Day 4-Going to Paris

Yesterday was our travel day from London and Paris, and I spent a good few hours with my head in a toilet after what may have been a bad hamburger.  When we finally made it to Paris it took us FOREVER to figure out how to use the ticket machine.  It seemed even French people were confused by it.  We made it to Paris though and I slept until dinnertime.  The good news is that our hotel room is very cute and has a nice view of the deaf-mute school across the street.  Not so nice are the actual deaf mutes who accost you on the street and pout when you don't give them money.

train station in London

ordering croissants at Paris train station

our hotel room

Last night we decided to walk around a little but we were too tired for anything else.  We saw the Seine and Notre Dame and the University of Paris in a short walk.  We also ate crepes for dinner--more like dessert for dinner since I got banana and nutella and mom got sugar and cinnamon.  We found some really tiny alleyways with tons of restaurants and cafes.

mom eating her crepe

This might sound silly, but there are tons of French people here.  Even lots of French tourists who I assume aren't from Paris.  I think we may have even seen more British people here than in London.  Also, many Parisians don't speak English.  Our TV also doesn't speak English which is sort of a problem but oh well.

The Seine

City Hall, and the site of the beheadings by the guillotine in the French Revolution

I'll probably write another post soon about our 2nd day in Paris.  Yay!

Day 3-Last Day in London

Today was our last day of running around London, but even running around didn't allow us to see everything.  Our first stop was the Tower of London, which as it turns out, is not actually a tower but a medieval fortress.  It was built over many years so it has overlapping architecture from different periods.  It kept prisoners in prisoners and kept out enemies and is very large, and today it is of course it is not much more than a tourist attraction. But it does have the crown jewels.  Seeing the crown jewels was cool but then again, they could have totally been fake crowns and I would never know.

London Tower

London Tower

Tower Bridge

We had lunch on a wharf by the Thames and our view of the other bank was obscured by a monstrous yacht.  We watched the billionaire get on his ridiculously oversized boat as we ate.

huge yacht--the waiter said it belonged to someone named Joe Lewis

the wharf

fish and chippies

After lunch we headed to the Globe Theater along the Thames.  Though the Globe was where Shakespeare worked and had his plays performed, we didn't know until after getting there that this theater is actually a replica that was opened in 1997.  It was still a good replica and the tour guide said that they made it as authentic as possible, with the only difficulties being incomplete information on how the Globe was originally, and of course 21st century safety concerns.  We also got to see a demonstration of how to wear Elizabethan costume.  A girl from a Japanese tour group was picked to be dressed and the Globe's costume people put her in a corset and huge skirt.  It took a long time because it was so detailed but it was pretty neat to actually see it.

inside of the Globe

I stole this off the internet but this is how they dressed the Japanese girl

outside view

Tonight for dinner we headed to Trafalgar Square for dinner and it was definitely the busiest area we've been to.  There were lots of people just hanging out and we found a restaurant nearby where mom got the Shepherd's Pie she's been wanting.

Trafalgar Square

Our last London experience this trip was going to Dennis Severs' house.  It is a house that is entirely decorated to look like the 19th and 18th centuries.  the first 3 floors belong to a wealthy family called the Jervises (they are made up) and the top floor belongs to a poor family.  You are just supposed to go around the house and think about what the family's life is like in this house.  The whole house has fresh food and dropped teacups because you are supposed to believe that they were just there, and that they ran and hid when they heard an intruder (you) in their house.  I liked it a lot.  I don't know if mom did--she said she didn't get it.  So you'll have to ask her about that.  There was not talking and the only light was candlelight which made it very hot, but each room was so detailed.  You almost expect that when you walk out you are going into old London.

We are going to bed son because we have to get up early in the morning to go to Paris!  Yay!  It's kinda sad to leave London.  I've gotten so used to people watching on the underground.  But I can't wait to take the train and see some of the country outside of the city.

Day 2-Bloomsbury and Notting Hill

Today was a day I was very excited for because we went to the British Museum and the British Library.  Pretty nerdy activities but I think mom enjoyed them too.  We started out by going to the British Museum and got super lost.  It wasn't bad getting lost because it was a really cute area called Bloomsbury which is supposedly the academic neighborhood of London.  We finally got to the museum (which was free!) and just started walking around.  We started in Egypt (where we saw the Rosetta Stone!) and moved on to ancient Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, the old clock section, and the mummies.  I had a super good time because I love looking at that kind of old stone.  We saw 7 year old Egyptian boy's mummified foot and I thought of Nikki and how sad she would probably be :(   We probably could have spent all day in there, but 2.5 hours seemed like a good amount, especially since England isn't quite as concerned with temperature control as the USA (I thought I would burst into flames.)

Mom in front of the British Library

The Rosetta Stone

oldest chess set ever (from the 1000s or something)

We had lunch in Bloomsbury at a deli that was across the street from the Prince of Wales' interior decorator's shop.  We know that he was the Prince of Wales' interior decorator because it said so all over his shop.  Good for him.

