Day 2

Highlights: Another day of beautiful weather, walking about 8 miles, St. Paul's Cathedral, The Tower of London

After breakfast at our hotel, we took a wonderful, 7 hour walk all over the city. First, we went to the train station to buy our tickets for Bath tomorrow, and Caterbury on Wednesday. We laughed about how even though everyone speaks English, we still have a difficult time understanding what people are saying to us. (We had "corn flakes" for breakfast because we had no idea what the other two options were, even though we had the girl repeat them twice, and hopefully we have the right train tickets!) :)

Then we wandered back to Buckingham Palace, to Piccadilly Circus (looks like a smaller version of Time Square) to St. Paul's Cathedral - which is amazing and beautiful! We lost track of how many Starbucks we saw along the way, as well as Pizza Huts. We also learned about British chains - Nero Coffee, and Pret. At St. Paul's we climbed a couple hundred stairs to the whispering gallery inside the dome, and then another couple hundred stairs to the viewing platform outside with gorgeous views of the city. We could not climb all the way to the top, because it was closed for some reason. But we still enjoyed the views from where we were.

As we left the cathedral, we stopped by a French patisserie and got sandwiches and a strawberry tart - some of our favorites from Paris. We seem to be enjoying the international cuisine a bit more. :) After a delicious picnic on the steps of St. Paul's (with at least a hundred other people) we walked across the Millenium Bridge and visited Shakespeare's Globe Theater (or I should say the gift shop because we didn't want to wait two hours for the next available tour - there were hundreds of school groups there!) We enjoyed a walk along the Thames to the Tower Bridge and then visited the Tower of London. This was a real highlight for Eric because he remembers visiting the Tower as a kid. He especially loved seeing the ravens again. I enjoyed reading about all of the folklore surrounding the Tower. We were there for a couple of hours.

At this point, we were tired and not sure what to do, so we ended up taking the subway (which is very easy to use here) to Harrod's department store. The store itself was so overwhelming with so much to see and so many people! We looked at the level with the food, but everything was very expensive, so we decided to head back to our hotel. It was about a 15 minute walk and we stopped at Jenny Lo's Tea House for dinner. It was another Asian fusion place with very spicy food. After dinner, we went to the grocery store - one of my favorite things to do! I love to see what is for sale- usually lots of good, inexpensive candy and desserts! :)

So that's it. We're headed in for an early evening so that we can catch our train to Bath tomorrow morning. Hope everyone is doing well. Eric may post his thoughts in a little bit.

Evening Day One

After a short nap and showers, we wandered around the neighborhood and found a great Asian fusion place for dinner, called Dim t (on Winton Street - so I don't forget). The food was very delicious and perfect for the both of us - Eric was able to enjoy dim sum, while I enjoyed pad thai and gyoza. For dessert we had chocolate sukiyaki, which was basically a chocolate fondue with fruit and marshmallows for dipping. After dinner, we wandered around some more, and then passed out around 10 p.m. We had a great night's sleep and were able to get up at 8 a.m. On to Day 2....

Eric's Thoughts from London

I am going to keep this post fairly short, but it has been fascinating to be in the country where I spent six and a half years of my childhood. I remember somethings that we are seeing. Others were not even around, and somethings seem like new even though they may not be.

I think the thing that I enjoy, other than being here with my best friend, is being in a walking city again. We are staying in a hotel with many restaurants within just a few blocks. It is nice to be able to walk to dinner and take a leisurely stroll back to the hotel.

I will end with the hope that we are able to adjust to the time change quickly. We took a few naps, and we are hoping that we are able to sleep through the night and wake up at a reasonable time.

Take care everyone who might be reading this. We will try to post some pictures tomorrow.