Take a Breath With Me: There She Goes...through classic London

Day 17

Passport Control = scary. Since it happened again, I wonder if they are all like that. Not really for me this time, I was kind of ignored as a standard tourist, but Aubrey got a bit grilled but being the pro of travel, she had no problem handling it with calm. However, I have decided that it is a necessary evil to traveling around the world. But this leads us the the short train from Paris to London on the Chunnel. I had always imagined this underwater bridge as a glass tube where you can see all the water and fish around you. Unfortunately this dream of mine is not real; it is only a dark blackness for a long time.

Once we got to London we headed out to see and experience. We walked pretty much the whole length of Oxford Street looking in shops every now and then. Not the cheapest of cities we visited, but certainly the easiest to get around as we truly understood the language. One fun thing to see is how many Subways and Starbucks there were. We did enjoy the Subways as we ate a good healthy lunch there at least twice. The menu you may think you know well, but it is at least a little different there. They have sweet corn and beets to put on your sandwich besides the things we generally think of. The corn tasted well and made me sad they don't have them here, but umm...yeah I didn't try the later.

We finally made our way to Harrods which is an absolute mall unto itself. You need a map just to even begin to figure out where you are. It is also a rather ritzy store and far too expensive to my taste until you come to the Toy Kingdom where I was happy as any child could have been. I even got a souvenir there.

I got a mini-version of these bears and it is adorable as these were just plain fun for being larger that life.

The wonderful buses that we road all over the city. May I recommend that you take a tour by just getting on a bus and sitting in the top front and enjoying your view. It is very cheap and very fun. Although I did have a few minutes where I wondered if we were ever going to fit down certain streets and at one point we almost ran over a bicyclist that was literally feet in front of the bus as we drove.

After shopping we headed to Westminster Abbey and Parliament. We saw the London Eye, although we didn't ride it. We thought about it but were too tired to walk that way that day and didn't get around to it after that. It was certainly an amazing area of sights to see.

Big Ben

Moreover, although you may not hear about it, the bells are absolutely beautiful when they ring out the time.

And never forget what you new as a child: "The second star to the right and straight on to morning."

Parliament

I really had hoped to have time to visit the floor and be able to watch the process of government there as it is so similar and yet so different from our own. Sometimes I wonder just where the inspiration for buildings like this came and why when we were building we did not decide to follow that tradition of building. I loved D.C. but it is extremely different than anything you see in Europe where the government buildings are older than the governments they house.

The Union Jack flying high.

Enjoying a snack and the beautiful warm weather.

Westminster Abbey

When we got to the Abbey, we were sad to realize that it was closed to tourists. So we decided to sit and enjoy the grass and beauty of the outside as it is still very impressive. We even almost fell asleep in our tired joy.

While we sat Aubrey made a daisy crown to remind us of childhood days.

I won't call myself an angel, but....

Our nice rest.

Our lovely view of the beauty.

We thought this would be our only view as it was closed but we realized that Evensong was being held right then so we joined it. Now we couldn't take pictures inside, but it is a church worthy of many pictures and a song of its own. Even though I had seen many such cathedral churches in Europe I never lost my joy of them. (I did find it funny though that in mainland Europe you go free into churches and pay for museums and in England you pay to go into churches and museums are free.)

If I could share with you any of that beauty I was experiencing listening to that music I would, but I must say that it may have been my absolute favorite thing in the whole trip to enjoy the music touching my soul and raising to the top of the ceiling and beyond to the heavens.

There is a little school next door to the church.

Aubrey wanted to visit the little neighborhood of the school near Westminster.

St. James' Park & Buckingham Palace

Not far walk from where we were and fabulous. It was so nice to see so many enjoying the sunlight. Ourselves included in that great joy.

The castle is literally in the middle of the park.

The guards that we all know will never laugh no matter what joke you tell them or face you make. We even jokingly wondered if they were cardboard cutouts until we finally saw them move :)

And if you want to see them change the guard know they only do it at 11 o'clock in the morning and it has a million people watching. We knew a few people who wanted to meet up there and realized there was just no way to find one another.

I have commented at the amazing difference between the US and Europe well here is another: our military have a much more obvious precision of movement and concern about this kind of guard situation. So way to go our military men for being dedicated at all they do.

Do you want to live in a place like this?

Where you can't look out your window without being noticed let alone walk outside your door.

Can we get in by climbing the gates?

They don't look that hard, but then those Redcoats (I wonder where those uniforms came from historically?) may shoot us with those little guns, that I assume are real.