Epic Grad Trip: London, Days 1 & 2

We landed in London around 2pm Sunday afternoon. Our flight was uneventful and we were lucky enough to get emergency exit seats with tons of leg room (perfect for trying to sleep). One thing I should mention though is that we discovered in the airport that Lori's suitcase was missing a wheel which made getting around places annoying for the rest of the trip. I guess we could have tried to get her a new one, but I didn't have that kind of money to spend.

Anyway, for me, one of the best things about traveling is that "just arrived in a new city" feeling: a combination of excitement about everything that's going to be cool, the whole of your adventures in that city lying ahead of you and that huge not-knowing feeling as you have to learn to navigate new territory. It's both a promise and a challenge, and I love it. Lori didn't love the "not-knowing" part so much. But we made it to our hotel without incident, checked-in, freshened up, grabbed a bite to eat (chicken schwarma wrap and a falafel wrap; Lori's introduction to south/southeast Asian food and she was pretty impressed) and headed out into the city.

I think it was this point on our outings tonight that the reality of "you're in London" hit:

Our first activity of the trip was attending a worship service at Westminster Abbey. We had decided to do that to get into Westminster for free and because it sounded like a good Sunday evening activity, but I have to say that I now wish that we had paid the £15 to go in as tourists. It was breathtakingly stunning inside, but I would have liked the chance to walk around and see the markers for all the people who are buried/commemorated in the abbey.

It's also always interesting attending worship services of faiths that are not your own. Lori's comment afterward was that "I felt the spirit while I was there, but something was also missing." It was a beautiful service, and there was one hymn in particular that I loved, but it's not yours, you know? And especially, for me, there's a huge difference between a lay-clergy and a professional clergy. After the worship service we tried to follow the Westminster walking tour in Rick Steve's Great Britain travel guide, but there were a few places where we weren't sure which building he was talking about. Mostly we walked around telling each other "Dude, we're in London!"

At one point during our stroll, Lori got accosted by an apparently Latin American man dressed as a cowboy, but with his face painted white, which was a fun adventure. He wanted her to take her picture with him, but I didn't think he was cool enough to spend a pound on, so we moved on and had a good laugh. We were exhausted by our long flight and limited sleep the night before, though, so we headed back to the hotel a little early and get some sleep.

The next morning we were up and at it, though. I have a tendency to way over estimate travel times, especially while traveling, so we had about an hour of early morning time to kill before we needed to start staking out space at Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard, so we took a leisurely stroll through St. James Park

Then we staked out a spot in front of the palace.

It was crazy how many people ended up showing up for the Changing of the Guard -- by the time the show started there were tons and tons of people.

My favorite part was the military music; I do love me a marching band. And I'm glad to have watched the spectacle, but if I'm going to be honest (and I usually am) Lori and I both agreed that it wasn't quite as cool as we expected it to be. Like I said, we loved the music part, but the rest of it: lots of marching and standing.

Once that was finished, we headed to the British Museum. Which was crazy amazing. The museum has stuff from pretty much all time periods and from everywhere all over the world. There's no way to see it all, and while I wish that I could say that I could have spent hours in there, the real truth is that after a couple of hours in any museum my brain starts to get saturated and words and objects start to become meaningless.

So, after a couple of hours exploring the Museum, Lori and I headed to Piccadilly Circus where we watched street performers for a bit, and then had a delicious Italian dinner.

The final event of our long day of sight-seeing was an evening walking tour around Westminster and watching the debates in the House of Commons. Probably the most touching thing about the walking tour was seeing a few of these signs still hanging around on the buildings:

The tour was our favorite part of the day. Our guide was delightful and we loved hearing a little more about the history of the area, even though, of course, I don't remember any of it now. I do remember feeling this huge sense of the vast history of the city though, and an awe for how much fear and triumph the people of that city had experienced. It was pretty cool.

We capped off our evening with some hot chocolate and tiramisu at an Italian place near our hotel. And I think I will cap off this blog post with what is probably my favorite photo of the day.