Europe: London

London

2nd stop: London

Becca: We took the Eurostar from Paris to London (it made us a little car sick). We arrived and were just across the street from King's Cross Station--so of course we had to go pay our respects to this Harry Potter site. We were looking for Platform 9.75, and Google'd it. Turns out they MOVED it. To be near the Harry Potter store. So that's kind of lame! When we found it, there was a line to wait over an hour to get your picture taken on the wall. We decided against it, and went and had fun in the Harry Potter store for a bit. 

Finding our way through town the next morning. 

Tay: My favorite architecture in London has been Westminster Palace, the home of Parliament which includes the Big Ben clocktower. It's an interesting color compared to most of the other buildings we've seen, and quite gothic. I think it's really elaborate and very impressive right on the bank of the Thames River. We also really enjoyed Westminster Abbey, which is directly adjacent to the Palace. We actually attended an Evensong service there today so that we could see the Abbey for free, as a friend had recommended. I hereby submit that we abolish ward choirs and make all the 7-10-year-old boys in our stakes train diligently to sing beautiful liturgies while we all enjoy. Sitting in the service reminded me of seeing a cathedral in the Dominican Republic. I remember sitting way in the back of this beautiful church while people in front walked up to the altar to receive the Eucharist. 

Rebecca: I also think Westminster Palace was my favorite part of London. It was absolutely beautiful! So intricate. Big Ben was only one of the many clocktowers we saw around London. I felt like there was a clock every five buildings. :) 

Tay: We have walked miles in London and in Paris, even though we also use the subways--or, as my new British friends call it, the tube--each day. Yesterday we saw the Tower of London, an old castle where Richard the Lion and early English monarchs ruled, Tower Bridge, the iconic bridge most people--myself included--often think is London Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral, The National Gallery (an art museum that was cool but not that cool after the Louvre), Trafalgar Square (a big open cement area with statues and fountains where street performers gather and lots of people watch and loiter around, the Science Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum (where they had impressive sculptures, including a cast of Michaelangelo's famous David, some Rodin sculptures, and several amazing diamond crowns, scabbards, and swords), the London Natural History Museum (I think I enjoyed Harvard's Natural History Museum more, but my memory may be faulty). We also attended church today at a ward in London. We saw some Picasso paintings and other famous paintings at the Tate modern art museum.

The National Gallery 

Trafalgar Square

Double Decker Bus

Kensignton Gardens

Buckingham Palace

St. Paul's Cathedral

Becca: We decided not to pay for the tour of the Tower of London, as it was pretty expensive and, honestly, didn't look as cool as other things we'd seen in the past or still wanted to see in London. It was really neat to be there, however, because that's where a few of my ancestors were beheaded. I'll have to look up the story again, but they helped hid a prince who was on the run, and later were found out and punished by being beheaded. 

The Tower Bridge was beautiful and really impressive! We loved the colors (turquoise and red), though we learned they were semi-recently updated to those colors. After walking across Tower Bridge, we ended up in the Burough Market. This was on our list of things to see, but stumbling upon it made it even better! It was completely packed. Like you can barely get through it because of all the other people inside. We were a little hungry and decided to save our pb&js for later and grab something fun to eat. :) The market smelled soooo good. There were so many different kinds of food, from Indian to brats. A lot of the food stands had vegan options (which was great, because of my recent change of being lactose-intolerant). We decided to try the Indian, and man--it was so good. 

Added note: We've only been home from Europe for about two weeks now, and have learned of two more terrorist attacks that happened right where we visited not so long ago. It breaks my heart, but makes me so thankful that we were able to go on this trip and be safe the entire time. I know it was because of our prayers and prayers of family! We hardly ever felt unsafe. **Correction: I hardly ever felt unsafe. :) Tayler felt safe almost the whole time, I just got a little nervous a few times when we were out at night. 

Tay: We've taken the time to sort of wander around both cities, and one of my favorite things about that is that we routinely bump into artifacts, sculptures, monuments that we had no idea about. There really is so much history here. And things are built to be beautiful, not just functional. Aside from some lame burgers we had our first night in London, we've enjoyed the chance to try new foods and imagine what it would be like to live in either city. We enjoyed walking through the Borough Market, a busy food market under a bridge in London. We tried some delicious Indian food that smelled too good to pass up. We enjoyed thinking about and trying to sort of rate and compare these cities with other cities we've been able to see.

Tay: Visiting the Science, art, and Natural History Museums in London made me think a lot about visiting Chan and Tiffany in Boston when I got home from Ohio. That was a good time. I also remember then, that it's a little like that's what you sort of do in a big city--go to museums. We've felt quite tired of museums at some points in London. But the museums in London were free, and we didn't really know what better to do. In the end, they have been enjoyable, but at times a little exhausting walking around for so long looking what seem just another rendering of a famous biblical scene or too many portraits of people we don't know anything about. That sounds bad, but we've enjoyed most museums in general. 

Becca: On Sunday, we started out at church in London. That was so fun! I loved hearing all the British accents during fast & testimony meeting. I just felt so much love radiate from those members. I had a distinct impression through the meeting that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true, and brings true joy. I could feel that joy, and noticed a difference being with those members from the past week of traveling and being surrounded by so many tourists. You could feel these members' testimonies.

