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.  

London Part Two

So onto the Tower of London. The Tower of London is a former royal residence/prison/fortress probably best known for as a site of a multitude of executions including Anne Boleyn. Today it is the site of the crown jewels. The Tower is actually kind of a village enclosed in thick walls as there is a palace and numerous other buildings on the site. There are tours led by "beefeaters" every half hour and one was starting momentarily when I arrived at the Tower entrance. The tour guide was quite humorous, and joked about the US's youth quite often (the tour was about 1/3 Americans according to a show of hands). We first walked through the gate into the site and were shown where hot oil was poured out of openings on the heads of would-be invaders. Other notorious sites were pointed out during the tour (such as where particular "traitors" entered the site, were tortured and imprisoned and where certain executions were as well as where kings like Henry VIII lived when at the Tower). It was a beautiful day for a tour and ended with a visit to the chapel on the site. I then went to the building which housed the crown jewels and perused the crowns and other royal jewels worn by British royalty for many hundreds of years.

However, the place was quite crowded (although it must not have been too crowded based on the enormous, but completely empty, space for queuing to see the crown jewels) and I didn't spend too much time after the tour browsing around. I then headed north of the Tower and made my way to Spitalfield's Market which was about a 15 minute walk. The Market is supposed to be quite good and I was hoping to find some fabric, but Tuesday is not a big market day, so there wasn't a lot to look at and I ended up just getting lunch at a burger place (and it was a fabulous burger). Given the lack of stuff at the market, I had more time than I anticipated, so I decided to head further north to a museum I had read about in my London book. It was The Geffrye--Museum of the Home and was another 15 minute walk to the north. The neighborhood I walked through was not as nice and touristy as the other areas I had been in, but nevertheless, there were always people around and the streets were busy so I felt quite safe.

I really enjoyed the Geffrye Museum. It has a series of "rooms" decorated and furnished according to different time periods starting in the 1600s. The exhibits with each period room had information about what architecture was like at the time, and how homes were managed (like what women's roles were and so on). The outside of the museum had a series of gardens arranged and planted according to what was common during different time periods. It was quite lovely and interesting to see the different functions and forms that gardens and landscaping took over the past 400 years. In addition to the period gardens, there was a large, quiet  garden space with benches and I relished the quiet (although, of course, there were a number of other people in the park as well) and read a bit before I headed back in the way I had came, toward the Liverpool underground station, which was near Spitalfields. I got on the underground back to Great Portland Street station which is right by our hotel and it was around 5 PM. I estimate that I walked around 5 miles during my travels that day.

Jason was back from his conference, so we then decided to go to a pub Jason had read about, “The Green Man”, which was about a 15 minute walk from our hotel. After sitting at our table at the pub for quite some time, we discovered that ordering at a pub is done at the counter. However, we finally placed our order and tried some more local beers and ciders and enjoyed the ambiance of a local pub. Jason again tried some traditional fare (fish and chips) and I ordered, um, chicken strips. But they were really good chicken strips! It was also interesting that outside the pub there were just a bunch of people standing around within a roped off area drinking their drinks. Sidewalk space (and patios for that matter) is hard to come by in London, so people just stand outside pubs with their beers. It’s treated like an extension of the pub, but there just aren’t tables.

We again retired rather early, around 9PM, but then Jason woke up around 11AM and watched some TV for a few hours before falling asleep again.    

London, Part one

Last week the kids were in Iowa and Jason and I went to London. Jason got an invitation to attend a conference in London and my parents generously offered to watch the kids if I wanted to go with, so we booked a six day trip . Jason attended the conference for two days and had a morning meeting another day, so I was on my own sightseeing for part of the time. I'm just going to write a synopsis of what I/we did more for my own memory than anything else.

On Saturday, June 1, we drove to Iowa, got the kids' rooms arranged, had lunch, said goodbye to the folks and kids, wished them well and drove back to MN. The goodbye was not too teary, Sam was a little sad, but quickly moved on to playing when we were driving out. Abby and Matthew were both napping so there were no outbursts from them (not that Matthew would have made a scene, but Abby surely would have). Our flight wasn't until 9:30PM, so when we got home Jason mowed the lawn and I cleaned, then we finished packing. After an uneventful, 8 hour, overnight (in which I slept maybe 2 hours max, and Jason slept maybe 4 hours) flight, we arrived in London at 11:15AM local time. We managed to get out of Heathrow which involved two train rides, then got to Paddington Station and got on the underground to the station near our hotel.

We stayed at the Melia White House in the Bloomsbury area of London, which is on the north central edge of the main center of London. After freshening up, we took a 20 minute walk north to the Camden area to explore the Camden markets. The markets were crazy. Stall after stall after stall on street after street in building after building. People everywhere. Welcome to London. Busy, bustling. After talking to a vendor we learned that this wasn't even a very busy market day. I sure wouldn't want to be there then as it was plenty busy for me.

