| Aug 6, 2006 - London
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 | | show all 11 | | Parliment houses and Big Ben | | Big Ben | | Tower Bridge | | |
| Cheerio from old London. This city is pretty overwhelming, It's SO big and there are people everywhere. People from all over the world speaking dozens of languages. I don't think I have ever seen so many people. It's been rather exhausting, especially after the relaxed atmosphere of Bath, The Cotswolds and Lakes District. We have been here 3 days and have been walking everywhere, hitting all the big sites, or at least, most of them. The first day we walked from our hotel near Victoria Station to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, then over to Leicester Square where we picked up half-price theater tickets for The Producers, which was hillarious. We did yet another hop-on, hop-off bus tour, which is a great way to get your bearings and see the major sites. Saturday we saw another play, The Woman in Black, a ghost story, which was also very good. We wanted to see another muisical before leaving, but not sure we will have time. Today we visited the Winston Churchill Museum and the 'Cabinet War Rooms', which was one of my favorite museums of the whole trip. It's the original underground bunker used during the war and is pretty much, exactly how it looked in 1945. Just like stepping back in time and very interesting.
This afternoon there was a huge anti-war demonstration starting in Trafalgar Square, with thousands of people. It seemed like a peaceful demonstration, at least we didn't see the police dragging anyone away, clobbering them with billy clubs or spraying them with pepper spray. It's Saturday night and only 8:00 pm, but both Candi and I are pretty whooped and ready for bed. All the walking combined with struggling through the hordes of humanity is taking it's toll. We ate dinner near our hotel and then decided to stop for a beer and cider at a pub across the street from our hotel. There was a group of locals celebrating the impending birth of one of their kids. They were chatting with everyone around and struck up a conversation with us and a table of Russian women. The Russians didn't understand English very well, and didn't know these guys were joking with them. One of the English guys plopped down between them and started rummaging through their grocery sack, asking if he could have some crisps (what they call potato chips). He was only kidding, but one of the women thought he was serious and looked a little freaked out. She opened the bag and passed it over to them, which brought forth a lot of laughter from the guys buddies. He walked over and apologized, saying he was only joking but thanking them for the crisps and then bought them each a beer. It's amazing how friendly everyone is. We all sat around and chatted with one another before finally heading off to bed. |
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