After church, we went to a few museums, and to see a changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. I had seen a lot of great reviews for the Science and Natural History Museums, but I wasn't that impressed...maybe I was just sick of museums. :) We decided to stop at the Victoria and Albert Museum, because it was right next door (plus it was free), even though neither of us were really excited about seeing another museum. This was one of our favorites! I especially loved seeing the jewel section. Amazing. I just wanted to try all of them on and see if I could still stand up while wearing them. We also saw a cast of The David. I also enjoyed learning that Victoria helped start the museum, and they even built its current building for it. 

Natural History Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The British Museum

 

Tay: Our Airbnb in London is a shared apartment with our own private bedroom. There are probably 10 people this four-bedroom apartment, with one little bathroom. It hasn't been that bad, but it's not as fun as having our own apartment, like we did in Paris. Granted, our bedroom is probably the same size as the Paris apartment, but I'd take small and private over big and shared after this. Really, it's not a big deal because we're not here very often.

Becca: One night we went grocery shopping to eat in (& save money), and the grocery stores (if you could even call them that, they were such small little markets) had only frozen food. Serious. Except for some chips, cereal, bread, and jam, it was pretty much all frozen food! So we grabbed a bag of chicken tenders, and ate that for dinner. Haha. We also scored and found the best granola that was also pretty cheap. That lasted for breakfast and snacks for quite a few days! 

Becca: We had been excited for and planning on going to Harry Potter Studios while in London. But, as we didn't have a ton of time to plan beforehand, we didn't know you had to buy your tickets like a month in advance...so we found that out the night before we wanted to go. Sad. But it all worked out, because we decided to treat ourselves to a last-minute Broadway show, instead! Plus, it ended up being way cheaper than Harry Potter Studios. And we both loved it! We saw Wicked, which Tay had never seen before. It had been long enough that I'd seen it, plus I love it and would re-watch it anytime. We had a blast! 

Tay: The final highlight of London was attending a Broadway play--Wicked! Everybody raved for years about the show. Rebecca saw it once before, but she was a good sport and wanted me to see it. It helped that we found amazing tickets at just $25 each. I was totally blown away by how great it was. The performers were outstanding, and the music was fantastic. I’ve spent the whole week replaying some of the songs over in my mind at random moments.

Before the play, we went again to the British Museum. It was quite enjoyable. We used a Rick Steves podcast to go through the museum, something we’ve done for a few others, like Versailles and the Louvre. At the Louvre, the podcast finished well before we wandered into less popular sections of the museum, like Napoleon III’s living quarters, but we didn’t have much time to wander around the British Museum. In that case, it was particularly nice to have the podcast to guide us to the most notable exhibits since we weren’t very familiar with what to look for. There were three important sections, Egyptian artifacts, which included amazing mummies, including Cleopatra’s. Second was a neat exhibit with artifacts from the Assyrians, the ancient group that inhabited the area around Iraq today. They had some really neat murals of lion hunting, as well as a couple giant sphinx-like guardians with heads in the image of one of their famous kings. The best section was ancient Greece, where they had the panels and sculptures that used to run around the upper perimeter of the Parthenon in Athens. The British government rescued the art and transported it inside to preserve it. It would be amazing to see as part of the Parthenon though.

Becca: Overall, London was really fun, but it wasn't really what I thought it would be. I pictured beautiful town houses, like you see in "The Parent Trap," but I only saw that once (pictured below). I liked London, and loved all the little kids with their cute accents. :) It was dirtier than I thought. Out of all the cities we went to, I think Paris and Switzerland cities were the cleanest. 

One really fun thing we stumbled upon walking through London was a book market. There were a few long tables outside, right on the river's edge, where a few people were selling a bunch of books. We loved it! We wanted to buy a few, but pulled ourselves away thinking of fitting and carrying books in our backpacks for the remaining 2 weeks of our trip!

Tay: Monday night was crazy. We had initially planned to stay at an Airbnb at the airport outside London. But after thinking things through, we realized that with 7 am Monday flight and the Wicked play Monday night, we’d get to the Airbnb at about 1 am just to leave for the airport around 4:30 am. We decided that wasn’t worth the hassle and we were able to cancel our overnight booking for a full refund. We went directly to the airport after the play instead. It was probably the right choice, but it was still sort of terrible. The airport was tiny, and other people were scattered through the terminals outside of the security gates. The spots against walls with electric outlets were the most popular, but we really needed to charge some devices. After a couple laps around the terminal looking for some place to sleep, we found an outlet near a closed bathroom where we could plug our stuff in. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, but Rebecca tried to a little. No luck. The terminal was really drafty and quite cold after sitting on the hard floor for a while.

Becca: That sketchy little airport was also freezing. 
There was a lot of construction and it honestly seemed like a bit of a sketchy airport. The security checkpoint was closed from midnight to 3, but we finally decided sleep was impossible at 4 and went through. On the other side of security, it was like a whole new world. Apparently, that was the newly renovated section of the airport. There were tons of shops, lots of food, and way more chairs. It felt like two different airports.