While Hannah was with us we decided to take a trip to see some dear friends in Scotland and explore a bit of London along the way. It's hard to believe that we live only about an hour from London and yet until this most recent trip had only ever seen the airport! Since we would be flying from London to Scotland we left Oxford a day early and booked ourselves a night in a hotel so that we could bum around some of the main attractions for a day and a half.
We saw Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, The London Eye, Westminster Abbey, China Town, Westminster Cathedral, Trafalgar Square, The Jewel House, museums, parks, red phone booths, arches, statues, double-decker buses, and monument after monument after monument. (Hannah took much better photos but those are all on Ben's computer which is currently in the shop.) Oh! And we also think we may have seen the street where the Banks family lived in Mary Poppins. (Our source for this may or may not have been a crazy man on the street.)
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P.S. - The London Underground is NOT wheelchair accessible. This means that the London Underground is also not stroller friendly. Luckily there were 3 adults to carry the thing (baby inside) up and down the hundreds of stairs! We all got a good workout in London - whether we wanted it or not.
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10 points to the first person to identify who this statue is... (Hannah, you don't get to play - sorry.)
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This is Nora playing in the Queen's daffodils (in the park across the street from the palace). Shhh, don't tell the Queen!
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In Trafalgar Square. We had to climb to get up to this thing and passersby definitely stopped to stare (laugh?) as I wiggled and wriggled my way onto this ledge. Apparently I (Deanna) am not as agile as I used to be...
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At the end of our first day we stuffed ourselves with Cornish Pasties and watched a silly movie starring Queen Latifah that was on TV in our hotel room (quite the novelty as Ben and I don't have a TV here!) before rolling into bed. The next morning we did a bit more sightseeing, grabbed some lunch, checked out of our hotel and headed to the airport to catch our flight to Edinburgh, Scotland. Only then did our adventure really begin.
It turns out, the directions we were given by the London Underground staff to get the airport were completely misguided. The line we were on was shut down for a portion, there were busses (insufficient in number) ready to take us down the line to get back on the same line but even if we could have crammed onto a bus (which we couldn't) traffic was at an absolute standstill. We tried to get a cab (which would in theory have more freedom to maneuver around the gridlock) but even they couldn't help. We were stuck. We weren't even sure where... but it was somewhere between where we came from and where we needed to be.
Needless to say, we missed our flight.
Luckily for us, our dear friends in Edinburgh were able to get online and book us new tickets for the next morning and a hotel room near the airport... a different airport. If it hadn't been for them I think we all would have sat down for a little cry (from exhaustion), thrown in the towel, and returned to Oxford.
To be continued...
the statue reminds me of George Washington or Ben Franklin, but if you're in London I really REALLY doubt it's them. heh I'm no good at identifying dead guys. I should be able to remember these sorts of things.
ReplyDeleteP.S. LOVE LOVE LOVE the lion pic. Seriously...is that Aslan???? mmmm I hope you're out in England long enough for me to visit!!
George Washington!
ReplyDeleteSome people guessed via email and some via facebook and Kristy via the blog (obviously). Because of all the time zones I think it will be too tough to figure out who guessed correctly first, so you can all have 10 points. (I'm feeling generous.)