London with my mom

At last, I am posting about London. It's been a long time, but my time at home has been so busy! My sister's high school graduation, sorting through about 10,000 pictures, a welcome home party and two days on a criminal court jury, I am finally ready to sit down and write about the last portion of my trip home. Better late than never.

After visiting my friend Luis in the Netherlands, I caught an Easy Jet flight from Amsterdam to London. I had convinced my mom to take a holiday and come meet me in London for a week before I headed back to the states. Seeing as London has four or five airports, it was not surprising that I flew into a different airport than the one at which my mother was arriving. So, I quickly hopped on the "inter-airport shuttle" and headed across town to meet my mom.

Upon arriving at the airport, both my hiking boots decided they were tired of silence and promptly adjusted themselves to have mouths. In other words, the soles of both came detached nearly simultaneously. I had to walk by picking my knees up nearly to my chin in order to avoid tripping over them. It was hilarious - at least to everyone else! :) But despite my clown shoes and the drizzly wet weather, I managed to place myself in the receiving line before mom came out of the terminal. What a happy reunion.

A friend of mine who lives in London (but who was unfortunately away on vacation the entire time we were there) was kind enough to "lend" us her flat for the duration of our stay in England. This was an financial life saver. London is SO expensive!!! We headed out of the airport, to the Tube (London subway) and to my friend's flat.

To ensure that we had the full and true London experience, we were met with dreary, wet and quite chilly weather. This was to continue every day until the very last one of our trip. So, we arrived at the apartment VERY happy to be there and slightly worse for the wear (or at least wetter for the wear!)

Despite the weather, we forged ahead and managed to see quite a lot of London. Our first day, we spent on a 2 story bus tour of the city (Big Bus Company). We battled the weather on the upper deck (open) with our raincoats as long as we could before retiring to the lower, enclosed part of the bus. Here are a few pictures from day one in London.

Red city bus circling Trafalgar square

lion molded with the iron from french cannons

Big Ben

(which is actually the bell, not the clock!)

the tower bridge

Enter the Tower of London

Emily in front of the Tower of London

Royal armor in the Tower of London

mom strikes a pose to show our state at the end of this rainy day!

For the rest of the trip, we alternated a day in London with day trips to Oxford and Canterbury. I will write about the day trips later. For now, enjoy some of London as we saw it.

First of all, the best purchase we made was our "Oyster cards" - or subway passes. We bought the week-long unlimited ride cards and probably spent about 5 times their value with all our rides on the Tube. Mom was continually amazed by how quickly I navigated through the mazes of subway. My reply was simple. "It's easy! It's all in ENGLISH!"

the tube station near the flat where we were staying

consulting my handy dandy London map book

mom next to a train whizzing off

SAINT PAUL's CATHEDRAL

The magnificent dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London is second in size only after St.Peter's Basilica in the Vatican ( Italy). The present cathedral was designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the fire of London destroyed the old one (from the Norman times). The cathedral is not only a work of art, but it is also a symbol of London. Many significant weddings (Charles and Diana) and funerals have been held here. We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but here are a couple from the outside. I also climbed the 300 something steps to the balcony ledge around the top of the dome for a great view of London. (Thank goodness it stopped raining for a while!)

the front of the Cathedral with a statue of Queen Mary

on the top of the cathedral with London behind me

Looking down at the square below

COVENT GARDEN

This is not actually a garden, but a part of London known for it's cafes, shops and street performers. Mom and I enjoyed coffee, dessert and some interesting performances here one afternoon.

performance one

carrot cake break

performance two

Buckingham Palace

And of course, no trip to London is complete without a visit to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, our timing was off, so we didn't get to see changing of the guard. But, we did get to watch this one (funny hat and all) march around bringing his knees to his belly buttons as he did so. (Maybe all the people who saw me at the airport just though I was practicing to guard the palace!)

Em and mom in front of Buckingham Palace

one of the guards

Westminster Abbey

Down the road from Buckingham Palace is Westminster Abby. This church is used formally by the royal family for coronations and royal celebrations. It, like St.Paul's, is truly magnificent. Mom and I 1.enjoy church and 2. didn't want to pay another entrance fee, so we headed to the abbey for their daily prayer service at 8am. It was short and sweet, but beautiful. And having the service in a side room of this magnificent church was very special. Again, I didn't get any pictures of the inside (which we did get to walk through on the way to the small chapel) but here are a couple from the front...including one of the "modern day saints" portrayed at the entrance.

Westminster Abbey

It took a minute to figure out that this truly is

Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.

Shakespeare's GLOBE THEATRE

The third Globe theatre to be build, the current one stands about 200 meters from where Shakespeare and his contemporaries built the first one. Millions of dollars and many years were dedicated to the study of what could be excavated from the original Globe as well as other theatres of the same time period so that this one could be built as accurately as possible. We didn't have time to see a show, but we did take the tour of the theatre (and see rehearsal in progress) and visit the Shakespeare museum housed under the theatre. What a neat place.

Emily in front of the Globe Theatre

some of these I never knew were Shakespeare!

mom in front of the Globe

(and the ice cream truck)

ice cream break by the Globe

(and look, it cleared up!)

Random sites of London

It was truly a wonderful trip, despite the rain.

More to come later on our day trips to Oxford and Canterbury as well as our visit with my friend Kat in London!