English Vacation (Day 12): London to ourselves

Today was a date day for Hyrum and I. A rare treat where we got to go out all day and night with just the two of us. It's pretty much impossible to get someone to babysit all day because either it will cost us too much for a babysitter, or no one wants to volunteer their time/we can't find someone with an equivalent child load to swap with, or we don't want to be away from the kids that long. Today though, Daisha had arranged tickets for Hyrum and I to go to Buckingham Palace and to a West End play, both of which are better attended without children, so she watched 5 kids while we played the day and night away.

We started out by trying to catch the train into London at 9:45. We got a late start, so Daisha drove us to the station, only to watch the train driving away. We bought our tickets just in case we were late again, then we had to wait a half hour for the next train. We left for the station again with just 5 minutes to catch the next train, but then we had to wait for the garbage men (dust bin men as their called in the UK) and their truck to get out of the way, and then just as they moved, I realized I'd forgotten my camera in my diaper bag back at the house. We had to go to the end of the street to turn around and then wait for the truck to move again. We called Dakota to run the camera out to us, so we grabbed the camera and headed out for the train again with just 3 minutes until it left. We again were stuck by the truck and a slow driver, but we pulled into the station just before the train pulled in, so we made it. Barely!!

We started out our day alone in London by taking the tube over to Westminster Abbey. We toured the inside and saw all the tombs and memorial plaques of the famous people buried or recognized there, like many kings and queens, Rudyard Kipling (Jungle Book), Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), and many more. It was really fancy and rather Gothic, and people still attend church there. I think it would be a little strange to attend church with a bunch of dead people's memorials all around me of them lying there dead. It's like a graveyard inside the church. Westminster Abbey is where the Kings and Queens are coronated. Since Hyrum and I have really gotten interested in English history and the royalty, we really liked Westminster Abbey.

Next, we headed over to Buckingham Palace to have a tour of the inside. It's only open for 2 months a year, and we were lucky enough to be there during the touring months. We grabbed a sandwich for lunch from some deli shop, and I had to take pictures of the sandwiches they make. Two things the English don't know how to do are sandwiches and salads. They don't even have Ranch dressing!!! The guy at McDonalds one day asked us what Ranch was when Hyrum asked for a Chicken Ranch burger. This was my second and last sandwich to order in England. They come on a large roll, which is tasty, but then they only put meat and cheese inside, and your choice of two types of mustard, so it's kind of dry. No mayo, no lettuce, no veggies. Plain, and fine, but definitely nothing to brag about. The mustard is also really hot and spicy, like it has a bunch of horseradish in it, which I liked. I just really missed the veggies!

We took our sandwiches to St. James park so we could eat them next to the water while we waited an hour for our tour session to start at 3:30. The park is huge and next to the palace, and we'd planned on walking all through it. As we were eating, Hyrum glanced at our tickets and noticed our time slot was 14.30 (as they would write it), which means 2:30 pm. It was 2:15 and we should have been in the line already. We panicked! We stuffed our lunch in our backpack and took off running. Picture in your minds a couple of out-of-shape 30-somethings, one pregnant and one with a bulging backpack, huffing and puffing their way through the park, jumping low fences to get to the street to make it to the side entrance. Not a pretty sight, but probably amusing to passersby. We didn't get a chance to see the park nor the front of the palace.

We made it just in time for our tour though. We went through security and started the tour. The palace was really opulent, and a bit too grand for my backwoods taste, but it was really neat to see it all, especially the banquet tables with everything in perfect lines, measured to exactness. A little robin was stuck flying around in one of the rooms. The courtyard was surprising because I thought for sure it would be fancier than it was. It was just red gravel with a shocking lack of plants and flowers. Very plain. The grounds were rather simple too with just vast lawns and trees and a pond. Not very manicured and breathtaking like Regent's Park. Also, I expected the exterior to be more grand, but then again all I got to see was the back. They have some scary looking security barbs outside the palace walls though. It was really neat to be able to go inside, since it's not something every tourist gets a chance to do.


