Here is London... Part Tre!

Back again. Whoa! These just take me so long to write that I kind of lost my mojo for a few weeks. I am very excited to continue. How I loved this trip! On a side note, I hope everyone had a great Christmas. We had a wonderful time around here. Magical. Okay, on with the trip...

We're really IN London now ;). As I said before, our hotel was not the finest and we'd had the mother-puking-into-the-bucket incident the night before so when we tried to eat breakfast on our first morning, we had to go right back outside. The smell was too much. It was off to McDonalds again! I know!

This is MY station. Okay, I claim Bayswater and occasionally Queensway (but only on rare occasions because it is so stinky).

Our first stop was the National Gallery. When you're in London, you really must tackle the National Gallery. It is marvelous. Whenever I'm there I'm gobsmacked at the sheer amount of fabbity fab art it houses. It's crazy! You can see Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet, Caravaggio, Cezanne, Hogarth, Turner, Van Eyck... GASP! It kills me! I love it so much. It's very well organized and mapped out so you can actually do it relatively quickly. A few hours is all you need to view some of the most amazing pieces of art IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE (that's an exaggeration as I doubt there is art in space).

Well, the nuttiest thing happened during our visit. We ran into Kara and Auntie Di! Oh yes we did! Kara and Auntie Di are friends from days of yore whom we love with all our hearts and who we intended to meet up with at some point during this trip. However, bumping into them at the National Gallery was coo coo cachoo! London is massive and the NG is massive! HOW this happened was sheer serendipity. It was so lovely to see them there. We decided to finish our high brow perusing and continue on, as a foursome, to the Orangery at Kensington Gardens for afternoon tea. WHAT?! I've wanted to have tea there for 11 years. It's true. Since I studied in London (and couldn't afford to have tea there) I have pined for the Orangery! It was great (the cucumber sandwiches were the teensiest bit soggy) and I can now check the Orangery off my dream list. Yessss!

That night we went to "The Mousetrap", which I had seen before but Steve had not. I really love that play. I actually forgot who the murderer was until about halfway through :). That made it a bit more exciting, I'm sure. After the play we ate at Wagamama. This, my friends, is a good chain restaurant. Yes, I'm admitting this. It's a noodle place and they have some superb dishes. They're all over London and they're open late! Woot woot!

Below are some pictures of day one in London. I shall continue with day two after said pictures ;).

Steve and I in Picadilly Circus. Too happy for my own good.

THE sign.

Steve's "London" pose. It had been a LONG time since we'd been back :(.

Me in Trafalgar Square. Again, way too excited. I'm sure people thought I was a right nutter.

Kara and Auntie Di on our walk through Kensington Gardens to the Orangery. Kara tended to drag Auntie Di by the fingertips...

Just a shot of Steve going up the escalator in the tubes. I was trying to show the crazy, crazy depths underground you go when you're on these trains. I try not to think about it too much because I'm massively claustrophobic. It's fascinating. Notice the Gerard Butler lookalike with the mocking smile on the opposite escalator. Yes, I'm a tourist.

The next day we were set to meet Kara and Auntie Di at the Notting Hill Gate tube station and head over to Portobello Road as it was a Saturday and the Portobello market is one of my favorite things. Ever. We got lost. It is amazingly easy to get from the station to Portobello Road and we got lost. We all felt like morons. We did eventually find the precious Road and the lovely shopping began.

I shopped this street almost every Saturday when I studied in London. I bought Lychees from that really loud fruit vendor you see on the movie Notting Hill (and not because he was famous, the movie wasn't out then. It was because he was soooo loud. And had good prices). It's so much fun to browse the antiques and hold little pieces of history in your hands. I like to imagine the previous owners of objects I'm considering. It makes them so much more interesting to me. That may be why I always spend a lot of money on Portobello Road ;).

I found some lovely Wedgewood, and some knit hats with the Union Jack on them for gifts. The Wedgewood man was hilarious. We spoke with him for about a half hour. He had been to Utah and was very interested in where we lived and HOW we lived as it's so different from the day to day in London. We ate some really great food but I was very sad to see that my fruit vendor was not there that day. I don't know if he's no longer selling fruit or if he just wasn't there on that particular Saturday. Anyway, it broke my heart. I longed to hear his deafening cries of, "lycheeeeees, ninety nine p a pound weight!" I loved that man.

