An Audience with the Queen

The first nice weekend of the summer (we are told by the locals) and we are off to a great start. Early Saturday morning we headed to Buckingham Palace to finally get Ryan his official visit with the Queen.

Unfortunately once again he was told the Queen had just left, and wouldn't be back until poor Ryan's naptime.



So in order to cheer our little cheeky monkey up we decided to take a tour of the state rooms inside of Buckingham Palace. They would not let us take any pictures of the inside or I would have blown all 2 gigs of my camera's memory card. Wow. Everything inside is bronze, or gold, or silver. The furniture is collected from long dead kings named Louis and Henry. The wallpaper is even made of silk. There are Rembrandts and other famous paintings everywhere and there is even a table owned by Napoleon Bonaparte which took 6 years to build.

We did an audio tour and wore headsets that told you all about every aspect of the palace from its conception as the Buckingham House to it's change from a quaint mansion into the palace it is today. One interesting fact I remember is that during "The Blitz" of WWII the Queen and her husband refused to leave the palace and abandon her people. The palace was bombed 9 times over the course of the war.

The people here love the Queen and it's easy to see why. The audio tour was fun and I'm sure Jessi enjoyed the half she got to hear before Ryan ripped the headset off her ears and entangled himself in it. After seeing the sights on the inside we were escorted out the back to see the garden area and we were invited to take pictures of the back of the palace.



This picture doesn't do it justice but you can get the general idea of what it looks like. We then took a cute family picture.



You can see Ryan telling his mummy about his opinion of the queen. He might be a bit bitter.

Sanity Restored

Weather here is a mixture of cloudy and rainy with the occasional 30 minute sunshine teaser. I've never been very good at going long periods without sunshine and I'm really bad when I'm cooped up for long periods of time. Ryan seems to feel the same way.

We needed to get plugged in over here and meet some adults and other kids so we could do something when the weather wasn't cooperating. Luckily I've recently started talking with some of Jessi's coworkers' spouses and they knew of all kinds of things to do here when it's wet and nasty. One of the really nice things is playgroups. There are two of them within a 5 minute walk of here and one is literally at the church next door. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday Ryan and I can hang out with a bunch of kids and play with mountains of toys. This gets him all happy and tired and gives me a chance to interact with some adults. Jessi has been working like a crazy person and I usually don't see her till 7 o'clock or so, so talking to adults is a nice change.



I've only taken a few pictures so far. Most of the time I'm chasing the madman around trying to keep him from falling on his head but here we are in the park with Karen and her two kids Ben and Annie, and Marie and her daughters Sienna and Sydney. Note Big Ben in the background and the Houses of Parliament. How cool. Ryan decided he could climb up the stairs to the slide all by himself (daddy ran over and made sure he didn't fall) and he also was able to climb up the slide part almost all the way to the top. Once again he keeps forgetting he's my baby dang it!



Here are some pictures from one of the playgroup places. Ryan is loving it. We were only able to bring a suitcase with a few toys for him and he is soooo bored with them now. New toy madness has made him a happy child again.


Ryan and toys = bliss

Marie doing a bit of painting and Karen enjoying some tea

Ben, Sydney, and Sienna.

London Science Museum

Sunday morning we decided to go see one of the wonderful museums here in London. There are loads of them but not many are able to capture the attention of a 1 year old for long. We had heard that there was lots to do in the London Science Museum so we loaded up and headed for the tube. We took it to South Kensington which was probably 3 miles or so away (doesn't seem far until you don't have a car) where we disembarked. There is a really cool underground subway that leads straight to 3 museums. I was expecting to take a ride but it turns out that that a subway here is just a big tunnel for you to walk under the city streets.

My first impression of the place was how big it was. There are 4 or 5 stories of museum and it is quite a walk from one end to the other. My next impression was a good one too. The museum is free! They take donations but you can come as often as you like for nothing. You pay to use the toilet here but this awesome museum is free. I guess thats the tradeoff hehe.

We saw tons of things including an entire level devoted to the history of flight with huge planes suspended from the ceiling and real examples of engines from planes all the way back to the early 1900's.



And yes it's true, that really is why they call it the crapper.

Here is a full sized reconstruction of the apollo moon lander. I no longer believe we actually landed on the moon. No way this thing landed and took off again from the moon. Noooo way.



This next picture will be really boring for most of you but my family was in the vaccuum cleaner business for the better part of a century so I had to snap a picture of the evolution of the vaccuum cleaner.



We spent most of the day here and will have to come back to see it all. We spent most of the time enjoying a really nice play area for the kids. Ryan absolutely loved it.

It was a bit packed but all of the kids were really good and Ryan loved playing in the water!

