingham Palace and were disappointed to realize there was no changing of the guard that day. We went to the Imperial War Museum and saw the amazing section on WWII and their acclaimed Holocaust exhibition that left me speechless. After that, we went back across town to the British Museum, which I would describe as one of the biggest and coolest collections of random stuff I’ve ever seen. They had everything from Cleopatra’s mummy to the Rosetta Stone to books written during the Enlightenment. After the British Museum closed, we grabbed some authentic fish and chips from a nearby restaurant and headed to about the coolest thing of all. We booked tickets the day before to see the play The Lion King. It is the Broadway version of the Disney movie, and has been very critically acclaimed. The costumes were very African-tribal looking and it was INCREDIBLE. As you can probably tell, Tchykita and I were beyond exhausted at this point and took the Tube back to our hotel.
The next day we went back to Buckingham and saw the changing of the guards. It was cool, but all the tourists squishing us up against the gate made for a less than enjoyable experience. When that was over, we went to Westminster Abbey and went in. We saw all the old British royalty, as well as tombs for Charles Darwin, Issac Newton and many, many more. After that, we went to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, followed up by Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. It was so cool to actually see all these things in real life! Next came the only real disappointment…I got the hours to the Tate Modern (a modern art museum) mixed up, and it was closed before we got there. I was quite annoyed at this oversight, considering how everything else had gone like clockwork. But, Tchykita and I were dead on our feet after our grueling two days so we weren’t too sad to just slowly stroll back over Tower Bridge, and take in the sunset over the Thames.
Oh, and I got a bottle of holy water at Westminster Cathedral (they actually had signs saying you could do this) and I went around all day blessing things (they did not have a sign saying you could do this). I'm sure it was quite blasphemous, but I thought I was very funny. Tchykita and I nearly run ourselves into the ground on these vacations. We only eat about one real meal a day and spend the rest munching snacks on our feet. Both of us are voracious about seeing as many things as possible, but not rushing through. All in all, we saw tons of stuff and had a fabulous time. I greatly look forward to getting back to London someday!

posted by Molly Jo @ 3:30 AM