We are getting lazier the longer we stay in London 🙂 vacation is winding down…and so are we. Yesterday was a big day of walking so we were slow getting started. Kegan and I trekked the 10 minutes up to the subway station and grabbed coffee/breakfast and then headed for Baker St. A certain famous 221b Baker St. to be precise. 🙂 Home of the Sherlock Holmes Museum. 

But, when we got there, the line was down the block to get in…. Now, I may be weird…but I rarely queue up for anything. I think I find it insulting to my sensibilities or something…but I basically refuse. Lol so… After watching the line to see if it moved quickly at all…and seeing it not move at all in 5 minutes- we decided that it wasn’t that important 🙂

   

     

It was a really nice day…so we decided to hop on over to Warwick Ave. to see “Little Venice”. Beautiful little area.

   

      

Next, we were headed north into the northern suburbs to Highgate to see the grave of my favorite author, Douglas Adams. I’m calling it the ultimate nerd pilgrimage. Mostly because I had to take 2 subway trains, 1 overground train, walk uphill for a mile or so and then navigate to the right part of the cemetary to pay respects to a tombstone the size of a notebook. Lol I love that everyone leaves pens as tribute. Also, someone had left a towel, which in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, his most famous book, he states:

A towel, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

So, I was happy to get to see the grave of a great author and “nerd out” a little 🙂

Randomly…we found out Karl Marx is buried here as well. 

   

              

We trekked on back home, went to an underground mall at our subway station and had a pretty boring night doing puzzles with Norah and doing some laundry 🙂

Tomorrow is our last full day! We have reservations for high tea at 2pm… I’m very excited to get dressed up and be fancy 🙂 

Today was our downtown sightseeing day. 

We took the subway downtown. Norah was so excited to “ride the train”. She was making friends with everyone.

  

   

Mind the gap.   

 

View from the middle of London Bridge. 

      

   Memorial to the Great Fire of London. The majority of medieval London burned to the ground in 1666 and this marks where they believe the fire started- a bakery on old Pudding Lane

  

  

Big Ben    

  

  

  

Westminster Abbey  

 

The Abbey bell tower   

 

No idea what this building is…but the stone carvings were amazing.  

   

Randomly…there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln here. I didn’t expect that. In my googling, it seems that we sent this over to England in the 1910’s to mark “a hundred years of peace” between our countries… (Wonder if taxpayers paid for that… Haha)

 

Getting close to the queen… 

   St James Park 

 We went to the Churchill War Rooms. This is where Churchill directed most of the war from underground as bombs were hitting the city   

  

  They have used photographs to try and put everything back exactly as it was at the time of its use.

The War Cabinet meeting room 

They had a sign underground to let them know what the weather above ground was like 🙂    

They hid a transatlantic telecom room from most everyone in the underground bunker by putting a bathroom lock on it that read “engaged”. People just assumed it was a special toilet reserved for Churchill!   

This was actually what was on the other side of the door. Churchill spoke to FDR and Truman from here many times.    

The prime minister’s dining room

Chief of Staff map room with the original maps on the walls.     

Zoomed in as far as I could on a little Hitler graffiti. This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night. Who drew this?? Lol      

Churchill’s personal room , complete with cigar by bedside

  

A map that hung at the foot of his bed with strategic places bombs may be dropped by the Germans.

A casualty count and log of all the bombs falling on Great Britain.  

  

  

A vintage poster I thought was cool.

  

Many people don’t know that all the “Keep Calm” posters actually originate from the air raids of WW2.   

After the war rooms was a Churchill museum.    

Churchill, after the war, was given honorary US citizen status. He was too sick to come and accept it…but his son did.  

The original door from 10 Downing St

 

  

Chasing pigeons. I don’t think she’s ever had more fun. Haha

  

  

  

  

  Buckingham Palace

  

  

  

   

Wellington Arch at Buckinghan Palace. George the IV had this commissioned to commemorate Britain’s victory in the Napoleonic wars and it was supposed to be the gateway to Buckingham Palace.