My Little Man

Burnings and Body Snatchers

We did it we braved the tube and got to enjoy some of the coolest stuff I've seen since we touched down in the U.K. I purchased a book back in the states called 24 Great Walks in London and have been eager to try one out. The walk that really caught my eye is called "Burnings and Bodysnatchers". This walk covers historic sites from the days of The Plague and the Great Fire of London right back to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

We started off viewing an old plague mass burial ground which it turns out is now a private park that you can't even get into. This discouraged me a bit as it was the very first thing on the walk but I ran into a local who knew a bit of the history of the place who showed me London's only surviving Tudor townhouse that is full of ghosts and stories of murder, treason, execution, and revenge. It dates back to 1370 where it was established as a Carthusian Monastary.






Next we visited the Smithfield Meat market which was established in 1868 but hit by a german V2 rocket during world war II and was completely destroyed. Rebuilt and thriving it has many pictures on the walls of the original buildings and what it looked like after the blast.



Above is St. Bartholomew's Church which was a very neat place founded in 1123 with tons of old tombs.



This church was also the site for many movies including Robin Hood Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner, The Other Boleyn Sister, 4 Weddings and a Funeral, and the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. Look at this next picture and notice the floor and the large windows. If you see it in a movie, many times those windows will be blacked out but you will always notice the very distinct multicolored tile floor.




Next stop was a visit to where Sir William Wallace (think Mel Gibson Braveheart) was executed. Many people were burnt on the stake or boiled alive here.



We then stopped by Pye Corner which is where the Great Fire of London in 1666 finally burnt itself out. Many people thought because it started on Pudding Lane and ended in Pye Corner that it was God's punishment for gluttony hence the little golden fatboy (the statue not the one in the stroller hehe)



I didn't take a picture of it but there is a watchtower near here where a nightwatchman used to sit and protect the churchyard beyond from raids by bodysnatchers in the night.

Here is an awesome view of St. Pauls from this area.





The next place of interest is St. Brides Church. This is the original design of the tiered wedding cake. It also has an interesting history. It was bombed during the Blitz and in the rubble they found an entrance to some old crypts underneath the church dating back to Roman times. I went down a bit to investigate but it wasn't very stroller friendly so we didn't get any pics.

All in all it was a very fun informative walk and ended within a 10 minute walk of Jessi's work which was awesome.

Europe in Review

I just wanted to post some quick links to last months posts in case you are new and missed out.

Bus Tour and Tower of London - Our visit to the tower of London among other things
Jessi's Take on London - My favorite ladies thoughts on our first week in London
A Long Walk through London - Everything you can see and do in 5 1/2 hours
The 8th Wonder of the World - Yummy!
Piccadilly and Trafalgar - A tour of a couple of Londons favorite spots
Ryan's back and Mastery of the Bus System - How we got our happy little man back and learned to navigate London.
Raw stumps and Big humps - Lost and found in Westminster
A Strange Concoction - My review of the revolution of porridge
The Adventure Begins - It all had to start somewhere
Old Habits Die Hard - Oh yes the things we miss
Ryan's First Flight and Big Old Jet - The story of how we got here

Fish and Chips Review + A bonus mystery food

It was a cold, rainy, very typical british day when my dearest most beloved son said to me "Oh father wouldst thou allowest your first born son the opportunity to endulgeth in the most splendid and besought after british fare that is known as fisheth and chipeth? (Thats what I get for reading him the King James Bible before bed). I of course had to say yes to his request even though the inclement weather warranted an all day indoors quarantine.

So we loaded up the buggy with rain gear and umbrellas and maps and more maps and we headed out to a local place called "The Laughing Halibut". Renown among the neighborhood peoples as a place to get the finest of fried foods we knew before even entering the restaurant that we had found the right place. The menu was a bit hard to understand with everything from eggrolls to meat pies but we chatted with the person taking orders, and we finally settled on a fish just simply known as "Rock" and some of the famous british "chips". Another menu item gathered my attention and I just had to purchase it. A mincemeat and onion pie, I have always thought it strange that they would put meat in a pie so I had to try it.



After receiving our rather greasy food wrapped in 2 layers of butcher's paper with absolutely nothing to keep it from leaking all over we knew we needed to get somewhere to eat quickly before it soaked through.



We settled on Westminster Abbey which has a nice grassy area in front with several large trees to keep the sun (hahaha) off our heads. (ok the rain).



The food was delicious. The fish seemed very fresh with just a hint of "fishiness" and the chips were deliciously soft inside with just a bit of a salty crunch on the outside. Everything fish and chips included had been soaked in a pungent mix of salt and malt vinegar and just oozed yuminess.



Ryan loved it and even ate the fish. He is a french fry eating fiend so it was nice to see him move on to something a bit healthy (he mostly eats the fish and leaves the breading for the pigeons).

You guessed it the bonus mystery food is the Minced meat and onion Pie. It is very much like a shepards pie or a pot pie but is filled with something akin to really good potroast. The crust was flakey and moist and the inside was seasoned well and filled with meat and a nice thick dark gravy. Oh yeah it was all good!

In the end we gave this meal two thumbs up. The atmosphere at Westminster was fantastic and the meal was memorable. It made a dreary day into something of a suprise.