We walked back toward our hotel after about an hour or so of madness and went to a local pub for dinner. Jason had bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes) and I had a potpie. Both were  "traditional British fare" and very good as were the local beers and ciders which we tried. At around 7PM we went back to our room and feel asleep pretty much right away. We both slept for a few hours, then woke up at 11PM and were up for a couple of hours watching tv and movies before falling asleep again, then getting up at 7AM. Our sleep was all out of whack from the lack of sleep on the flight, then the 6-hour time change.

Breakfast on Monday of our trip, as most days, consisted for Jason heading out to Pret a Manger (translated "ready to eat" in French ) and picking up yogurt parfaits, fruit and a pastry to share. The food at Pret was very good and it was conveniently located just across the street from our hotel (but there are Pret's everywhere, so it's not unusual that we were just minutes from one). Jason headed off to his conference a little before 9 and I ventured out for the morning around 10.

After about 20 minutes on the tube (the London Underground or subway), I made it to the Museum of Natural History. It wasn't too busy that day (meaning I didn't have to wait or "queue" at all to get in) and I perused the dinosaur exhibit and mammals exhibit before heading out. The dinosaur exhibit included an animated T-rex which was pretty scary looking and there was a little girl screaming as she didn't want to walk by it (it was on a one-way walkway) and I knew my little kids would be doing the same thing if they were there. Although I wanted to see more of the museum, I was rather hungry by that time (11ish) and wanted to head to my next destination before eating as it was reported to be a good place to get coffee and good food. So then I moved on to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Decorative Arts which was right next door. I spent a few hours there, wandering through the exhibits displaying jewelry, fashion, pottery, furniture, table ware, portraits, sculpture and so on from ancient times to today. I really enjoyed the museum and enjoyed getting a latte and lunch and eating it in the garden space in the middle of the museum.


I then ventured away from the museums and walked half a mile to a fabric shop which I read about online. Navigating London isn't always too easy as the streets aren't always easily marked (meaning there weren't always street signs) and often the streets names change every few blocks. In main touristy/historical areas there are signs with maps of the area on them located on nearly every block, but this was not the case where I was at. However, I found my shop with little problem, purchased enough Liberty of London fabric to make something for myself and Abby and made my way back to the nearby underground station for the return trip to our hotel.

I returned around 3:30, then Jason returned from his conference around 4. We decided to go to Trafalger Square (which is often the location of large demonstrations and there was a demonstration there that night in support of the uprising in Turkey) and the National Portrait Gallery. After another short trip on the tube we arrived at the gallery, spent some time looking at the lovely art and sitting by the fountains in Trafalger. We then wandered around the area and found a Mexican restaurant off of Oxford Street (which is known for high-end fashion stores) and had an excellent fajita dinner. After a short stint on the tube which ended with our train being held at a station due to a medical emergency of a passenger, we exited and walked about 20 minutes back to our hotel.  We again fell asleep rather early, only to wake in the middle of the night, and be up for a few hours before getting back to sleep.

St Paul's front entrance

On Tuesday Jason again attended the conference while I started my day at St. Paul's Cathedral, which was about a 10 minute tube ride and a 10 minute walk away.  The 300 year old cathedral is quite spectacular and pictures of it simply don't convey its immensity and splendor. While it's not a skyscraper, it is 75 feet taller than the US capitol building. I arrived just after opening (around 9AM) and wandered around it for about 45 minutes. Before leaving, I climbed 257 steps up a wide spiral staircase to the balcony of the interior dome of the cathedral (called the "Whispering Gallery"). The balcony was probably around 3 feet wide and encircled the interior dome. Although I'm not afraid of heights, it was a bit unsettling to be so high, plus the balcony slanted slightly down and I didn't spend too much time there. Instead, I went about 1/3 of the way around the balcony to a small doorway which led to a very narrow and steep spiral staircase which after another 100 or so steps, led to the "stone gallery" which encircles the outside dome of the cathedral. The gallery provides excellent views of London and was quite breathtaking.

View of London from the Stone Gallery. The "Shard" is on the left, Tate Modern is the column on the far right, the Thames in the middle

St Paul's dome from across the Thames. 

After leaving the cathedral, I crossed the Thames on the Millennium foot bridge which can be seen in the right side of the picture to the right and made my way to the Tate Modern. Once there I enjoyed an excellent latte on their patio on the river and then looked at some modern art which wasn't quite to my liking.

Tower Bridge

I then walked along the south side of the Thames for just about a mile until I reached the Tower Bridge which leads to the Tower of London. By this time it was about noon, and although I was hungry, I didn't want to stop for lunch as the area was rather crowded and I wanted to find a quieter place for a break. So I decided to go to the Tower of London first, then find somewhere for lunch.

I'll write more about the Tower of London and our other travels in future posts.

