London

We're home from our adventures in England.  A few background notes before we start showing photos: nine people came on the trip- Joe, Sarah, Zina, Brandan, Becky, Sofi, Abe, Helen and Gibson.  We planned our trip by making a list of all our ancestors from England.  We colored a map to show which county each family came from.  Looking at the map, most branches came from the North.  We have other family branches in the South, Central and East, but we spent most of our time on this trip in the North.  We'll have to save the other counties for another trip.  We began and ended our trip in London.

London was a family favorite.  Using the underground and the buses (and lots of walking), it was easy to get around.  We never got lost in London.  Here are Helen, Sofi, Gibson, Abe and Zina in Trafalgar Square.

 This is Abe standing on one of the lions that surround the monument commemorating Lord Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.  The steeple behind him belongs to the church of St. Martin-in-the-Field.  This church is best known for its superb orchestra.

 We stopped for photos with a member of the horse guard.  There is a sign nearby which warns the horses may kick or bite.  This horse stood very still.  

Sarah, Joe, Zina and Sofi toured the interior of the Westminster Abbey while the rest of us took a break outside.  We found the arch dedicated to 20th century martyrs which Elder Christofferson referred to in his April 2015 General Conference talk.

 Westminster Abbey is along one side of Parliamentary Square.  The Square holds statues of famous political leaders from around the world.  Abraham Lincoln has a statue here.  The other 3 sides face the House of Parliament, the Prime Minister's offices (and the road to Buckingham Palace) and the Supreme Court.  The square physically and figuratively represents the intersection of the four branches of British government: legislative, executive, judicial and the church.  Gib had a waffle and Abe and Helen had hot dogs from a street vendor

This dramatic gate is the entrance to the mall which leads to Buckingham Palace.  It was built during Queen Victoria's reign.  Most of the big monuments we saw in London were Victorian.  Britain was the world's superpower and celebrated her wealth conspicuously.  

 More flags around Buckingham Palace.

 Here are Sofi, Abe, Helen and Zina at Buckingham Palace's gates.  We saw the royal crest everywhere, but never quite as grandly as on the gates.

London has one of the world's greenest city centers.  Large parks dominate a huge swath through the middle of the city.  This is a view from Buckingham Palace looking back toward Parliamentary Square.  The parks are beautiful and well used.

 We walked through the Wellington Arch, built to commemorate Britain's victory over Napoleon.  This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.

 Sarah's friend recommended we visit Harrod's.  We had never heard of Harrod's before so we didn't expect a palace of shopping.  It has 7 floors, including the basement.  As far as we could tell, the 7 floors contain the most expensive consumer goods available.  It was fun to look around, but past dinnertime and we had walked all day, so we didn't stay long.

 The only shopping we did was in the Chocolate and Confectionery department.  

 We got some take out (Brits call it take away) at a Japanese fast food restaurant and ate it in Hyde Park.  Whether it was the dinner or the chocolates from Harrod's, Abe and Helen had a horrible allergic reaction after dinner.  We learned not to assume that food that was safe for them to eat in the US was safe in England.  Fortunately, the food labels were in English.

We all like the Harry Potter books.  In the series, students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry catch a train to school from platform 9 ¾ at the King's Cross train station.  The trick is it doesn't look like there is a platform 9 ¾ and wizards are the only ones who can walk through the brick wall to the magical platform.  We took the underground to the King's Cross stop and went upstairs to the train station.

 The train station is in an old brick building, but the platforms look very modern.  This is where platform 9 ¾ should be-- in-between platforms 9 and 10.  There is not a brick wall in sight.

 An enterprising capitalist has labeled a nearby wall with the sign 9 ¾. The longest (and really the only) line in the station was the tourists waiting to take their photos with the fictional platform.  Of course, we got in line.  We were surrounded by people of all ages from all over the world who all like Harry Potter.  Everyone was good natured and a couple of employees kept the line moving.

 A luggage trolley is embedded in the wall and everyone has a chance to get a photo looking like they are about to disappear through the wall.  You can purchase a professional photo (the capitalism part) or use your own camera.  Zina is wearing Slytherin's colors and Helen is wearing Ravenclaw.

One of our anticipated events before we left for England was riding the London Eye.  It's a 443 foot tall ferris wheel that dominates the London skyline.  The Eye is on the south side of the Thames River in an area called Southwark.

We had 360 degree views inside the Eye.  We could see many of the famous landmarks we had seen up close the day before.

Each ferris wheel car was roomy inside.  The Eye moves very slowly-- it takes 30 minutes to make one revolution.  

