England 2005 The Remainder
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Here we are in London Heathrow at 7:30 am, 24 hours after we started in Las Vegas with a stop in San Francisco. We are waiting for the bus to take us to Woking to catch the train to Crewkerne, close to South Perrott. I found this in the pub where we ate some of our meals. My parents used to own a Vauxhall and took it on some of our vacations. We have left South Perrott and are boarding the train to London. Their rail system is really nice. Rich had to have his "fix." We toured the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is a figure of an aged woman with a forked tail covered with gold scales. Here's Paddington Bear sitting at Paddington Station in London.
Security at Paddington Station. This was a rugby team giving a demonstration at Paddington Station. We toured the Tower of London. The inside of the Tower of London This sundial was on the side of one of the buildings, showing the exact time, minus daylight savings time. Two of the workers at the Tower of London
You are looking at the toilet in the Tower, straight down! At least this toilet had a seat, but it was still straight down. The throne in the throne room. There is a huge circular candelabra above the throne but the picture of it didn't come out! We found this picture of Edward's first queen, Eleanor, playing backgammon. Did she do it at dinner, as we do? I though this display of pistols and swords was cool. This may have been used on Anne Bolyn.
Here we are with a Beefeater. What can you do with your sidewalk chalk? We went to Windsor Castle the next day. We were lucky because the following day most of the rooms in the castle would have been closed for the Order of the Garter. We spend a long time watching the changing of the guard. The men in the black uniforms came out first. They were followed by this unit in the beaver hats. It was a warm day and I'll bet those hats were really uncomfortable! The beaver hatted band performed for us.
Later there was another changing of the guard. A group of schoolchildren being led by 2 teachers. They have the kids all marching like the guards. Notice the bleachers on the left for the Order of the Garter ceremony. As we were leaving the castle a vehicle was driving in. In a minute the 3 plates in the road will open and 3 black and red pylons will pop up. Now the driveway is blocked from traffic. No, he isn't real. We got a good deal on the airfare and hotel from United Vacations. Unfortunately the nearest tube station was closed for a year for repairs. Nevertheless, our room rumbled every few minutes for a few seconds as trains rumbled underneath on the District and Circle Lines. They were the ones hit by the bombing.
Rich just wanted a hamburger and Friday's was close to our hotel. We were actually quite chicken when finding places to eat. Traffic jam, London style The next day we went to St. Paul's Cathedral. The 4-year restoration project to clean the inside of the dome was finished the day before we went and the scaffolding taken down. We didn't realize it at the time so were really lucky to see the entire inside of the cathedral clean! Rich and I even lit candles for all our families - something quite unheard of for us! To read about the restoration see http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/10/nstpauls10.xml First we climbed 259 steps to the whispering gallery, where we actually heard each other whisper from the other side of the gallery. Then we climbed a total of 530 steps to the outside of the top of the dome, where I clung to the railing for dear life. The steps went round and round, which really wrecked my sense of balance. Of course we had to climb down all those steps, resulting in blisters on my right little toe, which didn't really get a good band-aid until we got to The Netherlands. Of course, none of the band-aid boxes were in English. http://www.aboutbritain.com/StPaulsCathedral.htm Rich was much more relaxed on the top of the dome. While we were on top of St. Paul's I noticed a bridge over the Thames River. It was the Millennium Bridge leading to the Tate Modern Museum. So I dragged Rich over to the Tate Modern where we saw an exact copy of Edward Weston's nude that Rich won in a lottery when he took a class from Edward's son Cole. http://www.urban75.org/london/millennium.html
  We leave London from Waterloo Station for Brussels via the Chunnel and the Eurostar Train.     We got a good breakfast for our first class fare, but didn't see much of the countryside. There were berms on each side of the tracks and mostly farmland. One minute we were in daylight and the next under the Channel. We stopped once in France and then before we knew it we were in Brussels. The Eurostar Train stops in 3 places: Paris, Brussels and Disneyland.