It's kinda small but it has a picture of a crown and then it says "By appointment to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales Supplier of Antiques and Decoration"

Lunch was nice and sunny, but it seems that in England the temperature changes within a minute.  It rained 3 times yesterday and 2 times today but only for abut 15 minutes and then the sun came out again.  Our hotel concierge Richie tried to convince us this morning that it doesn't rain all the time in England.  He also claimed (jokingly) that it rains in Paris nonstop and we shouldn't go there because the weather is worse than London.  Anyway we trudged through the rain to the British Library, but the end of the 10 minute walk was sunny.

street in Bloomsbury where we ate lunch

The British Library was a quick visit but a cool one because we got to see some pretty special things, like: the oldest new testament that has been found, Charlotte Bronte's manuscript of Jane Eyre, the Beatles' handwritten lyrics to "Yesterday" and "Help," Leonardi DaVinci's notes on architecture, Henry VIII's prayer scroll, the Magna Carta, Jane Austen's notes, Mozart's handwritten sheet music, and lots of other things I can't even remember.

British Library Entrance

Mom took some video at Notting Hill which was our next stop.  There's normally a big outdoor market but this weekend was the "Carnival."  Supposedly there was a parade but all we saw was a bunch of people walking and drinking, like a super relaxed Bay to Breakers.

street in Notting Hill

video of the Notting Hill "Carnival"


After resting our feet at the hotel, we grabbed dinner at...a burger place.  And it was good!  London doesn't seem to be a big food city.  We actually don't see very many restaurants or cafes and the ones we do see are chains or just kinda unspectacular.

after walking all day 

There are a few other interesting things mom and I have noticed about London:

1) We often forget we are in a foreign country because the language, culture, and weather are not really different.

2) With all the tourists and immigrants in London, we actually rarely hear or see someone with a British accent.  I would say 90% of the service people we have come in contact with at museums, restaurants, our hotel, etc. are not British but instead have some unidentifiable other accent.

3) There don't seem to be a whole lot of people out and about at night.  And there don't seem to be many places to go out too.

4) British people are very nice!  A restaurant cook who looked like he was enjoying his uninterrupted cigarette break got up to point the Library out to us.

5) Cars do not stop for you when you are crossing the street.  They DO NOT.

6) Oddly enough, mom has a hard time pronouncing words and we're not enough in France yet.  Her pronunciation of the train station "Cockfosters" was given a new and wildly inappropriate spin this afternoon.

7) London is very big.  There are so many neighborhoods we could not possibly see them all in 3 days, which is too bad because I would like to.  Within the neighborhoods themselves we seem to do a lot of walking too.

us using the map (again and again and again)

Tomorrow is our last day in London!  At night we are going to do the thing I have been looking forward to the most in London so I'm excited.  London has been very nice, but I think we are both looking forward to Paris.

View from our hotel room:

view from our hotel room

Pretty train station:

The Underground:

Day 1-The Big Sites

This morning we landed around 7am and went straight to our hotel to drop things off and begin sightseeing.  The hotel staff is hilarious, especially a guy named Richie who speaks with such a thick British accent that we actually couldn't understand half the things he said.  But he was very entertaining when we told him we were starting off by going to Westminster Abbey ("What's that?" he joked.)  He seemed disappointed that we are going to Paris after London: "WHY? They hate us over there?  I could send you to French restaurant here in London that will get you used to the French experience.  They have awful service--they'll drop a pot of onion soup on your lap and pretend they don't notice!  He must like us though because he upgraded our room and now we have a super awesome room with a sofa, sitting area and two desks (in case mom and I both want to write novels here at the same time.)

After eating some breakfast, we went to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.  The building was so striking and beautiful--it was almost surreal.  But of course it was zoo of tourists (including ourselves I suppose) and it continued onto Westminster Abbey.  The Abbey had so many things to look at.  I think the coolest was probably the oldest door in England which is about 1000 years old and still stands in its original structure in the Abbey.

Then of course, it started to rain, and then it started to rain harder, and suddenly it was pouring when it had been sunny 15 minutes before.  We decided to go to the hotel at the point, but the rest of our day kind of dragged on because we were so exhausted. We went to Harrod's (the zoo of zoos) and came out with a chicken pie from the food stalls.  We tried to stay awake the whole day to get on the right time zone, so we kept moving and strolled to Buckingham Palace.  It was even bigger than we both thought it would be and we got to the see the changing of the guards.  It was pretty neat, but after the changing of the guards I sat down on the floor and fell asleep for a few minutes.

And then...

...cod and chips for dinner!

Hopefully tomorrow we'll have more energy!

Off Tomorrow!

Tomorrow mom and I take off in an air-o-plane and head across the pond to foggy Londontown.  We're in a bit of a spot about what to pack, because the weather's been rainy on and off.  But I think we're finally prepared, especially after mom took my wise advice to put away the short shorts and flip flops (Kids these days...)  We are very excited to race around London for 3 days and see the sights, and then we will of course have tea with our besties, Will and Kate.  Not.  


The plan for our first day, after we get off the plane at 7am (yikes!), is to see most of the things around our hotel, which is near Buckingham Palace.  Our hotel is called the Hotel Cadogan (not Buckingham Palace as Cal so cleverly guessed) and our first day will be a mixture of a few big sites like the Palace and Westminster Abbey as well as a little shopping in the Portobello Road Market.  We're gonna skip seeing Kate's wedding dress which is on display and open to tourists willing to shell out a pretty shilling or two.  Also, the queen thought the dress display looked spooky, so when in London, do as the Queen tells you.  I think.  


Anyway, I'll get back to packing and make sure mom doesn't sneak in a bikini or a margarita machine.  
Toodle-oo for now!