After our ride, we walked down the south side to the Tower Bridge.  It's only 2 miles distance, but we took several hours to make our way down.  We stopped for lunch at the Bleeker Street burger stand.  Becky and Brandan tried ordering a vegetarian burgers and the cook said (imagine a British accent), "We were literally voted the best burger in the world."  So we got the beef burgers instead.  They were not the best burgers we had in London, let alone the world.  We googled them later and as far as we can tell, they won the London Burger Bash in 2014 competing against 2 other challengers.

In Charles Dickens' time, the south side of the Thames was where the criminals hung out.  Today it's safe, clean enough and much more relaxed than the formal and grand atmosphere on the north side of the river.  Our kids loved playing in this fountain.  Jets of water would create square rooms.  The walls of water would turn on and off, sometimes trapping the kids unexpectedly.

 We didn't see a lot of graffiti in London.  The cameras mounted everywhere in the city probably discourage it.  However, we saw a man at work on some graffiti in a skate park with lots of graffiti.

 Our kids wanted a break from walking so Joe stayed with them on the south bank while Sarah, Brandan and Becky crossed over the Millennial Bridge to pick up our National Trust passes.  Brandan and Becky looked around a little at some of the oldest parts of London before we went back across.  This is a photo of the wall that surrounded the Roman fort of Londinium, built in AD 47.  The walls had been built over and were hidden until bombing during WWII uncovered them.  

 We walked past the Globe theater, an accurate replica of Shakespeare's theater.  The original theater was shut down by the Puritans in 1642 (along with all the other theaters in town.)  It was torn down later to make room for housing.  The reproduction was built in 1997 using traditional tools and building materials.  It has the first thatch roof allowed on a building in London since the Great Fire of 1666.  It also has a modern sprinkler system.

London doesn't have as many skyscrapers as you'd expect in a modern city.  It does have The Shard, the tallest building in the EU at 1016 feet.  By comparison, the US has 12 buildings taller than this one.

 We saw the Tower of London, which looks more like a castle than we expected. The Tower dates back to William the Conquerer.  

We made it to the Tower Bridge.  It looks medieval, but it was actually built in the 1880s.

 While we watched, the bridge opened to let a sailboat with a tall mast through.

 We gave Sofi the job of finding the quickest route home for 9 tired tourists.  The underground maps are easy to use.  Sofi used Sarah's guidebook and found our way quickly.

 Sarah found us a great apartment to rent while we were in London on Colney Hatch Lane in the suburb of Muswell Hill.  It was close to a bus line which made it easy to get around.

  The apartment had 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, separate water closet, a living room (Brits call it the lounge) and this tiny kitchen.  The pans on the rack in the front of the photo and the 3 utensils hanging on the wall were pretty much all of the cooking equipment.  We walked to 2 different grocery stores in the neighborhood.  At least half of each store was devoted to sweets.

The big attraction in Muswell Hill is the Alexandra Palace, built during Queen Victoria's reign.  It's now a cultural center and ice rink, and people and signs refer to it as the Ally Pally.

Here's a photo of Zina and Abe outside the Ally Pally.

Muswell Hill was a charming neighborhood full of cute attached houses.  Sofi took this photo from the upper level of a double decker bus.

 We returned to London after our other adventures for one day before we flew home. We thought it would be fun to see a play on our last night in town and bought tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera.  We anticipated a 3 hour drive and thought we would arrive in time to do some shopping and have dinner before the show started at 7:30 pm.  However, a horrible accident on the M40 shut the motorway down in both directions.  It took Brandan, Becky, Abe and Gibson 7 hours to get to London.  It took Joe, Sarah, Zina, Sofi and Helen 9 hours.  We had to return our cars at the Heathrow airport, then take a 50 minute ride on the underground to the theater.  With a bit of luck, we made it to the show barely before it started.  

 We were so happy to make it to the play.  We all enjoyed it.  There were plenty of pyrotechnics to keep even our tiredest kids awake.  It was fun to see Picadilly Circus at night-- an area of London with dozens of theaters.  When the play got out at 10:30, the street was full of activity.  We still hadn't had dinner, but the restaurants near the theater were either nightclubs or super posh so we decided to start home and get food on the way.

 Our hotel was near Heathrow and it took a ride on the underground, a train and a bus to get there. We seemed to get to the next switch just in time to leave so we didn't have an opportunity to look for food.  As we sat on the bus and talked about our final destination, a young woman sitting next to us let us know that we had gotten on the bus going in the opposite direction from our hotel and we needed to get off, cross the street and catch another bus.  We got off at the next street, crossed the street and found a burger stop that was open until 3 am, and full of people ordering food.  Serendipity!  We finally got dinner about midnight.