London!

Well, we went on another big trip during spring break this year. This time around we went to London. This is that story. An early note that this will be a photo dump. I don't apologize. I will likely share some of my opinions on things as well. We'll see, I've just started writing. We spent just about a week in England, I'll go ahead and take it one day at a time.

Sunday, March 10th:
We arrived at Gatwick Airport in the morning and took a train up into London. Then we dragged all of our bags up to go to church at a chapel in downtown London. The people at the church were friendly and it was nice to go to church even though we were on the other side of the world. Then we went to our Airbnb and dropped off our bags (thank goodness) and then went right back to where we had been and visited the British Natural History Museum and the British Science Museum. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures on this day because I felt like I was about to collapse. I have a hard time sleeping in planes and so by the end of this day I had pretty much been awake for more than 24 hours. Here are some pictures:

On the Gatwick Express from the airport to London

A blue whale skeleton hanging in the Natural History Museum. There were a whole bunch of dinosaur fossils and some robotic dinosaurs in this museum, but I didn't take any pictures of them. Paul was afraid of the robotic T-Rex but he thought that the little feathered dinosaurs were funny.

A model of a Watt Steam Engine at the Science Museum. I had to take a picture of this because it's so significant historically and I thought maybe I could show it to my students. This is one of the primary developments that drove the first industrial revolution in the world.

 Monday, March 11th
On this day we set out to do some of the quintessential London things and were at least partially successful, though we were a bit disappointed in a couple things. For one thing Westminster Abbey was closed because apparently the Queen was meeting there with a bunch of people from the commonwealth countries. There were also a whole lot of protests happening around the Houses of Parliament about Brexit, and (and this is the most disappointing thing) the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament (more commonly known as Big Ben, though as any tour guide will tell you, Big Ben is actually the name of the bell) was completely covered with scaffolding, because apparently old buildings need to be maintained sometimes. We did, however, get to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (two versions!), visit the National Gallery, and go on the London Eye Ferris wheel (which was expensive, but fun), as well as going to Hyde Park. Here are some pictures:

This may be my favorite photo I took on the entire tripe. It's just so British.

One of the Queen's horse guards.

The changing of the Queen's Life Guard. They are not the same as the regular guards, as they ride horses.

The changing of the Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace. There was a marching band with them, too. These guys don't look like your standard British guards, and that's because they are Ghurkas from Nepal. A leftover from when Britain ruled Nepal in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They all carried khukri knives (which are super cool). After this we asked Paul what he thought and he said it was cool that they were carrying "automatical weapons."

Us in front of Buckingham Palace

The Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace

Climbing up the steps at the National Gallery. This was right after Paul fell down in Trafalgar Square outside and got an "owie" on his hand that had to be treated or he would cry for the rest of the day. When we asked the person at the front desk if she had a band aid (first of all they don't call them that in Britain. Who knew?) they ended up calling the first aid person, who came and put a band aid on Paul's completely non-injured finger. He was super nice about it.

In the end, I found the National Gallery to be a whole lot of art, most of which sure, was good painting, I guess, but I've never been particularly impressed by paintings. I'll acknowledge that they take talent to produce and that's cool, but I find it kind of boring to stare at them for any length of time. This is a cool one that I took a picture of, depicting Moses raising the brazen serpent for the children of Israel. Also, the guards tended to be pretty stuffy about the kids touching the ropes.

Nancy's note: It was cool to see paintings from Picasso and all those other artists you learn about in history class.  The kids loved running around and getting us in trouble for touching the ropes which were feet away from the paintings and about 2 feet off the ground right at kid level.

Trafalgar Square

I believe this is called the Jubilee foot bridge? It's hard to remember as there are like a million bridges across the Thames.

Heading for the London Eye! As we were walking across the bridge to the South Bank Paul was singing a song he made up. The lyrics went, "The London Eye/Is expensive!"

The London Eye, all told, was pretty cool. It was about the smoothest ride I've ever had on just about anything. If you didn't pay close attention you couldn't even tell that you were moving. The ride all the way around took about thirty minutes.

Nearing the top. We bought those binoculars for the kids to share because Paul has recently developed a fear of heights and we thought they might distract him. It worked.

Nancy's note: The London eye was a highlight of the trip for the kids.  We passed it a lot during the rest of the trip and each time Elsie would point to it and say, "we go up and down, there goes up and down."

The Prince Albert Memorial in Hyde Park/Kensington Park (they kind of blend into each other). Prince Albert was Queen Victoria's husband and apparently people liked him? It was a pretty cool monument.

