Tuesday – Hopping Along

Nate and I had a tough time getting up (can't imagine why, even though the desk was filled with beer and wine bottles) but then we made it down in time for breakfast at the hotel. It was a gorgeous dining room and quite an elaborate setup. Lots of rolls and pastries and fruit and hot meals as well, so we ate well. Then we walked over to the British Museum. We didn't have a lot of time to spend, but with our hotel being so close, it would have been a shame to not see anything there. So we breezed through some of the Egyptian artifacts and barely saw the Rosetta Stone over all the heads of the tourists taking pictures. We also walked through the Greek sculptures and the massive vase collection. We saw the reading room where great minds penned great works, including Karl Marx, who also often drank at a pub near the museum (according to the guide book anyway.) We made our way to the third floor where the mummies are located and I started having strange thoughts about how odd it was that we were looking at dead bodies. What if 300 years from now they dug up your family member and put them on display to show how these ancient people buried their dead? Nate and I discussed the fact that the British Museum is filled wit the spoils of war or of exploration... they won, they keep the spoils. But it did feel a little bit like grave robbing to me.

The Original Tour, hop on hop off double decker bus stop was right outside the museum, and we decided to do that. We figured it would be a good way to get a good feel for the city, at least better than just using the Underground all the time. So we paid the 24 Pounds a piece to do that, and within moments of getting on the correct tour bus, we realized that London's notoriously congested traffic was messing with our tour plans. It took forever to get from Trafalgar Square to Westminster, where we decided to hop off, so we could make sure to see that before it closed. The protest that was going on yesterday was still going on, but this time off the streets and moved into the grassy area in front of the Abbey. And the purpose of the protest remains a little sketchy to me since there were some signs about Iraq, Iran, Sri Lanka, and a very loud woman screaming undecipherable things into a megaphone. (I found out later that someone died at the protest Monday, and a couple of guys had jumped off the bridge into the water, and we're pretty sure we saw that cold, wet man wrapped in a blanket.)

We made it into Westminster Abbey and took the free audio guide with us on a walk around the Abbey (complete with tour guide Jeremy Irons) and I found it to be very informative and interesting (some of those audio guides can be so dull.) It's an amazing collection of the country's history all under one roof... Saxon era Kings buried near leaders like Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, who battled for the soul of their country, and the ancient coronation chair used for every King and Queen coronation since 1308. I guess they no longer do brass rubbings of the grave markers, and they don't even sell them anymore, so I the ones mom and I have must be antiques now! The lady in the gift store said they still do them at St Martin's, and I think we read that they also have a restaurant in the crypt of that church, so we'll have to make a trek there next time we make it to the UK.

We left Westminster Abbey and hopped back on the tour bus. We wanted to at least do one loop around the city, and hoped the traffic wouldn't take up too much of our time. We caught a glimpse of Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park, Oxford Street, The BBC building and TeleComm Tower, Piccadilly Circus and saw some neat little neighborhoods we might not have otherwise seen. But all in all, we're not sure that it was worth the money. I think we could have seen many of those things a lot quicker taking the tube, and actually would have had time to wander the side streets and stop at a pub for lunch. But we wasted so much time sitting in traffic that by the time we were approaching Trafalgar Square, we just decided to jump off and walk, because we weren't moving very fast at all. We walked to Westminster bridge where our hop on hop off bus pass also got us a ride on the Thames to Tower Bridge. It was interesting to see London from the water, and we caught a glimpse of the Millennium foot bridge and the new Globe Theatre, plus a view of the Tower Bridge and Tower of London from the water. We had to rush back to the hotel and get changed and then rushed to the Clos Maggorie restaurant, where we had reservations for my birthday dinner (thanks mom and dad!!) Then we went to Royal Haymarket Theatre and saw the play On The Waterfront. It was a unique production with some sort of modern dance type of moves instead of fight scenes, but we enjoyed it. Oh and Nate thinks the mob boss was played by an actor who played a bad guy in a James Bond movie. (We just looked it up and Steven Berkoff was indeed in Octopussy... he was also in Clockwork Orange and Beverly Hills Cop.)

We wandered around Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square and Covent Garden areas trying to find a pub for one last drink, but little did we know the pubs close up shop by 11pm in London. If you want a drink after that, you need to hit a nightclub and Nate and I aren't really the nigh club type. But the hotel bar was still open so we had a couple of drinks there and then called it a night... We have a long train ride to Edinburgh in the morning!