Foggy London Town (Days 4-5)

DAY 4: Wednesday, we started off by heading over to the British Museum. It was FREE! A nice break from all the 10 EUR/pound museums all over Europe. The British Museum has lots of historical artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone which was pretty cool to see! Other than that we saw a lot of ancient Egyptian artifacts, including many human sarchophaguses (sarcophagi???) and even a CAT sarcophagus! Cats were pretty important to the Egyptians and they even buried cats with people because they were good luck in the afterlife or something.

Rosetta Stone

After the museum, me and Cole made the trek to Harrod's to meet Julie and my parents. But there were more important things to do than shop-- soccer! The England-Slovenia game was on. We stopped at a pub pretty close to Harrod's to watch and it was packed. Everyone was standing around, crowded in a tiny space and there was only 1 TV so everyone was craning their necks to see the game. We had a few beers there and stood and watched the game. Luckily England won (!) so everyone was happy and in a good mood. We also met a Scottish man who had bet $2000 that England would win.... the WORLD CUP. At the time he might have been happy, but now in retrospect maybe not so much because they got booted their first game in the tournament. But oh well. USA was also playing Algeria during the same time slot, but obviously not many people were showing that game. However we did find out afterwards that USA won too!

Me and Cole celebrated post-game by finally going to Harrod's!!! I was pretty pumped, Cole not so much but he trooped along with me. I got a pretty sweet umbrella there. Its awesome, but post-purchase it became apparent that it might be difficult to transport home since its long and doesn't fit in the suitcase... we'll see how that goes but I'll probably have to just hold it all the way back. But all in all, England and USA both won, and I bought an umbrella at Harrod's in London. A pretty darn good day all around.

DAY 5: On Thursday me and Cole made a looooong trek to the Tower of London. We walked past Westminster, Big Ben/Parliament, then along the Thames past the London Eye, the Globe Theater, and finally to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. On the way we even stopped at a museum called the "Clink" prison museum (which is apparently the origin of the word "clink" referencing prisons).

Parliament

Some dude using the loo in front of Parliament... haha

Me and Cole at Parliament-- where James Bond jumped out the window into the Thames

Big Ben and Parliament in the background

London Eye

Clink Museum

Clink Museum-- kinda creepy (Cole was totally scared)

Tower Bridge

Although our feet were pretty tired from walking, we decided to forge ahead and go to the Natural History museum. Me and Cole both loved the Natural History museum in NYC so we really wanted to see the one in London! It was pretty great. I wish we could have stayed a little longer there too. There was so much to see! Some of the highlights included a dinosaur exhibit, the evolution of different species of elephants, and a huge blue whale skeleton. There were some other exhibits about human biology that I would have liked to see, but alas, not enough time!

Natural History-- dino skeleton

Momma and baby elephants

Tusk-less elephant!

Later that night after our sightseeing trek, we went to the Picadilly Circus area once again, this time to see a play called Avenue Q! Before the play started we went to Pizza Hut for dinner-- the British version, which for some reason is 1000x superior to American Pizza Hut. The salad bar was superb. Anyways, Avenue Q: OUTRAGEOUS. Totally worth seeing, if you can handle a few jokes about sex, racism, and just general inappropriateness. But it was pretty much hilarious and I'm really happy we got to see it!

DAY 6 (departure day): On our last day, we got up early for breakfast since Julie was leaving from the London airport. We decided to go all out for the $16 (actually 16 pounds, so more like $20) breakfast per person. Although a little overpriced, it was pretty tasty and we tried to get our money's worth!

After breakfast we packed up and took a cab to the train station to get the Eurostar back to
Paris. However we did make a quick stop at one of the places I was dying to see in London-- Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross!

Off to HOGWARTS!!!

Mom wants to go too!