English Vacation (Day 11): London with the kids

Off to London again today, without our tour guide, Daisha. We started out by eating sandwiches in the train station that Daisha had packed us, then walked over to St. Paul's cathedral. The kids wanted to feed the pigeons on the steps just like the bird lady on Mary Poppins, so we did that, only to see signs in town later saying you get a 500 pound fine for feeding the pigeons (500 pounds is equivalent to almost $1,000). Good thing we didn't get caught!

We didn't feel like spending almost $20 a piece to go all the way into the cathedral, so we just went in to the free part and peeked around to try to see the interior of the dome. We had a lot to pay for on this trip since everything cost us twice as much (it costs about $2 for every pound you spend right now), so we got cheap on this one.


Just on the other side of St. Paul's is Cheapside, a street. We hear about Cheapside a lot in Jane Austen novels and English stuff, so we had to walk along it for a minute.


We caught the tube (the subway train in England is called the tube, and the underground walkways are called the subway) to Covent Gardens, and laughed at the posters we saw, like this one:


Covent Gardens has fun shopping and street performers.


We watched a guy get out of chains and a straight jacket in 3 minutes. He was interesting because even though he was dressed up as a nerd with highwater pants and taped glasses, he was a good-looking guy that seemed more suited to the profession of a doctor or lawyer or something like that. The other street performers we always saw looked homeless or something.


While at Covent Gardens, we bought a bunch of London shirts and sweatshirts for the family so we could take a cheasy matching-family picture in the English countryside. We've never had matching clothes before, and after seeing the pictures and going through the hassle and expense of it all, I think this may be the last time we do that.

After Covent Gardens, we walked over to Leicester Square (pronounced Lester Square), but if you haven't been to London before, you wouldn't understand what a maze of streets it has. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the streets. They spiderweb everywhere and the names change every couple of blocks. We used Hyrum's iphone GPS and a map to find it, but it still took a few wrong turns and way too much time to finally get there. Darn our tour guide staying home!!! Leicester Square is the place where they have movie premiers like the theatre in Hollywood, and last night was the premiere of Tropic Thunder so the stars from that were present, but we missed it since we were at home last night.


We got hungry and looked around for a place to eat. We saw Subway, Burger King and Pizza Hut (good ol' America), and chose BK for the speed. This is how the kids spent their time at Leicester Square.

Hyatt had fallen asleep in the backpack carrier, so Hyrum had laid him down on the grass to sleep, and while Hy was gone getting food, some East Indian guy (by the way, in England they call people from India "Asian", and people from Asia "Oriental"...isn't that politically incorrect now to say Oriental?)...anyway, the Indian guy came and told me that I should put something under Hyatt so he wouldn't be on the cold ground. I told him the backpack was between him and the ground and that he was fine, but he insisted that his face was too close to the cold grass (uh, it was a warm day), so to appease him I put Kiersa's blanket under him. Nerd. Hyatt woke up in a few minutes anyway. I know my kids better than strangers do, duh.

Next to Leicester Square is the National Gallery that has all kinds of famous art by artists like Monet and Picasso.

We really like it, but we zipped through only part of it since the kids weren't that thrilled with it, then we went to Trafalgar Square which is adjacent to the museum. The kids played on the lions and fountains, so it made up for the museum boredom.


Hyatt learned how to write an "H" for his name, and has been writing it frequently ever since.


Next we took the tube to the British museum.

Now, you have to understand that every time we went anywhere in London (the tube, train stations, museums, cathedrals...everything), we had to go up steps. I've never been somewhere so full of stairs with so few elevators or ramps. I even saw a wheelchair specifically made for stair climbing, which you'd have to have in this city. With all these steps, I would hold the front of the stroller and Hy would get the back, and we'd heft the stroller up and down a million steps. Going downstairs wasn't so bad for me, but going upstairs just about killed my aching pregnant body. A couple of times people would offer to grab the stroller for me, and that was much appreciated. Hyrum would tell them "cheers" afterward, instead of "thanks" so he could feel that he was fitting in better, since that's what a lot of Brits say. He's funny.
Anyway, we went in the museum looking specifically for 3 things: the Rosetta Stone, the famous Greek Marbles and the ancient dead guy with his skin still on. We found the Rosetta Stone immediately, with a huge crowd around it. The Rosetta stone is what helped scholars translate hieroglyphs.


