London in September

Owen woke up chipper and ready to go on Friday morning. In fact, he was feeling so well, I took him to school to perform his part in the morning assembly with the rest of his homeroom. It was a skit about "respect" and they did a great job. Owen played the part of a scientist.

An American friend gave us a lift to the train station and two hours later, we met up with Craig at Paddington Station without any snafus. He was able to check into the hotel and we ditched our luggage and spent the rest of the day seeing the sights. Our first stop was The Monument to the Great Fire of London ("The Monument").


Craig really wanted to see this and we got to go up inside. There were many spiral steps, but the views were worth it.
From Wikipedia:
"The monument consists of a fluted Doric column topped with a gilded urn of fire and was designed by Christopher Wren (famous London architect) and Robert Hooke. Its 202 foot height marks the monument's distance to the site of Thomas Farynor, the king's baker's shop in Pudding Lane, where the fire began."
Also, "Wren and Hooke built the monument to double as a scientific instrument. It has a central shaft meant for use as a zenith telescope and for use in gravity and pendulum experiments that connects to an underground laboratory for observers to work (accessible from the present-day ticket booth). The steps in the shaft of the tower are all six inches high, allowing them to be used for barometric pressure studies."


Little knobs on the handrail so kamikazes can't slide their way down

I had booked a spot on the London Eye for all of us that afternoon. The London Eye aka the Millennium Wheel is a ferris wheel which is about 450 ft. tall, is supported only on one side and hangs over the River Thames. About 25 people can fit into each pod (we only had about 12 in ours) and it slowly takes you up and around, affording spectacular views of the city a little bit at a time. We all really enjoyed the ride and looking at London from a bird's eye view.





Houses of Parliament

Big Ben

Charing Cross train station

The County Hall
It is now where you get tickets for the Eye and serves as a general tourist information place.

Owen McCarter starring in the blockbuster film Eye'm Alone
Fortunately, there will never be an Eye'm Alone II.

Cool photo of the park where we played while waiting for our Eye flight

That evening, we all crashed back at the hotel. At around 11 PM, we were then all awoken by the murderous sound of a fire alarm! Everyone except Craig was reluctant to get out of bed and as soon as we did, the alarm was turned off and determined to be a false alarm. Quite the adventure...

I also had purchased tickets to see an attraction called the London Dungeons (not to be confused with the dungeons in the Tower of London) so we went there early Saturday. The London Dungeons is like a haunted house with real actors that put on short skits about gory disasters that have happened in London throughout the ages. Topics included: the plague, the great fire, Sweeney Todd, Jack the Ripper, general information on how people were tortured and hung long ago, Victorian surgical processes... I think you get the picture. There was a mini log flume ride and a drop of doom type thing. Owen swore he saw Sweeney Todd lurking around us in the dark and trying to cut our hair (the seats had air pressure puffs to simulate this). It was so cute how sure of this he was/is. Craig, Evan and I thought it was hokey; Finn and Owen were hooked. FYI ~ Any children below the age of eight would probably be scared to death of this attraction.

Beware of humped pelicans!
In more ways than one...

We walked around and across a lot of the bridges in town. I really liked the Tower Bridge which I had always thought was the London Bridge. However, London Bridge is MUCH newer and more modern because it is just as old as I am!




View of 30 St Mary Axe, also known as "The Gherkin" and the Swiss Re Building while on Tower Bridge
This is probably my favorite skyscraper ever.

View of the Tower of London after crossing the Tower Bridge

Under London Bridge

Millennium Bridge, I think

We also went to Picadilly Circus - which truly WAS a circus, it was so busy - to visit the Royal Academy of Arts but the queue was very long. I overheard that the featured exhibition had just been in the paper which explained all of the crowds crowding to get in to see it.




Craig next to a mini Tardis in Picadilly Circus

We went to Trafalgar Square for the Eid Festival (our first and last) and Covent Gardens for the street entertainment.



After a full night's rest, we headed back to Paddington Station

and only experienced a slight delay between Gloucester and Cheltenham when the conductor had to stop and wait to see if it was safe to proceed past a railside fire (what IS it with this weekend and fires???). We arrived home by 1 PM. Success!