Steve and I at the entrance to Portobello Road.

What I thought *might* have been my vendor's stall (it was where he usually set up), tended by a substitute. What a sad day. I'm sure they didn't sell half as much fruit that day ;). Doesn't it look delicious?

A very strange man who was letting his dog lick his head. Oh London.

After our shopping excursion, we said our goodbyes to Kara and Auntie Di who were catching a flight back to Utah. Steve and I then grabbed lunch at Cafe Diana on Bayswater. AH! My favorite! They have the most amazing chicken tikka wraps with hummus and pickled veg! I only discovered it late in my Study Abroad adventure and I strongly regret that I didn't find it sooner. I was mildly concerned that I'd built it up too much in my memory. I HAD NOT. It remains one of the best pita wrap thingies on planet earth. If you're in London, I insist that you try it. It's not off the beaten path. Really, just on Bayswater. It's got a yellow awning and black writing.

We were then on our way to Greenwich. To our extreme misfortune, we discovered that there were major line closures in the tubes due to construction (the Olympics are coming in 2012)! Well, just you try getting around London, especially outside zone 2 without those precious trains running. Heaven help that city should anything catastrophic happen to the tubes! We had to take a bus to Greenwich! What a nightmare! Well, we took the tubes part of the way, transferred to a bus and took a boat back into London. The horror! I was sicker than a dog by the time we got there. One pitiful, hateful thing about London (and likely the rest of the world) is that NO ONE will give up their seat. Young guys just watch you as you suffer (of course they don't know some of us have broken backs, but can't they SEE the pain on a person's face?) and don't do a stinking thing. It's horrifying. Pregnant women and women holding children wouldn't even be offered seats.

Here's a street sign we came across on our journey to Greenwich. We though Will would enjoy it.

Again, I'm demanding something. If you're ever in London, you must go to Greenwich. It's a delightful little town and the observatory and maritime museum are fascinating. Steve had just read "Longitude" about John Harrison who solved the problem of longitude by developing the most accurate clocks of the time, and was therefore out of his wits with excitement. It's also pretty great to stand in two hemispheres at the same time :).

Here, my friends, is the Prime Meridian of the World.

Here we are, being original and clever ;).

I fear you are underestimating the cleverness.

This is H4, the final clock John Harrison made. It's is so vastly different from the first 3 (whose pictures did not turn out).

Just a little shot overlooking Greenwich. Isn't it adorable?

After our visit to Greenwich, as I said, we decided to return to London by boat. I love a nice boat trip on the Thames. It gives you a view of London you can't get any other way. The unfortunate thing was that it was very dark by the time we got on the boat, it was quite dark. Still, it was exciting to see the Tower, Tower Bridge and London Bridge. As our luck concerning travel this day would have it, the engine on our boat caught fire and they had to kick us all off in SOUTH LONDON to make our way in the world. Unless you are used to the ways of South London, it is not the kind of place you want to be at night. Without a gun ;). Or a knife. However, we were planning on going on the London Eye anyway, so we just figured we'd walk on over and hop on. More like run. I was very uncomfortable in this part of town. It's sketchy. People get stabbed. 'Nuff said.

The London Eye was pretty cool. We got an amazing view of London at night and the pod they put you in is not too claustrophobic, which was grand. However, it is freakishly expensive. Insanely. There are certain tacky tourist things they could do without; naff pictures with fake backdrops, romance pods etc. Overall, it was fine.

Tower Bridge from the boat.

Steve and I on the London Eye. We got a fantastic view of London.

After the Eye, we went to a play called "The 39 Steps" which is an Alfred Hitchcock movie that they've turned into a comedy. It was hilarious and I highly recommend it. After the show, we headed to a Mexican restaurant (a rarity in England) and had an amazing dinner. We then headed back to the hotel and did laundry in the bathtub using detergent purchased at Tesco ;). It smelled really good. I'm not being facetious. All in all, it was a great day, and very productive, especially considering the travel fiascos we encountered. Huzzah! Success!

Here's a picture of my cute Steve walking through the tubes.

Peace out,

Heidi