Tuesday, March 12th
This was our day to visit religious sites in London, primarily. It was also the day that we took our open top double decker bus tour. Coincidentally, it was also the rainiest day of our trip to London. Huzzah. Anyway, we ended up making it to Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral. We learned a lot about the history of London on the bus tour, which I thought was pretty cool. Then, that evening we went to an awesome toy store called Hamley's. It is the oldest and biggest toy store in the world built in 1760 and moved to its current location in 1881.  It had 6 (I think) floors of awesome toys with people doing demonstrations and a lot of toys out that the kids could play with. It was basically a paradise and the kids LOVED it. Here are some pictures:

The front of Westminster Abbey. It was a pretty cool building and had a lot of really cool architecture. However, it felt cluttered inside because it was totally packed with tombs of famous and not-so-famous people. Also, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. However, I'd like to point out that we saw Isaac Newton's tomb and I also stepped on Kipling's tomb.

View from the stone gallery on the way up the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. This was one of my favorite things that we did in London. I guess if there's a tall dome and you're allowed to climb to the top of it, I want to make it happen. Paul did not enjoy the climb at all, and kept on asking, "Dad, what if you fall?" I was carrying him in the carrier.

At the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. Paul was pretty scared about how high we were but he was brave.

The front of St. Paul's. We were too close to see the dome and I never got a picture from further away. It's a cool building.

Playing in a life-size model of the model trains they had out for kids to play with at Hamley's.

Paul loves both the PJ Masks and Superwings, but he was much too busy checking out all the toys to stop and take a picture.

Wednesday, May 13th

Wednesday was the day for our one trip outside of London. I figured that if we were going to England than we had to see Stonehenge. It ended up being a pretty long trip, but even if some would say that Stonehenge was a little underwhelming (I will say that I thought it would be bigger), I still thought it was worth the trip. We took a train out there and then rode a double decker green Stonehenge tour bus out to the actual site. Nancy and the kids liked it, too, though the weather was pretty awful. It was super windy and it kept on raining whenever we stepped outside and then stopping when we went into the visitor's center. Come on, the weather! While we were out there, we also visited the Salisbury Cathedral, which is an awesome old building in the city of Salisbury, the city closest to Stonehenge. That evening we came back to London and went to Borough Market and made the obligatory Harry Potter Fan's pilgrimage to King's Cross Station. Here are some pictures: 

Sightseeing on the train to Salisbury

Kids before Stonehenge

The stones from about as close to them as we were allowed to get. The place was also more beat-up that I remember it looking in pictures I've seen. However, I can give it a break, considering that, all-told, it's like 4000 years old or something. As a history teacher, I really found this place fascinating. It's an obviously monumental construction built by a Neolithic group of people who ostensibly wouldn't have had a government. This makes it an outlier as far as history is concerned, since monumental structures almost always require the direction of a government that can exercise a significant amount of authority over its people. 

This was about the best picture of the kids that we got.

After the trip, people kept asking Paul if he went on one of those red double decker buses and he would tell them no (we took the tube/underground) but that he went on a green bus with a big roof that took us to the old rocks. Then he would tell them it was Stonehenge.

Salisbury Cathedral! All-told I liked it quite a bit better than Westminster Abbey. For one, it wasn't completely packed (with tourists or with tombs). Also, they had one of the original copies of the Magna Carta here, which, as a history teacher, kind of blew my mind. 

Also, this church allowed us to take pictures inside, unlike Westminster or St. Paul's.

Nancy and Paul with the oldest function in clock in Europe? Great Britain? The World? Hang on, let me check. Google says that it's the oldest working clock in the world, having functioned since 1386. Pretty cool.

Outside the cathedral (we weren't allowed to take pictures of the Magna Carta).

Tower Bridge and the HMS Belfast  from London Bridge (which is just a normal bridge).

Pulled pork mac and cheese and fish and chips from Borough Market. The pulled pork mac and cheese was amazing and I have since recreated it at home with a significant amount of success. 

Closer view of Tower Bridge. It's a pretty cool bridge.

Walking across Tower Bridge.

And then there was this. Paul and Elsie didn't really know what was going on but they got in character anyway. I chose the Hufflepuff scarf (there was a store there that takes professional pictures and then sells them for exorbitant amounts of money) because I can get behind accomplishing one's goals through hard work. Hufflepuff is a house that doesn't get enough respect, in my humble and also correct opinion. Also, it's worth noting that this was, by far, the longest line that we had to wait in the whole time we were in London.