  

      

We had a lazy evening. Walked back to the subway station and had some noodles at a place called Wagamama. 

 

  

  

Norah finally got a day of her own today 🙂 I don’t think she truly grasped the fact that we were literally going to Peppa Pig’s house until she got there and physically saw a lifesized Peppa haha

Oh, the people. Lol 

We didn’t even get back to Peppa World before Norah needed to ride a carousel.   

  

Now we’re getting it!  

So excited to meet Peppa!   

    

Norah was entranced watching Rebecca Rabbit try to throw a ball into the bucket  

Grandpa Pig’s boat ride

Peppa’ House  

 

  She could have stayed here all day. Unfortunately there was a huge line so she got about 30 seconds haha

  They had a little penguin show thing and they had the Penguins out for the morning

  

  

  

  

  

Last, we drove the car like Mommy Pig 🙂

  

  

  

Finished up with some ice cream. I went to buy her some milk or juice and she said “how ’bout some ice cream?” Haha ok… We are at a theme park lol

 

Overall, way too crowded, we had to wait about 15-20 minutes for each ride and Wayyyy too overpriced since you had to buy the whole theme park ticket just to go to the toddler Peppa thing- but…she loved it and we were here…so I’m glad we did it 🙂

We saw one last place on our way to London. It’s basically the start of the White Cliffs of Dover, called Beachy Head. It’s actually the highest chalk sea cliffs in the UK.

   

    

World War 2 Royal Air Force Bombers usually flew out from this southern point headed towards enemy territory. They had a radio communications station here and during the Cold War they used an underground bunker here for radar.   

Finally, we were headed to our final spot for the trip: London. We’re actually gonna spend 3 nights in the same spot! What?? Lol

We got Norah and Mom all settled in to our disgustingly dirty little rental… Seriously, this place is gross. But, it’s livable…so we got a taxi ride through downtown London over to Trafalgar Square. 

   

             

We then grabbed dinner at a restaurant called Inamo.  

 

It was really cool, the table was interactive. You ordered your food and drinks through a touchscreen on the table.   

  

It then projects what the food will look like on your plate. Ha    

You can even change your “tablecloth”     

There we go…a little more festive lol       

We continued walking to Piccadilly Circus, which is basically the Broadway and Times Square of London

   

    

      

 

     

We decided an hour was enough of that! 🙂 we wanted to take the “Tube” back to our place. (Subway) so we bought our prepaid Oyster cards that let you just swipe to ride instead of buying each ride every time. 

 

  

  

 Should have been easy! Piccadilly line- to Jubilee line-to house….

   But the Jubille line was closed for the Easter weekend! So….we got to play Subway detectives real fast! We figured out to go back one station on Picadilly, transfer to Victoria line, then to the Northern Line and then a 10 minute walk home. I love riding the subway though…so I had fun. Kegan… Not so much lol

  

Tomorrow we’ll do all the touristy stuff we’re supposed to in London. 🙂 

Today was an easy short day full of tourist traps 🙂 (You’d think I wasn’t a tourist!) most of our morning was spent driving out of Cornwall back towards the rest of England basically backtracking through what we did yesterday. 

The first new place we saw was Cheddar Gorge- which basically turned out to be the Pigeon Forge of the UK. lol That being said… The gorge was WAY bigger than I expected and I definitely didn’t expect the town to be built INTO the rock walls. Had we been able to find a parking spot within a mile of the little town center we would have spent some time there…but it was crazy busy… I’m guessing because it’s Easter weekend. 

   

               

We then headed to Bath. They have a old Roman bath. But something they don’t have: parking. So…we decided that the pictures online were just as good, especially since it was $20 a person to walk in and see the bath that really isn’t even that old. The only thing Roman that is left is the actual basin of water,  all the structure and tile and everything was built in the last 150 years. 

One oddity- all of Bath seems to have been built out of the same color stone. 

