And then we walked over to Marble Arch to begin our Hop On, Hop Off bus sightseeing tour.
We had to wait quite a bit for a Big Bus with the live commentary option we wanted but eventually we hopped on and headed up top. Right away Autumn made friends with a little girl in the back of the bus. I chatted with the mom here and there and could determine she was from the South (of the U.S.) but she told me they were living in Buffalo now. Then her son chimed in with all the places they've lived.
Places with NFL teams.
The NFL was in town...
...so eventually I innocently asked the 11 year old son, "So why have you moved so much?" and "Connor" told me, "My dad is a coach for the Bills." Bingo. (Later I looked him up and it was totally the family of the offensive coordinator for the Bills. I could tell just by the pic of his face. His kids look just like him. Kinda fun.)
Anyhow, we did the tour and saw all the things to see...
The weather was mild, even in the top of the bus. And dry, thankfully.
(See: that's the daughter of the coach back there...the grandma took a full-on posed smiling pic of Autumn with 'Emily' so I am fine with this small pic of her in profile.)
(^We'll be going there later in the day^)
St. Paul's cathedral.
St. Paul's is where Diana was married (I won a bet with Jason regarding this as he told the kids something like "all the royals got married at Westminster Abbey" and I was all, "Nuh uh...not Diana" and he's all "I'm willing to bet...").
Anyway, sometimes I wonder why I bother taking pictures. My pictures look all lame when there are much better pictures online.
Maybe I should just enjoy the ride and look online later to remember what I saw. ;)
My crap photo of "Big Ben framed by London Eye:
Jason's slightly better photo of "Big Ben framed by London Eye:
And the internet's even better photo:
"I want to be a lion" shout out for my nephew.
The kids were interested enough. Much more interested than when we did the same sort of tour around Dresden. But London and it's landmarks are obviously way more well known. And they've seen Cars 2. ;)
This is when coach's wife and son started laughing uncontrollably as we passed "The Shard" and it totally sounded like the guide said "shart" and, well, I guess that is funny, come to think of it.
This is when the tour guide guy is asking Easton (or any of the kids) if they will lead the bus in "London Bridge is falling down" over his microphone. Every single one (even the coach's kids) refused. :/ Also, I don't think kids today know all these sorts of classic songs and nursery rhymes.
When our bus reached the Tower of London stop we "hopped off" for the first time, bidding our new friends adieu with a "Go Bills!" (Not really, Jason didn't even know I had gleaned this bit of information at the time. He would have asked for tickets! :) )
Anyway, we stopped first for some lunch at the Tower Hill wagamama before continuing on. Dalton is reminding me that the water at that restaurant tasted terrible.
After that we were off to the Tower of London. Once inside the gate, we headed straight for the crown jewels as there can sometimes be quite a line.
Waiting in line.
Of course you can't take pictures--which is fine--as they're all over the internet so here, here is what we saw:
I found this Cullinan Diamond to be rather impressive.
Then it was back out to the front entrance area again in order to catch a Beefeater tour. Jason asked Easton to take our picture while we were waiting. I made J stand on the curb to be tall:
But Jason was like, "No, take one how we really are". Clearly this idea does not bring out my best smile: ;)
Then our surly ol' Yeoman Warder came and gathered our group.
Dalton stood with Jason and semi-listened. The other two were bored:
There was an amusing young "heckler" in our group. He had some smart comments and jokes and actually had our guide laughing hard. It was fun. We heard and learned all about quite a lot of things. I was definitely interested as I had, you know, watched all four seasons of The Tudors and, like, read all the Tudor Court novels (such as "The Other Boleyn Girl") so I'm practically an expert. ;)
Our Beefeater guide took us around the Tower Green near where they seem to think the beheadings of Henry the VIII's wives took place. They have a lovely little memorial with a little glass pillow in the middle...you know, for the heads or something. How thoughtful.
He also took us into the little St. Peter's chapel where some of those famous prisoners were buried...but I was picturing Natalie Dormer under there instead of the real Anne Boleyn (you can't take pictures inside the 'house of worship' so this is from the Interwebz).
Mr. Beefeater let us go out on our own from there so we explored around a bit more. I really liked this elephant made of chicken wire. (Standing in the place of an actual elephant that once lived there.)
It is believed to be the first elephant ever seen in England. It was a gift from King Louis IX to King Henry III as you can see:
I read about it a little and it seems the poor thing was given red wine to drink and lived in that tiny space and it just makes me extra sad because elephants are my favorite and all. Probably more sad than chopping off Anne's head makes me. She was a bit of a tricky vixen (on Showtime), anyway.
Few other things from the grounds:
There is an interesting(ish) story about ravens at the Tower of London with a superstition that "at least six ravens must remain or the Monarchy will fall". They can't let that happen, of course, so they clip the wings of, like, 8 of them and have a guy whose job it is to be the "Raven Master". They were fun to see around, in any case:
This fella was particularly vocal. Protesting something or other which amused us:
(and right after that he did a big poo which amused us even further.)
I know this happens all over Europe, but it still is amusing to me to see such old places like the Tower just smack in the middle of a big, modern, metropolitan city.
We went in to see the "Line of Kings" exhibit after that where bunches of suits of armor and big horse models and such are on display.
I was amused by how much Henry VIII must have thought of himself with this, uh, 'roomy' codpiece.
Princess with a sword:
Then she found this paper poppy on the floor. "Look! It's a Beefeater flower!" which seems more her speed than the dagger above.
We thought this dragon sculpture was cool. "Made out of parts of guns and war things," says Dalton.
The boys liked it so much, they asked Jason to take them back to see it a second time once we had moved on.
Autumn, however, did not.
Oooh, we could see where the crown jewels are housed out the window:
(Super old mixed with super new again with The Gherkin back there.)
Then it was into the gift shop:
Autumn found a much better souvenir than the dumb Scabbers from the day before. Her queen bear she calls Elizabeth:
And Dalton found a good one too, a Queen's Guard bear he calls John:
Easton held off choosing anything...he was thinking he'd like to try to find a stuffed dragon somewhere if possible.
After that we had to go. The Tower wouldn't be open too much longer and we had evening plans:
But not before we attempted to get the quintessential vacation shot with the Tower Bridge...'Christmas cards, here we come!'
(The first one was better of us, but not of the bridge, the next one was perfect of the bridge, less so of us. *groan* Strangers taking pictures. Pffft.)
We stopped back briefly at the flat to grab a bite to eat and change our clothes for our evening in the West End Theatre Disrict.
For an early Christmas gift, my mom bought us tickets to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. We did not see the muffin man. We did see Willy Wonka. The play was a little slow to get going as the entire first act took place in Charlie's house with his grandparents in their big shared bed and the whole "will he, won't he" golden ticket situation. We amused ourselves during intermission:
The theater was beautiful inside:
The second act blew us all away. Seriously, so so entertaining and the sets and effects were so creative and impressive. We loved it. Even though it was another late night. The kids were exhausted on the way home.
At one point a seat opened up and some tourist girls motioned for Dalton to join them. They thought he was so adorable and were even snapping pictures of him. He was quite pleased with himself:
And then we were able to go to sleep after another full day in London. Day 4 is here.
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