Day 184: Winding Down

Are you f%#$*ing serious? Yes.... It IS our last day. Wow. I cannot believe we are at this point of our dream trip. I don't want it to end but I do. It seems to have been a perfect amount of time. We're ready......for our last day in London!

First off we wanted to check out Buckingham Palace to see if we could catch the changing of the guards. We took the tube to Hyde Park and walked through the Green Garden towards the palace.

We spotted the Canadian war memorial, which seemed fitting after seeing all the Remembrance Day celebrations all week here.

We saw twenty young cadets riding thirty horses around the palace. Then we saw a procession of guards on horses come by that sent chills through my spine - it seemed so.....medieval and Royal at the same time. Unfortunately, they had changed to a once every two days schedule do here guard changing ceremony, so we weren't able to see that (funny enough, the girls had never heard of it.... I guess all things Royal are not as pervasive in this generation of Canadians as they used to be!).

Back on the bus, we headed West on the blue line towards Kensington and Notting Hill....neither of which I could mispronounce, which kind of sucked...

Yes, she's my bride, but that was not a veil, it was a rain poncho. Abby could now strike "experiencing rain in London" off her bucket list.

We made our way to the far end of Kensington Gardens where we got out at Notting Hill. It was time for lunch, so we dropped in at a nice looking pub called the Old Swan. The beer was cold....

...and the food was serviceable.

Notting Hill is the sight of the famous Julie Roberts and Hugh Grant movie, and by the looks of the place, you could see why they would make a movie there. It's very quaint with colourful rows of towns, nice looking shops and a large market street on Portobello road that sells all kinds of antiques and knick knacks.

Speaking of antiques, I spotted this Rolls Royce for private sale on the side of the road... I considered getting it for Probir, but he always says he'd prefer a vintage Porsche, so I decided not to put an offer in.

We spotted a Starbucks and headed right for it when Beth spied a Second Cup store complete with a Canadian Flag - it turned out to be the real thing, which delivered a very big post-coffee smile.

Beth wanted to show us the large Harrods in Knightsbridge, so we took the tube rather than wait for the bus. When we got out of the station next to the department store, there were a bunch of street performers - awesome. We also noticed a dog lying very still....

Until we realized that it was a sand carving - well done. We also saw Harry Potter doing a cool violin performance.

Harrods was busy on the main floor where there was a good mix of tourists and real shoppers. It wasn't all high end, but certain rooms were pretty much devoid of shoppers due to the scary high prices.

The food market was pretty spectacular. It looked like a Japanese department store but with even more flair and colour. Most of the crowds were checking out the food halls here - real Brits grabbing a takeaway lunch, Margaret Thatcher lookalike grandmas picking up some special ingredients, and of course Canadian backpackers taking pictures of everything.

The meat, seafood and poultry section made me salivate.... They had beautiful beef hanging up in dry storage cases.... It reminded me of the streak dinner we had in Toronto with RTD and Angela.... drool... drool....

Outside, the violinist had reached the end of his half hour time slot, and in rolled a comedian/magician. 

We watched his whole half hour set, and it was really quite good. In true British fashion, he was quick with the tongue and had a gift for biting, sarcastic, witty humour. We loved it.

By the end of his performance when he made a ton of fruit appear out of small copper cups, a huge crowd had gathered. I can't say it enough - the way this city embraces its street performers is amazing.

When the magic was done, it was time to head over for an early dinner that Beth had made a reservation for. We did catch another performer, this time an accordion player, in the tube station below Harrods.

Dinner was fun. We started recapping - how many times we'd packed and unpacked, how many cooking courses, overnight trains, food tours, animal adventures, sporting activities, countries, cities, flights, meals away from home, movies.... The time has flown. And it hasn't. It's hard to explain really.

Dinner at the posh pub turned restaurant called Balls Brothers was fantastic. We had one more little adventure after dinner, so we were eating early, but we all managed to polish off our meals.

Robin was doodling in her book and made a little thank you note which was cute...

When we got outside Victoria Station, we told them we had one more thing to check off the to do list in London, and that was to see a good old fashioned theater production! We were going to see Billy Elliot in the nearby Victoria Theater.

Beth and I had only seen the movie, but the premise was a good one for kids - a young northern English mining town boy discovers a passion for ballet and struggles to stay true to himself and battle stereotypical negative views from the macho townsfolk. Man, I should write bylines....