How to get sap off of skin

So we have these big tree stumps in our yard and one of them happens to be for a large pine. This morning Jason was home, working on the back garage and I and the kids went out to talk to him. Well, I wasn't really watching Abby closely as I was talking briefly to Jason, but I knew she was near us. After a few minutes Abby walked over to me and held out her hands. They looked like they had been dipped in corn syrup. Both hands. Her entire hands, front and back were covered with a thick, sticky goo. I would have been very lucky had she managed to get her hands full of corn syrup while playing the backyard as it turned out she had gotten her hands covered in sap.

My first thought was, Don't get it in her hair! So I grabbed her hands. Big mistake. I should have grabbed her wrists, because now we both had hands full of sap. And in case you were wondering, sap doesn't just wash off. I had a bucket of water that the kids had been playing with and went over to it and dipped our hands in it, rubbing them (as well as they could be rubbed as basically when they were put together they just stuck and didn't rub). And nothing happened except the sap turned white. Hmmm. What to do? I clearly can't google (as I can't touch anything) how to get sap off. So I then call Jason over to me and ask him to watch Abby while I run inside to get some Lava soap. So then he grabs her hands and gets sap all over his hands.

I get the Lava soap and we work and work and work and I get a dish scouring pad and work and work and work. And then I start scraping the sap off with my fingernails, one little scrape at a time and work and work and work. And after about 20 minutes of work, Jason had cleaned his hands enough to go google how to remove sap from skin and I had most of one of Abby's hands clean and part of one of my own.

So he found out that sap can be removed by using rubbing alcohol. So we got the rubbing alcohol, getting our door knobs sappy in the process of going into the house and began to work on Abby's and our own hands with rubbing alcohol. Oh yeah, as we're working on Abby and ourselves, Sam comes over and says his hands are sticky. Somehow he had touched something that Jason or I or Abby had touched and got sappy too. So we worked and worked and worked and after about 10 minutes with the rubbing alcohol, we had everyone's hands pretty well cleaned up.

And that's how to remove sap from skin. And keep Abby away from pine trees.

Potty training?

So I really have no intention of potty training Abby this summer. However, the other night before bath she was doing a little dance outside of the tub before I got a chance to get her in. Then she peed on the floor (she usually pees upon getting in the tub). So then the next night when it was bath time I saw her doing the little dance again and I asked her if she had to potty and she replied "Yes". So I got out the seat which sits on top of the toilet and sat her on it and then she peed. In the toilet. So then the next night before bath I sat her on the toilet again and she peed again and clapped for herself. I don't know where this will go (she's only 19 months old!), but I guess we'll be getting the froggy potty chairs out again and see what happens.

What we've been up to

Jason chopped and moved a bunch of wood. We cut down three large, rotting (but still living) trees in the backyard and had a bunch, and I mean a bunch of wood to move. What you see in the picture is probably around 20% of the wood that Jason took to the dump. He's been busy...

On Tuesday, when it was 95, we went to a nice shaded playground. Abby climbed on the benches and Matthew and Sam preferred the "ship" (the play structure was shaped like a ship). The boys played "shark spotting" and would look through the play binoculars and spyglass and spot various sharks in the surrounding sand, um, ocean.

 Later in the week when I was trying to think of something to do, I decided that we hadn't washed our vehicles lately. Matthew and Sam took the task very seriously.

Doctor's visit

Matthew and Abby had a check up last week to mark Matthew's 3rd year and Abby being 1 1/2. Matthew seems to have really turned a corner in his doctor's visits as he didn't cry at all. He even had to read the eye chart (with shapes) and have a hearing test and he actually complied and did what he was supposed to. The nurse said that kids don't often cooperate at age 3, but Matthew really did pretty well (and we know he has good eyesight and hearing).

Abby did pretty well too other than she was so squirmy and did not want to be restrained at all. She wanted to climb on the benches and chairs in the exam room and shrieked when I tried to get her to sit down and hold her. She is one opinionated girl! And she is growing and healthy too. Here are the kids' stats:

Abby:
Height: 33.25" (90th percentile)
Weight: 24 lb (50th percentile)

Matthew:
Height: 39" (90th percentile)
Weight: 36 lb (80th percentile)

On another note, today the boys were ready to go outside and I told Matthew to go upstairs and get some socks. He was taking quite a long time (which is not totally unusual for him as he often gets, um, distracted), so I went up to check on him. At the top of the stairs I saw an empty laundry basket which had been filled with clean and folded kids' clothes. I called out to Matthew and he proudly came out of his room and said, "I put clothes in the rooms! I'm being helpful!" I was a bit puzzled, but walked into his room. There was a stream of clean clothes on the floor in his room, from the door to his chest of drawers. Sam's clothes were in his room, in a 4' diameter pile near his door. Abby's clothes were in a similar state in her room. Awww. I told Matthew thank you and said that he was indeed being helpful. Then I told the boys to put their clothes in their drawers and put Abby's pile away. The clothes weren't really folded anymore, but really, some things just aren't that important. I don't know why I fold the kids' clothes anyway, as the boys just pull all sorts of shirts and pants out of their drawers when getting dressed and then stuff them back in when I tell them to pick up. Some things just aren't that important.