Next we searched for the marbles that Greece gave Britain a long time ago, and now they want them back and England isn't going to do it. I couldn't figure out why a handful of marbles would be so important for the two countries to bicker over, so I asked a museum guy (after he told Talea to stop touching the statues) where they were. He said to look in the Greece section and I'd see a large Parthenon and the marbles would be all over in the Parthenon. We found the Parthenon, and it was huge. I figured there must be a huge amount of marbles rather than a just a handful, but as I looked at the Parthenon, all I saw was statues. How was I supposed to get up high enough to see the marbles inside. Then, it hit me. I felt really stupid. How uneducated and naive could I be??? The marbles were the marble statues!!!!


I felt like an idiot. I told Hyrum about what I thought they were and what they actually were, and he just laughed at me. How silly. I could only imagine what Edward would be thinking if he had been there with me. I knew Daisha would laugh like crazy at me. But come on, she said "marbles", not "marble statues". I'm not exposed to many marble statues in my redneck area, so the only marbles I ever see are the little round, colorful balls that kids collected and traded in the 50s. I KNEW that those kind of marbles would be too silly for a multi-country spat!

After the marbles, we found the dead guy with his skin on.

He was found in sand and that had preserved him. Tilly found it pretty interesting to see a dead guy like that. There were also dead guys buried in a woven basket and a wooden box, and they were both decomposed to bones, so it was interesting to see the differences. Hyatt did NOT like looking at the bones. It freaked him out.


After a long look at this museum, we caught the tube to Regents Park. It was rush hour on the tube, so it took about 4 trains coming and going before we could find one that would accommodate our stroller and kids. People were seriously packed in like sardines. The air down in the tube is so dirty! You can kind of see the black haze in the air, and you can smell it. At the end of the day, you get black boogers from it. It's nasty.

We got off the tube by Regents Park and saw Bloomsbury Street, which is where a lot of authors lived, and there's a store in Ashland called Bloomsbury Books, named after this street.


We set off in search of bathrooms (or toilets or water closets as they say out here) and a playground. We walked through some gorgeous flowers and paths

until we found the bathrooms, where I had to get a skeleton key

to use the handicap bathroom to go in it with the kids.

Then Hyrum took the kids and the camera to a playground while I walked through the Queen's garden. It was the most beautiful place I've seen in a long time. My favorite part of London so far! I caught up with the rest of the family only to find that they hadn't been able to play on the playground because it had closed just as they arrived. Talea was devastated.

We walked on to Baker Street (like from Sherlock Homes)


and caught the tube there and headed home. I found the tube posters that we thought were hilarious: the muffin top, and the moobs (yes, it is a man's chest).

Well, we thought we were headed home. We caught the wrong line, but since it's first two stops had the same name as the one we meant to get on, we didn't realize until about the 4th stop that we were on the wrong one. We hopped off, carried the stroller down 2 flights and ran it up 2 more flights to get on the other platform. I thought I was going to die! By the time we got back to the Blackfriars station to catch the train home, it was getting late. We called Edward to see if he was on that train (he's been working late with all the financial bank crisis stuff this week...he works at Goldman Sachs), and he said the train was leaving in a minute and 10 seconds. We jumped off the tube, ran like mad to the escalator (the kids and I ran up it, but Hyrum had to wait for it to slowly climb since he had the stroller and Kiersa), then we ran for the train. We got to the back car doors as the whistle was being blown, but I didn't see Hyrum and I didn't want to get on without him. Suddenly, as the doors were about to close, I heard Hyrum call me. He had passed behind me and ran to the double doors to get on with the stroller, so he was just at the other end of the car. We all jumped on as the doors shut right behind us. When the chaotic dust settled, Edward made his way to our car, and while we were waiting for him (I told the kids he was coming), Hyatt said, "Edwards my favorite." Then Tilly said, "He's my favorite uncle too. He's soooo handsome!" Hmmm. Do I detect her second crush?

We got home really late and we just ate what we wanted. Our feet were so sore from all the walking that day that we could barely stand walking.

It had been a great day, and after looking back at it, I'd have to say that two highlights from the day were:

One of the smallest cars I've ever seen


And one of the most expensive cars I've ever seen (a Ferrari).


You don't see things like this in Myrtle Point.