We got serious today with our list of places to visit. Depending on how you’d count, we knocked off seven places on our list. I think it had something todo with Rosie’s multiple double-espresso in the morning.
Our first stop was the Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. This was number two on my list of places to visit. The size of Trafalgar Square is hard to understand until you actually see it in person. The fountains out front are huge, we spent 10-15 minutes just crossing it from the tube station. Once we got inside the national gallery, Rosie and Isaac took off at warp speed. I got the map, starting at one in and moving through each hall. I can honestly say that pictures of people are pretty boring to me. My favorites were all of things or places. But what I was surprised about was the size of many of the paintings. Entire rooms were full of portraits, with not a single one smaller than 10 feet tall.
I was looking forward to seeing van Gogh’s Sunflowers in person, I would consider it one of his more famous paintings. (For the simple fact that it is the only one I could name off the top of my head) But my favorite was van Gogh’s Chair.
Van Gogh’s Chair
But of the impressionist, I have always perfered Monet. I just love his water Lily’s and one of the things I am most looking forward to in Paris is seeing the water lily room. So of course my favorite painting isn’t he national gallery was the The Water Lily Pond.
Monet’s Water Lily Pond
But the National Gallary has may 10 Monet’s and a bunch of them of winter settings. I had never seen a Monet with snow in it, in my limited art history knowledge all of his paintings are of spring and summer settings. So when I saw The Thames below Westminster, I was blown away.
The Thames below Westminster
Our next stop was Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus, since it is maybe five minutes from the National Gallary. It was as crazy with people as you would expect. The line to get into the Lego store was longer any line we have seen for a ‘real’ tourist site. Isaac was good skipping Lego and went straight to the M&M store across the street. I had never seen one of these before, Rosie says there is one in Las Vegas now. It was four different floors (Two above ground and two below) I was so tired of M&M when we finally made it out of there.
Since it was now lunch time (at least for us), we went around the corner to what I would call Chinatown, but I am not sure that is what they call it here. We found a dim sum place and had a very taste lunch.
London Chinatown
During lunch we decided our next stop was the London Eye, or as it is now called the Coca-Cola London Eye. I actually purchased tickets online during lunch, which saved a bunch of time. So after another tube ride, we got in line to ride the big wheel. (For those keeping track at home, we are now up to four places on our todo list)
London Eye
One of the nice things about taking a ride on the London Eye, you get a great view of that part of London. We got to see Big Ben and Parliament pretty well, plus a long distant view of Buckingham Palace.
Big Ben and Parliament
And no, I can’t say Big Ben and Parliament without thinking, “Hey look, kids, there’s Big Ben, and there’s Parliament.”
I had to tweak this picture a little (and in my iPhone actually) so you could make out Buckingham Palace. Seeing it up close wasn’t big on my list, but I think Rosie may still try to get over to see it.
Using a little fuzzy math, that makes seven items on our list we checked off today. Tomorrow Rosie is heading out to where ever her company has their London office (which is about an hour train ride from London) to have lunch with her manager and co-workers. I was going to take Isaac to the Harry Potter sound stage, but discovered they are sold out for tomorrow. They are also sold out for the rest of the month and most of March. Oops – guess I should have bought the tickets a couple months ago. So instead we are going to the Sherlock Holmes museum and then hunting for one of the few blue Police boxes left in the city. (Can you say Dr. Who fans?)
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Yesterday was another interesting day. The family is still adjusting to the time zone shift, so I was again the first one up and moving. I am spending that quiet time in the morning writing these logs and doing sysadmin things that have been annoying for a while, but never quite had time to fix. Yesterday I finally fixed a problem in PHP/Apache/Wordpress which was preventing me from uploading photo’s when they got more than 2M.
Once we all got moving, we decided to try breakfast at the cafe which is attached to the apartment building we are staying at here in London. Rosie tried a traditional English breakfast, I got a plain omelette and watched. I’ve had them on previous trips, so I knew I didn’t like them. I don’t think she really did either, but my omelette was good. We also did the required amount of Pokémon hunting around the flat, Isaac is enjoying catching all the ‘rare’ Pokémon that appear to be normal here.