 

  

  

  

  

  

   

So… On to Stonehenge! They’ve put up this huge center and exhibit and cafe and gift shop. Lol it’s ridiculous.  

So many people…  

The rocks           

We paid $60 to take a bus back to a fence to see the stones only to leave and drive RIGHT by them from the road on the other side through a fence just a little further away. Haha 

 We were all like, Ahhh man! Haha but oh well, most of the things we’ve done have been free or very cheap…and I’m sure it goes to keeping up the site. 

I am constantly surprised by just how rural the majority of England is outside of the cities…it’s not like the US where we have tons of little towns scattered all around, if you get outside of the major cities…you may find a tiny cluster… But it’s just countryside.

  

We got to the hotel early and we’re totally eating at the Pizza Hut beside the hotel because this is a total tourist zone and American restaurants are all they have here. 

The don’t have breadsticks here, they only have garlic bread. Also they put corn on their pizza. 

   

 

Tomorrow morning is Norah’s day…we are going to Peppa Pig World! (Thanks to my friend Kelly for letting me know that it existed!)

We started out this morning by visiting Clovelly. A cute weird little seaside village that doesn’t have cars. The cobblestone streets are only like 6-7ft wide in most spots and it was so amazing to imagine living someplace seaside like that with no car alarms, no tires, squeally brakes…. I think they’re doing something right here! Except that the entire town is owned by one person who rents spaces for houses and businesses. I’m not sure how exactly a single person ends up owning an entire town and charging visitors admission to enter the town… But never the less, it was cool. Would have been infinitely cooler if it wasn’t pouring down rain making the stone path so slippery we were all worried we were going to end up rolling down into town.

   

               

  

  

    

  

 After Clovelly, we drove through Morwenstow…there was a 3 mile hike here along the jagged coastline but again….rain, cold and self-diagnosed bronchitis…I decided I’d better not. Although from what I’ve read- so many ships used to get wrecked on these rocks and the rocks were so jagged that the townspeople would find pieces of limbs among the rocks. There was an old graveyard here though and good view of the coast from afar.

  

   

 Our next stop was St. Nectin’s Glen. A remote waterfall that flows through a rock. It was over a mile hike each way in the freezing rain so we nominated the geologist. 🙂 I kinda wish I wasn’t so sick because the pictures looked so cool… And there as a money tree along the trail! I’ve been searching for a money tree all week! The local legend is that if you hammer a coin into the tree, it will cure illness and anyone who removes a coin will be struck with the illness. (You know these trees could never exist in the US, some methhead would pull every coin out and try to scrap the metal or something haha)

   

        

    

  

 Next was the town of Tintagel, the home of King Arthur’s castle. But when we got to town, it was so touristy we decided it wasn’t worth it. Lol we did spot the Castle Hotel that said that you had to try the “Cornish Cappucino Delux” so we stopped to try it. Turns out it was a fancy tea room and we have a not so fancy two year old 🙂 they didn’t have “take away” cups, so no Delux Cappucino. lol however, there were beautiful views around the back and you could see the castle ruins without paying the admission and without dealing with steps or tourists. Yay!

   

         

We then headed all the way out to the southern most tip of England to Penzance. If I didn’t have to drive in it, I would think these little seaside towns were amazing but they were all built before cars and not redesigned since. 

   

 

This was not a one way street, by the way

  

 We visited the Minack Theatre- an open air theatre sitting right on the edge of the island. I can’t imagine seeing a Shakespeare play or something here…

The water was so turquoise…unexpected with the climate they were having. 

     

                     

 

The plants at the theatre were very unique too

    

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

As we left on our way to St Ives (we did NOT meet a man with 7 wives) we could see St Michael’s mount off in the distance and the fog. We will be closer tomorrow, I hope to get better pictures.

  

St Ives from the top of the hill  

  

We then made our way to our hotel for the night. It was 5 floors up (no elevator) but we have an amazing view!