We actually hauled ourselves out of bed at a reasonable hour today! We got up, had some breakfast (pizza) and went out. We were initially going to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, but we decided we wanted the time to see the Tower of London (mostly, we didnt get out of the flat in time to get to Buckingham for 11am).Thus, we started at the Tower of London and did a tour with a lovely Scottish woman, who ran through the history (essentially, listed some of the unlucky souls who lost their heads at the location.
The Crown Jewels are held in the Tower, and are always an amazing sight. I was there 10 yrs
ago, but didn't remember a lot of the stories. I just watched the first 3 seasons of The Tudors over the holidays (yes, I know it is garbage) with my mother, so I was very interested in the true version of the Boleyn story. We were also luck in that there was a Henry VIII exhibition on that closes next week-- Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill. It was a massive exhibition of all his armour and weapons etc. Pretty impressive. One thing I
remembered from my first experience in London was the pride and Henry VIII-- this is clearly displayed in his armour, which contains a rather generous cod piece. By rather generous, I mean hilariously large.
We grabbed a few shots of the Tower Bridge, before grabbing a cab to Mayfair. We were headed to Maze, Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in Grosvenor Square. AMAZING. The best food ever. We had great service and a fabulous meal, made even better by the inherent love both
Kathleen and
I share for G-Ram. She got his bernaise (sp?) sauce simply because he has raved about it so.
We wandered around to hit Paddington Station so KDu could buy a bear-- I did it on one of my trips here and lovingly display said bear in my house. It was slightly off the beaten track, but we grabbed a bear and headed back to Baker St.
I hadn't seen Baker St. since my first visit in 2000. It was more of a drive-by in those days, so when we got off and KDu asked me which way we were going, I simply said "well, let's
count." Made sense. So we walked along until we saw 221b. That said, we didnt need to count much as there was a Sherlock Holmes museum and a nice guard dressed in oldskool London Police-wear to greet us at the door. His name was Josh. Josh offered us a Holmes cap for our obligatory photos, but we decided communal scabies hats could be something we didn't do in London (plus, I don't think it would have fit over my mane.)
We hopped on a train to Westminster to check out the Abbey and Whitehall (Parliament). Took a few more shots of Big Ben. We knew Westminster Abbey would be closed, but it was important for KDu to see it! We walked around the area for a bit and met a large group of Spanish tourists, before hopping the train back to the Piccadilly line.
Next up was going to be Harrods (its their annual sale!!) but we were running out of time. We
met Sara at 7:30pm at Eros in Piccadilly and headed over to the Gielgud Theatre for Avenue Q. I've wanted to see this musical for a long time, and enjoyed it quite a lot. I particularly enjoyed
the little snack portion of Haggen Daaz that I consumed at the interval-- it seems a strange theatre food, but it is always available and quite popular at intermissions.
We are catching a flight to Amsterdam at 7am, but we have to get to Stanstead Airport to do it, which means leaving here at 330am to catch a 410 am train at Liverpool Station, putting us into Stanstead at about 5am. EastJey are notoriously hardcore about baggage (ie cheap) so we
wanted to make sure we had lots of time! It's going to be a bit tiring, but we have a plan of action. Going to see Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum, maybe walk around a bit, then NAP before a fabulous night in the city. Our train to Bruges, Belgium also departs insanely early the next day, so I forsee another one of these nights coming up-- one
where I stay up waiting to catch the next bit of transportation!
xoxo <-- I like this sign off. It stays.
C.
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