After that we made our way to the tube station which is close to our flat. I didn’t quite understand how they worked well enough to use it on Tuesday. So we had hiked to the next stop up, which is also on a more common line. Now that we have gotten totally lost and spent a couple hours being lost, we have become experts at navigating them. We were hoping trains like pro’s yesterday and it is really quite convenient.
Our first stop was Knightsbridge and wondering around the fancy stores. I had always wanted to visit Harrod’s, which is really quite amazing. We probably spent two hours wondering around and only hit probably three floors. Isaac got another magic trick, which he has been playing with non-stop and I got a pair of workout shorts. It seems one of the ‘stacks’ of stuff that was suppose to get into the suitcase didn’t. The place we are staying has a really complete gym, pool and workout center. I am going to try and take a TKD class today. But anyhow, the most amazing thing I saw at harrod’s was the shotguns. I couldn’t believe they sold shotguns.
After Harrod’s we got lunch at this little place I saw when we were wondering around. The food was pretty good, but they managed to posison me with dairy. (More on that in a minute) Which is when I realized that none of the wait staff at any of the places we have eaten really speaks English. The lady who waited on us yesterday was clearly not a native speaker, Rosie eventually switched to French, which she seem to understand much better. The Mexican place Isaac and I ate at last night was run by Russians. It is a crazy world!
So after lunch we got back not he tube and went a couple stops to where the national science and history museums are located. I don’t think I mentioned this before, but nearly every tube station seems to have a Starbucks in it or at the very least, right outside of it. I really appreciate this, it makes getting my fix very easy. And yes, I have been having London Fog’s in London all week.
We decided to go through the science museum first, partly because it had a shorter line to get in. This was another thing that surprised me, there is no charge for these, they are all free. The museum was nice, but still focused for a target audience of about 10. Of course just about the time we got in (because while the line was shorter, there was still a line), my poison lunch required me to visit the little boys room. After round one of removing the poison from my system, I walked through the clock exhibit. This started with the earliest clocks, but what I really liked was the early sea going clocks that were used to help sailers navigate.
Early Sea Going Clock
The next stop was the ‘high tech’ section, which really meant old computers. It started with the Babbage Machine II, which was only started by Charles Babbage, but not finished until after his death.
Babbage machine 2
Then it was on to the actual computers run by electricity, like the Mk2 and this really old Commonder PET.
MK 1
This was used for nearly 10 years at some university, before being retired.I don’t remember what this system was actually used for, but it was a general purpose PET wired up todo something specific. I think it calculated weather predictions.
Commodore PET Weaather Station
About this time I had to make a second trip to the little boys room. I was just finishing up when the fire alarm went off. It took me a minute to even realize what it was, because while it was annoying, it wasn’t as annoying as the fire alarms in the statues. But they evacuated the museum and we got to watch the London fire department fly in in force. Even with he crowds, I manage to find Rosie and Isaac pretty quickly and we decide to call it a day and head home. This time the time the tube station was a ‘crowded’ with everybody trying to leave at the same time.
When we got back, Rosie was suppose to go to a Crossfit class, but bailed since she is still not adjusted to the time zone yet and was tired. Isaac and I decided to hike to a Mexican place for dinner while Rosie took a nap. She eventually made it to the gym, while Isaac and I watched two episodes of Arrow on our iPads. Tomorrow it is off to Trafalgar Square and the national gallery.
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Our second day in London got off to a slow start. Normally I am the one who sleeps late and generally is slow to get moving in the mornings. (I also stay up later, since I enjoy the quiet when everybody else goes to bed) Well that got flip around with our trip over. Both Rosie and Isaac took long naps when we got to the flat on Monday, so their bodies were still on Seattle time. (I stayed awake until it was 9PM and then crashed) As a result, I was up at 7AM and everybody else was still asleep. Poor Isaac slept until 10AM and only got up then because we woke him up. (He did sleep for 12 hours)
After getting everybody dressed and ready, we went in search for food. We missed breakfast at the local restaurant, since they stop serving at 10am, so I just asked Google. Got a recommendation for a place on the way to the Victoria tube station. Rosie and I thought it was amazing, Isaac wasn’t so sure since they put cream cheese on his French toast.
