Day 167-exploring London

This is the entirity of our tiny basement apartment.

   June 19-Spencer woke this morning to find that the English tooth fairy delivers British pounds.  In fact, he got one British pound for his tooth.  Since the American tooth fairy only brings one American dollar coin per tooth, Spencer might want to yank out some more teeth over here and get the extra 60 cents for each one!  The flat’s location in a basement on a side street made it relatively quiet, at least compared to the city streets in Munich.  It was even quiet compared to the revelers below the apartment we had had in Brussels.  In any event, everyone took the opportunity to sleep in.  We had purchased bread products and fruits for breakfast the evening before, so we ate those and then headed out. 

We came across a movie shoot with these beautiful old cars.

Buckingham Palace gate.

Waiting for the changing of the guard.

   Sally had hoped that we could walk down the Mall to Buckingham Palace so we could get good spots to watch the changing of the guards.  However, it was closed, effective June 18, in preparations for the 2012 Olympics, so we had to detour around and we only arrived at the Palace 45 minutes before the big event.  Consequently, we could not get the choice positions at the fence.  Nonetheless, Sally and the girls got to see some of the pageantry of the process within the fence and then Shan and Joslyn got to see them marching around with the band as well.

The kids at Buckingham Palace.

   From Buckingham we wandered down to Big Ben, the Parliament buildings, the Jewel Tower, Westminster Abbey, and the church of St. Margaret.  This parish church of the House of Commons was ignored by most of the tourists, but seemed rather interesting to us, since it included burials of (and plaques pertaining to) some relatively important English figures, such as Sir Walter Raleigh. 

Big Ben.

The Jewel Tower was built in the early Norman era.

The Parliament building.

Sun dials on St. Margaret's church.

   On the way back to the flat, we walked by the traditional gate of Buckingham Palace.  The gatehouse now houses the barracks for the horse guards, who conducted their guard change ceremony shortly after we showed up.  The ceremony was much more perfunctory, but the crowd was very small, so we could see it up close; the kids were much more impressed.  Besides, they could also pet the horses and have their pictures taken with one of the unmounted soldiers! 

  

   We ate a late lunch at a pub and then headed to the flat, where we changed out laundry and found even more locations to hang clothes out to dry.  We took a short boat ride on the Thames in the afternoon, from which we could see many of the more popular tourist buildings of London.  Spencer was smitten by the London Eye and wanted more than anything to ride it.  Unfortunately, we did not have time to do so, but that will probably be on the top of his list should he return to London in the future.  We also spied an Egyptian obelisk that piqued our curiosity.  It turned out to be one that dates back to the reign of Thutmosis III around 1500BC.  It was subsequently reused by Ramses II, two hundred years later, reerected by Cleopatra around 15 AD, and then shipped to London and reerected in 1878.  So much history in one monument!

The replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

The Tower of London.

Tower Bridge.

Large Olympic rings mounted under the Tower Bridge to celebrate the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. 



Parliament building and Big Ben.



Egyptian obelisk.

The London Eye.

    Back at the flat, we changed out the laundry again and then dressed up for a night on the town.  We took the tube over to the London Palladium to see “The Wizard of Oz.”  It was quite the production with an interesting rotating stage set-up and lighting tricks that reacreated most of the 1930s-era special effects from the MGM movie.  We all enjoyed it immensely. 

   Afterwards, we grabbed sandwiches at an area restaurant just before it closed.  However, we forgot drinks, so we stopped in at another sandwich place for drinks just as they closed.  Since they had some croissants and banana bread left over that would only be thrown away, they gave them to us as we walked out.  So, that solved breakfast for the next day!  We took the Underground back to Embankment and finally got back to the flat around 11pm.  We got the last load of laundry started and then we all hit the sack.