London Part Three

Another London post, although my memory is already fading! Anyway, onto Wednesday of our trip. That morning Jason had a meeting with a hedge fund office on the way to the Museum of Natural History, so we took the underground together part way, he got off at his stop for his meeting while I continued on to the Museum. I decided to go back as I hadn't spent much time there earlier in the week, plus I wanted to get the kids some souvenir dinosaurs from the museum. The museum was quite busy that day and I had to queue for about 15 minutes before getting in, which I guess is not too long of a wait. Fortunately, I already had seen the dinosaur exhibit which was quite busy and instead went to the Earth gallery. The entrance to the Earth gallery is a 3 story escalator which takes you inside of a huge model of the earth (I believe) and then you exit at the top floor of the earth gallery. I meandered my way through the 3 stories of the gallery and looked at exhibits of volcanoes, earthquakes, earth slides and other natural disasters. This area also includes precious metals and gemstones which was quite interesting.  I spent about an hour at the museum before heading back to our hotel to meet Jason after his meeting.

Front of the British Museum

Whitehall Garden

Jason and I both returned about lunch time and got lunch at the same pub we ate at on our first evening in London, The Albany. Then we walked to the British Museum which was about a 20 minute walk to the southeast. The day was beautiful, sunny and around 65 which was pretty much what the weather was like all week. The museum was quite impressive and it was amazing to see huge sculptures from ancient Egyptian and Greek cultures which were thousands of years old. We also got to see the Rosetta Stone and wandered through the European History wing before heading to the courtyard at the entrance to the museum for some afternoon coffee. We were there for maybe an hour and a half and barely scratched the surface of what was there, but we were ready for some fresh air and time outside, so we moved on.

We then took the underground south to the River with plans to see the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace. Our tube stop was about a half mile from Big Ben, so we walked through Whitehall Gardens on our way there and got to see a tree with crutches. It must be an important tree.

Taking a break at the garden

After a short 5 minute walk, we made it to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. I was completely shocked by how large the building was, and how high Big Ben is. I had  no idea it was so tall! I was just shocked. We had to take a picture with Big Ben in the background as I had told Sam we were going to visit and he knows what "Big Bently" is as that was in the Cars 2 movie. The building is beautiful and very impressive and really just difficult to describe. It is definitely a must see if one ever goes to London.

We walked past the Houses of Parliament, then passed Westminster Abbey and walked through St James Park which leads to Buckingham Palace. We were quite hot and tired from all of our walking during the day, so we just briefly paused outside the palace gates for a picture before moving on. Surprisingly, Buckingham Palace was not nearly as impressive as the Houses of Parliament or St Paul's Cathedral. It was incredible to think of it as a royal residence, but it simply did not have the same aura as the other areas we'd/I'd seen in London.

We then made our way to the nearest tube station and headed north. When we got off the tube, we were just south of an antiques market I had read about online, Alfie's Antique Market, so we headed north a few blocks in search of the market. We walked through an interesting neighborhood where a food market with many stalls of fresh fish on ice was just finishing up. By food market, I mean that stalls/tables were set up on the street and food was for sale. Once we got to Alfies, Jason and I were quite surprised to find that the antiques were more of the mid-century type (mid-20th century) and were mostly furniture and fixtures, with some other artifacts mixed in. They were quite pricey and nice, but I think we were both expecting older antiques.  

West end of the Houses of Parliament, with Big Ben in the background

As it was nearly 6PM, we were both quite hungry and walked straight east back toward our hotel. We were about 20 minutes from it. We passed Baker Street (did not run into Sherlock Holmes) and Jason wanted to take the tube from Baker Street back to our stop (which was just one stop away from Baker Street). I tried telling him it would just be better to walk as my journeys over the past few days had led me to believe that unless a destination is more than 3 stops away, it's generally faster to just walk. But we went to Baker Street Station, found it extremely crowded as it was rush hour, found the trains extremely crowded, and left Baker Street Station on foot and walked toward our hotel.

Outside Buckingham Palace

Near our hotel, we stopped at Pizza Express for a pizza dinner. I had seen some Pizza Express restaurants around London earlier in the week and thought it sounded, um, cheap, but had read it was really quite good pizza. And it really was quite good. I think that even if I wasn't extremely hungry, it still would have been quite good. We then went back to our hotel, deciding to skip Ukulele night at the Albany which our server had told us about during lunch. Apparently it's open Ukulele night and people just bring their Ukulele's and play together. I'm sure it would have been a great experience, but we were just exhausted from our day.