London Vacation Day 4

"No photography is allowed in here!" said the barista behind the counter at Starbucks. Yes, as in the wake-me-up every morning, must-get-my-fix coffee chain. The picture? Dad was taking an innocent picture of a basket and sign that suggested to recycle coffee grounds in your plants. Mom thought it was cool that they suggested such thing.


Hmmm...my thoughts? If I were a spy from another coffee shoppe, I wouldn't be carrying a really big Nikon around my neck...maybe more of a spy cam of some sort...


So after our tasty breakfast (I had hot chocolate with a raisin-filled cinnamon roll), we headed out the doors and toward St. James Park. Cary and I led the parents through the back streets, just to be able to say we went on one of our 'walks'.


Before the trip, Cary found a great book called 24 Walks In London. This takes you on a walking tour around the area and points out really cool, eerie, or just plain strange historical things. The street we walked to was part of Walk __, which spoke about Queen Anne.


A statue was made for Queen Anne, but without a plaque of who it was, the citizens of London thought it was a statue for Queen "Bloody" Mary. So they were disgusted with this statue, and threw things at it, breaking parts of it off. The statue was later repaired, a plaque reading "Anne Regina" added to it, and moved to another location. It is said that on a specific anniversary every year, the statue leaves its column and walks up and down the street 3 times before returning back to the column.


After taking a peek at the statue, we continued on into St. James Park. Here we saw a lot of squirrels (Cary just loves squirrels!!!) that came right up to us, looking for food. I tried feeding them wheat crackers, but they turned their picky little noses up at those and ran off. Perhaps it was because a man goes through the park on a regular basis and feeds them things (like nuts I think). I would turn my nose up at wheat crackers, too, if offered chocolate instead (hmmm...that sounds good!).


Cary then led us to Piccadilly Square, which I was excited to see because the last time I was there, it was decorated with Snowflakes for winter and they were advertising the movie Flushed Away. I was hoping that somehow they were advertising another movie, say, like, um....Harry Potter...no luck. So after getting there and seeing part of the square (and having pictures taken with a Charlie Chaplin statue), we made our way to the Natural History Museum.

What a cool place to visit! It was huge, and it had everything you could imagine there: plants, animals (including sea life, mammels, dinosaurs...), bugs...We only saw about half the museum, but I was exhausted after seeing it!

After the museum (which the building looks like a really old cathedral, but it was specifically built for the museum), we went to an outside exhibit--the Butterfly Exhibit. I was being a kid and said that I wanted antennae (they were selling some at the entrance), so my dad bought them. I very happily wore them almost the rest of the day--at times forgetting I had them on.

The butterfly exhibit was really cool though. You walk into this really hot, humid room and there are butterflys EVERYWHERE! We took so many pictures in this room, and Cary not only manages to attract women, but pretty butterflies too! He had at least 3 land on him during the time we were there. And I was running around, trying to blend in (remember I did have the butterfly antennae on my head!) and take pictures of all them. One elusive one kept flying away just as I was pressing down on the button, and other I got at least 5 pictures of...that one was a camera hog! As you got ready to leave, you had to check yourself in a mirror to make sure you had no hitchhikers on you.

The next location in our busy day? We walked to the Prince Albert Hall, the beautiful, round theater building. Cary pointed out to us as we went along that the residential buildings around the theater were all concave, rounded out so that they and the theater fit into the scenery. So much thought went into this area!

After oohing and aweing over those buildings for a little bit of time, we walked our way to Harrods. Cary took us the back roads so we could see the city without all the scary traffic. When we made it to Harrods, we were ready to sit down and relax for a bit. We found Harry Morgan's a little deli in the corner of the food center where we kicked back, ordered some drinks, and just sat in awe of the huge, decorated store.

After relaxing, we did what any great tourists would do in a fancy building: we rode the escalators all the way up, and then back down (there are 7 floors!) We also found both the Princess Di memorial, as well as the statue. A beautiful memorial for a beautiful person.

Harrod's Floor Guide

After Harrod's, we were tired and hungry. So we hopped onto a taxi and rode our way around to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. We managed to get pictures of famous rocker's clothing and instruments, including The Who (one of my favorites!) and the Beatles. After that, a long walk home was needed, and it was beautiful...

Did I mention the weather was in the 60's the entire time we were there??!