After breakfast, we made out way to the Victoria Underground and did the normal tourist thing of getting confused trying to buy passes. We eventually just gave up and went to the visitor window and asked the nice lady to help us. I had installed an app on my phone which told us which train to get on, but this turned out to not be sufficient.
Rosie and Isaac riding the Underground
I got us on the right line, but in the wrong direction. When I realized it, we got off and I proceeded to get us on another line, also in the wrong direction. (The damn signs are ass backwards if you ask me) We eventually got going in the right direction, but wasted about an hour.
We eventually popped out at Tower Hill and made our way to the Tower of London. This was one of the places we all wanted to see and it was pretty cool. We did the tour first, which are directed by Yeoman of the Tower. (All E6 or higher retired UK service men) Ours was very funny and we all learned stuff. After the tour we went to the display on the mint, which I had read quite a bit about during my reading about Sir Isaac Newton.
We then did a tour of the Royal Jewels, which was actually less interesting than I expected. Eventually we made it over to one of the walls and got into one of the turrets. At this point we were getting tired and hungry.
We stopped at a stand to get fish and chips, after paying 50p to use the only bathroom we’d seen all day. The fish and chips were OK, but I miss tarter sauce. At this point we wondered down to the water front and got our first real good view of the Tower Bridge, which I learned was not the London Tower Bridge, because just up stream is the actual London Bridge. This is just called the Tower bridge.
At this point we headed back to the tube station and made our way back to the flat. We stopped at a grocery store on the walk back and got curry for dinner. We were all pretty tired and went to bed early after dinner. Rosie was suppose to get up to take a Crossfit class, but as I mentioned, they are all still not adjusted to the time zone yet. I am again the first one up. (Enjoying my English tea!)
Random things about London.
Row of Nines
The age of buildings is really hard to growk until you wonder around a while. There are lots of row houses (I think that is the right term), which appear to be residential, but in fact were all hotels.
Once we got closer to the Victoria tune station, more modern buildings started showing up and so did the construction. There were several times today when I could see a place, but had to really work at getting there because it would be all blocked off.
The other thing which really stood out is the number of languages being spoken. I heard French and Italian nearly as often as English yesterday. There were several times that something like English was spoken to me and I had NO clue what they were saying. I helped a couple who were speaking Italian navigate the 50p bathrooms, since they understood me better than the attendant who was speaking one of these English like languages.
Then there was just the crazy stuff, like a Ferrari parked on the street.
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The great European Vacation began Sunday evening as we bordered a plane to London. I have traveled to Europe a number of times and I continue to hate the experience of getting here. Nine plus hours crammed into a small space. I don’t know how people manage to sleep, I doubt I got more than an hour total. I will say the food provided on this British Air flight was pretty good though. My new Bose noise canceling headphones I got for Christmas were also amazing. Well worth the $300 they cost. I had them on for nearly eight hours straight and the battery was only down to 90% when we landed.
Upon arriving we did the long walk from the Termianl to customs, I swear it had to be close to a mile. We got through customs fairly quickly and managed to find out way to the trains. I had pre-purchased tickets on the express train to London and the train was sitting there waiting for us when we walked up.
I knew we’d have to get new SIM’s for our phones/iPad, since none of us wanted to go without connectivity while out site seeing. I had planned at getting the pre-paid SIM at the train station downtown, but Rosie started getting itchy for connectivity before we had even made it to the train, so we had to stop at one of the vending machines and buy three SIMs at the airport.
The cost wasn’t a huge difference from what I had read you could get downtown, so that wasn’t a big deal. They also had SIMs by EE, which I had read had the best LTE coverage. The only problem, I forgot to pack the SIM extraction tool (i.e. Paperclip) and of course no SwissArmy knife. I went through my entire bag and couldn’t find anything that would work. Finally Rosie dismantled one of her bracelets and got me a small piece of wire. After figuring out how to extract the SIM on my phone, the rest were easy. The cost of wireless service here is amazing. I got 5GB of data, 200 SMS messages and 10 hrs of voice for $55. We only got Isaac a 5GB data only SIM and it was just $25.
The rest of the day was pretty much a wash. We got to the apartment Rosie rented around 3pm. Everybody crashed for a couple hours and then we walked to diner around 6pm local time. Tonight we are all going to bed early and planning to hit the sites tomorrow.
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