Hello from England #2

Day 3

Oct 17/09

We decided to head down to Portobello Road, a market famous for it's antiques. Not too far of a walk, we decided to head there by foot. It was an extremely packed and extremely interesting market. Set on Portobello Rd, the area is awesome. The buildings are all colorful and the street isn't very wide, so when we encountered the garbage truck trying to get through, it was definitely a tight squeeze! The antiques were really neat. I never really had an appreciation for antiques, but this was a good way to start. We had a snack at the market and then headed to purchase a ticket for the Underground to get to our next destination. That destination would be the London Tower. This is a fortress in the middle of London that is from the 1200's! It was used as a residence for royalty as well as prison and a place of private execution. It was really neat. People still live there today. It looks like a fairytale. Unbelieveable that real life actually looked like the stories they tell. It also amazes me how London looks. Depending on where you are, you will find areas that look old, older than anything I'm used to with our modern day Edmonton. I think the closest thing we have in Canada to London is Quebec city (the old part) and even that doesn't look quite that old in comparison. It's crazy. So, we went around London Tower, saw the Crown Jewels of England, which I must say are very impressive, saw some graffiti from the early day prisoners and then we headed out. We also saw the London Tower Bridge and then went to see the London Bridge (I had to. The song kept playing in my head over and over.) We crossed over the London Bridge and walked over to the Shakespeare Globe which is a theatre rebuilt in the image of the original theatre that his plays took place on. We only looked at it from the outside. Again my feet were tired. It was time to go back home. I believe this was the day that jet lag hit me so hard that I fell asleep around 8p and woke up around 5a and had issues falling back asleep. Oh how I love jet lag.

Day 4

Oct 18/09

Today we again headed to the Underground, this time heading to St. Paul's Cathedral, the church that Princess Diana and Prince Charles got married in. We looked around and then we were off to the British Museum. The nice thing about most museums in Britain is that they're free. And they're really good ones too. The British Museum has incredible items from all around the world including Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mexico and others. They have the Rosetta Stone on display (that was pretty cool). They also had mummies, Greek and Roman statues and all kinds of other very museum like items. It was a quick trip here so that we could make it to the next two destinations in time. Next was the British Natural History museum. Trevor has been following his Geek Atlas which tells him all the geeky places to see all around the world. This was one of them. I was a little disappointed after seeing the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Next it was off to the Science Museum next door. Now this was cool. Unfortunately my feet (again) were giving up on me, but I had a bit of strength left to see some of the amazing displays including a section on history of Medicine. Wow, the craziness of how modern medicine began! It's amazing. I also learned of William Hunter. I had heard of him before, but very little. He was a doctor of obstetrics and apparently an amazing one at that. There were some pretty things on display about him. They also had "the closest thing to Watson and Cricks original model of DNA" on display and a huge display on clocks. This was definitely a cool Science museum. We spent a bit more time at the pub next to our hotel after all the museums this day, this time having a traditional meat pie and Trevor had sausage and mash (better known as bangers and mash). We then went back to get ready to leave London the next day.