The girls were pumped. After seeing theater after theater and advert after advert for said theater productions for the last three days, it was our time to join in the fun.

Spoiler alert, Billy did great and everyone accepted him and supported him after working out their conflicted feelings about boys in ballet through song and dance.....that, my friends, is irony.

We got home late.... Too late. The girls were zomked, but we still managed to pack everything up for tomorrow's early flight back to.....TORONTO!!!

Now, I can't wait.

Day 183: Out and about in London

Rolling out of bed is getting tougher. It feels like we are on the 10th day of an 11 day marathon.... Oh, we are! Well, I feel like we have no pressure - London is massive, so we do we want and continue to GE ta feel for the different things going on with this city..... Including one awesome cutout we found!

We took a tube to Covent Gardens (don't say the "S" or Beth will get cross!), and eventually found our Big Bus tour stop. With it being the official "off season", we got 48 hours us a free boat tour ticket for the price of a regular 24 hour ticket.

The bus turned east, along Fleet Street and towards the City, the one square mile original London that still has its very own ceremonial mayor. The live tour guide on the bus, a woman sitting behind us on the partially covered second floor near the front, was very entertaining and full of information. We drove by our dinner destination for tonight which was nice - it's a nice restaurant in a very old pub building called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. Shortly after we passed by the impressive St. Paul's cathedral - beautiful and much bigger than I'd thought.

We got off the bus near the famous castle - the Tower of London. We were kind of sad to say goodbye after a short time to our bus guide - she was great. The Tower was way emptier than I'd seen it the last time I was here, during high season. They have free tours put on by the ceremonial guards of the Tower called Yeoman. The Yeoman carry on a long tradition of protecting the castle and even today they are made up of decorated veterans with at least twenty two years of service in the military.

After a moment of silence for Remembrance Day at 11:00 (something that really makes us feel that we are really so close to home!), we were off. The hour long tour was quite funny - lots of tales of executions with great drama and comedy thrown in. You quickly got the sense or how bloody the monarchy system was, especially when you layer in a full blown religious power struggle. I think it would have been much better to have been a blacksmith or fisherman thank you very much.

After the tour, we were off on our own. The main things to see there of course, are the Crown Jewels. The little museum full of expensive swords, crowns, scepters, goblets and more is very impressive. Like the Yoeman said, it got a lot of women looking down at the puny diamonds on their ring for sure.

Ah, the White Tower in the middle of it all. Sadly, we didn't see Gandalf or even Saurman....

Of course, more recognizable than the Tower of London is the big bridge the crosses the Thames right in front called the Tower Bridge. I personall don't like the baby blue trimmings on the bridge... They could have done better than that, however the rest of the working draw bridge is impressive.

We got the boat pier just after our boat left, which was fortuitous as there was a Starbucks next to the pier that literally had a Venti Skim Chai with my someone else's name on it.

Our boat came soon enough and we were headed East, towards Canary Wharf (who knew Wharf meant WareHouse At River Front!) and Greenwich (just one more word to bug Beth with... Remember....Lie-Chester Square, Covent GardenS, THames and now GreenWitch).

Greenwich was cute and fun. On display near the pier was the original Cutty Sark that has now been turned into a real life maritime museum.

However we had grander plans... Lunch. We headed to the Greenwich Market for lunch - it's a sort of half food stall, half craft show setup in a covered pavilion. I could barely get in the door before I felt three quid being sucked out of my pocket for two pork steam buns. We added Chana masala, stuffed ricotta and spinach ravioli and chicken tikka masala for a United Nations type lunch.

Greenwich is nice. I'm glad we're taking the girls to different slices of London. While the city is fantastic, the little Burroughs just outside the core offer a taste of London I don't think you'd normally get to see in such a short stay. We sacrifice church and museum interiors for neighbourhoods - it's just how we roll. :-)

You know there was a good business case when even Starbucks decided to give up their branding in favour of fitting in with the neighbourhood decor.

I've shifted my addiction of photographing chilli peppers and bottles of beer to pubs.... I love the uniqueness they bring to each street corner.

Back on the TH-ames, we made our way back upstream - past the Tower Bridge, into Central London. When we got out at Westminster Pier, we had a good perspective on the size and scope of Big Ben (or the tower that contains the bell called Big Ben, if you're being picky).