Thursday, March 14th
Today we took a cruise on the Thames River, which was pretty cool.  We almost skipped it but apparently I had told Paul long before the trip that a boat ride would be involved. The weather decided to be uncooperative again, but it was sunny for at least part of the time, so we got to sit on the top of the boat and enjoy the ride. While on this boat tour we stopped at the Tower of London and also in Greenwich. Probably the coolest part of the Tower of London was the crown jewels, where we saw a couple monster diamonds (on the order of about 500 carats), but we weren't allowed to take pictures of those. We also went back to Borough Market again for the pulled pork mac and cheese, but the stall was out of mac and cheese, which was really disappointing. Here are some pictures:

Riding on the top of the boat. Paul thought the boat was pretty cool. Elsie, if we trust this picture, had decidedly mixed feelings.

The White Tower, the central part of the Tower of London

Inside the white tower at the weapons and armor museum.

This dragon sculpture was made out of a bunch of armor and weapons. You can tell if you look close.

Paul firing a cannon

The picture just goes to show how perfect the kids were the entire trip.

At the pier in Greenwich. This is the clipper ship Cutty Sark, which was apparently the fastest ship in the world when she was built. I found out that she was built in like 1869 and I had a hard time swallowing that she was the fastest ship in the world at the time when there were steam powered ships around and Confederate blockade runners had been a thing, but I did some research, and apparently it was true! The Cutty Sark could do about 15 knots, which was absolutely screaming for the time, and I think the fastest Confederate blockade runners could do around 9. Pretty impressive. It's a museum now, but we didn't go on it. 

The primary reason why I wanted to go to Greenwich was to visit the Prime Meridian. We did the poor-man's version. You can go into the Greenwich Observatory and pay like 30 pounds a head to see the prime meridian line in there, or you can go in the street at the bottom of the hill and take this picture. I was cool with this.

Some people on the Internet said that standing on the prime meridian means you're in two days at once. They are mistaken. That's the International Dateline. The Prime Meridian is just the location from which all other lines of longitude (and, by extension, time zones) are determined. It's pretty significant.

Then there was a park there and Elsie LOVED the swings. There were a lot of really cool play structures at this park. It turns out that British playgrounds have cooler stuff in them than American playgrounds. Maybe it's because people there are less worried about their kids falling and getting hurt because of the free health care? Who knows. 

Borough Market

I guess we also went to Harrod's Department Store on Thursday, too, but none of us were particularly impressed by it, especially after how much fun we had at Hamley's, so we didn't really take any pictures.

Friday, March 15th
We started out this day at the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground, which was a lot of fun for the kids. It had all kinds of cool things to play on, including a pirate ship. The playground was inspired by the Peter Pan story, so there were a lot of cool things for the kids to do and explore. Then we went to the British Museum. Unfortunately, we were only able to spend about an hour there, which was a bit disappointing to this history teacher. However, the kids weren't too into it, so even if we had had more time, it probably wouldn't have been that enjoyable, because the kids kept running away and trying to touch things. I got to see some of the coolest stuff, though, so there is that. The reason why we were limited in our time at the British Museum was because we had an appointment at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, which was pretty fun, though the kids thought it was scary at times, which was fair, because the place could be kind of creepy. We also went up to Camden Market, which had, interestingly, both a lot of hipsters and a LOT of goth/grunge people waiting in a line for something. We looked around and bought some food.

Me with an artifact from my favorite classical empire: The Achaemenid Persian Empire! It was super cool to get to see some stuff that I've told my students about so many times.

The Rosetta Stone! This stone was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, and it was really cool to see the actual thing.

Me and Elsie with my close, personal friend John Wayne.

I've already used this picture and the Kennedy picture in my US History class.

Nancy and Paul with Britney Spears

A Cornish pasty and some pierogies. I could get on board with eating Cornish pasties more often, except that there's quite a lot of carbs in the shell. Sweet, delicious carbs.

Our trip home was kind of an ordeal. We were traveling for something like 29 hours, and our trans-Atlantic flight was the worst one I've ever been on. However, we made it back home, and saw the cool rainbow in the picture below on our drive back from Vegas (where our flight left and arrived) back to Phoenix.

All told, it was a pretty fantastic trip! The kids had a pretty great time, and Nancy and I loved getting to see more of the world. Though I would say that we preferred Rome to London, London certainly had its charms and we enjoyed our time there. Captain Danger out.