We left the palace grounds and took a double-decker bus to a tube station so we could go see the Tate Modern museum.

We walked across the Millenium Bridge (aka the wobbly bridge) to the Tate and were rather disgusted at the lack of talent we saw inside. Seriously, I could submit Hyatt's scribbles and they'd look better than some of the stuff I saw. It was "interesting" and is definitely a place I'd go to if I wanted to feel better about my own art. They had stuff like soap on a rope, wood scattered on the floor, a slashed canvas,

and graph paper with mushrooms on it that they just scribbled on.

I got in trouble for taking these pictures. I didn't see the sign that didn't allow cameras. They had a room of nude art, with a side room that warned of its sexual or nude material, or something like that, so we opted not to go to it. We couldn't image how raunchy it must be if we were facing full nudes in the uncensored room. Our time ran out since we had to find our restaurant that we had reservations at and we had to find it in the maze by Leicester Square, so we left the Tate

and showed the camera what we thought of the art there.

We crossed back over the wobbly bridge, which has St. Paul's as it's backdrop

and went off to the tube. We found our restaurant after some serious navigation and a million references to the London AtoZ book. The restaurant was called Fire & Stone,

and it was the ritziest pizza joint I've ever been to. I felt as though it was beyond my class since I'm a simple Pizza Hut girl with my American manners. Not one person there ate their pizza with their hands, but me. Brits eat almost everything with a knife and fork: pizza, burgers, fries, etc. They rarely need napkins, in fact Edward never needs a napkin since he never uses his fingers and he's so neat about eating, and his parents never put napkins at the table because they're never needed. I, on the other hand, need napkins because I eat like a sloppy American. To prove my American pride, I proudly ate my pizza with my hands, even though I got a lot of stares.


Hyrum decided to blend in and ate his with the knife and fork method.


The pizzas were pretty impressive, since it was pretty upscale.


Waffles aren't eaten for breakfast here, they're eaten as dessert, but dessert is called "pudding", and it refers to any dessert item. I'm not sure what they call pudding, but I am sure that waffles are amazing with ice cream on them!!!

We ordered lemonade, which is a fizzy drink like 7-Up or Sprite. Of course no refills, and there are about 6 swallows to each glass, and a bottle of water that fills two glasses is 3 pounds (almost $6). They don't do refills in England, unless it's an American place like Subway.


After dinner we walked over to the West End, which is London's equivalent to Broadway, but we were early for our show, so we walked around China town and looked at all the nasty things to eat

and tried to find a cute little silk dress for Talea, but decided she is way too tomboy for a dress like that at her age. She'd snag it up the first time she wore it.

We watched SpamALot at 8:30, which is a spoof of Monty Python's Holy Grail movie.

It was really funny, even though we were in the nosebleed section and used binoculars part of the time. We've only been to 2 plays now, and both times we were in the cheap seats up in the nosebleeds, so we don't know any different. It follows the movie but takes out the dumb parts and adds some silly songs that are pretty funny. By the way, they used a gesture in the play that I should explain. Using a middle finger to flip someone off doesn't really mean anything over here. Instead, they hold their fingers in a peace sign but hold their hand so you're looking at the back of the hand rather than the curled fingers. It dates back to the times when captured archers would get their first two fingers cut off so they couldn't use a bow, and then people would taunt them by holding up those two fingers.

It was really late when the play got over, and we were in the gay section of town (they even mentioned that in the play), and we passed by a lot of boy love and a gay bar named Gei-Sha (pronounced gay-sha). I guess that's SoHo's reputation. It was interesting to see since Myrtle Point is far from anything like that. We caught a tube back to the Victoria station, since Blackfriars doesn't go to Eynsford that late at night, and it was kind of nice going on a train this late because they cut out a ton of the stops, so Eynsford was the 4th stop which got us home pretty quick compared to usual. We walked home in the darkness and managed to find the correct alley to take us back to Daisha's house. Our feet were doubly tired tonight since they still hadn't recovered from the night before, but it was so worth it.