On the other side of the river, we could see the London Eye - apparently the busiest (by visitors?) tourist attraction in the world last year (that's what the boat guide said, and there were no qualifiers on that superlative!).

"Look kids, Big Ben, Parliament!"

We got back on our bus - this time we managed to catch the blue bus that only had recorded descriptions of the sights, which was ok but not as good as our old live guide. Robin was loving the bus tour - it is totally her style. She wants the information to come to her - not the other way around. She described it as "like flying" in the bus, though we suspect that may have meant "like not walking".

We passed Westminster, the famous church used for inaugurations and special events. I had to do a double take as at first glance you'd think you were looking at Notre Dame.... But....no.

The audio recording was constantly reminding us to make sure we kept our headphones in case we got back on the bus in the future so we could reuse them. The sight on the top of one of the bus stops we stopped at while this recording played was pretty funny - it was a veritable headset cemetery.

We ended up alighting (hah!) at Marble Arch, near the head of the famous Oxford Road shopping street.

Oxford was full of Christmas decorations, and with the red double decker buses, the whole area shone with life.

Remembering to look down alleyways is important. We found this little gem of a shopping alley that had hundreds of stores and was decorated with giant hanging red ornaments above.

We watched a couple of talented human beat box performers. If....when I come back to London, I'm arming myself with tons of one and two pound coins and watching street performers all day and night.

Turning South on Regent Street, we got another, longer look at the amazing ritzy street of London.... Though let's be real, pretty much every street in London, with rents and prices what they are, can be considered ritzy for the average Canadian backpacker family of four!

We got to another bus stop that we were going to take over to the Eye, but we figured out that the buses were pretty much done for the day with the winter hours. So we got in a Black Cab (apparently also on Abby's bucket list!) and watched nervously as the pounds and pence on the meter crept speedily upwards as we crawled through traffic.

The London Eye is the biggest...oh, I'm not even going to try. I'm sure there's some kind of superlative to describe it. I will say though, it did provide some fantastic views of the city at night.

Riding in it is not like a ferris wheel experience - the pod is more like an average sized London batchelor pad (though it smelt better and the windows were clean) slowly flying through the night.

A great shot, if I do say so myself, of the parliament buildings.

Ah, the girls are getting quite the trip send off in London.

We walked over to nearby Waterloo Ststion - yet another impressive, massive monument of public transportation excellence.

We got out not far from Fleet Street, our dinner destination. We were all pretty pumped up as we had a dinner date. As Robin put it, "yeah, someone ELSE to talk to!". As we crossed the street, we spotted this tiny slice of a pub that had 90% of its patrons outside eating and drinking.

Being early (shocker!), we walked around St Pauls to see if we could go in. No dice, they were having some kind of private event. I was a little disappointed that they don't light the church up at night.

At seven, we made our way back to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese to meet Andy and Jenny whom we'd met in Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka. We'd shared a safari in Mineriya with them as well as staying at the same hotel, and we'd gotten on very well. They were at the pub when we'd arrived, and it was like meeting old friends. We are pretty compatible and did not have any lulls in the conversation. The kids didn't talk too much, instead just seeming to be content with listening to us have a conversation with REAL LIFE PEOPLE! Seriously though..we needed that!

The food would have made Papa very jealous.... Particularly the roast beef dinner that five of us ordered!

Robin rounded out the orders with some good old bangers and mash!

What an absolutely terrible picture, but what a great night! We heavily encouraged Jenny and Andy to come stay with us in Toronto any time they wanted. It was great meeting up with them again.

Tubing it home, we ran into the the usual Tube buskers. I love the energy of this city. Beth said to me, and she's spot on about this, "I wish Canadians weren't so bloody afraid to DO anthing" (ok, I added the "bloody" part) and it's so true. In Toronto, we've tried for 15 years to introduce (allow?) food carts/trucks in the city that don't just sell hot dogs.... They can't get it to work. Buskers in Toronto? Stick to buskerfest....otherwise, NO! London has the whole system of street performers worked out (and by the way, the city makes a ton of money from the system). Every street performer has a half hour or hour window reserved for an exact location and they pay for that right. In turn, it fosters a vibrant arts culture to the city. We need to write John Tory a letter I think....