Day 3: Buckingham Palace, Ben Franklin's, Kensington Palace, George Handel's, and the London Hilton

First stop: moving our stuff to the London Hilton, supposedly the Hilton's flagship for the entire world. Complete with beautiful wooden beds, marble bathrooms, terry cloth robes, free cookies for the eating, meals in the executive suite and views of the city from the 17th floor. We felt a little underdressed walking around; there was some kind of black tie thing in the ball room that night.

Buckingham Palace: the residence of the queen. The front porch is where the pictures of Charles and Diana were taken after their wedding. The place gets jam packed for the changing of the guard, but we ended up standing next to some people from Kentucky. You can pick out Americans easily; we all sound like we're mumbling hicks compared to the English.

They march in in two big groups, one on each side of the yard in front of the palace. Then they march around in there for 45 minutes, the band plays,

. . . and then they march back out. Doesn't it look a bit funny to see them looking so formal carrying guns like that? Seems like they ought to have sabres.

The house where Benjamin Franklin lived while in London. Felt like a little bit of home to see something paying tribute to a great American.


The view of Hyde Park from our hotel room. There are several parks this big in London where people come to hang out. Kensington Palace is on the other side of the park.

The side of Kensington Palace which houses apts for the royal family, extended royals that is. The queen's sister lived here as did Princess Diana. We saw an exhibition here of Princess Di's dresses and pictures from the last photo shoot she ever did.

The house where Handel wrote the Messiah.

Day 2: St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Globe, & British Museum

The day began with an early walk to St. Paul's Cathedral. This is where Princess Diana's wedding was held.

The Tower of London where prisoners and traitors were held. Several Americans were kept here during the Revolutionary War, Anne Boleyn, 2nd wife (of 6) of Henry VIII, was beheaded here and is buried in the chapel.


When the royalty were in residence here, this is where they lived in the center of the complex. The crown jewels are also kept here, crowns and jewelery in big cases that the queen wears for special occasions. I've never seen so many diamonds at once in my life. The largest diamond in the world is kept on a crown here. And you walk right by it in a case.


This suit of armor is registered in the Guiness book of world records for being the biggest ever found, over 7 feet tall.


Tower Bridge, built to complement the Tower of London. The bottom part of the bridge comes up for boats to pass thru.

A ride to the British Museum in a taxi cab.


Having fun with the Egyptian artifacts in the British Museum. That place is full of amazing things from other countries. Makes you realize how big the British empire used to be and how much they took.

We also went to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and saw part of a play. One of the actors was Jeffrey the butler off of Fresh Prince! Needless to say, we walked a LOT this day and we were all VERY tired at the end of it.

Day 1: Arrival, Westminster, Big Ben & Parliament

Dad took about 1500 pictures on this trip, so I'll include a small sample (it's so hard to choose!). You can click on the pictures to englarge them. As usual, pictures don't do anything justice, you really have to be there. . .

Flying over London...

Here's how we looked switching between hotels, carrying/rolling our bags, stopping on street corners to look at maps.

These telephone booths are EVERYWHERE, even in the country.

With a member of the queen's royal horse guard. I forget where this is but it was somewhere close to No. 10 Downing street where the Prime Minister, Tony Blair lives. I would include a picture of his house, but it's really not much to look at comparatively. . .

Big Ben and Parliament during the day. . .

. . . and at night.
There's a story behind this picture, this picture is actually about Day 4. Mom and Dad decided
they wanted to ride a double decker bus so we got on one on the other side of Ben, rode it across the bridge, and they insisted we get off at the last second to take this picture. So we rode a bus for about 1/4 of a mile. I'm sure everybody watching us scramble off the bus said, "Look at those silly Americans..."

Westminster Abbey
This building is across a square from Big Ben and is where the coronations happen and where many of the anchient monarchy are buried, like Mary Queen of Scotts and her sister Elizabeth I (remember the movie we watched at the Andersons, girls?). It's beautiful in there but it's almost like a tomb because you're walking around these huge stone caskets with stone figures of the people inside laying on top with their hands folded. Sorta creepy. However, the accoustics are amazing. We heard a choral and organ evensong here.

England, here I come!

I thought I'd take a quick minute to write on my way out the door to get to DC to get on a plane to fly to England. I think this is going to be the biggest adventure my family has yet embarked on and from the frenzy downstairs I daresay this could be very interesting... So I hope you all think of me as I'm over there in the rain walking around looking at very old things (maybe even in the stuff, Carrie ;-). I'm sure at least one of the hotels we stay at will have internet so I'll try to get on and drop you all a note.

A Fishy Day

The week was topped off with a break from packing to the GA Acquarium with Carrie and Ryan. Here's some pictures from the trip mostly from the tank with the whale sharks since that was the most exciting!

It's very exciting to be crammed in a small enclosed tube with lots of people when a whale shark goes over your head and the volume doubles from all the "oooh!'s and ahhh!'s"...

Here's a school of rays, there's a bunch of them in the big tank, it's about the size of a football field.


Here's Carrie (can you find her?) with Ralph... or Norton... we don't know which. Hard to believe these guys are just young sharks. They came from Thailand where a bunch of fishermen were keeping them in a sea pen.

And for a more close up view...

And here's my friend the sea turtle. He winked at me, really he did! Carrie saw it too!

For more pictures and a different perspective check out Carrie's blog.

One last Lookouts game...

The festivities continued with a Lookouts game Tuesday night (which they won amazingly). Ryan was supposed to go with us but unfortunately he got hit in the face with a softball the afternoon before and took a trip to the Emergency room for stitches in the lip.

(For more pictures... funny ones... see Carrie's blog...)