So I left off last summers blogs talking about my summer vacation. What I did not get to was my day and a half in London. Unfortunately I was not impressed. I think there were a few strikes against us. We were rushed, we were tired, and the famous English rainy weather got the best of our day and a half. London seemed like a great city with so much to offer but we had so little time and it was the last day and a half of our trip. I could not want to have missed all the other sites we saw but maybe I will have to go back to London to enjoy it more.
The late afternoon and evening in London we decided to go and see a show. After figuring out our way into London on the subway, we bought our tickets, and went to dinner at a chinesse restaurant in London's China town. It struck me that I have never been to a China Town in any city before. We went to see Monty Pythons Quest for the Holy Grail. Marika and I had already seen this show before and it was interesting to see another interpretation of the show. There were some jokes that we did not understand because they were based on local humor. Maybe this is why we liked the tour that came to the Bushnell in Hartford better.
The next morning we started out going to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace. It started late and there was an amazingly large crowd. I didn't get any good pictures of the actual guard changing, my father-in-law did though. But here is a picture of the crowds and police presence. The architecture around the area was very impressive.
After the changing of the guard the weather started to get questionable. We decided that museums might be the way to go. We visited the National Portrait Gallery and the National History Museum. I do love Museums but at the end of this whole trip this was not a high point. I do want to talk about a few things though.
First the architecture in the very old building that houses the National History Museum was fascinating. All around the pillars in the entire museum there were carved animals like this monkey. And the monkeys all had different expressions and poses. Speaking of the monkeys there were also Orangutan skeletons hanging on the second floor. I had fun with those.
As you can tell by this picture there were also lots of really cool stain glass windows in the museum. The lighting and the decoration of the museum were great.The lighting was such that I either had to use flash everywhere, and I don't like how those picture come out, or I could use a slower shutter speed. I had a great deal of fun playing with the slower shutter speed. I did get lost from the group though as I waited to get the perfect picture of the "Dippie" the Diplodocus in the middle of the Museum foyer. This picture was way to much fun to take though.
I also took this picture of Marika and her family. It was fun to have them pose even though the people were moving about in the museum. The result is, in my opinion, a really cool picture.
We spent the rest of the day wandering in and out of stores and seeing sites from along the Thames river. It was raining on and off and we got to see a lot but didn't do much. We did eat dinner in the Cafe in the Crypt at St. Martin in the field in Trafalgar square. Eating dinner cafeteria style while sitting at a table positioned about peoples grave stones was a unique experience. I have to thank Peter Seem for suggesting it.
After dinner we found our way back to the London eye. This picture of the London Eye is taken from across the Thames with a Egyptian Sphinx in the foreground. The Sphinx had score marks in it from a bombing that had happened in the street right next too it.The view from the eye was great, but because it was night and I am not that good with my camera, not many of the pictures I took came out. The lights over the city and looking at the mix of new and old architecture in London was a great way to end our trip.
The next morning we caught our flights home from Heathrow Airport. Marika and I did get stuck in Toronto because of late summer thunder storms. We met up and traveled with two other people that were also stuck in Toronto and flying to Bradley Airport. I was suggesting we rent a car and drive home rotating drivers. We all decided we were too tired to try. So our trip was extended by one more day. I wish we could have seen some interesting sites in Toronto but the airport was too far from anything to see.
I will have to update my readers on my new sailboat in my next blog post. (I bought that this year in case anyone is confused by the time line in this blog.)
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